Anomie
(from French anomie - lawlessness, lack of norms) (ancient Greek ἀ- - negative prefix, νόμος - law) - a concept introduced into scientific use by Emile Durkheim to explain deviant behavior (suicidal moods, apathy, disappointment, illegal behavior) . According to Durkheim, anomie is a state of society in which the decomposition, disintegration and collapse of a certain system of established values and norms that previously supported the traditional social order occur, due to its inconsistency with the new ideals formulated and accepted by the state. A necessary condition for the emergence of anomie in society is a discrepancy between the needs and interests of some of its members and the possibilities of satisfying them.
It manifests itself in the form of the following violations:
- vagueness, instability and inconsistency of value-normative prescriptions and orientations, in particular, the discrepancy between the norms defining the goals of activity and the norms regulating the means of achieving them;
- low degree of influence of social norms on individuals and their weak effectiveness as a means of normative regulation of behavior;
- partial or complete absence of normative regulation in crisis, transitional situations, when the old value system is destroyed, and the new one has not taken shape or has not established itself as generally accepted.
Further development of the concept of anomie is associated with the name of Robert Merton.
The concept of anomie expresses a political-economic conditioned process of destruction of the basic elements of culture, primarily in the aspect of ethical norms. When some social ideals and morals are rather abruptly replaced by others, certain social groups cease to feel their involvement in a given society, their natural alienation occurs, new social norms and values (including socially declared patterns of behavior) do not have time to be assimilated by members of these groups and are positioned instead once conventional and equal means to achieve former individual or social goals as their own (which are no longer approved, in particular, illegal). The phenomena of anomie, affecting all segments of the population during social upheavals, have a particularly strong effect on young people.
According to the definition of Russian researchers, anomie is “the absence of a clear system of social norms, the destruction of the unity of culture, as a result of which people’s life experience ceases to correspond to ideal social norms.”[1]
Anomie manifests itself in various spheres of social life. Currently, studies are being conducted on the manifestations of anomie in economics[2], politics, family relationships, religion[3][4].
Deviant behavior caused by anomie poses a huge danger to society. The spread of anomie leads to an increase in the level of alcoholism, drug addiction, suicide, crime, divorce and single-parent families.
Notes
- Gromov I. A., Matskevich I. A. Semenov V. A. Western sociology. - St. Petersburg: DNA Publishing House LLC, 2003. - P. 531
- Pletnev A.V. Development of anomie among representatives of various professional groups of Russian society at the turn of the XX-XXI centuries. // News of the St. Petersburg State Agrarian University, 2013, No. 30, pp. 291-294.
- Pletnev A.V. Development of anomie in the religious sphere of life in post-Soviet society // Modern studies of social problems (electronic scientific journal). 2013. No. 4(24).
- Pletnev A.V. Religious anomie as a catalyst for deviation in modern society // Modern studies of social problems. (electronic scientific journal). No. 9(53), 2020.
ANOMIE
ANOMIA (Greek ἀνομία - lawlessness), 1) a state of society characterized by the disorganization of social norms and institutions, uncertainty and instability of the conditions of human action, as well as the discrepancy between the goals proclaimed by society and the availability for the mass of people of legal means of achieving them; 2) social-related individual psychological. a state characterized by demoralization, weakening of connections with society, the experience of groundlessness, alienation from people, emptiness of life, etc., which is the cause of the spread of deviant behavior in society and the increase in suicides.
In sociology, the term "A." introduced by E. Durkheim (1893). He considered A. an attribute of the transitional state of industrial socio-economic. order when traditions collapsed. "mechanical" forms of moral authority, in which each person “knew his place” in the hierarchy of social positions and values, and the new free, self-governing order of disciplined moral individualism, generating “organic solidarity” between people, had not yet been fully established. Overcoming the consequences of A. at the socio-economic level. life in general is the task of the state, moral regulation of behavior at the departmental level. professions is achieved by the development of professionals independent from the state. associations (“corporations” with strong professional ethics). Ch. efforts should be directed not so much at improving the material conditions of human life, but at combating instability in social life as the main. cause of anomich. phenomena.
