To Durkheim, men were creatures whose desires were unlimited. Unlike other animals,
they are not satiated when their biological needs are fulfilled. “The more one has, the more
one wants, since satisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs.”10 It follows
from this natural insatiability of the human animal that his desires can only be held in
check by external controls, that is, by societal control. Society imposes limits on human
desires and constitutes “a regulative force [which] must play the same role for moral needs
which the organism plays for physical needs.”11 In well-regulated societies, social controls
set limits on individual propensities so that “each in his sphere vaguely realizes the
extreme limits on individual propensities so that “each in his sphere vaguely realizes the
extreme limits set to his ambitions and aspires to nothing beyond. . . . Thus, an end or a
goal [is] set to the passions.”12
When social regulations break down, the controlling influence of society on individual
propensities is no longer effective and individuals are left to their own devices. Such a
state of affairs Durkheim calls anomie, a tern that refers to a condition of relative
normlessness in a whole society or in some of its component groups. Anomie does not
refer to a state of mind, but to a property of the social structure. It characterizes a condition
in which individual desires are no longer regulated by common norms and where, as a
consequence, individuals are left without moral guidance in the pursuit of their goals.
Although complete anomie, or total normlessness, is empirically impossible, societies may
be characterized by greater or lesser degrees of normative regulations. Moreover, within
any particular society, groups may differ in the degree of anomie that besets them. Social
change may create anomie either in the whole society or in some parts of it. Business
crises, for example, may have a far greater impact on those on the higher reaches of the
social pyramid than on the underlying population. When depression leads to a sudden
downward mobility, the men affected experience a de-regulation in their lives–a loss of
moral certainty and customary expectations that are no longer sustained by the group to
which these men once belonged. Similarly, the rapid onset of prosperity may lead some
people to a quick upward mobility and hence deprive them of the social support needed in
their new styles of life. Any rapid movement in the social structure that upsets previous
