Integrative Theory in Criminology Applied

to the Complex Social Problem of School

Violence

In: Case Studies in Interdisciplinary Research

By: Stuart Henry & Nicole L. Bracy

Pub. Date: 2013

Access Date: January 31, 2021

Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.

City: Thousand Oaks

Print ISBN: 9781412982481

Online ISBN: 9781483349541

DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483349541

Print pages: 259-282

© 2012 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

This PDF has been generated from SAGE Research Methods. Please note that the pagination of the

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Integrative Theory in Criminology Applied to the Complex Social

Problem of School Violence

StuartHenry

Nicole L.Bracy

Introduction

Interdisciplinarians have been very clear that they are interested in addressing problems, questions, or topics

that are “too broad or complex to be dealt with adequately by a single discipline” (Klein & Newell, 1997, p.

393) and “whose solutions are beyond the scope of a single discipline” (Boix-Mansilla, 2005, p. 16; National

Academies, 2005, p. 39). Single disciplinary approaches “fail to provide the truly comprehensive perspective

on the problem that policymakers and the public really need. On too many issues of public importance, the

disciplines tend to talk past each other” (Repko, 2008, p. 31). The charge of “disciplinary inadequacy” (p.

39) in dealing with complex social problems has been applied to crime by integrative criminologists who, like

interdisciplinarians, are also concerned about the myopic analysis offered by traditional disciplines (Barak,

1998a, 1998b, 2009; Messner, Krohn, & Liska, 1989; Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Beaver, 2009); each

discipline captures a narrow dimension of the crime problem but misses, or dismisses, the contributions of

the rest. As a result, public policies to deal with crime, which themselves derive from disciplinary analyses or

from media-driven fear (Muschert & Peguero, 2010), are also likely to be partial and fail to comprehend the

complexity of the problem.

Multidisciplinary approaches that acknowledge a range of disciplinary perspectives through a process of

“cognitive decentering” (Hursh, Haas, & Moore, 1998; Repko, 2008) are an advance over disciplinary

approaches. Cognitive decentering “is the intellectual capacity to move beyond a single center or focus

(especially the innate tendencies towards egocentrism and ethnocentrism) and consider a variety of other

perspectives in a coordinated way to perceive reality more accurately, process information more

systematically, and solve problems more effectively” (Hursh et al., 1998, p. 37). However multidisciplinarity

rarely looks at the dynamic, interactive, and cumulative effects of the complex problem over time; rather, it

fragments the complexity and fails to comprehend its emergent holistic characteristics. In contrast, integrative

interdisciplinary approaches to addressing complex social problems explicitly engage in “integration,

synthesis, or amalgamation that attempt to produce a ‘comprehensive’ explanation” (Einstadter & Henry,

2006, p. 310) and move us toward holistic policies to address them.

In this chapter, we explore the last steps of Repko's (2008) research process: how to integrate insights

to produce interdisciplinary understanding. We do so by examining the insights of those criminological

theorists who have been attempting to develop integrative theory for the past 30 years. In the first section

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of the chapter, we critically review the issues that have arisen in criminological theory around what should

be integrated from the disciplines beyond simply “insights.” And in the second section, we show how

criminologists striving for an integrated theory have applied this to explain the crime of violence. In the third

section, we sketch out what an interdisciplinary understanding of school violence might look like and indicate

its policy implications.

Creating Common Ground(s) and a Comprehensive Understanding in

Criminology

For readers not familiar with the history of theory development in criminology, it is important to know

that criminology has, from the outset, been profoundly influenced by the theories of other disciplines to

explain why people commit crime, violate laws, or deviate from norms. In this sense, criminology is an

applied science/social science. Theoretical explanations of crime causation range from the theological and

demonological to economic, biological, psychological, sociological, and political; more recently, they also

include a variety of feminist, postmodernist, and social constructionist theories (see Einstadter & Henry, 2006;

Lanier & Henry, 2010). At different times some criminological theories have been more prominent than others,

but rarely are any theoretical explanations completely expunged, with the result that criminology fits Ritzer's

(1975) category of being a “multiparadigmatic” science.

However, since 1979 a subset of criminological theorists has attempted to harness the explanatory and

predictive power of existing theories of crime causation by integrating the concepts and propositions present

in the diverse range of disciplinary-based theories (see especially Akers, 1994; Barak, 1998a, 1998b,

2009; Bernard, 2001; Colvrn, 2000; Colvrn & Pauly, 1983; Elliott, Agerton, & Canter, 1979; Fishbein,

1998; Hagan, 1989; Hawkins & Weis, 1985; Jeffrey, 1990; Johnson, 1979; Messner et al., 1989; Muftić,

2009; Pearson & Werner, 1985; Robinson, 2004; Robinson & Beaver, 2009; Shoemaker, 1996; Tittle,

1995; Vila, 1994). This has been attempted in a variety of ways, which leads to an instructive set of

issues and challenges for interdisciplinary integrative theory. The three dominant positions are advocates,

critics, and moderates. Advocates see distinct advantages in integrating existing discipline-based theories.

