ANOMIE AND VIOLENT BEHAVIOR

Concept of anomie in understanding contemporary violent disorder among young people

Concept of anomie in understanding contemporary violent disorder among young people

Introduction

The word anomie, which can be defined as the absence of laws or norms, has ancient historical roots (Durkheim, 1951, 42). In the present entry, its history is traced from its earliest form to the present, and in doing so, its significance as a sociological concept and as an explanatory variable in understanding the conditions for social change and stability are considered (Barash, 2001, 66).

Discussion and Analysis

Despite a wealth of understanding of violence at the individual and macrosocial levels separately, much remains unknown about how these two levels are linked to explain violent crime (Merton, 1938, 670). Policies targeting a reduction in violent victimization will be strengthened by the development of theories that take into account both individual and macrosocial forces. Multilevel integrated theories of violence can be developed from two directions simultaneously (Merton, 1938, 675).

First, the identification of risk and protective factors through empirical data mining has direct relevance for theory development. That is, if researchers and scholars know which factors are related to the presence and absence of violent crime, they can construct theories that account for these empirical facts (Merton, 1938, 676). Although this approach is worth subsequent exploration, numerous existing theories, several that were reviewed here, are ripe for theoretical integration. Then, linking existing theoretical explanations across levels of explanation is a second approach to the development of a comprehensive understanding of the causes of violence (Merton, 1938, 679).

A major obstacle to the development of multilevel theories of violent crime has been the mutually reinforcing problem of inadequate data and insufficient theoretical complexity (Black, 1983, 44). In the past, existing data sets were not complex enough to develop and test multilevel theories of violence, and these theories were not sufficiently developed to spark appropriate data collection. This is not true today (Booth, 2006, 88).

Studies examining multilevel theories require data that have a nested structure such that individuals are nested within some macrosocial context. The Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) offers a wealth of data in which individuals are nested within neighborhoods. The PHDCN is a compressive data collection effort aimed, in part, at uncovering the developmental and contextual causes of violence and other behavioural outcomes (Booth, 2006, 138). A major component of the study involves the accelerated longitudinal cohort design that followed seven birth cohorts for three waves of data collection. Additionally, the PHDCN has community survey and systematic social observation data at the neighbourhood cluster level. These features of the PHDCN make it an ideal data set for both testing multilevel theories of violence and developing them by employing the epidemiological approach to the study of violent crime (Booth, 2006, 141).

One particular example of an integrated theoretical approach to understanding violence is from Akers's social structure social learning model (Sykes, 1957, 630). Akers links individual learning principles to macrosocial structural ...