Summary Of Social Structure And Anomie Merton

The article Social Structure and Anomie by Robert K. Merton talks about how each and every society around the world has their own norms, goals, and intersects and all of these societies have different means when it comes to achieving those goals. And all of these goal is accepted by everyone in a society. As every society has norms, each and every society also have sort of regulatory code. Robert Merton also talks about anomie, which he borrowed from Durkheim, is lack of norms in a society (Durkheim, p.43). And due to these anomies people tend to commit crime because they do not understand and break the norms that a society has. Robert Merton also writes about culturally and social structure goals. Culturally goals are the purpose and intersect a given society has, as this comprises a frame of aspirational references and these goals are more or less included and have varying degrees of reputation and views (Merton, p. 48). And due
49). According to Merton, there are 5 categories when it comes to the goals and the means of achieving them and they are conformity, innovation, ritualism, retreatism, and rebellion (p. 50). And the most common and widely diffused category in every society is conformity, which means that everyone in a society obeys or accepts all the rules and regulation in the society (Merton, p.50). And the least category in every society is retreatism, which means that some person or people reject or drop out of the cultural goals or the societies goals (Merton, p. 50). There are also some people that try to escape from the society goal or the requirements of the society, which are known as defeatism, quietism, and resignation and these people also try not participate in societies goals (Merton, p.