ABSTRACT
The influence of the anomie perspective in criminology has risen and fallen over the past seven decades or so. Robert Merton’s well known formulation, which was originally published in 1938, dominated sociological inquiry into crime during the 1950s and 1960s, only to be relegated by some to the dustbin of criminological history. As noted, “institutional-anomie theory” of crime adopts a conceptualization of “institutions” that is derived from Talcott Parsons’ work on general sociological theory and is compatible with more applications in other social science disciplines. Social institutions are to some extent distinct with respect to the primary activities around which they are organized, which is the basis of conventional classifications of institutions. To illustrate, the system of institutional norms that relates to activities pertaining to the subsistence requirements of human organisms—food, clothing, shelter—is typically labeled the “economy,” though the economy goes far beyond these minimal requirements.
