Social Disorganization

In one line

Social disorganization is the condition of a society whose parts have stopped working together, so that its rules no longer command obedience and its institutions no longer perform their functions.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: social disorganization is the process or condition in which the established norms, values and institutions of a society lose their hold over its members, the relations between its parts cease to be harmonious, and the society becomes unable to perform its functions or to control the behaviour of its members; it is marked by conflicting norms, a decline in the effectiveness of social control, and a rise in deviance, disputes and personal disorganisation.

Definitions

• Elliott and Merrill: social disorganization is a process by which the relationships between members of a group are broken or dissolved. They treated it as the opposite of social organisation, which exists when the parts function in harmony.
• W. I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, whose study of Polish migrants is the classic source: social disorganization is a decrease of the influence of existing social rules of behaviour upon individual members of the group. Note the emphasis: not the absence of rules, but the decline of their influence.
• Ogburn and Nimkoff: when the harmonious relationship between the various parts of culture is disturbed, social disorganization results, which ties the concept directly to cultural lag from [Culture].
• Faris: social disorganization is the disruption of a previously existing state of organisation, so it is relative to what went before.

The characteristics

1. Conflict of norms. Two or more sets of expectations apply to the same situation and pull in different directions, so a person cannot conform to one without breaching another.
2. Weakened social control. The informal machinery of [Formal and Informal Social Control] stops working: nobody knows the person, so nobody's disapproval matters.
3. Failure of institutions. The family, the community, religion and the local authority cease to perform their expected functions.
4. Rising deviance. Crime, delinquency, addiction, family breakdown and dispute follow, and are symptoms rather than the condition itself.
5. Uncertainty and confusion. Individuals do not know what is expected of them.
6. Personal disorganisation accompanies it: alienation, anxiety, loss of purpose in the individual.
7. It is a matter of degree. No society is perfectly organised or wholly disorganised, and the useful question is how much and in which institution.

The causes

Rapid social change is the general cause, and every particular cause below is an instance of it.

Cultural lag. Ogburn's concept: the material culture changes faster than the non-material, so the norms governing a new situation have not yet been formed. This is the single most useful explanation of the condition and links directly to [Culture].