alienation

(noun)

Emotional isolation or dissociation.

Related Terms

Examples of alienation in the following topics:

  • Alienation

    • Here, Marx contends that alienation is endemic in any system based on capitalism.
    • Marx refers to this as being alienated from one's work, and as such one's self.
    • Tönnies's work shifted from conceiving of alienation in economic terms to thinking of alienation in social terms.
    • However, many of Marx's predecessors focused on the social consequences of alienation where Marx emphasized the economic causes for alienation.
    • Thus, the reorientation to social alienation did not represent a break in thinking on alienation, just a shift to new directions.

  • Work and Alienation

    • In the concept's most important use, it refers to the social alienation of people from aspects of their "human nature. " Marx believed that alienation is a systematic result of capitalism.
    • The first is the alienation of the worker from the work he produced, or from the product of his labor.
    • The second is the alienation of the worker from working, or from the act of producing itself.
    • When the bourgeoisie interferes with or impedes any of these natural tendencies, the worker is alienated.
    • Analyze Marx's theory of alienation in terms of the four types of alienation and their implications for workers

  • Marx and the "Opiate of the Masses"

    • From this objectification comes alienation.
    • The common worker is led to believe that he or she is a replaceable tool, and is alienated to the point of extreme discontent.
    • Capitalism utilizes our tendency towards religion as a tool or ideological state apparatus to justify this alienation.
    • Marx viewed social alienation as the heart of social inequality .
    • The antithesis to this alienation is freedom.

  • Importance of Division of Labor

    • When the worker monitoring the caramel no longer sees how his work contributes to the larger product, he is said to be alienated from his labor.
    • He described the process of specialization as alienation.
    • In his view, workers become more and more specialized, and their work becomes more and more repetitive, until eventually they are completely alienated from the production process.
    • Examine how the division of labor can lead to alienation and less satisfaction in the workforce

  • The Conflict Perspective on Deviance

    • Marx himself did not write about deviant behavior specifically, but he wrote about alienation amongst the proletariat, as well as between the proletariat and the finished product, which causes conflict, and thus deviant behavior.
    • Alienation is the systemic result of living in a socially stratified society, because being a mechanistic part of a social class alienates a person from his or her humanity.
    • In a capitalist society, the worker's alienation from his and her humanity occurs because the worker can only express labor, a fundamental social aspect of personal individuality, through a privately owned system of industrial production in which each worker is an instrument, a thing, not a person.
    • The nineteeth-century German intellectual Karl Marx identified and described the alienation that afflict the worker under capitalism.

  • Classical Views on Social Change

    • As a result, the proletariat is alienated from the fruits of its labor – they do not own the products they produce, only their labor power.
    • But the alienation from the results of their production is just one component of the alienation Marx proposed.
    • In addition to the alienation from the results of production, the proletariat is also alienated from each other under capitalism.
    • Capitalists alienate the proletariat from each other by forcing them to compete for limited job opportunities.
    • While Marx did have a solution to the problem of alienation, he seldom discussed it in detail.

  • Sociological Perspectives on Urban Life

    • After the Industrial Revolution sociologists such as Max Weber and Georg Simmel began to focus on the accelerating process of urbanization and the effects it had on feelings of social alienation and anonymity.
    • This theory was in contrast to the prevailing belief that urbanization produced only social disorganization and alienation.

  • Capitalism, Modernization, and Industrialization

    • According to Marx, a capitalist system results in the alienation (or estrangement) of people from their "species being."
    • This is what Marx refers to as alienation.

  • Tilting the Tests: Discrimination by IQ

    • For example, IQ tests may be inappropriate for measuring intelligence in non-industrialized communities, because they focus on modern, rational-style thinking, a type of reasoning that is common in the modern industrial West but may be alien to other cultures.
    • For example, IQ tests may be inappropriate for measuring intelligence in non-industrialized communities, because they focus on modern, rational-style thinking, a type of reasoning that is common in the modern industrial West but may be alien to other cultures.

  • Subcultures

    • This process of cultural appropriation may often result in the death or evolution of the subculture, as its members adopt new styles that appear alien to mainstream society.