Breaking down the question
This is a focused comparative question worth ten marks, and the key word is “difference”. The examiner wants the distinction between two uses of the same term to be drawn sharply, not a separate essay on each thinker. Both Durkheim and Merton use “anomie”, and the mark is earned by showing precisely where their meanings diverge while acknowledging the lineage that connects them.
The answer should establish each conception briefly and then set them side by side on clearly stated axes of comparison — what anomie is, what causes it, and what it explains. Because the space is limited, economy is essential: a short account of Durkheim, a short account of Merton, and then a pointed contrast that names the differences rather than leaving the reader to infer them.
How to approach it
Define each thinker's version in one tight paragraph, then contrast them explicitly. The cleanest structure is Durkheim, then Merton, then a comparison organised around a few axes so the difference is unmistakable.
Durkheim on anomie
Present anomie as a condition of normlessness or deregulation. For Durkheim it arises when the collective norms that regulate individual desires break down, typically during rapid social change such as economic crisis or sudden prosperity. Human aspirations are potentially limitless and require moral regulation; when that regulation fails, desires outrun any attainable satisfaction and social life becomes disordered, a state he linked to anomic suicide.
Merton on anomie
Present Merton's reworking as structural strain. Anomie for him is not a temporary breakdown during upheaval but a chronic feature built into the normal structure of a society like the United States, which holds up universal cultural goals such as monetary success while distributing the legitimate means to reach them unequally. The gap between culturally prescribed goals and the institutionalised means of attaining them generates strain, and the resulting adaptations — conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, rebellion — explain patterns of deviance.
Model answer
Both Durkheim and Merton use the concept of anomie, and Merton openly borrowed it from Durkheim, but they give it substantially different meanings, causes and analytical purposes, and the value of the comparison lies in seeing exactly where they part.
For Durkheim, anomie is a state of normlessness or deregulation. His starting point is that human desires are naturally boundless and can only be contained by the moral authority of society, which sets limits on what individuals may legitimately want. Anomie occurs when that regulation breaks down, characteristically during periods of rapid change — economic depression but equally sudden prosperity — when established norms lose their grip and aspirations are no longer matched to attainable ends. The individual is left without a moral compass, and the result is disorder and dissatisfaction, which Durkheim connected to a distinct type of anomic suicide. Anomie here is essentially a pathology of regulation, an abnormal condition that appears when the collective conscience weakens.
For Merton, anomie is redefined as structural strain and located in the normal, everyday working of society rather than in moments of crisis. In his analysis of American society, the culture holds out success, especially material and monetary success, as a goal to which everyone should aspire, while the social structure distributes the legitimate means of achieving it — education, secure employment, opportunity — very unequally. The disjunction between universal cultural goals and unequal access to institutional means is what Merton calls anomie, and it produces a strain toward deviance. Individuals adapt in patterned ways — conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism and rebellion — and this typology allows Merton to explain crime and deviance as a normal response to the structure of society, not as individual failing.
The differences are therefore clear. Durkheim treats anomie as normlessness caused by a breakdown of regulation during social change and uses it chiefly to explain social disorder and suicide; Merton treats it as a structural gap between goals and means that persists in stable, prosperous societies and uses it to explain the social distribution of deviance. For Durkheim it is deregulation and an absence of norms; for Merton the norms are firmly present but contradictory, since the culture prescribes goals it does not equip everyone to reach. Merton thus shifts anomie from a symptom of transitional crisis to a permanent feature of ordinary social organisation, giving the classical concept a new and more sociological cutting edge.
Examiner's perspective
Because this is a comparison, the marks concentrate on the contrast, and the frequent mistake is to write two disconnected mini-biographies of the concept without ever stating the difference plainly. Set the two conceptions against each other on explicit axes — normlessness versus goals-means gap, crisis versus normalcy, explaining suicide versus explaining deviance — and the examiner can award the comparison marks directly.
A small but impressive touch is to note the intellectual lineage: acknowledging that Merton adapted Durkheim's term shows you understand this as a development within a tradition rather than an unrelated coincidence of vocabulary. Keep each thinker's summary tight so the space is spent on the contrast, which is where the question's value lies. Merton's wider framework is elaborated in the note on Merton's functions and reference groups, and the concept itself is treated in the entry on anomie.