Barak (1998b) summarizes these advantages, arguing that criminologists engaging in integration do so

(1) because of a desire to develop central concepts that are common to several theories; (2) to provide

coherence to a bewildering array of fragmented theories, and thereby reduce their number; (3) to achieve

comprehensiveness and completeness, and thereby enhance their explanatory power; (4) to advance

scientific progress and theory development; and (5) to synthesize ideas about crime causation and social

control policy.

In contrast, critics ask whether it is better to have a set of competing theoretical explanations, each of

which responds to a different, but overlapping, set of questions, or whether it is better to combine elements

of several theoretical perspectives into one integrative theory. For example, some critics have argued that

criminological theories should remain “separate and unequal” and that “theory competition” and “competitive

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isolation” are preferable to theoretical integration (Akers, 1994, p. 195; Gibbons, 1994; Hirschi, 1979, 1989).

They claim the idea that integration appears to create a more powerful or more comprehensive explanation

is an illusion often resulting in theoretical confusion (Thornberry, 1989, p. 54).

We argue that these opposing positions need not be mutually exclusive; criminological theories can remain

separate because the separate disciplines illuminate different aspects of the issue, problem, or question, but

there are also potential benefits to be gained from integration (Newell, 2001). Our more moderate position

is that we should not integrate unless there is a measurable benefit from doing so. We maintain that if

integration produces a more comprehensive understanding that is not presently provided by disciplinary

approaches alone, then it is a valuable process. For example, a comprehensive approach to complex social

problems, such as crime, benefits from both disciplinary-based theories competing for the best explanations

and integrative approaches that go beyond the single theoretical approach.

Another contentious issue is whether integration can achieve comprehensive understanding or whether,

because of the increasing number of interdisciplinary combinations, it simply produces a plurality of

comprehensive understandings or competing meta-theories (Einstadter & Henry, 2006; Fuchsman, 2009):

When the conditions for interdisciplinarity exist, there are then a variety of results possible from

efforts to forge a synthesis. There can be full integration, no integration, partial integration, or

multiple integrations. The contending discourses, synthesis, ideological disputes, plural

epistemologies, and fragmentations that occur within disciplines and their subfields also make their

appearance within interdisciplinarity. (Fuchsman, 2009, p. 79)

Under these circumstances, we might argue that the concept of integration as a single coherent entity may not

always be possible; when there are multiple bases for integration (e.g., assumptions, concepts, or theories),

partial integration may be the best that one can achieve, although full integration remains the ideal. Indeed,

one recent review of integrated theories in criminology found that different integrative theories each draw on

2 to 10 of the 14 different discipline-based theories available, and their various combinations have produced

16 different integrative theories (Lanier & Henry, 2010). These come with a variety of indicative names, such

as “integrated social theory,” “integrated structural Marxist theory,” “conceptual integration theory,” “integrative

systems theory,” and “holistic theory.” Moreover, not all discipline-based theories that constitute these new

integrative theories are drawn on equally. The range of inclusions varies from 2, in the case of feminist

criminological theory, to 11 or more in the case of social learning theory and social control theory (Lanier &

Henry, 2010, pp. 382–391). This raises the question of whether theoretical integration should be striving for

comprehensiveness or multiple more-comprehensive understandings and, in criminology, whether the new

set of competing integrative theories provides theoretical clarity or “integrational chaos” (Einstadter & Henry,

2006, pp. 319–320).

Interdisciplinarians, however, might argue that the charge of integrational chaos presumes that there is no

way to adjudicate between competing integrative theories. Newell's (2001) theory of interdisciplinary studies

and Repko's (2008) version of the steps in the interdisciplinary research process both include a final step

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of testing/applying the more comprehensive theory (Boix-Mansilla, 2005). As is the case in classic theory

building, the fit with empirical evidence determines which competing integrative theory is preferable or at least

has more practical value (Bernard, 2001). If multiple integrated theories of crime causation exist, whether

these have been arrived at by partial integration or by the integration of elements from different combinations

of root disciplines, the key issue is which stands up to the evidence. As a further test, we might ask which

of the different “comprehensive policies” produced by each of these different integrative theories lowers the

incidence of a particular crime. In short, which comprehensive policy works best when it is implemented?

