Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) came up with the term “anomie” while investigating the nature of suicide in human societies. He defined it as “the absence of norms,” or normlessness; a state of “instability in the society or individual that arises from a breakdown of standards and values.” In such a state, individuals despair, as they lack standards to strive towards. In his definition of anomic suicide, he gave two instances. One occurs when an individual despairs as a result of his or her complete inability to achieve set goals due to a lack of resources. The other occurs when an individual is unable to set goals for himself or herself because of an abundance of resources.
Later on, Robert Merton, an American sociologist, further analyzed the causes of anomie. He discovered that anomie most affects those without acceptable ways of achieving whatever goals they may have set for themselves. Acceptable, in this context, means that which is considered correct by the society. The pressure to achieve regardless of the method used to do so may lead to increased focus on the end rather than the means. The state of anomie then arises when afflicted individuals resort to illegitimate means to achieve their goals, resulting in a general disregard for societal standards and values. Thus, Merton’s version of anomie theory (also called strain or means-ends theory) focuses on the disparity between a society’s definition of success and the society’s norms on the proper means of achieving success.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/anomie
Anomie
Émile Durkheim’s (1912) “Elementary Forms of Religious Life” offers an early sociological theory of deviance. According to Durkheim's proposal, anomie (social alienation) is an innate “organic function” (social mechanism) within everyday life. A functionalist explanation of "deviance,” alienation is a circumscribed social condition. Essential to sustained collective consciousness are ritual acts of inversion, or what Durkheim calls a dynamic of “social cohesion.” This functionalist view of conflict suggests social values, beliefs, customs, norms, and mores derive meaning from deviance sourced in the persistence of anomie.
Strain Theory
Following French Functionalist Durkheim, Robert King Merton's (1957) “Strain Theory” is an American Functionalist theory that examines the sociological explanation of criminal deviance from the perspective of the individual. Pressure to achieve socially accepted goals, suggests Merton, leads to the commission of crimes by individuals. Pressures induced by an individual’s pursuit of goal-oriented “conformity” with social expectations, participation in goal-oriented “ritualism” as part of a collective, or even “retreatism” (i.e., goal substitution) may foster criminal behavior. Furthermore, where the combined pressures of what Merton calls "inadequate means," "prejudice," and "discrimination" are present, the conditions of strain are optimal for criminal commission of deviant acts.
Criticism
Critics of Durkheim and Merton’s theories point to the suggestion that weak empirical evidence and neglect of class relations, structural differences, gender relations, and other inter- or intra-personal relations that contribute to "deviance" and the real circumstances surrounding crime fail to adequately and fully explain social problems such as “white collar” crime, where opportunities are abundant, thus delimiting deviance to the lower classes.
https://ei.marketwatch.com/Multimedia/2017/01/12/Photos/ZH/MW-FD606_madoff_20170112123439_ZH.jpg?uuid=6521e8e6-d8ed-11e6-9dba-001cc448aede
https://www.thoughtco.com/structural-strain-theory-3026632
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