In Durkheim’s view, traditional religions often provided the basis for the shared values which the anomic individual lacks. This is contrary to previous theories on suicide which generally maintained that suicide was precipitated by negative events in a person's life and their subsequent depression. He believed that anomie is common when the surrounding society has undergone significant changes in its economic fortunes, whether for good or for worse and, more generally, when there is a significant discrepancy between the ideological theories and values commonly professed and what was actually achievable in everyday life. The nineteenth century French pioneer sociologist Emile Durkheim borrowed the word from the French philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau and used it in his book Suicide (1897), outlining the causes of suicide to describe a condition or malaise in individuals, characterized by an absence or diminution of standards or values (referred to as normlessness), and an associated feeling of alienation and purposelessness. But, as used by Émile Durkheim and later theorists, anomie is a reaction against or a retreat from the regulatory social controls of society, and is a completely separate concept from anarchy which is an absence of effective rulers or leaders. The contemporary English understanding of the word anomie can accept greater flexibility in the word “ norm”, and some have used the idea of normlessness to reflect a similar situation to the idea of anarchy.
Thus, the original meaning of anomie defined anything or anyone against or outside the law, or a condition where the current laws were not applied resulting in a state of illegitimacy or lawlessness. In the original city state democracy, the majority rule was an aspect of arché because it was a rule-based, customary system which might or might not make laws, i.e. For example, a monarch is a single ruler but he or she might still be subject to, and not exempt from, the prevailing laws, i.e. The Greeks distinguished between nomos (νόμος, “law”), and arché (αρχή, “starting rule, axiom, principle”). Throughout all his writings he never diverted from his collectivist point of view and his work was thus in striking contrast to that of many of his contemporaries, including Max Weber.The word comes from Greek, namely the prefix a- “without”, and nomos “law”. In his final work, Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse (1912 translated as The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, 1915), he interpreted the religious bond as a type of social bond expressed through ritual and defined God simply as Society. Durkheim gave the name ‘anomie’ to individual behaviour or the state of a society lacking moral or social standards. In this pioneering study of social statistics, Durkheim distinguished between three kinds of suicide and was able to associate each with different aspects of the social order. Durkheim then focused on the ‘collective currents’ that he had suggested influenced the conduct of individuals in society, and embarked upon a major empirical investigation published as Le Suicide (1897 translated as Suicide, 1952). In his Les Règles de la méthode sociologique (1895 translated as The Rules of Sociological Method, 1938), Durkheim went on to enlarge upon this concept and successfully laid down a methodology for the science of sociology. He conceived an image of social solidarity and at the same time was able to define the proper task of sociology as the study of social rather than individual facts. In his first major work, De la division du travail social (1893 translated as The Division of Labour in Society, 1933), Durkheim rejected the ideas of the English utilitarians and proposed the theory that social structures influenced individual behaviour, not vice versa. His aim was to discover the nature of society and thus the values and principles upon which education should be based many of his views, and those of his followers, were published in the journal L'Année Sociologique, which he founded in 1896. French sociologist and one of the founding fathers of modern sociology.Īfter he graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, Durkheim taught sociology first at the University of Bordeaux and then, from 1902 until his death, at the Sorbonne.
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