Another approach to the issue of creating more comprehensive theory comes from addressing what,

precisely, is being integrated. In the criminological literature, there are four different ways that integration

in criminological theory has occurred: (1) conceptual integration; (2) propositional integration; (3) causal

integration; and (4) cross-level integration (Einstadter & Henry, 2006; Hirschi, 1979; Liska, Krohn, & Messner,

1989). When considering the meaning of these various integrations, it is important to be clear that social

science theorists (like their natural science counterparts) typically see theories as assertions about

relationships among variables. Different theories may have some variables in common, but they can be

distinguished by the differences in the variables they interconnect and by the assumptions about causal

relationships between the variables. There is no reason an integrative theory cannot include a wider array

of variables and provide a somewhat different explanation (from those contained in any of the theories

from which it derives its variables) for why those variables are included and how they are interconnected.

Here, a variable is a measurable way of operationalizing an abstract or general concept; a variable is

either in an equation or it isn't. For example, we might want to look at the range of variables derived from

different theories that have been empirically demonstrated to correlate with the propensity of juveniles to

join gangs. We might include neighborhood housing density, age, criminality of parent or siblings, degree of

neighborhood disorganization, and neighborhood transience rates. These variables may be interconnected

in different ways. Theories that claim community shapes the opportunities available for adolescents to make

delinquent decisions present a different set of interconnections than those that claim that only juveniles who

are predisposed to sensation-seeking behavior due to biological or psychological developmental processes

will act on environmental opportunities. In this individual-level predisposition case, we might be including

variables such as adolescent brain development, domestic abuse, traumatic brain syndrome, high sugar

consumption, addictive personality, and so on. Clearly, therefore, a different comprehensive understanding

would emerge, based on an integration of variables located at the micro-level of analysis (i.e., at the level of

the individual), than if we integrated elements of theory based at the macro-level of analysis (i.e., at the level

of the community and society) because the latter would embody the former and arguably shape its internal

relations/dynamics. So the decision about the nature of the interconnections between variables affects which

concepts are integrated from the different discipline-based theories.

Conceptual Integration

In order to achieve conceptual integration toward a more comprehensive understanding, concepts from

different disciplines first need to be reconciled through redefinition, extension, organization, or transformation.

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This conceptual reconciliation is a step prior to the integration process (Step 8, creating common ground,

rather than Step 9, integrating insights into a more comprehensive understanding, in Repko's [2008] schema).

As we have previously argued, “integrating concepts involves finding those that have similar meanings in

different theories and merging them into a common language” (Einstadter & Henry, 2006, p. 316). This

technique of redefinition in interdisciplinary studies, referred to as “textual integration” (Brown, 1989), is one

of the foundations for creating common ground. Abstractly, theories are generally built up from concepts, or

kernels of ideas, that theorists then link together into explanations for events or phenomena. For example,

high levels of immigration into cities combined with profit-seeking landlords leads to poor quality, low rent,

multifamily inner-city housing with high resident turnover; the resultant neighborhood instability fragments

communities, resulting in a breakdown of informal networks of social control. Fearful of being victimized,

youth band together for self-protection, forming subcultures that can become territorial gangs that protect

their members by instilling fear in nongang or other gang members. They maintain autonomy by engaging in

a variety of delinquency, such as vandalism and drug dealing (i.e., the social disorganization theory of gang

formation).

In practice, many theories start with others' explanations that they modify by creating concepts to fit, or by

borrowing concepts from other theories. For example, the concept of social learning added to the theory of

social disorganization extends its explanatory power. It explains intergenerational gangs by showing that gang

members develop powerful rationalizations to justify their existence; define crime and violence as necessary

for survival; and pass the knowledge, skills, and markets on to new gang members. Once a gang is formed

in a neighborhood, youth can be socialized into the gang's subculture.

In creating common ground, then, the separate disciplinary “languages” (really, definitions of terms) reflect the

differences as well as the similarities in meanings of related concepts. Those differences, in turn, reflect what

distinguishes one discipline from another: most generally, its perspective or worldview. Merging concepts is

not the simple task of focusing on similarities and ignoring differences. Rather, it entails figuring out how to

utilize those similarities in a way that retains the integrity of the original concept.

The aim of interdisciplinary integration when creating common ground (Step 8) is to be identifiably responsive

to each disciplinary perspective on which one draws, but to be dominated by none of them. Although this test

for interdisciplinarians normally refers to constructing a more comprehensive understanding, it also applies

to creating common ground (i.e., a concept should be redefined such that it is responsive to the perspective

of the discipline into the domain of which the concept is entering). For example, Akers's (1994) “conceptual

absorption” approach takes concepts from social learning and social control theory (among others) and

merges them. The control theory concept of “belief,” which refers to a person's moral conviction for or

against delinquency, is equated to learning theory's “definitions favorable or unfavorable to crime” (differential

association). It is interesting that there are parallels here to the theory of human cognitive practice known

as “conceptual blending,” in which humans subconsciously integrate elements and relations from diverse

situations to create new concepts, a process seen by some as being at the heart of the creative process

(Fauconnier & Turner, 2002; Turner & Fauconnier, 1995).

