# Integration, Anomie and Deviance

Sociology I · Foundations and the Great Themes · https://tryals.app/learn/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance

## Two Anomies

**Durkheim** published *Suicide* in 1897 to demonstrate a sociological method. He showed suicide rates are stable social facts shaped by social conditions.

He proposed four types across two variables:

| Type | Variable | Condition |
|---|---|---|
| Egoistic | Integration | Too little group attachment |
| Altruistic | Integration | Excessive group attachment |
| Anomic | Regulation | Insufficient moral limits |
| Fatalistic | Regulation | Excessive oppressive rules |

**Jack Douglas** argued official statistics reflect coroner decisions rather than objective facts. Influential families often prevent suicide verdicts, biasing Durkheim's correlations.

**Anomie** has two distinct meanings:
- For Durkheim, it is **deregulation**: the collapse of moral limits on human desire.
- For **Robert Merton**, it is a **structural mismatch** between shared cultural goals and unequal institutional means.

| Adaptation | Cultural goals | Institutional means |
|---|---|---|
| Conformity | Accepted | Accepted |
| Innovation | Accepted | Rejected |
| Ritualism | Rejected | Accepted |
| Retreatism | Rejected | Rejected |
| Rebellion | Replaced | Replaced |

## Deviance and Social Control

Later theorists shifted focus to social learning and societal reactions:

- **Edwin Sutherland** showed crime is learned in groups, introducing **white-collar crime**.
- **Edwin Lemert** separated **primary** rule-breaking from **secondary** deviance, where a person adopts a deviant identity.
- **Howard Becker** argued Deviance is created by audiences applying rules and sanctions.
- **Stanley Cohen** showed how media reactions amplify the very rule-breaking they condemn.
- **Travis Hirschi** asked why people conform, pointing to strong social bonds.

> **Common pitfall:** Confusing Durkheim and Merton on anomie. Durkheim's anomie means desires lack moral limits. Merton's anomie means legitimate routes to cultural goals are blocked.

## Practice questions

10 of this lesson's 15 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app.

### 1. Arrange these contributions to the sociology of deviance, earliest first.

**Answer:**

1. Durkheim publishes Suicide
2. Merton publishes Social Structure and Anomie
3. Sutherland sets out differential association
4. Lemert distinguishes primary from secondary deviance
5. Becker publishes Outsiders
6. Cohen publishes Folk Devils and Moral Panics

**Why:** The sequence tracks a shift in what the question is. The first three ask why some people break rules; the last three ask how the rule and the reaction to it are produced and what they then do to a person. Neither question replaced the other, but the second half of the century did most of its work on the second.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/arrange-these-contributions-to-the-sociology-of-deviance-earliest

### 2. Durkheim argued that the suicide rate is a social fact. Which of his claims explain why he thought it could not be reduced to individual psychology?

A. The rate varies systematically with religious affiliation, marital status and economic conditions
B. Psychological explanations account for who dies but not for how many die in a population
C. Individual biography plays no part whatsoever in any particular death
D. The rate for a given population is stable from year to year even though the individuals change

**Answer:** A. The rate varies systematically with religious affiliation, marital status and economic conditions; B. Psychological explanations account for who dies but not for how many die in a population; D. The rate for a given population is stable from year to year even though the individuals change

**Why:** The whole argument is about levels. Durkheim never denied that each death has a biography; he argued that biographies cannot explain why the number is what it is and why it moves with social conditions. The third option overstates him into a position that is both implausible and unnecessary to his case.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/durkheim-argued-that-the-suicide-rate-is-a-social-fact-which-of-his

### 3. Durkheim explained the suicide rate by the psychological states of the individuals who died.

**Answer:** False

**Why:** **False**, and the inversion is the whole point of the book. He argued that the rate is a property of a group, explicable by that group’s degree of integration and regulation, and that psychology explains which member of a population is at risk rather than how many will die.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/durkheim-explained-the-suicide-rate-by-the-psychological-states-of

