Alienation and Deviance: Strain Theory Reconsidered*

Richard G. Mitchell, Jr., Oregon State University

This paper proposes a way in which the concepts of alienation and anomie may be related in a single dimension of social experience and offers a refinement and expansion of traditional strain theories of deviance causation. It is argued that both alienated and anomie social actors seek a common goala sense of effective interaction with their environment; an experience of personal competence. Anomie persons are those who perceive the demands of primary roles as confusing and beyond their abilities and who respond by seeking to maximize certainty, security, and stability in social interaction. By contrast, alienated individuals are those who experience primary role requirements as simple but stilling and restrictive, bereft of meaningful challenges. These latter persons seek greater freedom and opportunities for creativity and self-expression. The ways in which deviance may emerge as these alienated persons adapt to the perceived discrepancy between their abilities and responsibilities are outlined and illustrated following the adaptive modes suggested by Merton for anomie persons.

According to Merton (1938, 1957) and other traditional strain theorists (Cohen, 1955; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960), in the United States there eire relatively many persons who internalize and aspire to the culturally promulgated goals of wealth, material well-being, and sociaJ stability, but there are relatively few who have access to the legitimate, institutionalized means of achieving those goals. From this perspective, strain at the social structural level is the result of this imperfect integration between goals and means and, for the individusd, the disjunctures between aspirations and realistic expectations, the discrepancies between capacities to perform and the requirements of role performances. Consistent with this traditional strain model is a view of social actors as somehow inadequate, incapable, or inferior as a result of their disadvantaged positions in the social structure. In this condition the challenges the individual must confront to achieve success outstrip his or her meager skills and resources. In sum, the individual's i>erceived abilities are less than his or her perceived responsibilities.' Recurrent experiences of personal failure and inadequacy may lead to a sense of meaninglessness and normlessness called ainomie. This anomie disorientation is reduced through modes of adaptation whereby normative goab and means are variously rejected, circumvented, or supplanted, resulting in some cases in deviance. This traditional strain model has been criticized on a number of points

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(see especially Clinard, 1964:55-56, 57-97). Hirschi (1969:6-10) and Empey (1978:301) direct attention to three major weaknesses. Strain theory fails (1) to adequately account for deviance committed by middle- and upper-class persons (and others in relatively advantaged positions), (2) to explain the deviance of persons who do not hold material success and security as central life orientations, and (3) to take into consideration the general decline in deviance observed in young adulthood in spite of the relative immutability of social class (however, see Hirschi and Gottfredson, 1983:552-584). By reexamining the strain process, talking into consideration the three related concepts of alienation, competence, and anomie, I believe these shortcomings can be obviated and strain theories given new and broadened utility. The Relationship between Alienation and Anomie It is (>ossible to conceive of aJienation and anomie as opposite ends of a continuum of social experience (Mitchell, 1983:chap. 12; Coser, 1969:505; Cooley, 1912:343; Coburn, 1975:213-225; Barakat, 1969:1-10; Durkheim, 1951;' French and Kjihn, 1962:1-47). The points on this continuum may be conceptualized as of ratios of jjerceived ability to perceived responsibility in primau-y role relationships. Strain, in this context, is deFmed as the imbalance between ability and responsibility, where failure to reconcile these conditions has important jjerceived consequences (see McGrath, 1970:10-21). Anomie Merton argues that when ability is inferior to the responsibility of necessary role performance required to achieve socially emphasized goals, people tend to experience anomie. As an example of this process he focuses on the plight of lower-class persons who struggle with inadequate social skills to obtain scarce monetary rewards. Anomie, however, is not simply the absence of material success. To me, anomie suggests feelings of confusion or disorientation, existence in a social world lacking in predictability or substance, a sense of recurrent contradictions in what is required or permissible in social action (Duridieim, 1951). Anomie persons characterize their relationship to others as normless, meaningless, insubstantial. They perceive themselves as isolated, out of touch. By adopting this broadened interpretation of anomie, the motive for action of anomie persons takes on new meaning. In brief, anomie motivates a search for social stability, security, and certainty. The goal of anomie persons is not simply economic achievement but, more broadly, the restoration of stable social interaction, escape from pervasive uncertainty, reintegration into an understandable and predictable social order. The response to anomie is to seek a state where the demands placed upon one to achieve, monetarily or

