High Social Integration as a Source of Deviance

Abstract

Historically, much attention has been given in sociology to relationships between the degree of social integration of a society and deviance. As is well known Durkheim investigated the effects of social integration upon suicide.1 While it is not fully clear what he meant by social integration, apparently Durkheim had in mind agreement by a society's members about basic life values.2 Many of the Chicago school of sociology held that social disorganization generated various forms of serious deviance.3 Recently Gibbs and Martin, using status integration as a measure of social integration, have suggested that as status integration decreases, suicide increases.4 Generally, an inverse linear relation has been posited between a measure of social integration and some form of deviance.5 Remarkably little interest has attached to whether high levels of social integration beget deviance. To be sure, Durkheim did hypothesize that altruistic suicide was a consequence of that excessive social integration.6 Straus and Straus suggest that closeness of structuring of a society, an idea much akin to social integration, and suicide were positively related.7 And Powell holds that over-envelopment of individuals by their culture (as well as under-envelopment) leads to suicide.8 The aim of this paper is to focus attention on this neglected line of reasoning. The idea of reciprocity in role-playing provides a useful way of giving greater meaning to the concept of social integration. Mauss,9 Gouldner,10 and Homans11 among others'2 have stressed reciprocity as a fundamental process of interaction. The view here is that the more do roles in given types of situation mutually facilitate the playing of each other, that is, the more is reciprocity built into role relationships, the greater will be social integration.13 It will be necessary to distinguish