Complete the account of the two concepts of anomie.
For Durkheim anomie is a condition of ______, in which the moral limits on aspiration loosen, which is why he thought sudden ______ could produce it as readily as sudden ruin. For Merton it is a mismatch between cultural ______ that everyone is taught to want and institutional ______ that are unequally distributed.
Word bank: deregulation · prosperity · goals · means · integration · poverty
Hints
- One of the two authors thinks the problem is the absence of a limit; the other thinks it is the absence of a route.
- A lottery win is the standard illustration of the first.
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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.
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.
Practise Integration, Anomie and Deviance
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More questions on Integration, Anomie and Deviance
- Arrange these contributions to the sociology of deviance, earliest first.
- Durkheim argued that the suicide rate is a social fact. Which of his claims explain why he thought it could…
- Durkheim explained the suicide rate by the psychological states of the individuals who died.
- Match each response to the adaptation of Merton’s five that it represents.
- Douglas critiqued Durkheim's use of official suicide rates as objective social facts. What follows from…
- Arrange the steps of Lemert’s route from primary to secondary deviance.
- In which year did Durkheim publish Suicide, his demonstration that a rate can be a social fact?
- On Becker’s definition, whether an act is deviant depends on the reaction it provokes rather than on any…
- Estimate how many years separate Durkheim’s Suicide and Merton’s paper Social Structure and Anomie.