Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions
Since the early days of sociology, the anomie phenomenon has interested many social scientists. A number of theories have been developed, a host of empirical studies (including cross-national) have been performed since Emile Durk heim described this phenomenon and introduced the anomie term. Still...
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| Опубліковано в: : | Социология: теория, методы, маркетинг |
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| Дата: | 2019 |
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Iнститут соціології НАН України
2019
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| Цитувати: | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions / O. Maksymenko // Социология: теория, методы, маркетинг. — 2019. — № 2. — С. 187-190. — англ. |
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Digital Library of Periodicals of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine| _version_ | 1859805222456524800 |
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| author | Maksymenko, O. |
| author_facet | Maksymenko, O. |
| citation_txt | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions / O. Maksymenko // Социология: теория, методы, маркетинг. — 2019. — № 2. — С. 187-190. — англ. |
| collection | DSpace DC |
| container_title | Социология: теория, методы, маркетинг |
| description | Since the early days of sociology, the anomie phenomenon has interested many social scientists. A number of theories have been developed, a host of empirical studies (including cross-national) have been performed since Emile Durk heim described this phenomenon and introduced the anomie term. Still, there is no general consensus among scholars on what anomie is and what it is not. A hard-and-fast definition of anomie has not yet been given, and what is more, researchers look at this phenomenon from at least two different perspectives: individual and institutional, explaining it as a state of mind or a state of society respectively. In terms of society, anomie has mostly been associated with malfunctioning social institutions and breakdown of moral standards, as is evidenced by high crime rates and public justification of unethical behaviour. On the other hand, living even in a "totally anomic" society and experiencing a whole range of anomie-driven emotions and reactions does not necessarily mean acting immorally. To what extent is the thesis about a link between anomie and moral decline of society applicable at individual level? The author seeks to answer this question.
|
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Со ци о ло гия: те о рия, ме то ды, мар ке тинг, 2019, 2 187
Ol’ha Maksymenko
Demoralised but not depraved
UDC 316.4 OL’HA MAKSYMENKO,
MA in Psychology, leading sociologist at the De -
partment of Methodology and Methods of Socio -
lo gy, Institute of Sociology of the National Aca de -
my of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv
Demoralised but not depraved:
Why societal lack of norms disheartens people
but does not necessarily make them commit
moral transgressions1
The phe nom e non of an o mie, de spite hav ing been stud ied for over a cen tury
and there fore con sid ered to be one of the most exhaustively stud ied top ics in so -
ci ol ogy, still en gages the minds of so cial sci en tists, along with re search ers from
other fields. What makes them ad dress this phe nom e non over and over again and
look at it each time from a dif fer ent an gle is ap par ently the over whelm ing (and of -
ten ir re vers ible) im pact of an o mie on both the in di vid ual and the so ci ety as a
whole. At this junc ture, the widely dis cussed the sis about a strong link be tween
an o mie and moral de cline is prob a bly worth spec i fy ing or re vis it ing. This the sis,
how ever con vinc ing it may sound, begs a num ber of ques tions. The first one is re -
lated to what, ac tu ally, should be un der stood by an o mie in this re spect. Is this
what E. Durkheim re ferred to as dereglement (which lit er ally means “dis tur -
bance”) and as so ci ated with in sa tia bil ity of hu man pas sions and de sires in a sit u a -
tion where there is no ex te rior so cial force to curb them — or is this what
R. K. Mer ton ex plained as a re sult of a disjunction be tween “cul tur ally pre scribed
as pi ra tions” of a so ci ety and “so cially struc tured av e nues for real is ing those as pi -
ra tions”? Or, per haps, we ad here to R. M. MacIver’s ap proach, who as serted that
an o mie is “the break down of the in di vid ual’s sense of at tach ment to so ci ety... the
O.Maksymenko, 2019
1 This paper was presented at a round-table discussion published in “Sociology: Theory,
Methods, Marketing”, 2019, 1 (pp. 129–144).
state of mind of one...who no lon ger has any sense of con ti nu ity, of folk, of ob li ga -
tion... re spon sive only to him self, re spon si ble to no one”. Which as pect — in di vid -
ual or in sti tu tional — do we bring to the fore front while at tend ing to the an o mie
phe nom e non?1
The next ques tion con cerns the term “an o mie” it self and what it cov ers. In
Greek, where this word came from, “an o mie” (áíïìßá) means “law less ness”. It is
also ren dered as “normlessness”. How ever, a sit u a tion where there are nei ther
laws nor norms is barely conceivable. As Mer ton aptly noted, “no so ci ety lacks
norms gov ern ing con duct”. Even the most prim i tive so ci et ies were gov erned by
laws, al beit un writ ten; even the most un just and in hu mane ones had an elab o rate
set of rules (and so phis ti cated ide ol o gies too) which al lowed com mit ting all
those in jus tices and atroc i ties. So, an “an omic so ci ety” is not the one where all the
laws and norms have ceased to ex ist. Rather, it is marked by emer gence of some -
thing new that we are not ac cus tomed to and for this rea son feel con fused, some -
thing that runs coun ter to our well-es tab lished sys tem of val ues and rules (or to
what we see as “lofty ide als”), some thing that dis rupts our ev ery day life and
makes us miss “the good old days”. Need less to say, we spend enor mous en ergy
try ing to ad just to such a pre cip i tous change. A pic ture like this is com mon to
tran si tional so ci et ies (which is con firmed by nu mer ous re search stud ies on
post-com mu nist and post-to tal i tar ian an o mie), but it is not con fined to them.
