The New Social Developments of Durkheim and Merton Theories on Anomie in Modern Society

Abstract

The authors of the present article consider anomie as a natural manifestation of the process of social evolution, especially macroevolution. Macroevolution implies a qualitative transformation of some social institutions with their system of social control into other social institutions with a different set of norms and sanctions. During the process of social macroevolution, the following scenarios are systematically observed: the old systems of social regulation cease to function effectively, and the effective functioning of the new systems of social regulation does not yet begin. All this gives rise to the phenomenon of social anomie in all its variety of manifestations. The interpretations of anomie inspired by Durkheim and Merton still dominate the research literature. However, society is changing, so the theories created a century ago can hardly embrace all the nuances of the new social reality, such as the nonlinear behavior of a social system or the acceleration of social processes. We seek to understand how the anomie theory should be updated in order it could reflect the transformations of society and changes in social actors. So we introduce the concept of reflexive anomie. This concept helps us better understand seemingly unwarranted, high-profile crimes like the cases of Anders Breivik in Norway or Stephen Paddock in the USA. We compare and contrast two of the possible approaches to explaining these cases of asocial behavior: from the perspective of narcissistic personality disorder and reflexive anomie. The comparison of the