Anomie and Strain: Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton

Anomie and Strain: Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton

Understanding Criminology

16th October 2007

Lecture Outline

•Emile Durkheim

–Functionalism

–Crime as normal

–Anomie

•Robert Merton

–Strain

–Adaptations

Emile Durkheim

•1858-1917

•Early pioneer of sociology

•Positivist

•Functionalist

•Macro-level sociology

Social cohesion

•How could society hold together during a period of fundamental and rapid social and economic change?

Functionalism

•Societies should be analysed as a organic whole: each aspect of society should be analysed with reference to its function for society as a whole

•Society is essentially consensual

•As deviance was universal across all societies, it must have a function: crime is normal

Crime is normal

•What function can crime have to society as a whole?

•Crime, and the reaction to it:

–Reinforced collective sentiment

–Defined the boundaries of acceptable behaviour

–Represented a litmus test for legal codes

Functional Analysis of Deviance

•Example: prostitution (Kingsley Davis, 1937)

•Prostitution: a safety valve against sexual frustration leading to assault

•Prostitution is functional to the nuclear family

•Adultery would threaten an essential societal institution

•Stigmatisation (informal disapproval) of prostitution confirms the collective approval of monogamy

Pathological levels of crime?

•Too little crime?

–Social control is too excessive

–Social stagnation

•Too much crime?

–Society’s capacity to regulate is being swamped: social cohesion is at risk

•There is, therefore, a functionally desirable level of crime

Criticisms of Functionalism

•Consensus based

–Functional in whose interests?

–Conservative

–Ignores conflict

•Tautological:

•Holistic: little room for consideration of individual agency

•Other structural explanations still possible e.g. Marxism

•Inability to distinguish the functional from the dysfunctional

How can Durkheim explain the continued existence of crime?

•Key concept: Anomie (normlessness)

•Anomie as a characteristic of industrial societies

–Unfettered individualism

•Anomie as a characteristic of individuals

–“A process whereby social norms lose their hold over individual / group behaviour”

•A symptom of underdeveloped division of labour

The Division of Labour

•Mechanical Solidarity

–Pre-industrial

–Simple normative system: a unified, simplified moral code

•Organic Solidarity

–Industrial society (though yet to be achieved)

–Complex division of labour

–Conscious Collective: social cohesion achieved despite moral diversity

•Anomie: results from the decline of mechanical solidarity, and the lack of development of regulatory forces

•Individualism > Social Responsibility

Robert Merton and Strain

•Shared Durkheim’s functionalist concerns

•Anomie: a strain existing between two powerful sets of normative codes

–Goals – material success, power etc.

–Means of achieving them legitimately

•The vast majority of the (American) population by definition could not achieve the goals

Merton’s adaptations to Strain

Criticisms of Merton

•Unwarranted assumption of shared goals

–Not, though, ignoring the possibility of conflict

•Overly deterministic: everything explained by socialisation: no conscious choice

•Paradoxically, also underplays the importance of structural position e.g. the mediation of expectations in different class positions

•Does not account for different types of “innovation”

•Subjectivity absent