Anomic suicide: A Durkheimian analysis of European normlessness

ABSTRACT

According to Durkheim (1897), periods of economic, social, or political change result in a state of anomie or normlessness. Anomic periods lead to deregulation of desires and suffering. Durkheim hypothesized that, as an expression of suffering, societies and groups experience an increase in suicide rates. This paper provides two formal tests of Durkheim’s (1897) theory of anomie - a behavioral aggregate analysis and an attitudinal individual-level analysis - on the backdrop of the 2008 economic crash. The first analysis assesses the relationship between unemployment and suicide in the European Union between 2000 and 2010. Results provide conditional support for Durkheim's theory: suicide rates increased following the crash and decreased once economic stability resumed in 2010 for males only. A second attitudinal analysis identified factors contributing to the gendered relationship between anomie and suicide. Results indicated that traditional Durkheimian regulatory mechanisms, such as marriage and divorce, contributed to the gender-specific results.     

Why is Collective Violence Collective?

A theory of collective violence must explain both why it is collective and why it is violent. Whereas my earlier work addresses the question of why collective violence is violent, here I apply and extend Donald Black's theory of partisanship to the question of why violence collectivizes. I propose in general that the collectivization of violence is a direct function of strong partisanship. Strong partisanship arises when third parties (1) support one side against the other and (2) are solidary among themselves. Such support occurs when third parties are socially close to one side and remote from the other and when one side has more social status than the other. Third parties are solidary when they are intimate, culturally homogeneous, and interdependent. I focus in particular on lynching: Lynching is a joint function of strong partisanship toward the alleged victim and weak partisanship toward the alleged offender. Unequal strong partisanship appears in both classic lynchings (of outsiders) and communal ynchings (of insiders) across societies and history. Where partisanship is weak or strong on both sides, lynching is unlikely to occur. Evidence includes patterns of lynching in various tribal societies, the American South, imperial China, and medieval Europe.     

The canonical limits of Durkheim's first classic

A classic text is not always canonized. Canonical texts are frequently anything but classics. Durkheim's Division of Labor in Societyis an instance of the former; his Rules of Sociological Methodof the latter. Both books are based on errors of fact and method. Division of Laborwas so intentionally the classical theory of modern divided societies that Durkheim, son of generations of rabbis, totally misrepresented the facts of Ancient Israel. In Rules,Durkheim was so intent on writing the canonical text of sociology's methods that he stipulated rules that even he (in Suicide) could not use. Durkheim was thus a giant of the sociological past because,not in spite of, his errors. He erred because he dared to think seriously about the moral issues of his time. Hence, the ironic fate of Durkheim's sociology—it led in two different directions. From Rulesand Suicidecame modern empirical sociology. From Elementary Formscame all the antimodernists—beginning with Levi-Strauss, and from him, Derrida and the others—who became, among other things, the most articulate critics of the sociology Durkheim helped invent. Such is the genius of classic, if not canonical, authors like Durkheim.     

Durkheim on Religion and Moral Community in Modernity*

Durkheim's theory of religion is approached from the perspective of his lifelong concern with the question of meaning and moral order in modern society. This emphasis naturally leads to a consideration of wider themes informing Durkheim's sociology of religion than are usually found in analyses focusing exclusively on his treatment of primitive religion in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1964). Durkheim sees as the distinguishing feature of modernity the progressive emancipation of the individual from traditional sources of influence. The evolution toward greater individuation, culminating in the “cult of the individual” or “religion of humanity,” is set by Durkheim within the context of the role of collective ideals in promoting social change and in the maintenance of moral order. Religion, the major symbolic expression of societal wide ideals, is identified as the key variable which enables Durkheim to reconcile the competing demands of individuals for freedom with the interests of society in collective welfare.     

ÉMILE DURKHEIM'S DIVISION OF LABOR AND THE SHADOW OF HERBERT SPENCER

This article assesses Durkheim's theory of the division of labor in advanced societies relative to Spencer's views on the subject. It seeks to correct a key chapter in the history of sociological thought, for it is in his classic 1893 work that Durkheim is presumed to have routed both Spencer's account of the division of labor and his larger theory of man and society. In fact, Spencer and Durkheim differ very little in their conceptions of the causes of an expanding division of labor (both identify population growth and concentration, and its impact, through heightened competition—group and individual—on specialization of function). They do differ, however, in their treatment of its effects, but Durkheim's explanation is not necessarily—as is commonly assumed in textbook narratives—an improvement of Spencer's. Indeed, many of the questions involved (e.g., whether and to what extent exchange presupposes or creates norms, or divided labor produces cohesion beyond that resulting from mutual need, or the division of labor itself is a moral or economic phenomenon) remain moot. Spencer and Durkheim championed explanations that derived from larger and generally competing perspectives, namely, the moral communalist and the "exchangist" (as Durkheim dubbed his opponent's position). One cannot actually banish the other, for each is a perennially serviceable intellectual outlook.     