An o mie is deeply en trenched in coun tries with a long his tory of war (Iraq, Af -
ghan i stan, etc.), in so ci et ies which prac ticed ra cial seg re ga tion (South Af rica)
and, quite expectedly, in eco nom i cally dis ad van taged coun tries. On the other
hand, an o mie may also plague pros per ous and tech no log i cally ad vanced coun -
tries such as the USA and Ja pan. S. F. Messner and R. Rosenfeld in the work
“Crime and the Amer i can dream” (1997) un der lined that Amer i can so ci ety is in
a per ma nent state of an o mie and linked this state to “com pet i tive in di vid u al -
ism” es poused by many Amer i cans and their ob ses sion with eco nomic suc cess.
J. P. Azzopardi wrote about “Amer ica’s over dose of an o mie”, while R. Kim Fong
Yong and Y. Kaneko ad dressed the “hikikomori” prob lem (de lib er ate so cial
with drawal among Jap a nese young sters) and de fined it as “an omic re sponse” to
“dif fi cul ties”. Thus, it is not nec es sar ily po lit i cal or eco nomic tur moil that leads
to an o mie. Any thing that is alien to us but has to be ac cepted, any thing that is im -
posed on us by so ci ety but hard (or nearly im pos si ble) to achieve may trig ger an o -
mie- like re ac tions. Viewed from this per spec tive, an o mie is akin to cog ni tive dis -
sonance and so cial maladaptation; thus, it should be in ter preted as a “state of
mind”.
There fore, last but not least is the ques tion of an o mie in di ca tors with re gard
to an in di vid ual and his/her prone ness to im moral be hav iour. Why do we con -
clude that some one is ex pe ri enc ing an o mie, whereas some one else is not? What
makes us as sume that some one marked as “an o mie-rid den” will nec es sar ily com -
mit a trans gres sion? Since 1956 (the year when L. Srole sug gested the first an o -
188 Со ци о ло гия: те о рия, ме то ды, мар ке тинг, 2019, 2
Ol’ha Maksymenko
1 For more detail see: Durkheim, E. (2013). Le Suicide: Etude de sociologie. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France; Merton, R. K. (1938). Social structure and anomie. American
Sociological Review, 3(5), 672–682; MacIver, R. M. (1950). The ramparts we guard. New York:
Macmillan Publishers.
mie scale), quite a few scales (Dean, Fischer, McClosky & Schaar, Mezruchi,
Teevan, Wins low, etc.) have been de vised to “cap ture” and quan tify this elu sive
but per va sive phe nom e non, and a host of em pir i cal stud ies have been con ducted.
A vast ar ray of char ac ter is tics has been at trib uted to an o mie: from lack of trust in
au thor i ties and so cial iso la tion (Srole) to a feel ing of de spair and con fu sion
(Mestrovic). Fe tish ism of money (Messner & Rosenfeld), po lit i cal in ef fi cacy
(Carkoglu & Cagin Bilgili), a sense that life is mean ing less (Mar tin), a feel ing of
awk ward ness (McClosky & Schaar), ten dency to re ject so cial norms (Baumer,
Bjarnason), self-in ter ested be hav iour (Konty) and the like are also on the list. In -
deed, it seems im pres sive — but which of these char ac ter is tics are re ally cou pled
with im mo ral ity? Well, fe tish ism of money is be lieved to pro pel peo ple into
crime, es pe cially if there are few — if any — le git i mate means of get ting what they
want. Ten dency to re ject so cial norms will, more of ten than not, re sult in anti-so -
cial be hav iour too. How ever, let us not for get that so cial norms are not im mu ta -
ble, and de fy ing some of these norms may be more moral than con form ing to
them.
Ye. Golovakha and N. Panina used the term “an omic de mor ali sa tion”1
(1996) to de scribe the state of a so ci ety where both the econ omy and po lit i cal in -
sti tu tions had col lapsed, and or di nary peo ple were strug gling to sur vive. But “de -
mor ali sa tion” in volves a loss of con fi dence or hope. “De mor al ised” does not mean
“mor ally bad”, al though does not rule out the pos si bil ity of be com ing like that.
