In Search Of A Normal Society

Since 1893,when The Division of Labor in Society was first published,Emile Durkheim's theory of anomie has been in a state where it is only widely quoted but rarely discussed in detail,although the changes of conceptual meaning and theoretical development have been hard to count for more than 100 years.The research question of this paper is:what is the developmental process and basic structure of Durkheim's theory of anomie?The main content of this paper is divided into five parts,the first section,as an introduction,states the research question,the research significance and other basic issues.As the literature investigation,the second section will summarize and analyze scholars' studies and debates since Durkheim put forward his own theory of anomie,consists of three sub-sections,the first explains the object and scope of the literature investigation,the second reviews the representative literature for nearly a century,the third summarizes the status and disadvantages of existing research,the former can be summarized as four points:(1)They have revealed the relevant major works;(2)Scholars have given up inappropriate comparisons and focused on Durkheim's own texts;(3)They have viewed the development of Durkheim's theory of anomie from the perspective of process;(4)They have combined the history of social thought(macro)and the development of Durkheim's own thoughts(micro).The latter are two problematic:(1)the wholeness hypothesis;(2)self-sufficiency hypothesis.The third section is the text reading part and analyzes the main point of the representative works in chronological order,and pointed out that since 1893,Durkheim's theory of anomie underwent four stages:emergence(1893-1896),developing(1897-1900),perfection(1901-1902),and disappearance(1902).The fourth section is the theoretical summary,which reconstructs Durkheim's theory of anomie analytically.It is mainly divided into two sub-sections.The first focuses on the theoretical explanation of the duality of Durkheim's theory of anomie,especially from the perspective of the concept of "society".The second discusses the types of theory of anomie,the connotation of society and individuals,the most important binary opposition structure,the causal analysis,and the measures to deal with anomie.The last section is a summary of the paper,and briefly explains the limitations of this research.