When shared norms weaken, aspiration loses limit and distress and deviance rise.
Durkheim's 1897 study linked suicide rates to periods of rapid change — booms as well as busts — because both dissolve the shared expectations that make aspiration finite.
In practice
- A merger dissolves the informal norms of two firms and leaves neither; absence rates rise in both halves before anything measurable changes about the work.
- A village that loses its shop, pub and bus service reports rising vandalism no one can attribute to any new arrival.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Sociology & Culture
- Essay
- How societies hold together, sort people, and change