Interrelationships of the explorative anomie studies

This chapter reviews the main findings that emerged from the studies and the implications of those findings for our understanding of the role of anomie in both maintaining and disrupting existing social structures. The Chinese project served a two-fold purpose: First, it was concerned with developing a measure of social instability and second, it aimed to employ the instrument in assessing the level of instability among the surveyed population. The Bulgarian study was based on the hypothesis of the existence of acute and mass anomie in Bulgaria due to the objective socio-economic crisis. The goal of the Australian anomie project was to develop a working model of the way in which accelerating rates of social change, conducive to the development of anomic structures, impacted on quality of life. The examination of the anomie profiles which were compiled using national and regional data was instructive