Assessing the Relevance of Anomie Theory for Explaining Spatial Variation in Lethal Criminal Violence: An Aggregate-Level Analysis of Homicide within the United States

One of the most influential statements in the anomie theory tradition has been Merton’s argument that the volume of instrumental property crime should be higher where there is a greater imbalance between the degree of commitment to monetary success goals and the degree of commitment to legitimate means of pursing such goals. Contemporary anomie theories stimulated by Merton’s perspective, most notably Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional anomie theory, have expanded the scope conditions by emphasizing lethal criminal violence as an outcome to which anomie theory is highly relevant, and virtually all contemporary empirical studies have focused on applying the perspective to explaining spatial variation in homicide rates. In the present paper, we argue that current explications of Merton’s theory and IAT have not adequately conveyed the relevance of the core features of the anomie perspective to lethal violence. We propose an expanded anomie model in which an unbalanced pecuniary value system – the core causal variable in Merton’s theory and IAT – translates into higher levels of homicide primarily in indirect ways by increasing levels of firearm prevalence, drug market activity, and property crime, and by enhancing the degree to which these factors stimulate lethal outcomes. Using aggregate-level data collected during the mid-to-late 1970s for a sample of relatively large social aggregates within the U.S., we find a significant effect on homicide rates of an interaction term reflecting high levels of commitment to monetary success goals and low levels of commitment to legitimate means. Virtually all of this effect is accounted for by higher levels of property crime and drug market activity that occur in areas with an unbalanced pecuniary value system. Our analysis also reveals that property crime is more apt to lead to homicide under conditions of high levels of structural disadvantage. These and other findings underscore the potential value of elaborating the anomie perspective to explicitly account for lethal violence.

Beyond the Pro and Contra of Evidence-Based Practice: Reflections on a Recurring Dilemma at the Core of Social Work

Currently, social work is witnessing a quite polarized debate about what should be the basis for good practice. Simply stated, the different attempts to define the required basis for effective and accountable interventions in social work practice can be grouped in two paradigmatic positions, which seem to be in strong opposition to each other. On the one hand the highly influential evidence based practice movement highlights the necessity to base practice interventions on proven effectiveness from empirical research. Despite some variations, such as between narrow conceptions of evidence based practice (see e.g. McNeece/Thyer, 2004) and broader approaches to it (see e.g. Gambrill, 1999, 2001, 2008), the evidence based practice movement embodies a positivist orientation and more explicitly scientific aspirations of social work by using positivistic empirical strategies. Critics of the evidence based practice movement argue that its narrow epistemological assumptions are not appropriate for the understanding of social phenomena and that evidence based guidelines to practice are insufficient to deal with the extremely complex activities social work practice requires in different and always somewhat unique practice situations (Webb, 2001; Gray & Mc Donald, 2006; Otto, Polutta &Ziegler, 2009). Furthermore critics of evidence based practice argue that it privileges an uncritical and a-political positivism which seems highly problematic in the current climate of welfare state reforms, in which the question ‘what works’ is highly politicized and the legitimacy of professional social work practice is being challenged maybe more than ever before (Kessl, 2009). Both opponents and proponents of evidence based practice argue on the epistemological, the methodological and the ethical level to sustain their point of view and raise fundamental questions about the real nature of social work practice, so that one could get the impression that social work is really at the crossroads between two very different conceptions of social work practice and its further professional development (Stepney, 2009). However, this article is not going to merely rehearse the pro and contra of different positions that are being invoked in the debate about evidence based practice. Instead it aims to go further by identifying the dilemmas underlying these positions which - so it is argued – re-emerge in the debate about evidence based practice, but which are older than this debate. They concern the fundamental ambivalence modern professionalization processes in social work were subjected to from their very beginnings.