Introduction
Sociology uses models and concepts to analyze social groups, elucidate problems in them, such as social tensions, and propose ways to solve them. Nowadays, despite all social and technological advances, conflicts are still present at all levels of society and personality. The rate of suicides is quite high, and the problem of crime and international terrorism is very actual. Emile Durkheim, a 19th – 20th centuries sociologist, proposed the concept that personal and social conflicts are interconnected. They, and, subsequently, the violence toward others or self, is caused by anomia, a lack of any internal norms and morals that direct one’s life and grant it meaning. The anomia is caused by unsuccessful social integration when no connection and cooperation are present between society members, and everyone feels lonely and trustless toward each other.
The Problem of Violence and Self-Violence in Society
Violence is present in society in many forms, but one may divide it into external violence, aimed at other people and social norms, and internal one, aimed at oneself: exam. According to various studies, social violence, such as aggressive riots or terrorist attacks, is often caused by existential reasons such as despair (Troian et al., 2019). For example, when studying people’s tendency to engage in violent action, in light of the December 2018 French protests, researchers found that this tendency correlates with the loss of life meaning (Mahfud & Adam-Troian, 2019). It means that internally lonely and desperate people who see no future for themselves are more ready to participate in violent acts and tend to engage in criminal activity.
Internal violence is found to be connected with similar issues, too. When studying the suicidal tendencies among Kurd migrants in the UK, it was found that they are correlated with the loss of the sense of self-identity and usual social norms (Cetin, 2016). Thus, the problem of violence and self-harm is actual and deeply interconnected with existential problems and a lack of cultural norms, called anomia. In my opinion, by analyzing the anomia and ways to solve it, one may find clues to healing society.
Durkheim’s Theory: Anomia, Suicide, and Social Integration
A social fact
Durkheim’s theory consists of various terms, elements, and models, and to describe the anomia, one should define the concept of social fact first. It is some phenomena, ideas, or events that exist in one’s life without their consent and sometimes even without their notice but have a profound influence on them. A typical example of a social fact is norms of behavior that were introduced to a person in early childhood and are unconsciously followed by them (Blommaert, 2018). Sociologists usually “regard social roles as unchanging parts of a society’s culture; they are social facts,” which means that those norms define social roles (Giddens et al., 2020, p. 99). Another example is a crime that, according to Durkheim, always exists in society, and criminals play a particular role there (Dillon, 2019). The first example is internal, and the second is external, but both of them are social facts, as they are formed and maintained by societal structure.
Social facts, according to Durkheim, are the basis on which the social structure is formed. As a functionalist, he sees society as a unified living organism where each part exists for a specific purpose (Dillon, 2019). He insists that it is not enough to use simple psychological methods when evaluating a person’s condition: they are limited as they ignore a significant layer of impersonal influences (Barnwell, 2017). This layer is created by cultural norms present in society, the cultural background of a certain social group, opportunities for this group, and other people’s behaviors. It may be indirectly measured by sociologic parameters, statistics, and case analyses: for example, suicide rates and news analysis.
Anomia (Anomie)
It is a situation where no organic, working social norms are present, and people feel disconnected. Anomia, originally called Anomie by Durkheim, is a major moral crisis and a social disease in functionalist terms (Serpa & Ferreira, 2018). It may end with society’s dissolution and death, which is highly uncomfortable for everyone living there. Cooperation is much hindered in this situation: people feel deeply lonely, everyone is considered alien, and all prerequisites for violent actions are present. It is interconnected with Karl Marx’s concept of alienation, which “refers to feelings of estrangement and even hostility— initially to one’s job and eventually to the overall framework of capitalist-industrial production” (Giddens et al., 2020, p. 445). People start to fear each other, lose the sense to live, and finally stop seeing any value in life at all. When great frustration is present, along with the absence of any moral values, a society becomes very prone to destruction: crime, riots, and suicides (Cetin, 2016; Mahfud & Adam-Troian, 2019; Troian et al., 2019). This social disease is hazardous and signalizes the necessity of formulating new actual moral norms.
Anomia is especially prevalent in situations when old norms, cultures, and religions die out due to irrelevancy, and new ones are not formed yet. Durkheim said that “processes of change in the modern world are so rapid and intense that they give rise to major social difficulties” (Giddens et al., 2020, p. 13). The 2020s is a time of rapid technological progress, globalization, cultural mixing, and global power confrontation. It means that the processes mentioned by Durkheim and Marx are much more intense today than they were in their times. People become alienated from their jobs as technologies push them out of them; diverse cultures make interpersonal communication much harder than in a monocultural society. One can conclude that we are living in the age of mass anomia: this explains the prevalence of social violence and, hopefully, opens some ways to solve this.
Collective consciousness and social integration
Integration is the process of the social structure’s formation when various social norms are set in the society, and the resulting structure is called the collective consciousness. In all cases, the social atmosphere determines people’s behavior, along with their personality: this atmosphere is the structure made of many interconnected social facts (Barnwell, 2017). Durkheim argues that the very existence of the society “depends on cooperation, which presumes a general consensus among its members regarding basic values and customs” (Giddens et al., 2020, p. 12). While forcefully imposed cooperation leads to the alienation of people from their jobs and one another, only increasing the anomia, organic cooperation makes everyone feel safer and better (Dillon, 2019). Thus, if people are interconnected based on their cultural values and ability to understand each other, society becomes stable, safe, and very productive for its people.