The the sis about a link be tween an o mie and moral de cline works well at so ci -
etal level, which is il lus trated by high sui cide and ho mi cide rates, nu mer ous prop -
erty crimes, as well as by jus ti fi ca tion of tax eva sion, petty cor rup tion, do mes tic
vi o lence, etc. among the gen eral pub lic. How ever, in or der to de ter mine the de -
gree to which this the sis can be ap pli ca ble to the in di vid ual, fur ther ex ten sive re -
search is needed. In any case, liv ing even in a “to tally an omic” so ci ety does not
mean “blend ing into the crowd” and start ing to act im mor ally. His tory pro vides
abun dant ex am ples of peo ple who lived in un imag in ably un fair and dis hon est so -
ci et ies but, none the less, epito mised the best hu man qual i ties.
Received 12.02.2019
OL’HA MAKSYMENKO
De mor al ised but not de praved: Why so ci etal lack of norms
dis heart ens peo ple but does not nec es sar ily make them com mit
moral trans gres sions
Since the early days of sociology, the anomie phenomenon has interested many social scientists. A
number of theories have been developed, a host of empirical studies (including cross-national)
have been performed since Emile Durk heim described this phenomenon and introduced the
Со ци о ло гия: те о рия, ме то ды, мар ке тинг, 2019, 2 189
Demoralised but not depraved
1 Golovakha, E., & Panina N. (1996). Democratisation in the Ukraine under conditions
of post- totalitarian anomie: The need for a new human rights developmental strategy. In
H. Dekker, R. F. Farnen, D. B. German, & R. Meyenberg (Eds.), Democracy, socialisation
and conflicting loyalties in East and West: Cross-national and comparative perspectives
(pp. 242–261). London, England: Palgrave Macmillan.
“anomie” term. Still, there is no general consensus among scholars on what anomie is and what it is
not. A hard-and-fast definition of anomie has not yet been given, and what is more, researchers
look at this phenomenon from at least two different perspectives: individual and institutional,
explaining it as a “state of mind” or a “state of society” respectively. In terms of society, anomie has
mostly been associated with malfunctioning social institutions and breakdown of moral standards,
as is evidenced by high crime rates and public justification of unethical behaviour. On the other
hand, living even in a “totally anomic” society and experiencing a whole range of anomie-driven
emotions and reactions does not necessarily mean acting immorally. To what extent is the thesis
about a link between anomie and moral decline of society applicable at individual level? The
author seeks to answer this question.
Keywords: anomie as a “state of mind”, anomie as a “state of society”, anomic demoralisation,
moral decay, moral principles, standing out from the crowd
190 Со ци о ло гия: те о рия, ме то ды, мар ке тинг, 2019, 2
Ol’ha Maksymenko
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| id | nasplib_isofts_kiev_ua-123456789-182292 |
| institution | Digital Library of Periodicals of National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine |
| issn | 1563-4426 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2025-12-07T15:16:00Z |
| publishDate | 2019 |
| publisher | Iнститут соціології НАН України |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | Maksymenko, O. 2021-12-26T18:11:36Z 2021-12-26T18:11:36Z 2019 Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions / O. Maksymenko // Социология: теория, методы, маркетинг. — 2019. — № 2. — С. 187-190. — англ. 1563-4426 https://nasplib.isofts.kiev.ua/handle/123456789/182292 316.4 Since the early days of sociology, the anomie phenomenon has interested many social scientists. A number of theories have been developed, a host of empirical studies (including cross-national) have been performed since Emile Durk heim described this phenomenon and introduced the anomie term. Still, there is no general consensus among scholars on what anomie is and what it is not. A hard-and-fast definition of anomie has not yet been given, and what is more, researchers look at this phenomenon from at least two different perspectives: individual and institutional, explaining it as a state of mind or a state of society respectively. In terms of society, anomie has mostly been associated with malfunctioning social institutions and breakdown of moral standards, as is evidenced by high crime rates and public justification of unethical behaviour. On the other hand, living even in a "totally anomic" society and experiencing a whole range of anomie-driven emotions and reactions does not necessarily mean acting immorally. To what extent is the thesis about a link between anomie and moral decline of society applicable at individual level? The author seeks to answer this question. This paper was presented at a round-table discussion published in "Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing", 2019, 1 (pp. 129 144). en Iнститут соціології НАН України Социология: теория, методы, маркетинг Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions Article published earlier |
| spellingShingle | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions Maksymenko, O. |
| title | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions |
| title_full | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions |
| title_fullStr | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions |
| title_full_unstemmed | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions |
| title_short | Demoralised but not depraved: Why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions |
| title_sort | demoralised but not depraved: why societal lack of norms disheartens people but does not necessarily make them commit moral transgressions |
| url | https://nasplib.isofts.kiev.ua/handle/123456789/182292 |
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