Richard A. Cloward was an American sociologist and political activist. He influenced the Strain theory of criminal behavior and the concept of anomie, and was a primary motivator for the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 known as "Motor Voter". He taught at Columbia University for 47 years. Born in Rochester, New York, Cloward served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in World War II from 1944 to 1946.

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  • Richard A. Cloward was an American sociologist and political activist. He influenced the Strain theory of criminal behavior and the concept of anomie, and was a primary motivator for the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 known as "Motor Voter". He taught at Columbia University for 47 years. Born in Rochester, New York, Cloward served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in World War II from 1944 to 1946. He received a bachelor's degree from the University of Rochester in 1949, and then a master's degree from the Columbia University School of Social Work in 1950. He then served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army from 1951 to 1954, and later worked as a social worker in an army prison in New Cumberland, Pennsylvania. Cloward became an assistant professor at Columbia's School of Social Work in 1954, and had visiting posts at the Hebrew University, the University of Amsterdam, the University of California, Santa Barbara and Arizona State University. He received a doctorate in sociology from Columbia University in 1958. Together with fellow sociologist Lloyd Ohlin, Cloward wrote Delinquency and Opportunity: A Theory of Delinquent Gangs, which rejected the prevailing assumption that delinquency resulted from irresponsibility of youths and argued that it was a symptom of poverty and the lack of alternative opportunities caused by poverty, and that the conditions underlying delinquency could be resolved through social programs in local communities that addressed the essential causes. Cloward argued that Robert King Merton's theories should specify two rather than one structure of opportunity to reflect both legitimate and illegitimate avenues of structure. An illegitimate opportunity is more than simply the chance to get away with a criminal or deviant act; it involves learning and expressing the beliefs necessary for subcultural support. Consequently, just as any given individual may not have equal access to legitimate means of achieving goals, the same individual may not have equal access to illegitimate means of achieving the same goals. Merton had proposed that the Retreatist would not turn to illegitimate means due to an internalized mechanism. Cloward, however, believed that the Retreatists suffered from a "double failure", i.e. there was no opportunity for them to succeed through either legitimate or illegitimate means. In 1966, Cloward co-founded the National Welfare Rights Organization, which advocated federalizing Aid to Families with Dependent Children by building local welfare rolls. In 1982, he and Frances Fox Piven founded "Human SERVE" (Service Employees Registration and Voter Education), which established motor-voter programs in selected states as precedents for the Motor Voter Act enacted in 1993. Also in 1966 he and his wife Frances Fox Piven published a paper in the May issue of The Nation magazine... "The strategy of forcing political change through orchestrated crisis. The "Cloward-Piven Strategy" seeks to hasten the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, thus pushing society into crisis and economic collapse. " He died of lung cancer and was survived by his wife, the influential sociologist Frances Fox Piven.
  • Richard A. Cloward war ein US-amerikanischer Soziologe, Kriminologe und Bürgerrechtler. Cloward studierte an der Columbia University Sozialarbeit und Soziologie und arbeitete danach als Sozialarbeiter. Seit 1954 lehrte er an der Columbia University Sozialarbeit und nach seiner Promotion 1958 Soziologie. Cloward entwickelte gemeinsam mit Lloyd E. Ohlin die merton'sche Anomietheorie weiter und verknüpften sie mit der Subkulturtheorie. Nach ihrer Auffassung steigt die Kriminaitätswahrscheinlichkeit nicht allein aus Mangel an legitimen Mitteln zur Erreichung allgemein üblicher Ziele. Es komme entscheidend auch auf die Verfügbarkeit illegitimer Mittel an, die in Subkulturen eher zur Verfügung gestellt würden. Cloward war ein bekannter Meinungsführer in US-amerikanischen Protest- und Bürgerbewegungen.
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  • Richard A. Cloward was an American sociologist and political activist. He influenced the Strain theory of criminal behavior and the concept of anomie, and was a primary motivator for the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 known as "Motor Voter". He taught at Columbia University for 47 years. Born in Rochester, New York, Cloward served as an ensign in the U.S. Navy in World War II from 1944 to 1946.
  • Richard A. Cloward war ein US-amerikanischer Soziologe, Kriminologe und Bürgerrechtler. Cloward studierte an der Columbia University Sozialarbeit und Soziologie und arbeitete danach als Sozialarbeiter. Seit 1954 lehrte er an der Columbia University Sozialarbeit und nach seiner Promotion 1958 Soziologie. Cloward entwickelte gemeinsam mit Lloyd E. Ohlin die merton'sche Anomietheorie weiter und verknüpften sie mit der Subkulturtheorie.
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  • Richard Cloward
  • Richard A. Cloward
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