Adrian Toomes, the Vulture of Spider-Man: Homecoming, does not start out as a villain: he starts out as a contractor with a crew, a van and a mortgage. His company wins the job of clearing the rubble left by the Battle of New York, until a newly created agency —an alliance between the government and an armored billionaire— pulls the contract and leaves him with nothing. From there, Toomes makes a decision: he collects the abandoned alien technology, turns it into weapons and sells them on the black market. For institutional anomie, Toomes's story is not that of an evil man who decides to be evil, but that of a man who learns a lesson his society will not stop teaching him: that the only value that counts is money, and that the rules are written by and for those who already have it.
// The theoryWhen winning is the only value left
The sociologists Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld, in Crime and the American Dream (1994), reframed anomie in macro-structural terms and named a culprit: the American Dream. Not only for promising wealth to everyone, but for turning economic success into the only measure of worth and for letting the market devour the other institutions that ought to rein it in. In a healthy society, the economy coexists with the family, the school and politics, which teach loyalties, limits and duties. The problem arises when the economy dominates them: when a person's value is measured by what they bill, and no other institution has the strength to say «there are things you do not do». Once those counterweights are weakened, the goal of money is left with no law but itself, and crime prospers —at the top and at the bottom—. Toomes lives that anomie firsthand: he discovers that his trade, his experience and his word are worth nothing against a contract signed in an office, and he concludes that if the game is about making money by any means, he knows how to play it too.
The class tension the theory illuminates
Institutional anomie does not describe only the greed of those who have already made it: it also describes the pressure on those who are left out. Toomes adds the class nuance the theory handles well. He is not after a yacht: he is after providing for his family, paying off the house, not being the loser the system has decided he should be. But his moral framework is already colonized by market logic: he internalizes that economic success is the only thing that grants dignity, and that whoever cannot reach it by legitimate means is entitled to reach it by illegitimate ones. «Guys like us», he says, eat the scraps off the table of the powerful. That single line holds the whole theory: when the economy swallows everything, inequality does not just impoverish —it teaches—. It teaches that rules are a luxury for those who can afford them, and that the only real obligation is not to fall behind. Toomes turns his resentment into method: he does not renounce the Dream, he chases it with the tools he has left.
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// The subjectThe black-market entrepreneur
What is unsettling about Toomes is that he behaves exactly like a model businessman, only without a license. He spots a niche (weapons of impossible technology), organizes a supply chain (scrapyard, engineering, distribution), manages risk, looks after his employees and protects his margin with violence when necessary. His discourse is that of the self-made entrepreneur: he worked hard, saw an opportunity, seized it. That the product kills people is, in his calculation, an externality —just as it is for the corporations he envies—. That is where the theory bites: Toomes is not the exception to the system, he is its faithful reflection in the mirror of crime. He does, without permission, the same thing those who have it do: put profit before any other loyalty. The family, which ought to be the counterweight, becomes his moral alibi: he does it «for them», and that justification lets him avoid looking at the victims. The man who fiercely protects his daughter is the same one who arms criminals without asking what for —because in his world only one question is left, how much is to be made—.
El Buitre
// The riftExplaining the pressure is not signing the alibi
The rift with Toomes is the most dangerous of all, because the character himself lays the trap for us: he already comes with his explanation built in. «The rich did this, I am only surviving». Institutional anomie may sound like the perfect alibi —the structure is to blame, the subject is just one more victim—, but that is a misunderstanding. Messner and Rosenfeld analyze structures in order to pin down responsibilities with more precision, not less. Explaining why the pressure exists does not erase the fact that Toomes chose: he chose to arm criminals, he chose to try to kill a kid, he chose blackmail and threats. Thousands of people lose their business to an unfair contract and do not set up an arms cartel. The theory illuminates the tilted ground; it does not push the hand that pulls the trigger. And there is a second rift, the opposite one: reducing Toomes to a «poor desperate man» and romanticizing his descent. His violence is not class justice: it is a business that produces weapons so others may kill, and his tale of grievance is also the noise that keeps him from hearing those he harms.
The honest reading holds both things at once. Toomes is responsible —for every weapon sold, for every threat, for the attempted murder—. And his story points to a society that taught a competent workman he was worth only what he billed, and that let the market write the rules for everything else. Understanding that pressure is not taking his side: it is refusing to let the system that pushed him step out of the picture as clean as it stepped out of the contract. The remembrance here is not for the black-market entrepreneur, but for all those whom his weapons turned into collateral damage of a calculation that never took them into account.
Rebalance before the scrap becomes a weapon
The Vulture matters because he shows institutional anomie from the bottom rung, where it usually stays invisible. The theory's lesson is political and cuts against the grain: this crime is not fought with more Spider-Man or more police alone, but by rebalancing the institutions the market had devalued. A country that protects the non-economic —decent work, safety nets that hold up those who fall, an idea of worth that does not depend entirely on a paycheck— starves Toomes's reasoning of oxygen long before he ever reaches the scrapyard. Because his crime does not begin when he switches on the suit: it begins the day he learns that losing his business means losing his worth, and that the rules belong to those who win. Decommodifying dignity —not letting the market alone set it— is the brake no armor will ever apply.
Three key takeaways
- The Vulture (Adrian Toomes) embodies institutional anomie (Messner and Rosenfeld, 1994): when economic success is the only yardstick of worth and the market dominates the other institutions, the pressure toward crime becomes structural. Toomes lives it from below, as a workman the system leaves without a business.
- His nuance is class tension: he does not renounce the Dream, he chases it with the tools he has left. He acts like a model businessman without a license —supply chain, margins, violence as risk management— and uses the family as an alibi to avoid looking at his victims.
- Explaining is not exonerating. Toomes himself comes with his alibi built in («the rich started it»), but understanding the pressure pins down his responsibility with more precision, not less: he chose to arm criminals and to kill. The theory illuminates the tilted ground; it does not pull the trigger.
Sources · further reading
- Messner, S. F. & Rosenfeld, R. (1994). Crime and the American Dream. Wadsworth.
- Merton, R. K. (1938). «Social Structure and Anomie». American Sociological Review, 3(5).
- Rosenfeld, R. & Messner, S. F. (1997). «Markets, Morality, and an Institutional-Anomie Theory of Crime». En The Future of Anomie Theory. Northeastern University Press.
- Savolainen, J. (2000). «Inequality, Welfare State, and Homicide: Further Support for Institutional Anomie Theory». Criminology, 38(4).
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
¿Quién es El Buitre?
El Buitre («Adrian Toomes») es un villano de Spider-Man, analizado en KRIMINIS con la lente de la criminología. They took his business away with the stroke of a pen, through a contract signed by the powerful.
¿Por qué El Buitre (Adrian Toomes) se convierte en villano?
The Vulture (Adrian Toomes) and institutional anomie: when economic success is the only measure of worth and the market swallows those who are left over, crime stops looking like a crime and starts looking like survival.
¿Qué teoría criminológica explica a El Buitre?
El caso de El Buitre se analiza desde la Anomia institucional. The institutional anomie of Steven Messner and Richard Rosenfeld holds that, when economic success becomes the only measure of worth and the economy dominates the other institutions —family, school, politics—, the pressure toward crime becomes structural. The Vulture (Adrian Toomes), from Spider-Man: Homecoming, embodies that tension from below: a workman and engineer whom a contract between the state and a billionaire leaves without a business overnight. His response —stealing technology to manufacture and sell weapons— springs from a calculation the theory recognizes: if the goal is money and the rules are written by those who have already arrived, breaking the law is just another way to compete.
