ABSTRACT
Introduction In Part I , we examined major social theorists’ conceptualizations of alienation. Not included was the seminal scholar Émile Durkheim, whose Suicide ([1897] 1960:58-9, 67, 72-5) spoke of “mental alienation” in reference to individuals who have lost sanity, or are out of their minds. Durkheim also presented a penetrating analysis of normlessness, one of our fi ve varieties of alienation; he linked normlessness not to alienation , but to the closely related concept of anomie . In particular, Durkheim investigated egoistic, altruistic, and anomic types of suicide and linked them to “fundamental” and “secondary” affective states. He further broadened his earlier conceptualization of anomie as a defi ciency in social interaction (Durkheim [1893] 1984:291-309) by elaborating a microsociological analysis that conceptualized anomie as involving individuals’ departures from, or lack of regulation by, the normative order. Durkheim recognized that the normative order of the group is the ultimate source of social regulation that guides and constrains human behavior.
