SYLLABUS
CALENDAR
ASSIGNMENTS
NOTES
Anomie and Social Integration
Emile Durkheim:
excerpt: Egoistic Suicide and Anomic Suicide
Egoistic Suicide
We have thus successively set up the three following propositions:
Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration
of religious society.
Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of domestic society.
Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of political society.
This grouping shows that whereas these different societies have a moderating influence upon suicide, this is due not to special characteristics of each but to a characteristic common to all. Religion does not owe its efficacy to the special nature of religious sentiments, since domestic and political societies both produce the same effects when strongly integrated. This, moreover, we have ahead proved when studying directly the manner of action of different religions upon suicide. Inversely, it is not the specific nature of the domestic or political tie which can explain the immunity they confer, since religious society has the same advantage. The cause can only be found in a single quality possessed by all these social groups, though perhaps to varying degrees. The onlyquality satisfying this condition is that they are all strongly integrated social groups. So we reach the general conclusion: suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration of the social groups of which the individual forms a part.
Indeed, a whole range of functions concern only the individual;
these are the ones indispensable for physical life. Since they are made
for this purpose only, they are perfected by its attainment. In everything
concerning them, therefore, man can act reasonably without thought of
transcendental purposes. These functions serve by merely serving him.
In so far as he has no other needs, he is therefore self-sufficient and
can live happily with no other objective than living. This is not the
case, however, with the civilized adult. He has many ideas, feelings and
practices unrelated to organic needs. The roles of art, morality, religion,
political faith, science itself are not to repair organic exhaustion nor
to provide sound functioning of the organs. All this supraphysical life
is built and expanded not because of the demands of the cosmic environment
but because of the demands of the social environment. The influence of
ft\ society is what has aroused m us the sentiments of sympathy and solidarity
drawing us toward others; it is society which, fashioning us in its image,
fills us with religious, political and moral beliefs that control our
actions. To play our social role we have striven to extend our intelligence
and it is still society that has supplied us with tools for this development
by transmitting to us its trust fund of knowledge.
Through the very fact that these superior forms of human activity have
a collective origin, they have a collective purpose. As they derive from
society they have reference to it; rather they are society itself incarnated
and individualized in each one of us. But for them to have a raison d’etre
in our eyes, the purpose they envisage must be one not indifferent to
us. We can cling to these forms of human activity only to the degree that
we cling to society itself. Contrariwise, in the same measure as we feel
detached from society we become detached from that life whose source and
aim is society.
Anomic Suicide
No living being can be happy or even exist unless his needs are sufficiently proportioned to his means. In other words, if his needs require more than can be granted, or even merely something of a different sort, they wifi be under continual friction and can only function painfully. Movements incapable of production without pain tend not to be reproduced. Unsatisfied tendencies atrophy, and as the impulse to live is merely the result of all the rest, it is bound to weaken as the others relax.
In normal conditions the collective order is regarded as just by the great
majority of persons. Therefore, when we say that an authority is necessary
to impose this order on individuals, we certainly do not mean that violence
is the only means of establishing it. Since this regulation is meant to
restrain individual passions, it must come from a power which dominates
individuals; but this power must also be obeyed through respect, not fear.
It is not true, then, that human activity can be released from all restraint.
Nothing in the world can enjoy such a privilege. All existence being a
part of the universe is relative to the remainder, its natuFe and method
of manifestation accordingly depend not only on itself but on other beings,
who consequently restrain and regulate it. Here there are only differences
of degree and form between the mineral realm and the thinking person.
Man’s characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not
physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material
environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience superior to his
own, the superiority of which he feels. Because the greater, better part
of his existence transcends the body, he escapes the body’s yoke,
but is subject to that of society.
But when society is disturbed by some painful crisis or by beneficent
but abrupt transitions, it is momentarily incapable of exercising this
influence; thence come the sudden rises in the curve of suicides which
we have pointed out above.
In the case of economic disasters, indeed, something like a declassification
occurs
(Iwhich suddenly casts certain individuals into a lower state than their
previous one. Then they must reduce their requirements, restrain their
needs, learn greater self-control. All the advantages of social influence
are lost so far as they are concerned; their moral education has to be
recommended. But society cannot adjust them instantaneously to this new
life and teach them to practice the increased self-repression to which
they are unaccustomed. So they are not adjusted to the condition forced
on them, and its very prospect is intolerable; hence the suffering which
detaches them from a reduced existence even before they have made trial
of it.
It is the same if the source of the crisis is an abrupt growth of power
and wealth. Then, truly, as the conditions of life are changed, the standard
according to which needs were regulated can no longer remain the same;
for it varies with social resources, since it largely determines the share
of each class of producers. The scale is upset; but a new scale cannot
be immediately improvised. Time is required for the public conscience
to reclassify men and things. So long as the social forces thus freed
have not regained equilibrium, their respective values are unknown and
so all regulation is lacking for a time. . . . With increased prosperity
desires increase. At the very moment when traditional rules have lost
their authority, the richer prize offered these appetites stimulates them
and makes them more exigent and impatient of control. The state of deregulation
or anomie is thus further heightened by passions being less disciplined,
precisely when they need more disciplining.
But then their very demands make fulfillment impossible. Overweening ambition
always exceeds the results obtained, great as they may be, since there
is no warning to pause here. Nothing gives satisfaction and all this agitation
is uninterruptedly maintained without appeasement. Above all, since this
race for an unattainable goal can give no other pleasure but that of the
race itself, if it is one, once it is interrupted the participants are
left empty-handed. At the same time the struggle grows more violent and
painful, both from being less controlled and because competition is greater.
All classes contend among themselves because no established classification
any longer exists. Effort grows, just when it becomes less productive.
How could the desire to live not be weakened under such conditions?
Emile Durkheim. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Translated by John A. Spaulding and John Simpson.