### 4. Match each response to the adaptation of Merton’s five that it represents.

**Answer:**

- Conformity → Works hard in a legitimate job and hopes for promotion
- Innovation → Pursues wealth through fraud after legitimate routes close
- Ritualism → Follows every office procedure exactly while abandoning any ambition
- Retreatism → Withdraws from both the goal and the means altogether
- Rebellion → Rejects both and organises to replace them with different ones

**Why:** Ritualism is the adaptation students find hardest, because it does not look like deviance. The ritualist breaks no rules at all; they have simply stopped believing in what the rules are for, and go on performing them. Merton’s point is that a strain in the social structure can show up as excessive conformity just as readily as as crime.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/match-each-response-to-the-adaptation-of-mertons-five-that-it

### 5. Complete the account of the two concepts of anomie.

**Answer:** For Durkheim anomie is a condition of **deregulation**, in which the moral limits on aspiration loosen, which is why he thought sudden **prosperity** could produce it as readily as sudden ruin. For Merton it is a mismatch between cultural **goals** that everyone is taught to want and institutional **means** that are unequally distributed.

**Why:** The sudden-prosperity case is the sharpest test of the difference. On Merton’s account a windfall removes the strain, since the means to the goal have arrived. On Durkheim’s it can create the condition, because the horizon of what one might reasonably want has just been destroyed. Same word, opposite prediction.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/complete-the-account-of-the-two-concepts-of-anomie

### 6. Douglas critiqued Durkheim's use of official suicide rates as objective social facts. What follows from treating suicide verdicts as social constructions rather than neutral measurements?

A. Coroners merely record the direct psychological motives
B. Sociological study of suicide rates is entirely invalid
C. Official data accurately mirror real suicide variations
D. Comparative rates reflect reporting processes over acts

**Answer:** D. Comparative rates reflect reporting processes over acts

**Why:** Douglas argued official statistics capture the social judgements and negotiations of coroners and families, not pure objective counts. Critiquing institutional categorisation shifts analysis toward the social construction of records without dismissing sociology entirely.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/douglas-critiqued-durkheims-use-of-official-suicide-rates-as

### 7. Arrange the steps of Lemert’s route from primary to secondary deviance.

**Answer:**

1. A person breaks a rule without any consequence for how they see themselves
2. The rule-breaking is noticed and a label is publicly applied
3. The label becomes the trait through which others interpret everything the person does
4. Conventional roles and opportunities close off
5. The person reorganises life and identity around the label

**Why:** The chain is what makes labelling more than a claim about vocabulary. Each step narrows the alternatives available, so that by the end the label describes something true, which is precisely what makes it look like a discovery rather than a production. Lemert’s claim is that the sequence, not the original act, is what generates a deviant career.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/arrange-the-steps-of-lemerts-route-from-primary-to-secondary

### 8. In which year did Durkheim publish Suicide, his demonstration that a rate can be a social fact?

**Answer:** 1897

**Why:** **1897.** The sequence matters: the methodological rules came first, in 1895, and the study was built to demonstrate them on the least promising possible material. Choosing suicide was an argumentative decision before it was an empirical one.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/in-which-year-did-durkheim-publish-suicide-his-demonstration-that-a

### 9. On Becker’s definition, whether an act is deviant depends on the reaction it provokes rather than on any property of the act itself.

**Answer:** True

**Why:** **True.** His formulation makes deviance a status conferred by a reaction, which is why the same behaviour is criminal in one jurisdiction, unremarkable in another and celebrated in a third. The obvious objection, that some acts injure people whatever anyone says, is about harm, which is a separate question from the label.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/on-beckers-definition-whether-an-act-is-deviant-depends-on-the

### 10. Estimate how many years separate Durkheim’s Suicide and Merton’s paper Social Structure and Anomie.

**Answer:** 41 (within ±5)

**Why:** **About 41 years.** Four decades separate the two uses of the word, which is part of why the shift in meaning went largely unremarked: by the time Merton wrote, the term had become common property, and a reader could take his usage for a development of Durkheim’s rather than a replacement of it.

Page: https://tryals.app/practice/sociology-i/integration-anomie-and-deviance/estimate-how-many-years-separate-durkheims-suicide-and-mertons