Durkheim'sdivision of labor in society

The source of social life, according to Durkheim, is the similitude of consciousnesses and the division of labor. The former is best evident among primitive societies where a mechanical solidarity, evidenced by repressive law, prevails; the latter in advanced societies where populations evidence greater dynamic density, and juridical rules define the nature and relations of functions. In combating individualism and basing the existence of societies on a consensus of parts, Durkheim refutes his positivistic emphasis which denies the relevance of ends to a scientific study of society. In his discussion of social ends is a latent anti-mechanistic trend. The theory of unilinear development is established on deficient ethnographic data. It assumes the absence of division of labor among primitive societies and of any mechanical solidarity among modern societies. Repressive and restitutive law Durkheim seeks to use as indexes of mechanical and organic solidarity, but he does not establish with any precision the perfect associations which he assumes obtain between his types of solidarity and of law.Reproduced from theAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 40 (1934), pp. 319–328. (© 1934 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.)     

GENERAL EVOLUTION AND DURKHEIM'S HYPOTHESIS OF CRIME FREQUENCY: A Cross-Cultural Test

This research tests and supports the hypothesis proposed by Durkheim which relates increasing crime frequency to social differentiation as a process of sociocultural evolution. Unlike past tests of this hypothesis, the current study provides a cross-cultural sample of 121 societies representing a broad range of societal development, geographical dispersion, and cultural diversity. This examination interprets social differentiation in the broader scope of general evolutionary theory, thus providing a between society analysis of sociocultural complexity. While it is recognized that "crime" is not defined the same across all societal types, this research does examine 14 behavioral categories which are of interest to modern criminology.     

Guest Editor's Introduction

Classical social theory in the Western tradition concerned itself with the history of the human condition and sought answers to big questions such as the meaning of change and progress. They were interested in the nature, origins and consequences for human life of modern society, with its new means of organizing production as well as legal and political arrangements. Contrary to the optimism of the Enlightenment with its unbounded faith in the ability of reason and scientific inquiry to liberate humans from domination by both religion and nature, classical social theorists saw the negative side of modern civilization. This can be summarized in terms of the loss of freedom or the enslavement of humans, which each theorist understood as taking different forms. For Marx it was alienation, for Weber confinement in the iron-cage of rationality, and for Durkheim anomie. Although Ibn Khaldun lived centuries before the rise of classical social theory and was by no means a product of the modern world, it is possible to read his work as thematising the absence of freedom or enslavement as well. Bringing out this aspect of Ibn Khaldun shows, to some extent, the modern relevance of his thought. This article elaborates on Ibn Khaldun's theme of enslavement via his discussion on luxury and senility. It is the enslavement of sedentary people to luxury that explains the loss of group feeling or ‘asabiyyah, setting in motion a chain of developments that results in the senility of the dynasty and its eventual demise. In the first section I discuss the Enlightenment promise of freedom. The section that follows discusses classical social theory's critique of modernity or what amounts to a loss of faith in the Enlightenment project. Here the thought of Marx, Weber and Durkheim are presented as examples of Western assessments of the problem of the human condition in modernity. I then turn in the next two sections to Ibn Khaldun, discussing his theory of the rise and decline of states in terms of the role played by luxury.     

DIALECTICS OF NORMS IN MODERNIZATION

The frequently lamented weakening of wakening of social and law norms in modern societies is examined. After some concern about norm erosion in classical sociology, empirical social research on mass communication, industry, the military, and urban life soothed earlier concerns. Yet criminological evidence on late modern and rapidly modernizing societies, qualitative research in the sociology of culture, and quantitative lifecourse research attest to a weakening of normative standards during the second half of the twentieth century. Their findings are propelled by communitarian discourses. However, long-term historical research and some studies in the sociology of law demonstrate the growing strength of norms that regulate interpersonal violence. Contradictory evidence thus suggests replacing one-dimensional and unidirectional ideas about the impact of modernization on the strength of legal and social norms by a dialectic understanding. A set of hypotheses is developed, based on diverse literatures on organizations and the economy, culture of life course, political and social movements, and crime and the law. The hypotheses concern the dialectic consequences for the strength of norms, of the growing size of social units, growing participation in labor markets. transition of economic forms, formal rationalization of law, and the shift from a noninterventionist state to an interventionist welfare state.     

