For Anomie

1. For Anomie • Is there a class bias in this theory? Or, how can Anomie explain deviance by the wealthy? • If there’s an imbalance between norms, how can policy try to restore/create balance?

2. Durkheim’s Anomie • Moral and social constraints exist on person’s drives “moral discipline” • If these constraints lose their power, then people end up unhappy, or out of control. • Because access to achievement is not equal, some will not follow prescribed paths of behavior to achieve goals. • Or they get hopeless and commit suicide. • Social upheaval causes disequilibrium and hence leads to an increase in deviance. • Over time, some luxuries become necessities.

3. Merton’s Anomie I. • Social structure exerts pressure to non-conform (p.142), because given the situation, a normal person would deviate. • Goals are exalted, even if they are generally unreachable. • “Money has been consecrated as value in itself” • Merton’s myths: • Anyone can succeed • Lower class therefore deserves it • Only those who act like the dominant class have full membership.

4. Merton’s Anomie II. Types of Deviance • Conformity: Being just like you were told. • Innovation: Thieves and cheats. • Ritualism: Scaling down. Ascetics, fatalists, blamers. (Or just practical??) • Retreatism: Drug addicts, alcoholics, bums, hoboes. • Rebellion. Genuine ‘transvaluation’. Rejects old status quo and seeks to bring about new one

5. Cloward • Thesis: • There’s also differential access to illegitimate means • The patterns of access and barriers follows that of legitimate means • Begins by summarizing Durkheim • People need to fulfill their social needs • Moral constraints keep them on the straight & narrow (a foreshadowing of control theory) • In times of rapid social change, values shift, become unattainable, leading to anomie, control institutions lose power, allowed unbridled greed to cause deviance (rebellion or crime), or despair to ensue (suicide). • Then summarizes Merton • Goals and norms may vary independently, When norms can’t lead to goals, goals gain in importance, and because social structure closes off access, deviance results.

6. Cloward continued • So Durkheim explains how the ends justifies the means through social change. • Merton adds that social structure attenuates access to normative paths toward goals. • So then Cloward asks, But what about access to illegitimate means, is that universally accessible? • Applies it to forms of deviance • Innovation (crime) • Retreatism (failure at ‘failing’) • Rebellion??? • Ritualism?? • And the answer is…no, it’s not. • It has to be part of the cultural script • There’s a meritocracy to it…you have to have the skills. • Need to be in the social network. • Social class structures opportunities • It’s subject to discrimination in ‘hiring’ practices • Ethnicity, race, gender, social class

7. Very Brief Summary • Functionalism. Deviance is so common, it’s normal. Serves a purpose. Whose purpose, that’s the question, though. • Social disorganization: I live in a neighborhood where we don’t know how to behave yet. • Differential Association: Who you know, therefore how you learn. Need to rationalize. • Anomie. The means is necessary to achieve the society’s exalted ends. Also need to rationalize.