The interpretation of A. after E. Durkheim developed in 2 directions: A. acted as the equivalent of “absence of norms,” moral anarchy, lack of moral discipline, etc.; A. denoted “normative tension”, “conflict of norms” in a given culture, i.e. it described a situation where the moral values and norms of group members do not correspond to the possibilities of realizing the goals inherent in these values (for example, the unattainability of the standard of living resulting from the imposed society of ideals of wealth and success). Supporters of the 1st direction tend to view any conflict and division of interests between groups as temporary. a state of imbalance of their functions in the transitional phases of social development, ultimately overcome by universal moral agreement, full-fledged moral education, socialization, etc. Supporters of the 2nd direction (which was started by R. K. Merton) proceed from the theoretical. models of society as a system of groups in constant tension and various conflicts, which serves as a stimulus for social change. This direction continues another thought of E. Durkheim that A. is a reality, almost a “normal state” of any complex modern society. type, especially during periods of radical change.
Scisne?
Russia has discovered an unpleasant illness: the erosion of values and common ideas about living standards.
Sociologists call this condition social anomie. The most paradoxical thing is that it primarily affected the young and educated - precisely those who, it would seem, should lead the country on the path of development in the future. The elites are also confused. Ogonyok found out how we lost the simple knowledge of what is good and what is bad. At the annual conference of the American Sociological Association of Russia, a diagnosis was made: the country is sick with anomie. The authors of the report on this topic - Christopher Swader and Leonid Kosals, associate professor and professor of the Faculty of Sociology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics - are now preparing their scientific work for publication and assure that this strange illness is the key to understanding our problems.
Sociologists have been using the concept of “anomie” since the end of the 19th century, and it denotes approximately the same vast and indescribable range of phenomena that is assigned to the word “depression” in medical terminology. Different schools argue about how to define anomie, and the reasons for its occurrence usually include a brief history of all the political and economic crises of the country.
The shortest definition of an anomic society, however, comes down to the idea of it as having lost value guidelines and various kinds of social norms. Now, if you ask members of an ideal anomic society what they like more - tea or coffee, they will either find it difficult to answer or choose “both.” The same applies to questions about freedom and security, capitalist and state economies, freedom of speech and censorship. Everything is fine. It’s not clear what to choose.
“In our research, anomie was understood as the uncertainty of a member of society regarding the prevailing norms in this society, ignorance of how to act correctly in a particular social situation and role,” Christopher Swader tells Ogonyok. “Based on survey data from the World Values Survey Survey) of 2005 and 2011, we found that Russia has one of the highest levels of anomie, even taking into account other post-socialist and developing countries.
Of course, you can live with this, but “where to live” is not at all obvious. The authors of the study noted that transitional societies, as a rule, have more problems with anomie than developed and settled ones. The replacement of socialism with capitalism, modernization, and reforms do not contribute to the preservation of old norms, but make people disappointed in the newly emerged ones. But the situation with Russia cannot be explained by this alone. We have had stability for at least 10 years, but the people, it turns out, are still described in the words of Sholokhov, a writer of everyday life of civil unrest - “blundering like a blizzard in the steppe.” Not only a national idea, but even a political taste did not arise. Or, in any case, it is such that it is not captured by interethnic surveys, which produce a starry sky of incoherent views instead of a value portrait of the country.
Learned not to appreciate
“It is important not to overdo it with criticism of our “incomprehensible” society,” says Anna Andreenkova, deputy director of the Institute for Comparative Social Research. “Indeed, Russians often experience difficulties, for example, when answering a question about their political preferences. The simplest questionnaire—to indicate whether you are more “leftist” or “rightist”—in most European countries gives a very clear distribution of answers; no more than 10-15 percent of respondents find it difficult to fill it out. In Russia, those who have difficulty are always at least 40 percent. However, it is worth asking the question: is it people’s problem that they see Russian realities this way? Or is this still a problem of reality? It seems to me that our population very adequately describes the current order of things. The spectrum of Russian political parties is unclear to political scientists themselves; the executive and legislative powers are almost indistinguishable—there is uncertainty everywhere. And people record this very clearly.