The ties that bind: The effect of clustering on dyadic relationships

This study explores the extent to which one can explain the dynamics of a given relationship or set of relationships by mapping the social network in which they exist. Specifically, it focuses on the effect of cluster membership on the evolution and intensity of dyadic relationships. The results suggest that relationships are as much a product of the social networks of the two individuals involved as of their personal needs, histories or desires.     

Reciprocal Associations Between Connectedness and Autonomy Among Korean Adolescents: Compatible or Antithetical?

The primary goal of this study was to examine the longitudinal reciprocal relationships between connectedness to parents and autonomy among Korean adolescents using five annual waves of the Korea Youth Panel Survey. The sample consisted of 3,449 adolescents, whose mean age was 13.79 years at Wave 1. Contrary to the mainstream findings in individualistic societies that autonomy is not necessarily inimical to connectedness to parents, the present study convincingly suggested that Korean adolescents' pursuit of autonomy might conflict with the maintenance of connectedness with their parents. Similarly, unlike most studies conducted in Western countries, Korean adolescents' maintenance of connectedness with their parents was likely to undermine the attainment of autonomy. Results are discussed in terms of collectivistic cultural values emphasizing the developmental pathway of interdependence instead of the development of autonomy within the cultural context of Korea.     

Relational sociology and culture: a preliminary framework

In this paper I outline a framework for a relational sociology of culture. I begin by briefly defining relational sociology and contrasting it with both individualistic and holistic alternatives. Culture, I suggest, is an inherently relational concept and needs to be theorised and analysed as such. This argument is briefly elaborated through a discussion of the generation and diffusion of culture by way of interaction and social networks. The respective contributions of Tarde, Durkheim, Merleau-Ponty, and Wittgenstein are given particular attention. In the final part of the paper I introduce and discuss Howard Becker's notion of ‘art worlds’, drawing out and elaborating upon its relational foundations whilst also further developing it through a more sustained reflection upon both the facilitative potential of social networks and their shaping, as hypothesised by Peter Blau (and developed by Miller McPherson and Noah Mark), by way of homophilic attraction in ‘social space’. The paper covers a lot of ground and is intended as a sketch which subsequent work will fill out.     

Durkheim's Evolutionary Conception of Social Change

Using criteria derived from several recent inquiries into the nature of classical social evolutionism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this study has endeavored to determine what Durkheim's comprehensive views on evolutionary change were. Durkheim appears to have remained prevailingly and persistently a social evolutionist throughout his sociological career. He accepts the usual view of classical social evolutionism regarding the macro- or large- scale character of the social units undergoing change (i.e., total societies or entire institutions), the organism and its change as exhibited in growth as an appropriate analogy, and the comparative method as the recommended investigative procedure (albeit with a somewhat unique technique to insure the similarity of the social contexts of the items studied). His conclusion at the end of his career that change is naturally both slow and rapid in its rate, relatively limited or unlimited in its initial scope, and small and large in scale is apparently without parallel. His multiplanal, multilinear, and arborescent notion of the directionality of change has seemingly only one parallel (in Spencer). Finally, he agrees with social evolutionists generally that the causes of social change are prevailingly internal, necessary, and uniform in nature.     

What motivates adolescent bystanders to intervene when immigrant youth are bullied?

Pathways to bystander responses were examined in both generalized and bias-based bullying incidents involving immigrant-origin victims. Participants were 168 (M_age = 14.54, 57% female) adolescents of immigrant (37.5%) and nonimmigrant backgrounds, who responded to their likelihood of intervening on behalf of either an Arab or Latine victim. Models tested whether contact with immigrants and one's desires for social contact with immigrant-origin peers mediated the effects of individual (shared immigrant background, and discriminatory tendencies) and situational (inclusive peer norms) intergroup factors on active bystander responses. Findings indicated that desires for social contact reliably mediated effects across both victims; however, contact with immigrant peers was only associated with responses to Latine victims. Implications for how to promote bystander intervention are discussed.     

Durkheim and the Homo Duplex: Anthropocentrism in Sociology

Previous analyses of anthropocentrism in sociological theory primarily attribute the origins of anthropocentrism in sociology to George Herbert Mead. This study addresses anthropocentrism in the influential works of David Émile Durkheim. At the core of Durkheim’s theory is his concept of the homo duplex, an inherent but tentative quality separating humans from all other animals. Durkheim uses the homo duplex as an ontological device, defining humanity as having the unique capacity to create and participate in the social. This collective process permits humans to transcend the profane, or what he observes as the immoral, passionate, animalistic individualism of nonhuman animals, into social solidarity: a realm generating morality and, ultimately, the sacred. This key distinction serves as the basis of all Durkheimian theory. This profound anthropocentrism becomes significant considering the degree of Durkheim’s influence on the field of sociology and the extent of anthropocentrism in sociology as a whole.     

