Opportunity Structure

The Emergence, Diffusion, and Differentiation of a Sociological Concept, 1930s–1950s

Bibliographic Data

ID20079652
AuthorsRobert Κ Merton (corresponding author), Robert K Merton
Year2020
Pages3-78
Publication date2020-03-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueLegacy of Anomie Theory (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1201/9780429335945-2
OpenAlexW3013760489
ISBN9780429335945
LanguageEN
Citations received23

This chapter focuses on the emergence, early diffusion, and initial differentiation of the concept of opportunity structure, primarily in its interaction with related concepts basic to a structural sociology. By focusing on generic social and human consequences of differential access to opportunity in a heavily success-oriented culture, the structural and consequential analysis of deviant behavior as exemplified in the SS&A paradigm provides a sociological basis for a social and moral critique. Opportunity structure designates the scale and distribution of conditions that provide various probabilities for acting individuals and groups to achieve specifiable outcomes. From time to time, the opportunity structure expands or contracts, as do segments of that structure. Cloward’s further elucidation of the anomie-and-opportunity-structure paradigm provides a clear instance of the workings and cognitive consequences of socially organized skepticism. The concept of the illegitimate opportunity structure was designed to complement, not, of course, to supplant, the concept of the legitimate opportunity structure

Diffusion · Economic geography · Epistemology · Genealogy · Geography · Physics · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Decadence, Literature, and Society · History · Philosophy · Sociology and Norbert Elias

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