The term, Anomie was used by Durkheim to indicate “the collapse of the normative order.” The term implies that conformity to norms is natural and normal; that resistance is pathological. Then too, embedded in the concept is the idea that norms are above and beyond the individuals who are said to organize their behavior in terms of the normative structure. However, there is a marxist position that the normative structure is a product of transacting humans rather than a “superorganic” thing.

The contemporary functionalist Robert K. Merton developed his early conceptions of theoretical sociology at Harvard, within the historical and intellectual milieux shared by his contemporaries Talcott Parsons and George Homans . One of his earliest and more enduring arguments was formed in the essay "Social Structure and Anomie" (1938), written and published during the Great Depression in the United States. The distress of this period appears to have forged a solid tradition of order that shaped the Harvard mind, a tradition that Merton did not leave behind when he joined the sociology faculty at Columbia University.

Merton (1983) credits the then young Talcott Parsons as an important mentor along with another grand theorist of systems, Pitirim Sorokin. And, as did Parsons, Merton also came under the influence of the biochemist L. J. Henderson. For several decades, Merton collaborated with Paul Lazarsfeld, a sociologist whose major interests were community disorganization and the loss of autonomy. However, it is to the French "master at a distance," Emile Durkheim, that Merton expressed his greatest debt and rightly so.

Merton’s image of human nature is centered in the Hobbesian/Durkheimian problem of unrealistic expectations, while his image of society reflects more an interest in balance than in change. Such images are expressed theoretically in questions of social control, specifically, the relationship between expectations of success and opportunities for success.

Merton’s final seminal work was in the form of a theoretical piece, "Social Structure and Anomie," published in the American Sociological Review (1938). In it, he sought an explanation for deviant behavior through an explication and refinement of Durkheim’s conception of anomie. Merton wrote in a context of crisis and change and as did Durkheim, Merton focused on deviance as a consequence of structural disorganization.

In this classification of anomic deviance, Merton explored the relationship between cultural goals and the structural means to achieve those goals. For this sociologist, when success goals were universally imposed on the members of society while the means to achieve them were restricted for some members, deviance could be expected on a broad scale. As evident in the following schemata, it is the type of consistency or inconsistency between goals and means that leads to either conformity or to one of the four "types" of anomic deviance.

From Merton’s scheme we can understand that the conformist internalizes the common success goals but also has access to the approved means to realize the goals. For the other relationships, a condition of goals—means dysjunction exists. The innovator role manifests the adoption of disvalued means (for example, theft) to realize success. The ritualist follows the rules obsessively but loses sight of the overall goals (for example, the inflexible bureaucrat). The retreatist abandons both success and goals and the means to realize them (for example, the drug addict). The rebel rejects both the traditional goals and means, but envisions new ones as the basis for a new social order. It should be stressed that Merton saw deviance not in terms of personality types but as role responses to different forms of dysjuction.

Merton’s theoretical contribution to the field of deviance serves as a window to his later efforts to construct a system of functional analysis.

Deviant roles are not created by willful intent or intimate experiences. They occur as patterned responses to a breakdown between universal expectations (to be successful) and the availability of approved methods to achieve those ends. Or in Merton’s words, when a society professes that every office boy can become president, while the avenues to such aspirations are socially limited, the stage is set for deviance on a broad scale.

Evident in this early work in the theory of deviance are distinctive properties that were carried throughout his career.

First of all, Merton focused on a more modest theoretical problem (in this case, that of deviance).

Second, his argument held that cultural ideals might in unintended fashion serve as a source of unexpected role behavior.

And finally, he noted that many are not afforded the legitimate means to reach universal goals. Thus, he intimated that not all existing practices contribute to the positive integration of the total society.