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Otherwise, are in rough equilibrium with one's capacities. What is sought is the articulation of salient goals with permissible means, not simply materisil success. Using the limited case of economic achievement as a case in point, Merton (1938, 1957) explains several types of deviance in terms of people's efforts to adapt to anomie, to alter their life experience in the direction of increased predictability and control. Not everyone, however, is in want of security, stability, and certainty. Alieftation Middle- and upper-class persons, and some in other categories, have achieved and perhaps learned to take for granted at least moderate monetary success and social stability. Yet these persons may experience another sort of strain, another kind of disjuncture between goals and means, which, in turn, contributes to other types of deviance. Those who have achieved stable social circumstances and material well-being may feel themselves lacking in other ways. Security, stability, and certainty in sodai interaction are not positive qualities without limits. When one's place in the social structure is so secure that mobility is forlorn, when relationships are so stable as to render change impossible, when the form and content of social interaction becomes so certain that outcomes are known in advance, then security, stability, and certainty may no longer be experienced as desirable or even tolerable. Tsdcen to excess, the certain, stable, and secure social environment engenders a repression of personal volition, a denial and stifling of individual creativity, and it inhibits self-expression. Some people may obtain economic well-being, prestige, and permanence of position in the social structure at the expense of other desires. Sjifely ensconced in positions of (tower, they may find themselves in many ways powerless to act (Kanter and Stein, 1979:9-12). Assembly-line workers are often well pud and secure in their jobs but limited in their work to the performance of menial and repetitive tasks without intrinsic satisfaction (Garson, 1979a:211-217; Molstad, 1980). Teenagers perceive themselves as possessing rapidly developing social and physical abilities. Yet in the extended adolescence, especially experienced by middleand upper-class youth (Glaaer, 1975:29), these perceived abilities find no adequate demonstration, earn no tangible or symbolic reward (Stinchcombe, 1964:chap. 5). To their continual frustration, young people fmd themselves sociaiiy identified with dependent childhood (Friedenberg, 1966:50-51; Julian, 1977:365, 376-378). The inteUigent, educated, ambitious young woman finds her marriage to a successful executive restrictive and unfulfiUing, her responsibilities as a homemaicer, babysitter, maid, and occasional sex object unchallenging and dull (Arnott and Bengtson, 1970; Oakley, 1974; Friedan, 1%3; Rollin, 1973).

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Consistent in each of these examples are images of social actors as possessing greater capacity, talent, skill, or resources than flnd opportunities for expression in the enactment of primary roles. Persons see themselves capable of, and desire to do, more than they are allowed or encouraged to do. For these people the social world is experienced recurrently as bound over by regulation, rule, and routine at every turn. Spontaneity and creativity are stifled. Individuality is subjugated to the dictates of an obdurate and oppressive social structure. In sum, individuals' perceived abilities are greater than their perceived responsibilities. Recurrent experiences of this sort may lead to a sense of powerlessness and self-estrangement called alienation.' Competence The goals of the alienated individual are different from and similar to those of anomie ]3ersons. They differ in that alienated individuals, in searching for occasions to utilize their perceived abilities, may purposely seek out problematic and puzzling circumstances or actively encours^ continued instability in some areas of their social lives. More important than their differences, however, are the similarities between alienated and anomie social actors. Both are seeking ways of bringing into balance their perceived abilities and the responsibilities confronting them. Both endeavor to match the challenges they face with the resources they possess. Both attempt to move toward a state of equilibrium between what they perceive themselves capable of doing and what they are allowed or required to do as a result of their position in the social structure. Achievement of this balance renders activity intrinsically rewarding, enjoyable, "fun." It becomes leisure in the cl2issic sense (deGrazia, 1%2:11-25). In neuropsychological terms, organisms are motivated to alter environmental inputs, reducing stimulus variability when too much is present, increasing variability when stimulation falls below some optimal level (Bcrlyne, 1960; Hebb, 1955; Hunt, 1965; Farley in Hooper, 1983; Zuckerman, 1971).'' Social psychologically, role expectations are met with appropriate and adequate role pterformances. Persons are motivated to achieve what White (1959) refers to as competence, a sense of personal worth, self-as-cause, efficacy in interaction with others. Csikszentmihalyi (1975) identifies the condition of a balanced dynamic tension between tJsiiity and responsibility as "flow." In a state of flow, "a person perceives that his ci^iacity to act (or skills) matches the opportunities for action perceived in the environment (or challenges)" (Cakszentmihalyi and Larson, 1978:326-327). Sociologically, normatively prescribed success goals are articulated with socially legitimated structural means. For Marx this meant the means of production were self-controlled. The goal of production was self-actualization, found in the process of intrinsically satisfying labor (Schacht, 1970:85-86).