Moreover, not all values are equally incomprehensible to Russians. Regarding some of them, a consensus has emerged that is so respected by experts. According to the results of the European Social Survey, our population, choosing between the value of self-affirmation and the value of solidarity, caring for others, confidently advocates self-affirmation. Among European countries, we are one of the five main admirers of this quality, while solidarity and care, of course, remain neglected. Thus, we can conclude that resourceful Russians have even developed standards for living in a society without standards, the first of which is a focus on personal well-being, personal success and their own strength.
“The paradox is that the consent of respondents when answering any question is not always an indicator of the cohesion and health of society,” believes Vladimir Magun, head of laboratories at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the National Research University Higher School of Economics. — My colleague Maxim Rudnev drew attention to the fact that Russians are similar to each other in their commitment to personal interest and that such a consensus speaks precisely of social ill-being. In my opinion, this is anomie. Overcoming it is associated with the dissemination in society of the values of responsibility, honesty, mutual assistance, solidarity and the formation of appropriate norms. The point is not that people simply know about their existence - anomie disappears when mechanisms of social control over the implementation of these norms take shape and personal commitment is formed in relation to them. Today, public opinion is not mobilized to support norms of responsibility, honesty and solidarity; instead, its resources are spent on false causes such as the fight for the “correct” sexual orientation. Since generally binding moral norms do not apply in society, people replace them with informal norms accepted in individual social groups and communities.
Actually, one of the consequences of anomie is a retreat into “private” morality, a refusal to seek contacts with other people and to participate in public life. Hence, according to sociologists, the low turnout in elections and the garbage on the streets. When there are no common values, there is no need to waste time on them. However, the question arises: how manageable is such a society without values? Of the two well-known public regulators - law and morality - in Russia, apparently, neither one works well. Therefore, it is assumed that anomic societies are always at risk of a phase transition: here everything can change in one moment, yesterday’s “good” suddenly becomes “bad,” the incomprehensible becomes obvious, the unnecessary becomes necessary. Any stability in this case is deceptive, like the smooth green of swamps.
Can't see from above
One way to safely cross the swamp and settle on solid ground is to trust elite guides. It has become a truism to assert the high role of the social elite in difficult historical times, and in general it seems that they should know where it is good and where it is bad. But Russia was not very lucky here either, and according to a number of researchers, it was precisely here that it was unlucky.
In our country, anomie has affected high-resource groups of the population no less than everyone else. And it often turns out that they are the most confused and disoriented, almost blind guides of the blind.
“Last year we completed the Axioradar project: during an all-Russian representative survey, we allowed respondents to choose between various mutually exclusive value statements,” says Alina Bagrina, coordinator of the non-profit research service Sreda. “The most interesting thing in connection with the problem under discussion is that a group was found "ambivalent" Russians. For example, on the “spiritual - material” scale, 16 percent of respondents have contradictory attitudes: one is more important than the other, and the other is more important than the first. And most often among them are those who consider themselves to be “middle class by self-identification” and “intelligentsia by self-identification.” They are confused. On the axis “it’s important to wait - it’s important to act” there is enormous ambivalence - 42 percent are ready for both the first and the second. And here the same representatives of the “middle class” predominate.
In their confusion one can see isolation from their roots, or one can see disappointment in Western ideas; be that as it may, the advanced and most “modern” social stratum of Russia is showing all the signs of imminent paralysis, convulsing between activity and expectation. The possibility of a phase transition in these convulsions, by the way, is also obvious.
But the “middle class” is still not the very top, just like the intelligentsia. There remains hope that the ruling circles have acquired values and meanings during their reign. The hope, however, is illusory, if we recall the results of the sensational study of experts of the international discussion club “Valdai” “Russian Elite - 2020”. Data for it were collected over 19 years, in several stages, at each of which “those in power” were interviewed: officials, deputies, heads of largest enterprises. All in order to understand where its outstanding representatives are leading the country. The authors' basic hypothesis - that the new elites (the generation of the 80s) should bring with them new values - had to be adjusted as the work progressed. Of course, they carry something with them, but it is not a fact that one can call it an established circle of values.
