In an interview on Crime and Punishment

Tell me about Durkheim’s Suicide

This is a great taproot for modern theories of crime in the anomie tradition, anomie being a state lacking social and moral cohesion. It was Durkheim who, in this book, did most to establish sociology as a subject in its own right, by showing how suicide, that supremely individual act, varied in relation to social pressures. He stressed the pursuit of ‘infinite aspirations’ as generating higher rates of anomic suicide, due to the weakening of moral regulation in the wake of economic boom as well as slump. Suicide also rose as social bonds weakened due to ‘egoism’ – there is a higher suicide rate in Protestant countries than there is in Catholic ones. And, counter-intuitively, the rate falls when social integration strengthens, as in time of war. His theories of crime, deviance and control are intensely relevant today in the midst of financial crisis following the crash of 2008. In The Division of Labour in Society, he focused on the ‘non-contractual elements in contract’ – trust, integrity and moral obligations – as the prime source of social cohesion in economic relations. Elementary sociology but ignored by, or unknown to, economists, for whom Durkheim should be compulsory reading. Feral bankers are a far greater threat to civil peace than feral children. Even the neo-conservative Francis Fukayama prefaced his book Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (1995) with a quotation from Durkheim.

Crime in Durkheim’s view is intimately bound up with the overall nature of society.

This sounds quite bleak.

Well, Durkheim was actually optimistic. He looked forward to the happy ending of organic solidarity.