Everything about Social Alienation totally explained
In
sociology and
critical social theory,
alienation refers to an individual's estrangement from traditional community and others in general. It is considered by many that the
atomism of
modern society means that individuals have shallower relations with other people than they'd normally. This, it's argued, leads to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other's uniqueness (see
normlessness). It is also sometimes referred to as
commodification, emphasizing the compatibility of
capitalism with alienation (a common theme of the early work of
Karl Marx; see
Marx's theory of alienation). Many sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th century were concerned about alienating effects of modernization. German sociologists
Georg Simmel and
Ferdinand Tönnies have written rather critical works on
individualization and
urbanization. Simmel's
"Philosophie des Geldes" ("Philosophy of Money") describes how relationships become more and more mediated through money. Tönnies'
"Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft" ("
Community and
Society") is about the loss of primary relationships such as
family bonds in favour of
goal oriented secondary
relationships. The American sociologist
C. Wright Mills conducted a major study of alienation in modern society with "White Collar", 1951, describing how modern consumption-capitalism have shaped a society where you've to sellyour
personality in addition to your work.
This idea of alienation can be observed in some other contexts, although the term may not be as frequently used. In the context of an individual's relations within society, alienation can mean the unresponsiveness of the society as a whole to the individuality of each member of the society. When collective decisions are made, it's usually impossible for the unique needs of each person to be taken into account. This form of alienation was criticized by many of the
Young Hegelians.
In a broader
philosophical context, especially in
existentialism and
phenomenology, alienation describes the inadequacy of human
being or
mind in relation to the world. The human mind, as the
subject of perception, relates to the world as an object of its perception, and so is distanced from the world rather than living within it.
This line of thought can be found, among others, in
Søren Kierkegaard,
Martin Heidegger,
Jean-Paul Sartre,
Albert Camus and
Theodor Adorno.
There is a commonly noted problem of translation in grappling with ideas of alienation derived from German-language philosophical texts: the word
alienation, and similar words such as
estrangement, are often used to translate two quite distinct German words, and, interchangeably.
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