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The focus of the discussion that follows is at the social psychological level, while recognizing the effects of individual and institutional structures on interaction and perception. Competence grows from the process of recognizing one's abilities and applying them meaningfully and completely. Competence means assessing oneself as qualified, capable, fit, sufficient, adequate. Competence emerges when a person's talent, skills, and resources find useful application in meeting a commensurate challenge, problem, or difficulty. In sum, competent individuals' perceived abilities are roughly equal to their perceived responsibilities. It is my contention that deviance is the potential product of a search for competence by anomic and alienated persons. Merton illustrates the typicsJ forms this deviance may take among the former category of persons. He proposes four modes of adaptation to anomic strain: innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion. Alienation produces deviant adaptive behavior as well. Figure 1 summarizes the relationships between ilienation, competence, and anomie. Figure 1 Relationships between Alienation, Competence, and Anomie
Anomie Competence Alienation

Ability < ResfKjnsibility - Ability * Responsibility - Ability > Responsibility

Subjective Experience Subjective Experience Subjective Experience

Confusion-disorientation Normlessness Isolation

Motive for A dion

Competence Self-as-cause Personal efficacy Flow

Frustration-repression Powerlessness Self-estrangement

Motive for A ction

Social and economic security, stability, certainty Comprehension, contrtrf

Personal freedom, creative self expression, challenge Recognition, creativity

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Adaptations Alienated individuals may act in deviant fashions as they strive for challenges to match their capacities, as they seek opportunities for creative selfexpression in the enactment of primary roles, or, in response to the absence of such opportunities, in other ways. By locating in Merton's paradigm a search for creativity and self-expression as the goal motivating adaptive action, it is possible to account for those kinds of deviance omitted by traditional strain theory. Specifically, the deviant acts of well-to-do persons, acts of "senseless" destruction and violence, ind, indirectly, the cessation of deviance by young adults following delinquent teenage careers may be more easily understood and expliiined by hypothesizing that these persons are in search of creative self-expression, not economic success and social stability. The conceptual categories of ritualist, innovator, retreatist, and rebel set forth in the original paradigm are employed to guide the following discussion of deviance rooted in alienation. Ritualism Ritualism is of two types, one involving a scaling down or abindonment of hope for creative expression, the other intentional restriction of abilities in the face of a scarcity of meaningful challenges. The first tyjse is a process paralleled by anomie social actors, involving a trimming of goals to fit available means. In Merton's scheme, if unswerving commitment to institutionalized means produces less than some culturally preferred level of success, the anomie rituadist reduces aspirations to conform with available opportunities. When fully utilized abilities are inadequate to meet the demands of existing resp>onsibilities, a lower level of responsibility is sought. Likewise, alienated fjersons, frustrated in their search for creative opportunity, may set Siside that elusive goal but retain their commitment to conventional role relationships. For some persons the circumstances of their primary roles such as employment and family may be accepted, though hope for meaningful creative experience therein is abandoned. Cultural cliches such as "Nobody likes to go to work but that's my job so I do it" or "Who cares if we're not happy? Husbands and wives have a responsibility to stay together for the sake of the children" illustrate the ritualists' perspective. The ritualist may be bitter and intolerant toward those who continue to strive for mestningful and creative outlets on the job and at home (Kaufman in Schacht, i970:lii-liii). People who seek to meike some personal input at workthose who deviate from established procedures and make suggestions for changesate seen by the ritualist as "troublemakers" who are "rocking the boat." The work of people