Theorizing the social: Émile Durkheim's theory of force and energy

This paper offers a new interpretation of Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) as the basis for reconsidering the Tarde–Durkheim debate of 1903 and the distinctions between a theory of social force and a theory of social assemblage. Resisting traditional interpretations of Durkheim's scientism, this essay traces how concepts of force and energy are centrally developed in Elementary Forms to draw new lines between epistemology to ontology for twentieth-century theory. I argue that Durkheim develops an ‘energetic epistemology’ that conceives of the human capacity for shared meaning as a product of invested energy in the form of continually enacted and evolving material practice, thought, and attention. According to Durkheim, when a member of a collective perceives a god or feels belief, he or she actually perceives the accumulated energy of on-going creation and maintenance of objects and ideas by members of a collective. Sacred objects, images, and ideas bear the trace of collective energy the more they are carefully crafted, maintained in spaces that are specially arranged, and written into behavioural codes. This reading of Durkheim allows us to consider him in a lineage of social constructivists and, particularly, in relation to Ludwik Fleck, who has been largely confined to different theoretical discussions when his contributions to sociology have been acknowledged at all. By reconsidering Durkheim, we have occasion to rethink his sociology and understand how he redrew the lines between thought and action, between epistemology and ontology, through the material framework of energy and force.     

Divine relations, social relations, and well-being

The social support literature focuses on the effects of networks composed of "real" or concrete individuals on psychological well-being. Persons interact in imagination, however, with a wide range of others who may or may not actually exist. In modern societies as in traditional societies, persons experience, interact with, and appeal to spiritual or divine beings. Using data from the NORC General Social Survey, this study examines the extent to which relationships with "divine others" affect psychological well-being. Regression analysis reveals that divine relationships have a significant effect on several measures of well-being (controlling for sociodemographic background variables and church attendance). Hypotheses regarding the impact of stress, social relationships, cognitive resources, and images of the divine on the effect of divine relationships are also considered.     

Toward a Sociology of Nature

Although we often believe that nature stands apart from social life, our experience of nature is profoundly social. This paper unpacks this paradox in order to (1) explain sociology's neglect of the environment and (2) introduce the articles in this special issue on “the sociology of nature.” I argue that sociology's disinterest in the biophysical world is a legacy of its classical concern with tracing society's “Great Transformation” from gemeinschaft to gesellschaft: while early anthropologists studied “primitive” societies that allegedly had not yet completed “the passage from nature to culture” (Lévi‐Strauss 1963 : 99), pioneering sociologists presumed that industrialization and urbanization liberated “modern” society from nature and therefore focused their attention on “urbanism as a way of life” (Wirth 1938 ). As exemplified by the articles in this symposium, environmental sociology critiques the nature‐culture and town‐country dualisms. One of environmental sociology's core contributions has been demonstrating that nature is just as much a social construction as race or gender; however, its more profound challenge to the discipline lies in its refutation of the sociological axiom that social facts can be explained purely through reference to other social facts. “Environmental facts” are a constitutive feature of social life, not merely an effect of it.     

Organizational theory: From classical sociology to the 1970s

Organizations are the fundamental building blocks of modern societies. So it is not surprising that they have always been at the center of sociological research, starting with Marx and Weber. And although Durkheim did not explicitly analyze organizations, his work has clear implications for the study of organizations. We review the insights of these three pioneering sociologists and then discuss ideas about organizations proposed by other scholars, from both management and sociology, from 1910 to the mid‐1970s. Marx, Weber, and Durkheim's theoretical frameworks were tools for understanding the transition to modernity. Marx and Weber saw organizations as sites of class struggle and rationalization, respectively, while Durkheim focused on social cohesion and collective sensemaking, both of which underpin organizations. Later theorists focused more closely on the meso‐level and micro‐level processes that happen within and between organizations. These later theorists emphasized pragmatic concerns of optimizing organizational efficiency and labor productivity (scientific management and human relations theories), processes of affiliation and hierarchy (Simmel), limits to rational decision‐making (the Carnegie School), and environmental conditions that shape organizational processes and outcomes (contingency theories). A companion paper describes the three perspectives (demographic, relational, and cultural) that have dominated sociological research on organizations since the mid‐1970s.     

Industrialization and Social Stratification*

This paper reviews the current state of knowledge about the effects of industrialization upon systems of social stratification. Taking societies as the unit of observation, we consider the relationships between level of industrialization and (1) the distribution of status characteristics in the population (the structure of stratification); (2) the pattern of interrelations among status characteristics (the process of stratification); and (3) the form of linkages between status characteristics and other aspects of social behavior (the consequences of stratification). A set of propositions is specified, a few of which are empirically well established but most of which yet require empirical testing.