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Although ultimately conceptual integration may distort, even transform, a disciplinary concept in creating a

new or blended concept (Lanier & Henry, 2004, p. 342), that need not be a disadvantage so long as it does

not engage in a reductionist practice, that is, to lose the integrity of the original idea through oversimplification

(during Step 9 of creating a more comprehensive understanding). The appropriate test is not to remain true

to disciplinary intent, but to faithfully capture the meaning of the aspect of the concept that will be utilized—its

kernel of truth or essential idea. A disciplinarian should be able to look at a redefined or extended concept,

for example, and agree that the part of the concept of interest to the interdisciplinarian has been accurately

and adequately captured.

Propositional Integration

Having created the common ground through conceptual integration, we can now move to Step 9, creating

a comprehensive understanding. If we take theoretical propositions to refer to the interconnections or

relationship between two or more variables, or among a specific (and usually small) set of variables, then

at least some theoretical propositions must be integrated in order to construct an integrated theory. If one

of those variables is also included in the causal explanations of another discipline, propositional integration

could involve the addition of another equation to a system of simultaneous equations or another independent

variable to a single equation. Propositional integration “refers to combining propositions from theories or

placing them in some causal order or sequence” (Lanier & Henry, 2004, p. 343) or what might simply be called

organizing them logically.

Propositional integration is a more formal effort because it entails linking the propositions and not

just the concepts of two or more theories into a combined theory. … Rather than simply usurpation,

a propositionally integrated theory must actually meaningfully connect or relate the propositions of

different theories into the new theory. (Paternoster & Bachman, 2001, p. 307)

Shoemaker (1996, p. 254) has observed that propositional integration can quickly result in an exponential

increase in the number of variables, making the testing of integrative theory impractical because of the sample

size necessary. However, this may be appropriate—the causal factors interacting to produce crime may

indeed be numerous—but it is not inevitable: Interdisciplinarians may come to realize that some variables

from one discipline are being used without much success to explain an aspect of crime that is much better

explained by another discipline. Those variables would then be supplanted in the more comprehensive theory

by variables from the other discipline or disciplines. Along this line of thinking, Robinson (2004, pp. x–xi)

advocates building integrative theory by examining the tested contribution to our understanding of crime

made by “risk factors” derived from each discipline, “illustrating how risk factors at different levels of analysis

from different academic disciplines interact to increase the probability that a person will commit anti-social

behavior” (Robinson, 2004, p. 271). It is important to note that Robinson is disaggregating these “risk factors”

from their discipline-based theories and applying the test of whether they contribute to the new integrated

theory based on their empirical veracity, then combining them into a new integrative explanation for why

people engage in crime, or why they engage in a particular kind of crime.

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Here, we are considering what is the most appropriate mechanism or method of integrating selected theories

to produce a more comprehensive understanding (Step 9). For example, is integration to take the form of

one grand theory? Does integration assume a sequential, “end-to-end” process, in which various theories

kick in at different stages? Does the mechanism of integration seek to provide a transcendent approach,

leaving the individual theories to deal with specifics? Does the mechanism used for integration discuss the

interrelationship between the component theories, showing how each of the dimensions relates, or do the

integrated propositions vary depending on which crime/offender/situation is being analyzed?

Liska et al. (1989, pp. 5–15), drawing on Hirschi (1979), suggest that a key issue in generating a

comprehensive understanding through integrating theory is to consider how theoretical propositions are

logically related. They describe three types of relationships, though others could also be envisioned: (1)

end-to-end or sequential integration, which implies a sequential causal order; (2) side-by-side or horizontal

integration, which implies overlapping influences; or (3) up-and-down or vertical integration, which “refers

to identifying a level of abstraction or generality that encompasses much of the conceptualization of the

constituent theories” (Bernard & Snipes, 1996; Messner et al., 1989, p. 5). The danger of up-and-down

propositional integration, in which one theory is subsumed by another that is claimed to be more general

in its explanatory power while incorporating the explanatory power of its constituent theories, is that it can

rapidly become an example of reductionism. However, in its less-often used synthetic form, it holds significant

promise, which is discussed below.

First, end-to-end or sequential integration links the immediate cause of crime to a more distant cause of

crime and then links that to an even more distant cause. For example, an arrest for gang violence might

be the outcome of the following process of sequential causes over time: Biological deficits at birth may lead

to low IQ, which leads to learning disabilities in early childhood, which may lead to an inability to follow

social norms, which may lead to group and institutional exclusion, which produces reduced self-esteem and

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