Anomie describes a condition of normlessness — a state in which the shared rules that regulate people's desires and govern their conduct have weakened or broken down. The term entered sociology through Émile Durkheim and was later given a new meaning by Robert Merton. In both hands it names a disorder of the relationship between individuals and the moral framework of society, and it remains one of the discipline's most productive concepts for the study of deviance.
Durkheim's anomie
Durkheim introduced anomie in The Division of Labour in Society to describe a pathological form of the division of labour. As modern economies grow and specialise rapidly, the moral regulation that should coordinate the parts of society may fail to keep pace, leaving relations between functions ungoverned by clear rules. The result is friction, isolation and a loss of the solidarity that specialisation ought to produce.
He developed the idea further in Suicide. Human desires, Durkheim argued, are potentially limitless and can only be satisfied when society sets bounds to them; contentment depends on aspirations being proportioned to means. In periods of sudden upheaval — economic crisis, but also abrupt prosperity — this regulation collapses. Desires outrun any possibility of fulfilment, discontent spreads, and rates of anomic suicide rise. For Durkheim, then, anomie is fundamentally a deficiency of moral regulation, a failure of society to restrain and give purpose to individual wants.
Merton's reworking
Writing in 1938, Robert Merton relocated the source of anomie from insufficient regulation to a contradiction built into the social structure itself. Every society, he argued, holds up certain culturally prescribed goals — in the United States, above all material success — while also defining the legitimate, institutional means for reaching them. Anomie arises when the culture glorifies these goals for everyone but the social structure denies many groups genuine access to the approved means. The resulting strain pushes individuals to adapt in various ways, of which conformity is only one; others include innovation, in which illegitimate means are used to pursue accepted goals, alongside ritualism, retreatism and rebellion. Deviance, on this account, is a normal response to a structurally generated disjunction between goals and means rather than a mark of individual pathology.
Anomie and alienation compared
Anomie is frequently compared with Marx's concept of alienation, and the two are best kept distinct. Anomie is a condition of the normative order: it concerns the weak or absent regulation of desires and conduct, and its reference point is the moral integration of society. Alienation, in Karl Marx's analysis, is a condition of estranged labour under capitalism — the worker separated from the product of their work, from the act of production, from their own creative nature, and from fellow workers, all rooted in the private ownership of the means of production. Anomie thus points to a failure of shared norms and is remedied by moral and institutional regulation; alienation points to exploitation embedded in economic relations and is overcome only by transforming those relations. One is a problem of order and regulation, the other a problem of power and production.
Relevance
Anomie remains a central tool in the sociology of deviance and social control, and it links the classical and modern traditions. Durkheim's version illuminates the moral consequences of rapid social change, migration and boom-and-bust economies; Merton's illuminates crime and deviance in societies that promise success widely while distributing opportunity unequally. For aspirants, the concept rewards careful handling of its two meanings — Durkheim's normlessness and Merton's structural strain — and of its contrast with alienation, which recurs in questions on both thinkers and on deviance.
References & further reading
- Durkheim, É. (1893). The Division of Labour in Society.
- Durkheim, É. (1897). Suicide.
- Merton, R. K. (1938). Social Structure and Anomie. American Sociological Review.