ABSTRACT
Emile Durkheim has long figured as an archetype. The first sociologist to exhibit a passion both for theoretical rigor and metric precision, he inspired generations of social scientists driven by a quest for the univocal. In 1893, Durkheim presented his first constructive use of the term in a context dealing with structural differentiation in modern societies. In his 1897 book on suicide, Durkheim used anomie to designate the regulation not of social relations among groups, but of passions within individual actors. Durkheim's view of the relation between anomie and modern society also shifted somewhat between 1893 and 1897. In considering the anomie division of labor Durkheim held that anomie simply reflected the lag between the emergence of new structures and the creation of suitable norms governing their relations. The notion of social facts was the main vehicle Durkheim used to drive home the scientific validity of societal realities.