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in occupations presumably offering more creative opportunity, especially those in the fine arts and academia, is demeaned as "weird," "long-hair," or just plain "academic." Persons who divorce because they find their marriages unfulfilling are dubbed by ritualists M "immature," "self-centered," even "sinful." Whether or not this form of ritualist adaptation may be considered deviant dejjends on the degree their prejudice toward self-expressive, creative persons is manifested in overt discrimination. A second, more clearly deviant form of ritualistic adaptation is unique to alienated persons: impoverished goals are made more attractive by purposeful reduction of available means and pterformance capacities are intentionally limited to match available creative chsdlenges. Alcohol and other soporifics may play a part in this self-handicapping process. Traditionsilly, these drugs have been associated with anomic retreatism, serving to blunt the urgency of overbearing and ever-present demands on limited resources (Roman, 1974; Hessler, 1974). However, alternative applications are possible. Alcohol and other substances may be used in controlled amounts to limit the range and variety of possible action, transforming the monotonous chore to a reasonable challenge as abilities decrease to a level commensurate with the job at hand. Routine work and relationships take on added relative complexity as coordination, perception, and skill are attenuated by drug effects. In the realm of play, ability to maintain some minimal level of role performance under increasing drug influence may serve as a source of personal pride or interpersonal comf>etition. High school and college students may indulge in drinking games. The object of this play is to ingest quantities of alcohol in a limited period of time"chug-a-lug" contestsor as a penalty for losing in games of chance"passout." Status accrues to those who consume the most alcohol while retaining limited motor skill or, at least, remaining conscious. Other drugs were employed during the 1960s in a similar fashion. Novitiate marijuana smokers under the influence would venture into the strzught world of movie houses, ice cresun and pizza parlors, and music events to try their skills at passing for normal. Some LSD users, likewise, tested their abilities to maintain composure and act plausibly in conventional society. Games based on drug-induced incapacitation are also adaptable to work settings where the difficulty of meeting expectations while inebriated enlivens otherwise laborious routines. I am acquainted with a computer programmer who worked for more than two years under the influence of m2Uijuana and periodically cocaine as a buffer against what he perceived as the tedium of an overly simple job. Similarly, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's mythical character Sherlock Holmes was said to have a mind that "rebels at stagnation," that "must have stimulation and challenge at any cost" (Bryant, 1974:100). When Holmes' work as a

