Anomie is a concept introduced by the sociologist Emile Durkheim in his 1897 study of suicide. It describes a state in which social norms have dissolved — when the rules that govern behaviour are unclear, contradictory, or absent, and individuals are left without moral guidance.
Durkheim observed that suicide rates increased during periods of rapid social change, whether economic boom or bust. The common factor was not poverty or wealth but disruption. When the old norms dissolved and new ones had not yet formed, people lost their bearings. They did not know what was expected of them. They did not know what to expect of others. The result was anomie — literally, "normlessness."
Anomie is dissolution at the social level. The norms that coordinate behaviour, that provide meaning, that make life predictable — these dissolve. What remains is a society of individuals who share a physical space but not a moral one. They are adjacent but not connected. They act without reference to any common standard.
Durkheim considered anomie a pathology of modern society. The division of labour, which was supposed to produce interdependence and solidarity, instead produced isolation. People performed specialized functions but did not share a common life. The dissolution of gemeinschaft — community — into gesellschaft — society — was accompanied by the dissolution of the norms that made either tolerable.
In Fiction
Albert Camus's The Stranger (1942) is a portrait of anomie in a single character. Meursault kills a man on a beach, without motive, without remorse. He is not evil; he is simply disconnected — from social norms, from emotional responses, from the meaning that other people impose on events. The novel's famous first line — "Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure" — is the voice of anomie: the dissolution of the emotional bonds that make life bearable.