Anomie breaks out when social norms are not respected and the State loses its ability to control.
For psychology and sociology , anomie is a state that arises when social rules have been degraded or directly eliminated and are no longer respected by the members of a community. The concept, therefore, can also refer to the lack of laws .
This name is given to all those situations that are characterized by the absence of social norms that restrict them and, on the other hand, it is also a language disorder that makes it impossible for a person to call things by their name.
Anomie is, for the social sciences , a defect of society that is evident when its institutions and schemes fail to provide some individuals with the essential tools to achieve their objectives within their community. This means that anomie explains the reason for certain antisocial behaviors that are far from what is considered normal or acceptable.
Anomie as violation of norms
Continuing with what the social sciences understand by anomie, we will say that it is a violation of the rules, although not of a law: if a person breaks the law, he or she incurs a crime . Typically, the lower classes of society are under greater pressure and have a greater propensity to stray from shared social norms.
Anomie, ultimately, creates a problem for rulers since their control mechanisms are not sufficient to reverse the alienation reflected by people or groups in this condition.
The contributions of Durkheim and Merton
The main promoters of the concept were the sociologists Emile Durkheim and Robert Merton . This last specialist indicates that anomie appears when the objectives of a culture and the possibility of access of some population groups to the necessary means are dissociated. The association between means and ends, therefore, begins to weaken until the breakdown of the social fabric takes place.
According to Emile Durkheim, when a group is highly united, it develops a certain number of norms to regulate behavior and maintain order within it, which establish limits for aspirations and achievements as well as the actions of each individual to provide a some security to the whole. For him it was not possible to think about social action in an absolutely free way, because without norms there cannot be agreements for harmony in a society and guides that collaborate with a linear behavior that is favorable for the entire community . Through group expectations relationships can be updated and shared in a cultural environment.
For his part, Robert K. Merton expressed that anomie is synonymous with the lack of laws and control in a society and its result is great dissatisfaction due to the absence of limits on what can be desired.
For medicine, anomia is a language disorder that appears with Alzheimer's disease and other diseases and conditions.
Anomie according to medicine
In medicine , for its part, the term is used to express those language disorders that prevent some individuals from being able to call things by their name. The simple explanation given for this disorder is that it is constantly having the sensation of having words on the tip of your tongue. It receives this name because it is characterized by lacking laws in the rules of language.
When speaking, we look for each term in our own lexicon in which fifty to one hundred thousand words coexist. It is an almost instantaneous but absolutely complex process. We have acquired this capacity through practice and for this we must have the cognitive system always attentive and prepared, however sometimes it fails and that is why we have gaps when we are expressing ourselves, some terms or expressions are seen, etc. Anomia occurs when this difficulty becomes chronic and it is impossible to recover words when speaking; It is common during aging, when people suffer from brain injuries or degenerative diseases ( Alzheimer ).