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chemist did not provide this necessary excitement and when too few puzzling cases were available for him to solve, he sought "mental exaltation." This was accomplished by experience of the everyday world through altered states of consciousness produced by morphine and cocaine, the "seven percent solution" to his problems of vocational boredom. Innovation Innovation involves accepting the desirability of creative and meaningful self-expression but rejecting the conventional avenues through which this experience is found. This may involve a search for creativity outside of, on the margins of, or within primary roles. Stagnating jobs and unrewarding family lives may be seen as undesirable but inevitable. OppKjrtunities for creativity are sought in dternate activities, in hobbies or play (Grubb, 1975; Spreitzer and Snyder, 1974; WUensky, 1960; Kando and Sumners, 1971). The middlemanagement executive, stymied in efforts to produce what he conceives to be a meaningful contribution in work, flnds compensatory action in restoring an old car, coaching Little League, or, more deviantly, by taking up mountetin climbing, hang gliding, spelunking, or other high-risk sports (Mitchell, 1983;chap. 12). The devoted but dissatisfled husband and father has an aiTair with his secretary or other co-worker (Roy, 1974:44-66). The middle-class housewife finds outlets for her frustrated creativity and self-expression conventionally in volunteer work or deviantly in shoplifting (M. Canneron, 1964) and prostitution. Other kinds of innovation may involve attempts to fmd creativity on the periphery of primary roles. Inflexible and unrewarding work is made mesuiingful by the creation of personal performance goals and interaction rituals on the msirgins of work, where some volitional control remains (Kanter and Stein, 1979:182). Keypunchers keep time with each other or to other subtle rhythms (Garson, 1979b: 195-197); punch press operators structure job time and measure progress around daily snack and beverage breaks (Roy, 1959:158-168); workers in various industries play "wai^gamei" against management time-rate evaluations, purposely concealing or misrepresenting tl^ir production capacities (Mathewson, 1931). Moistad (1980) found that woricers in a beer-bottling plant ran token businesses while on the job, selling cheese, inexpensive clothing, vitamins, and illicit drugs to their fellow employees. Others reaoid discounted beer outside the plant, circulated football betting cards, or provided other in-plant gambling action. A pervasive feature of these enterprises was their limited proHtability. Little was earned, considerable time and energy were invested. One unsuccessful part-time businessman-bottler exfdained his continued interest in terms of intrinsic rewards: "I do this for fun; it's a challenge. If I wanted to make money I'd work overtime" (Moistad, 1980).*

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Innovation may also take place within primcu-y roles. Assembly line workers commit acts of sabotage by purposefully misusing equipment, adulterating or damaging products, and disrupting work flow in order to symbolically gain control over their surroundings and make a meaningful contribution in the work place, even if that contribution is a negative one (Molstad, 1980; Swados, 1962). Auto assembly workers deliberately set flre to line controls, scratch paint, dent bodies, bend gejir shift levers, slit upholstery, cut ignition wires, leave bolts loose, break off trunk keys in the lock {Time, 1972:76), drop ignition keys in the gas tJink (Garson, 1979a:215), weld bits of loose scrap metal inside body psuiels (creating permanent unrepairable rattles) (Swados, 1962:113), drop partisiUy assembled cars from cranes, and overlook such errors as steering wheels that come ofl" in the driver's hands {Blue Collar Trap, 1972). The guild-craft signature of the modem metsd worker becomes the surreptitious hammer blow denting the finished product (W. E. Upjohn Institute, 1973:88). The task of outwitting security offers the employee-thief "significant job enrichment . . . [providing opportunities] to tike matters into his own hands, assume responsibility, make decisions and face challenges" (Zeitlin, 1971:24). Physical aggression and abuse directed toward spouse and children are other illustrations of deviant actions aimed at producing a meaningful impact in primary roles when the requirements of these roles are perceived as stifling or inhibiting (Gelles, 1972; McKinley, 1964:139-157; Steinmetz and Strauss, 1975:13-14). Retrtatistn The retreatist rejects the notion that creative self-expression can be found or made possible in primtu-y roles. Meaningful work and other relationships are imagined as possible only in some other time or place. Current unpleasant circumstances are endured, creative expression deferred. Some believe that unrewarding work or ill-chosen mates are only temporary impediments to their creative urges. They have a plan. Paraphrasing W. Cameron (1967: 103), such a plan might sound like this: " I ' m going to work at this lousy job for ten more years, save some money, and then I can quit. Then I'll buy a sailboat, leave my bitchy old woman and sail off to Tahiti, set up housekeeping with a beautiful native girl and learn to paint." Others have a less definite program before them. They accept more or less the notion that a life of ceaseless and senseless toil with ill-suited and unappreciative companions will ultimately lead to opportunities for creative and meaningful action at some unspecified future datewhen one's karma is sufilciendy improved or when one joins the joyful heavenly host.