It turned out, for example, that the generation of the 80s is both a bearer of post-materialist values - self-expression, openness, freedom - and professes aggressive anti-Americanism. Moreover, the entire post-materialist complex of ideas and devotion to the ideals of emancipation does not prevent the youngest from preferring an authoritarian style of government. From 1995 to 2011, the popularity of authoritarianism among members of the younger generation, according to researchers, increased by more than 50 percent (the average for all social groups is 30 percent). And assessments of the importance of the development of democracy and the current level of development of democratic institutions in the country in this cohort were, accordingly, much lower than the overall indicator. It turned out that the young elites do not like democracy more than the mass of the population. At the same time, they are not giving up freedom, and what future they are leading to is a mystery. In attempts to analyze the inexplicable, the authors had to call the emerging Russian elites “two-faced Janus.” Only myth can accommodate such contradictions.
“Anomie can be understood as an uncertainty of norms and values,” one of the study’s authors, Eduard Ponarin, head of the laboratory of comparative social research at the National Research University Higher School of Economics, explained to Ogonyok. “Our elite is precisely characterized by a lack of unity regarding some key issues - for example, about the ideal form of government.” There is a dispersion of views in everything related to the priority methods of governing the country: the problem of anomie, therefore, exists.
Valuable and priceless
There is, however, one reassuring dream - that all cross-country studies, as well as national surveys built according to Western patterns, are not able to capture our unique system of values and norms. Maybe the antitheses “self-affirmation - concern for others”, “authoritarianism - democracy” do not define the reference points of the people’s soul. And yet they exist: we live differently, we care about others.
“If you take into account many reservations and do not take this consideration too literally, then you can find a certain meaning in it,” says Alina Bagrina. “We should not forget that the very concept of “value” is a secular concept. Would anyone die for something that has a “price”? They die for what is priceless or, at worst, for what is extremely valuable. And in Russia, according to our surveys, the readiness for self-sacrifice still exists. This means that Russians have something that can be called not so much valuable as sacred, something indivisible and not always verbalized. We tried to look at the sacred through the eyes of people through photo research: we asked respondents to choose images of a “saint.” The selected photographs contained no state, no labor, no history. There were only other people - and this, of course, is very interesting: perhaps our asociality is greatly exaggerated by ourselves.
On the other hand, everything that is not verbalized has one big drawback - it is not clear how it will turn out and how it will manifest itself. You can die passionately for an infinite number of ideals, and rarely is it worth it. Researchers are already depicting the possibility of not the best value leaps in our society, some of which lead to the disintegration of the country, others to ethnic nationalism.
“It is important to note that the elite and the masses differ in the definition of a significant “other,” explains Eduard Ponarin. “For the masses, this is an ethnic other: a Caucasian, a migrant.” But the elite does not want to play such a game. Here lies the main contradiction of the coming years, which the counter-elites will try to play on. Since the majority of the population is indifferent to the ideals of democracy, debates about democracy will remain intra-elite squabbles. But xenophobia is a completely different matter. According to our forecasts, the majority of the population is ready to support the slogan “Russia for Russians.”
Isn't this what will become a national bond? While neither the elites nor the masses have decided on basic democratic values, they may well be offered others that are not at all democratic. It would be good if our saint did not respond to such a lucrative offer.
Olga Filina Ogonyok Magazine, No. 39
Factors in the development of social anomie
The essence of social anomie is the disruption of social order. Below are the factors “thanks to” which social anomie can develop as a phenomenon:
- Natural, political, economic or other types of shocks, which led to the fact that the majority of the population stopped focusing on established norms, rejected the usual statuses and roles in favor of physical survival.
- Corrosion of values, that is, blurring of the boundaries between good and evil, the foundations of moral norms. As a result, there is criticism towards things that were just recently important, rhetorical questions from society: “Are they as important as they thought?” Disintegration of social integrity.
According to Sroul
Previously, only social anomie had been considered, and only Leo Sroul first proposed positioning the term from a psychological point of view. It was with his light hand that the definition began to include not only the state of society, but also an individual individual, among whose characteristics is the weakening or absolute destruction of social cohesion, the individual’s craving for self-destruction by various physical and moral means.
