Social Disorganization

Migration and urbanisation. The classic setting. A person leaves the community whose norms governed them and whose members enforced them, and arrives where nobody knows them. Thomas and Znaniecki's study of migrants is exactly this.

War, disaster and displacement, which break institutions abruptly.

Economic change: industrialisation, unemployment, and the destruction of occupations described in [The Economic System, Work and Occupation].

Conflicting cultures in one population, which produces normative conflict without any single norm being weak.

Failure of socialisation, where the family or school does not transmit the norms.

Natural and demographic change: sudden population growth, epidemic, famine.

Social disorganization and social change: the distinction that carries marks

This is where the answer is won or lost.

The proposition to write: rapid social change produces disorganization when the non-material culture, the norms and institutions, has not caught up with the changed conditions; and disorganization ends when new norms and institutions form, which is reorganisation. Disorganization is therefore best understood as the interval between one settled order and the next, not as decay.

The commonest error is to treat every change as disorganization, which turns the concept into a complaint about the modern world. The joint household dividing is change; a city neighbourhood in which nobody knows who is responsible for a child is disorganization.

Anomie, and how it differs

Durkheim's anomie is closely related and not identical, and examiners set the two against each other.

Anomie is a state of normlessness or deregulation in which the norms have lost their authority over individuals and desires are no longer limited by any accepted standard. It is Durkheim's, it is primarily about the regulation of the individual by society, and he identified it in periods of both sudden prosperity and sudden depression, because either dislocates the customary limits.

Social disorganization is broader and is primarily about the relations between the parts of a society: institutions failing, norms conflicting, control weakening.

The relation: anomie is one aspect, arguably the central one, of a disorganised condition, seen from the side of the individual. A student who says that is answering well.

The Chicago School, and where the concept is strongest

The concept's classic development is the Chicago School's work on the city in the early twentieth century, which mapped rates of delinquency, addiction and family breakdown by area and found them concentrated in particular zones. Shaw and McKay's finding is the one worth knowing and it is genuinely striking: the high-delinquency areas remained high over decades although the ethnic composition of their populations changed completely. Successive waves of migrants moved in, showed high rates, and showed lower rates after moving out.

Why that finding matters. It shows that the cause lay in the area and its social organisation rather than in the people, which is the strongest single piece of evidence for a sociological rather than an individual explanation of deviance. Their explanation was the weakness of local institutions in such areas: high turnover, poverty and heterogeneity prevented residents from forming the stable relationships through which a neighbourhood supervises itself.

Criticism of the concept and the school.

1. It is evaluative disguised as descriptive. Calling a condition disorganised assumes a standard of proper organisation, usually the observer's, and communities described as disorganised often turn out to be differently organised. Whyte's study of an American slum found dense and stable social organisation where outsiders had seen none.
2. It confuses the symptom with the condition, listing crime and addiction as evidence of disorganization and then explaining them by it, which is circular.
3. It neglects power. An area may lack institutions because it has been denied investment, policing and services, in which case the disorganisation is a consequence of decisions taken elsewhere.
4. The dark figure problem from [Crime and Social Deviance]: high recorded rates in an area may reflect heavier policing of it.
5. It is vague, and its boundaries with change, anomie and deviance are not crisp.

A worked example

Two thousand households are moved from a settlement they had occupied for thirty years to a new block of buildings twelve kilometres away.

What is lost. Neighbours who knew each other's children by sight; a local elder whose word settled disputes; the shopkeeper who gave credit; the informal watch by which everyone's absence was noticed. All of that was the neighbourhood's informal control.

What is not yet built. Nobody knows who is responsible for the stairwell; there is no accepted way to settle a quarrel; the residents are drawn from several communities with different norms; and the formal machinery, police, municipality, courts, is distant and slow.

The symptoms follow predictably: disputes escalating for want of a settler, children unsupervised, property damage nobody prevents, and a rise in complaints.

Now the sociological reading rather than the moralising one. The residents have not become worse people. The machinery through which any group controls its members was destroyed by the move and has not yet been rebuilt. This is disorganization exactly: an interval between one order and the next.

And the implication for policy and law, which is what a law student should take: the response that works is not primarily more policing but whatever accelerates reorganisation, residents' associations, clear responsibility for common areas, a local forum for disputes. This is the most practical thing in Module II, and it is why the concept survives its criticisms.

Quick revision

1. Social disorganization is the condition in which a society's norms lose their hold and its institutions cease to perform their functions.
2. Thomas and Znaniecki: a decrease of the influence of existing social rules upon members of the group. Not the absence of rules, the decline of their influence.
3. Characteristics: conflict of norms, weakened social control, institutional failure, rising deviance, uncertainty, personal disorganisation, and it is a matter of degree.
4. Causes: rapid social change, and specifically cultural lag, migration and urbanisation, war and disaster, economic change, conflicting cultures, failed socialisation.
5. Change is the cause; disorganization is a possible consequence. It is the interval before reorganisation, not decay itself.
6. Anomie (Durkheim) is normlessness seen from the side of the individual; disorganization is broader and concerns the relations between the parts.
7. Shaw and McKay: high-delinquency areas stayed high over decades although their populations changed completely, so the cause was in the area's social organisation, not in its people.
8. Criticism: evaluative disguised as descriptive; circular; neglects power; recorded rates may reflect policing; vague boundaries.

Test yourself

1. Define social disorganization and give four of its characteristics. The condition in which the established norms, values and institutions of a society lose their hold over its members and its parts cease to function together. Its characteristics include a conflict of norms, so that conforming to one breaches another; the weakening of informal social control; the failure of institutions such as the family and the local community to perform their functions; and a consequent rise in deviance, disputes and personal disorganisation, together with widespread uncertainty about what is expected.

2. Distinguish social disorganization from social change. Social change is any alteration in the structure or culture of a society; it is universal, continuous and neutral in value. Social disorganization is a breakdown in the functioning of a society's parts and the hold of its norms; it is occasional and is always a malfunction. The relation is causal: rapid or uneven change produces disorganization when norms and institutions have not caught up, and the condition ends with reorganisation on a new basis.

3. Distinguish anomie from social disorganization. Anomie is Durkheim's term for a state of normlessness or deregulation in which norms have lost their authority and individual desires are no longer limited by an accepted standard; he found it in periods of sudden prosperity as well as sudden depression. Social disorganization is the broader condition, concerning the relations between the parts of a society: institutions failing, norms conflicting and control weakening. Anomie is best understood as that condition seen from the side of the individual.

4. What did Shaw and McKay find, and why does it matter? That certain areas of a city showed high rates of delinquency decade after decade although the ethnic composition of their populations changed completely, successive groups showing high rates while resident there and lower rates after moving away. It matters because it locates the cause in the area's social organisation rather than in the characteristics of its people, and it is therefore among the strongest pieces of evidence for a sociological rather than an individual explanation of deviance.

5. Give two criticisms of the concept. That it is evaluative while presenting itself as descriptive: calling a community disorganised assumes a standard of proper organisation, usually the observer's, and communities so described often prove to be organised differently rather than not at all. And that it is circular: crime and addiction are offered as evidence that an area is disorganised and are then explained by its disorganisation, so the condition and its symptoms are used to prove each other.