Social Disintegration as the Cause of Violence
Social disintegration is the process when anomy is significant, and social norms cease to exist in society at all. Everyone begins to feel alone, and only strict mechanical responsibilities, such as the necessity to be alive, have a place to live, and obey the law, group society members together. They cannot or do not want to follow old moral orders, and no new social game rules are available (Blommaert, 2018). People become disorientated and often disappointed: while it may be the time when new original ideas are created, it is also a time of suicides, mass depression, criminality, and violent riots.
Durkheim shows that laws and punishment should exist in a healthy society, along with criminals and other deviant elements. Repressive laws are ineffective, as they create only mechanical solidarity when people are connected with each other by external brute force (Serpa & Ferreira, 2018). As there are directed social influences and social currents, which influence people’s behavior, it is unlikely that repressive laws and severe punishments will make them better, as they heavily evoke negative emotions in people (Barnwell, 2017). According to the textbook, “the harsher and more oppressive prison conditions are, the more likely it is that inmates will be brutalized by the experience” (Giddens et al., 2020, p. 204). Thus, social disintegration is a lack of cooperation and connection between society’s members caused by large anomia, and repressive methods cannot heal it. Conversely, such methods are more likely to destabilize society even more, increasing the negative emotions accumulated in it and eventually destroying it totally.
Toward the Social Integrity
Social integration is when all people have a cooperative position toward each other, which means they are ready to communicate and solve any problems without coercion. Law, according to Durkheim, should not concentrate on punishments but on restoring and maintaining the social order via the upbringing of morality in people (Serpa & Ferreira, 2018). However, he “argued that punishment not only helps guarantee conformity among those who would violate a culture’s norms and values but also vividly reminds others what the norms and values are” (Giddens et al., 2020, p. 75). He considers punishment an essential social element, but its purpose is to educate criminals rather than inflict pain and harm on them.
A functionalist approach, followed by Durkheim, sees society as an organism: thus, its integrity may be reached by defining and healing its problems. As many social facts should be studied as possible, and people’s problems should be seen in the light of social facts, as they will determine their choices (Barnwell, 2017). For example, in the case of violent protests, processes that make people desperate must be elucidated (Troian et al., 2019). Sometimes they are apparent, such as a lack of social mobility, and sometimes vague, such as the loss of cultural values.
Durkheim called successful social integrity integration organic solidarity: it is alive, self-regulating, and evolving over time. It is when “all members of society are engaged in highly specialized roles (or functions, in Durkheim’s terminology), with functional interdependence” (Giddens et al., 2020, p. 70). As mentioned, it cannot be reached by the repressive approach, as it will only have a temporary effect but eventually destabilize society even more. In the following discussion and conclusion, I will propose my ideas about how integrity may be reached: by introducing new concepts of moral education and punishments.
Discussion
I think that Durkheim’s theory of social integration is actual and important for the modern world, full of social tensions between various groups, classes, races, cultures, and genders. People are often disorientated and disintegrated: they do not know what is important to them and often are in fear. They often fear the punishment, in case they will break the law somehow, and the violence from other people. The situation may be slowly changed by creating new, more universal moral principles and educating people from childhood. Knowledge of cultural diversity and technological advances must be included, as they will allow communication with people of various cultures more freely and be on pace with the world’s high development speed. In addition, the concept of punishment should be changed: it is not a tool for revenge but for reeducation and demonstration of the power of law and morals. I believe that those two ideas, new moral principles and the new concept of punishment, will help to reach social integration and, thus, solve many problems caused by anomia.
Conclusion
The problem of violence in society is actual: crime, terror attacks, and suicide rates are major challenges to people’s security. Internal violence, such as self-harm and suicide, and external violence, such as the desire to participate in terrorism or criminality, are interconnected and usually have similar reasons. Anomia, the stage of losing social norms and moral guidance, is shown to be this reason: desperate people, who feel that they have nothing to value and lose, are prone to kill others or themselves. The situation may be seen from the functionalist perspective: as an ill society that should be healed by successful social integration. Thus, methods of moral education and punishments should be reviewed: the former should be actual and consider all modern challenges, such as cultural diversity and technological advances. Punishments should be aimed at restoring the societal order and re-educating deviant elements rather than harming them. Those changes may help reduce anomia and solve the problem of violence in society.
References
Barnwell, A. (2017). Durkheim as affect theorist. Journal of Classical Sociology, 18(1), 21–35.
Blommaert, J. (2018). Durkheim and the Internet: Sociolinguistics and the sociological imagination. Bloomsbury.
Cetin, U. (2016). Cosmopolitanism and the relevance of “zombie concepts”: The case of anomic suicide amongst Alevi Kurd youth. The British Journal of Sociology, 68(2), 145–166.
Dillon, M. (2019). Introduction to sociological theory: Theorists, concepts, and their applicability to the twenty-first century. John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. P., & Carr, D. (2020). Introduction to sociology (12th ed.). Norton.
Mahfud, Y., & Adam-Troian, J. (2019). “Macron demission!”: Loss of significance generates violent extremism for the Yellow Vests through feelings of anomia. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 24(1), 136843021988095.
Serpa, S., & Ferreira, C. M. (2018). Anomie in the sociological perspective of Émile Durkheim. Sociology International Journal, 2(6).
Troian, J., Baidada, O., Arciszewski, T., Apostolidis, T., Celebi, E., & Yurtbakan, T. (2019). Evidence for indirect loss of significance effects on violent extremism: The potential mediating role of anomia. Aggressive Behavior, 45(6), 691–703.