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The article focuses on the paper "Status, Mobility, and Anomie: A Study in Readiness for Desegregation," by Melvin M. Tumin and Ray C. Collins Jr. This paper presents some highly interesting data. It does not, however, present data which would support the conclusions at which the authors claim to have arrived on the basis of their data. What the paper does is to raise some extremely significant questions, which the authors fail to pursue. The authors of the paper divide their respondents into four mobility categories based on a two-way occupational status classification. The two statuses are high and low. The four mobility categories are high stationaries, upward mobiles, downward mobiles and low stationaries. The authors then present findings relating scores on five scales of readiness for desegregation to these four mobility categories. Finally, they relate the desegregation scores to scores on the Srole anomia scale. Their findings are that the two mobile groups combined do not differ significantly from the two stationary groups combined in readiness for desegregation, the two high-status groups show considerably more readiness for desegregation than the two low-status groups, the rank order of decreasing readiness for desegregation is, first, high stationaries; second, upward mobiles; third, downward mobiles; fourth, low stationaries and the rank order of increasing anomia is the same as the rank order of decreasing readiness, i.e. the greater the anomia, the less the readiness for desegregation.

Contemporary definitions of anomie and alienation have confused, obscured, and changed the classical meanings of these concepts. Alienation for Karl Marx and anomie for Emile Durkheim were metaphors for a radical attack on the dominant institutions and values of industrial society. They attacked similar behavior, but from opposing perspectives. Marx assumed an immanent conception of the relationship between man and society and the value of freedom from constraint; Durkheim, a transcendental conception and the value of moral constraint. Marx was interested in problems of power and change, Durkheim in problems of the maintenance of order. Paradoxically, contemporary definitions accept what was most problematic for these classical theorists–the dominant institutions of society. The paper author speculates if contemporary definitions of alienation and anomie actually value-free, or are sociologists witnessing a transformation from radical to conformist definitions and values under the guise of value-free sociology.

The article discusses the findings of a study in which 394 married couples were examined in order to determine the relationship between marital satisfaction and personal anomie. The findings support the Mertonian anomie theory, which dictates that there is an inverse relationship between the two variables. The authors discuss the sociological context of the study as well, and point out that emphasis on family sociology leads to less attention paid to personal isolation or social separation.

This study determined the additive and interactive effects of different aspects of alienation on attitudes toward pollution control for residents of an Illinois community which was concerned with a sewage treatment issue. A sample of 218 community residents of voting age was obtained and administered questionnaires during May, 1971. Powerlessness and anomie, while not additive, were found to act interactively to explain opposition to pollution control. Furthermore, this relationship was characterized by a ‘saturation’ or diminishing return effect. Alienation produced negativism toward the issue up to a certain point, with a subsequent increase serving to lessen the issue opposition. The interaction effect was found to exist controlling for respondent socioeconomic and demographic characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anomie is a word to conjure with, and from its Greek root it has been defined as broken limits. In the article, the term is used in its largest meaning, that is, a state of deregulation in which social norms mutually agreed upon goals and means do not control men's actions. The individual participants may be clear in their own minds what the appropriate means and goals are, but if they are interacting with others who accept different norms, the social situation which they jointly share is normless. Although the distinction between the group condition, anomie, and individual causes and effects of that condition is clear, it is not difficult to understand why the two should sometimes be confused. It is important to divest anomie of as much of its moral connotation as possible. Anomie, in the sense both of the lack of shared norms to guide interaction and of lack of approved means to achieve approved goals, has almost certainly increased. That fact, however, is best understood by relating it to the actual societies which demonstrate it and the individuals who experience it, not by reference to idealized stable, homogeneous, prescriptive, sacred, gemeinschaftlich societies.

The article presents information about the relation between sociologist E. Durkheim's concepts of anomie and egoism. While the obscurity of Durkheim's distinction has frequently been commented upon, it is implicitly assumed to be irrelevant for contemporary theorization in social pathology. Against this view, two theses will be advanced. Firstly, if Durkheim had pursued and attempted to clarify his distinction between the two concepts, he would have been forced to re-examine the presuppositions upon which his sociology had been based. Secondly, despite difficulties in Durkheim's theory in which concepts of anomie and egoism play a crucial part, a distinction between them still has to be drawn which in fact retains some elements of their original meaning. All contemporary studies of anomie have neglected the distinction between anomie and egoism with the result that social conditions, psychological states and processes which are entirely different from one another have been assimilated.

The article discusses Robert K. Merton's anomie theory and its influence in the study of juvenile delinquency. It is the theory that delinquency results from and manifests a state of anomie in society. It conceives anomie as a breakdown in the cultural structure, occurring particularly when there is an acute disjunction between the cultural norms and goals and the socially structured capacities of members of the group to act in accord with them. In the case of juvenile delinquency, three discrete, testable propositions are implied. First, youngsters from various socio-economic strata are subject to similar success pressures and aspirations. Second, youngsters from lower socio-economic backgrounds perceive fewer legitimate opportunities to obtain desired success goals than do youngsters from upper and middle class backgrounds. Third, if success orientations are constant, the lower the opportunity, the higher the delinquency. Merton's anomie theory can be most fruitfully applied to delinquency, when it is applied, as a model for the analysis of the interpersonal network of structured relations that occur within the adolescent social system. The adolescent social system refers to a distinctive social class system that emerges among adolescents in urban, industrialized areas and is independent of the stratification system of adults.

Since Robert Merton reprinted his well known essay on "Social Structure and Anomie in Social Theory and Social Structure" a good deal of work has been done both in elaborating the theory and in trying to test it out. A recent volume not only surveys the existing work very competently, but adds some new evidence and a comment by Merton upon what he emphasizes is the developing theory of anomie. In his article Merton refers to some discrepancies between sociologists in their interpretation of the term anomie, and he is wise to do so as a glance through a number of sociological texts will show. R. M. Williams, for instance, quotes the Mertonian cultural goals-structural limitations analysis as one type only of anomie, and refers to cultural apathy with respect to standards of conduct; which seems to imply withdrawal. He also, however, refers to conflict situations in general. Hermann Cohen, using the analogy of a game the rules of which may not be observed, also seems to equate anomie with complete breakdown.