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Rebellion Rebels argue that creativity neither inheres in nor can be infused into conventional roles. The only way true creativity can be found, they say, is by a radical restructuring of one's perceptions. In its milder forms this modification of perception in search of creative experience is found in religion, psychiatry, consciousness-raising or encounter groups, and the like. All of these offer an alternative interpretation of experience in primary roles, which purport to bring meaning and purpose to previously empty acts and relationships. It is claimed that one needs only to get rid of the "phony" conventional qualities of primary roles and relations and "get in touch with your feelings" to find the potential for creativity in daily affairs. This is not simply a process of paying greater attention to the jxjsitive qualities of one's family or work but a rejection of previous forms of perception in favor of new ones. In its extreme form this rebellion involves acceptance of Orwellian sorts of "double think" epitomized by the slogan "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Makes You Free) on the gates of Auschwitz concentration camp or Ronald Reagan's dubbing of a multiwarhead nuclear missile system the " M X Peacekeeper." Others espwuse the "mind-expanding" drugs as a ready entr6e into an alternative resdity where creative opportunities abound.* Summary I have suggested a form of strain in the relations between socially promulgated goals and prescribed means that explains types of deviance not accounted for by Merton and his model of anomie socied actors. This second kind of strain is the result of a discrepancy between the individual's ability to perform certain roles and the structured blocks that prevent or limit that role enactment. This strain is the result of a differentiid between what people think themselves capable of doing and what they are allowed or encouraged to do. Persons experiencing this variety of strain are not motivated to act by some need to attain material wealth or social stability but rather by the search for the satisfaction of experiencing themselves as fully functioning individuals, a feeling of personal competence. This competence is the experience of effective interaction with the environment, the act of creative self-expreSsion. Competence is experienced when one's perceived abilities are matched with approximately equal responsibilities. When there is an imbalance between capacity and performance, between the tools at hand and the job to be done, two avenues are open. When challenges outstrip the capacities of the individual to cope with them, we observe the situation described by classic strain theorists. The difficulties of achieving monetary success and stability in a socisd world permeated by middle-dstss

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materialism are too great for those with only a lower-cleiss preparation and access to that world. The individual experiences a sense of anomie, of existential chaos, of normlessness and disorientation. This is the experience Hegel refers to as separation from Society (Sch2icht, 1970:45-64). On the other hand, when individuals perceive that the challenges and responsibilities set before them are not commensurate with their talents and abilities, when their responsibilities do not fully allow them to utilize the skills and capacities they believe they possess, the response is quite different. They experience eilienation, what Hegel refers to as a separation from self. I suggest that the latter reaction most frequently characterizes middle-class delinquent juvenile behavior and certain kinds of adult criminsdity.

ENDNOTES I would like to acknowledge Robert Merton's patient review of and thoughtful commentary on this paper. What conceptual errors remain are mine alone. An earlier version was presented at the Society for the Study of Social Problems annual meetings, New York, New York, September 1980. 'The reference here to individual perception is intended and important. While Merton'j (1938, 1957) formulation focused pointedly on social structural conditions and rates of deviant acts (see especially Menon, 1957:132, 163) to the exclusion of individual perception and action, my purpose is to expand the application of the paradigm to the interactional level. Anomie and alienation are, in this context, conscious, negotiated definitions of experienced situations. They are emergent products of the symbolic interaction between persons, social actors' interpretations of perceived structural conditions, not Just the conditions themselves. "While DurKheim was aware of a condition in direct opposition to anomie that I refer to as alienation, where "excessive regulation" and "oppressive discipline" overly restrict individual action, he granted this circumstance little importance. It receives mention only in a footnote, followed by the qualiHcation that "it has so little contemporary importance and examples are so hard to fmd . . . that it seems useless to dwell upon it" (Durkheim, 1951:226). 'Alienation is one of the oldest concepts in the social sciences derived from yet earlier notions of original sin. It has been used to describe a wide range of psychological and social conditions, including loneliness, powerlessness, isolation, despair, depersonalization, ruthlessness, apathy, aggression, self-estrangement, normlessness, atuiety, meaninglessnesg, and hopelessness. Among the social categories said to be alienated or anomie in varying degrees are blacks, women, blue-collar workers, white-collar workers, migrant farm workers, artists, college professors, the mentally ill, drug addicts, the aged, adolescents, the poor, the newly rich, voters, victims of prejudice, the prejudiced, political conserveuives, political radicals, the physically handicapped, immigrants, exiles, bureaucrats, beatniks, and recluies (]ose|^son andjosephson, 1962:12-13). The Joiephsons observe that, even taking into account possible duplications, this lilt includes a sizable proportion of the persons found in any industrial society. Eilbrts to organize the melange of meanings applied to alienation have been made by Seetnan (1959), Feuer (1963), Sawt (1965), Barakat (1969), and Johnson (1973). among others. These schemes themselves have been fraught with the overlapping and parallel categories. Alienation has, at times, come perilously close to what Kaufmann calls a "bargain word," one

