anomie

plural anomies · alternative anomy

1. countableuncountableAlienation or social instability caused by erosion of standards and values.

   No wonder, then, that all of these women are consigned to their lot. What’s the point? From adolescent traumas to adulthood indignities, their anomie has been overdetermined.

   2020 March, Jess Bergman, “I’m Not Feeling Good at All”, in The Baffler, number 50

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   This is in line with sociologist Emile Durkheim's seminal study Suicide (1897 [1997]), which argued that "anomie", or normlessness, could explain variations in suicide rates across countries and time.

   2019, Kathryn Edin, Timothy Nelson, Andrew Cherlin, Robert Francis, “The Tenuous Attachments of Working-Class Men”, in Journal of Economic Perspectives

   Although the hypotheses on what causes anomie are different and reflect the social conditions of different societies, the concept itself refers to the same idea/phenomenon: a weakening of the guiding power of social norms, a loosened social control.

   2020, Freda Adler, The Legacy of Anomie Theory, Routledge, →ISBN

   In fact, one of the recurrent themes in all Didion’s books, both fiction and nonfiction, is Americans’ penchant for reinventing themselves, their belief in fresh starts and second acts — a faith, on the one hand, that helped settle this country and fueled the American dream, and yet, on the other, has resulted in rootlessness and anomie, the discarding of personal and public history.

   2021 December 24, Michiko Kakutani, “Didion’s Prophetic Eye on America”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   [T]hey duly make the acquaintance of all the dysfunctional, boorish and anomie-stricken super-rich on board, including a hateful elderly Brit couple with the Churchillian names of Winston and Clementine.

   2022 May 21, Peter Bradshaw, “Triangle of Sadness review – heavy-handed satire on the super-rich loses its shape”, in The Guardian

   Stories about technology-driven anomie and lives that had become unmoored from meaningful values were thrilling to readers in the 1980s and 1990s, but to be a character in such stories is a different thing.

   2024 July 30, Dan Brooks, “Do you ever get the feeling that we’re living in a postmodern fiction? You’re not alone”, in The Guardian, →ISSN