Modernity and Anomie - Essay Example

Emile Durkheim has defined anomie as a society’s condition where the society has relaxed moral regulations for its members and there are less moral regulations for individuals of that particular society (FRANZESE, 2009, p.34). Anomie can be witnessed in the society of media and entertainment industry, where a lower amount of rules and regulations are applied on members such as movie directors and celebrities and these celebrities are very negatively impacted by the issue of anomie. For example: when a celebrity ends up getting fame that is sudden and unexpected in nature, the celebrity becomes distant from his/her family members and even damages the norms that the celebrity was supposed to follow and this leads to a decrease in the amount of support that the society as providing to the celebrity which causes unfavorable results for the society as well as the individual.

Durkheim asserted that the desires of a particular individual should be kept in balance with the guidelines provided by a particular society and this kind of balance is very difficult to attain in modern societies. Durkheim was one of those sociologists who were able to be a witness of the transformation of Europe and Europeans that was social in nature during the period of the 19th century. He asserts that before industrialization occurred, societies were very dependent on traditions and these traditions helped in keeping the society and its members together.

He regarded this state as a collective conscience and stated that collective conscience was so strong in nature that any individual within the society who would participate in deviant activities was immediately sanctioned and dealt with. He used the term mechanical solidarity to refer to the strong bond between different members of the society and this solidarity was a result of common likeness and he referred to this form of solidarity as mechanical in nature because he was of the idea that people in these societies had an automatic sense of being together and operating as a whole (ROUSSEAU, 2002, p.10).