Excerpt from Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories

Social Phenomenon. I think back to Emile Durkheim and my Sociology of Deviance class at LSU.

Anomie

Anomie (/'æn??mi/) is a societal condition defined by an uprooting or breakdown of any moral values, standards, or guidance for individuals to follow.[1][2] Anomie may evolve from conflict of belief systems[3] and causes breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community (both economic and primary socialization).[4] In a person this can progress into a dysfunction in ability to integrate within normative situations of their social world - e.g., an unruly personal scenario that results in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of values.[5][citation needed]

The term, commonly understood to mean normlessness, is believed to have been popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide (1897). However, Durkheim first introduced the concept of anomie in his 1893 work The Division of Labour in Society. Durkheim never used the term normlessness;[6] rather, he described anomie as "derangement", and "an insatiable will".[7][need quotation to verify] Durkheim used the term "the malady of the infinite" because desire without limit can never be fulfilled; it only becomes more intense.[8]

For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations.

Wow he used the word the a lot