Criminology

La teoría de la tensión social mira la distancia entre meta y medios: strain theory looks at the distance between goals and means. Strain — not tension, which is the word the Spanish puts in front of the eye and which would send an English reader to an entirely different shelf. La tensión does three jobs that English keeps in three places. It is the « strain » of this list: something pulled harder than it can bear, in a material or in a life. It is the « tension » in a room or between two states, the atmosphere before something gives. And it is the « voltage » in a socket — alta tensión on a warning sign is high voltage, and a translator who writes high tension has turned a hazard into a mood. The theory on this list is called strain theory in English for the first of those reasons, and « social tension theory » names nothing at all.