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Fight Club: Emile Durkheim's Anomie Theory

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Danny Svenelid Term Paper – Fight Club 10/04/2016 SY 4540 A social system that is in anomie is one that no longer accepts common values and rejects common meanings that were once widely accepted and understood, while simultaneously lacking new values and meanings to replace the former ones. Anomie theory is used to help explain why deviant behavior exists in modern society and what social changes have occurred in order to cause such behavior. In layman’s terms, this theory gives way to understanding why criminals are exactly that, criminals. There have been different versions of the anomie theory over the course of history but the first person to introduce the concept of anomie was French sociologist Emile Durkheim in 1893 (Carls). Durkheim’s …show more content…

In modern society, everyone wants the latest and greatest iPhones, cars, clothing, accessories; the list goes on and on. The age of technology and social media make consumerism more prevalent now than ever before and it seems plausible to think that our society, like the one depicted in Fight Club, allows the things we own to characterize us as people. . Companies and businesses are able to advertise through many different outlets like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, which many of us interact with daily. You can order anything, from anywhere, at anytime in today’s world with a click of a button. It’s a race to see who can get the newest, most expensive hot commodity until its time to do it all again for the next one. With consumerism setting the values for society and applying the pressure to obtain these items, it forms a divide between those who can and those who cannot afford these objects. How will those who cannot afford the things society deems valuable conform to the rest of society? How will they feel like they are a successful, contributing part of society? Merton would believe that those who cannot obtain those societal values and/or goals through legitimate means would be at risk of entering an anomic state. Those who know what the socially accepted goals are (i.e. to own that new convertible) but do not have the availability to achieve those goals are more prone to deviant behaviors. Which in modern society is common. You read about it in the news all the time – people stealing or committing crimes because they were unable to afford the thing they were stealing. The pressures society puts on people to possess what society deems valuable puts those who are unable to own such items at a disadvantage, leading them down the path of deviant

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Emile Durkheim was a french sociologist that was mainly known for his views on the structure of society. More specifically on how traditional and modern societies evolved and functioned. On the contrary to Durkheim, the film Baraka shows the inconsistency between traditional and modern societies. Baraka focuses on the illogical progress from traditional to modern societies. In this sense, even though there is great distinction between Durkheim and the film Baraka, there is also great comparison.

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One contrast between Marx and Durkheim is how they think society coerces individuals to conform to its expectations. Marx believes that value and coercion is created through labor-time. For example, on the commodification of workers, he writes, “These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market” (Marx, in Calhoun, p. 101). Marx presents workers as victims of capitalism who are coerced to accept their wages due to the competitive nature of a capitalist society. Individuals, as workers, are thus coerced to accept the quantifiable, expected wages for their labor, and thus conform to

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The concept has been widely used by sociologists since. Anome is a French word which means normlessness or a state without rules or regulations. One of Durkheim 's most famous studies was concerned with the analysis of suicide. Durkheim showed that social factors employ a fundamental influence on suicidal behaviour. Durkheim defined suicide as "every case of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act performed by the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result" (Aragwal, 2012).

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Weber’s procedure involves certain models of ideal behavior of individuals that he calls “ideal types” which he believes are not the reflections of how the society actually behaves but are to be considered abstract, hypothetical examples of situations from which actual events deviate because of accidental and irrational factors. These ideal types are used to compare and assess the deviation of actual behaviors and events from the ideal type. Durkheim on the other hand believed that the method applied in the study of sociology should be universally applicable. Unlike Weber who put more emphasis on interpretation of actions and on creating some fixed ideal types, Durkheim believed that we should not begin to approach sociology with pre-formulated broad notions that exist only in our minds without observing the real world around us. He believed that moral facts were phenomenon that were possible to observe, describe and classify and that since “morality develops over the course of history and is dominated by historical causes”, it changes with the change in social conditions (Durkheim xxvi).

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