Durkheim's Theory of Anomie and the 2016 American Election

Abstract

Anomie is a listless, affectless and alienated condition where one feels entirely cut off from others, it was coined by the sociologist Émile Durkheim in the year 1897 to explain the social integration and the rising suicide rates in European countries. The same interpretation is used to justify the rise of Donald Trump taking into consideration the anomie in the American society. This study seeks to explain how the American society has been evolved or been changed amid the anomic conditions which have attached themselves to this nation and how anomie gotten entrenched in the American Society to the point that it has caused profound impacts on several areas of life like firearm and property legislation and social welfare. For instance, it explains how the anomic conditions of the American Society enabled President Donald Trump to get into office and how this occurrence greatly surprised many individuals in the country. The paper also describes how the American society exists in a permanent anomie state where competitive individualism, as well as social institutions, tends to lead a lot of Americans to resist institutional controls actively and demonstrates how the rates of suicide vastly increased after the election of President Trump, who many did not ever believe or expect him to be elected into the seat.