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thai requires little or no thought and "can be used in a great variety of contexts with an air of expertise" yet signify little or nothing (Kaufman in Schacht, 1970:xlix). In the face of this apparent ambiguity and vagueness some have called for the abandonment of the term in favor of more precise and appropriate references (Israel, 1971:289; Feuer, 1%3). My effort here and elsewhere (Mitchell, 1983) has not been to deny the term but to clarify it, to locate alienation and anomie on a single dimension of social experience, thus bringing a variety of theory and research onto some common ground. The perspective of alienation used here has its roots in Marx's use of the term. Marx is often credited with bringing alienation into sociology Certainly he did much to popularize it. His notion of alienation focused on a person's position in the economic order. Those in a capitalistic system who are required to sell their labor are stripped of any meaningful relationship to the things they produce. Pride of authorship, a sense of personal efTicacy, of creative self-expression in work are lost. The individual is denied the gratification of the full use of his or her capacities. Alienated labor is work for some end exterior to the work itself, such as a paycheck. Such work is no longer intrinsically rewarding but becomes a burden, a noxious but necessary drudgery (Marx, 1956:169-170). 'Maurice Zuckerman (1971; Zuckerman in Hooper, 1983) argues that "sensation-seeking" behavior varies from one individual to the next but is a basic biological trait akin to exploratory behavior in other species and is related to reduced levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase. Frank Farley goes further by tying sensation-seeking behavior to creativity. Sensation seekers are curious, imaginative individuals who enjoy juggling the modalities of perception, rcconceptualizing the world about them in novel ways. Farley posits a kind of opportunity structure theory of delinquency reminiscent of Cloward and Ohiin (1960) wherein sensation seekers who are denied opportunities for conventional outlets of their creativity express that capacity in deviant ways. "High creativity and delinquency spring from the same source, like Janus, an underaroused nervous system. . . . We just completed a study of low-arousal [high sensationseeking] kids, in which we found . . . the probability of delinquency was greater in the lower-class group; of creativity in the higher-class group. I think upper middle-class families can provide for the low-arousal child's stimulation in socially acceptable ways. A tower-class child with the same needs may hit the streets, join a gang, run away or get in trouble" (Farley in Hooper, 1983:80, 173). 'The organizers of the Tupperwarc-type parties where glass, cookware, lingerie, basketry and the like are sold to friends and neighbors demonstrate similar behavior. These exchanges provide occasions for token business participation and demonstration of sales skills yet are seldom motivated exclusively by extrinsic proFit except perhaps for mid-level sales managers. Others may display their entrepreneurial competence by fund-raising efforts on behalf of charitabk and philanthropic organizations where personal financial gain is altogether precluded but the real and intransigent challenges of the marketplace remain. 'The pharmacological properties of drugs used in the adaptive proceu are less important than their social definitions. As noted, hallucinogens may be employed by ritualists to purposely limit performance capacities or, alternatively, as tools for rebellious manipulation of conventional perceptions of reality. Still others may flnd in the use of opiates a confirmation of their creative abilities. Finestone (1957) has shown that heroin addicts sometimes develop shared rationaliutions, which give them a sense of superiority through rejection of conventional standards. From this alternative subcultural perspective, drug usage is not an escape but a valued enhancement <il and achievement in perception, a form of creative setf-expreuion.

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