How Does Durkheim Create Anomie

To Durkheim, men were creatures whose desires were unlimited. Unlike other animals, they arenot satiated when their biological needs are fulfilled. "The more one has, the more one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulateinstead of filling needs." It follows from this natural insatiability of the human animal that his desires can only be held in check by external controls, that is, by societal control. Society imposes limits on human desires and constitutes "a regulative force [which] must playthe same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physicalneeds." In well-regulated societies, social controls set limits onindividual propensities so that "each in his sphere vaguely realizes the extreme limits on individual propensities
Moreover, within anyparticular society, groups may differ in the degree of anomie that besets them. Social change may create anomie either in the wholesociety or in some parts of it. Business crises, for example, may havea far greater impact on those on the higher reaches of the social pyramid than on the underlying population. When depression leads to a sudden downward mobility, the men affected experience a de-regulation in their lives--a loss of moral certainty and customary expectations thatare no longer sustained by the group to which these men once belonged. Similarly, the rapid onset of prosperity may lead some people to a quick upward mobility and hence deprive them of the social support needed in their new styles of life. Any rapid movement in the social structure that upsets previous networks in which life styles are embedded carries with it a chance of anomie.

Durkheim argued that economic affluence, by stimulating human desires, carries with it dangers of anomic conditions because it "deceives us into believing that we depend on ourselves only," while "poverty protects against suicide because itis a restraint in itself." Since the realization of human desires depends upon the resources at hand, the poor are restrained, and henceless prone to suffer from anomie by virtue of the fact that they possess but
He has often been accused of having anoverly anti-individualistic philosophy, one that is mainly concerned with the taming of individual impulse and the harnessing of the energies of individuals for the purposes of society. Although it cannot be denied that there are such tendencies in his work, Durkheim's treatmen tof altruistic suicide indicates that he was trying to establish a balance between the claims of individuals and those of society, ratherthan to suppress individual strivings. Acutely aware of the dangers ofthe breakdown of social order, he also realized that total control of component social actors by society would be as detrimental as anomie andde-regulation. Throughout his life he attempted to establish a balance between societal and individual