NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Social alienation

In sociology and critical social theory, alienation refers to the 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 would in a traditional community. This, it is argued, leads to difficulties in understanding and adapting to each other's uniqueness (see normlessness). This is sometimes also 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/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 favor of goal oriented secondary relationships. Sociology (from Latin: socius, companion; and the suffix -ology, the study of, from Greek Î»ÏŒÎ³Î¿Ï‚, lÃ³gos, knowledge) is an academic and applied discipline that studies society and human social interaction. ... This article is a discussion of critical theory as the phrase is used by the Frankfurt School. ... In natural philosophy, atomism is the theory that all the objects in the universe are composed of very small, indestructible elements - atoms. ... Modernity is a term used to describe the condition of being modern. Since the term modern is used to describe a wide range of periods, modernity must be understood in its context. ... Anomie, in contemporary English means the absence of any kind of rule, law, principle or order. ... Commodification is the transformation of what is normally a non-commodity into a commodity, to assign economic value to something that traditionally would not be considered in economic terms, for example, an idea, identity, gender. ... Capitalism generally refers to an economic system in which the means of production are all or mostly privately[1][2] owned and operated for profit, and in which investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods and services are determined through the operation of a free market. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 â€“ March 14, 1883) was a 19th century philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Marxs theory of alienation (Entfremdung in German), as expressed in the writings of young Karl Marx, refers to the separation of things that naturally belong together, or to antagonism between things that are properly in harmony. ... Georg Simmel Georg Simmel (March 1, 1858 â€“ September 28, 1918, Berlin, Germany) was one of the first generation of German sociologists. ... Ferdinand TÃ¶nnies (July 26, 1855, near Oldenswort (Eiderstedt) - April 9, 1936, Kiel, Germany) was a German sociologist. ... Gemeinschaft ( ) and Gesellschaft are sociological categories introduced by the German sociologist Ferdinand TÃ¶nnies for two normal types of human association. ... A community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment, normally with shared interests. ... Young people interacting within an ethnically diverse society. ... A family in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso in 1997 A family consists of a domestic group of people (or a number of domestic groups), typically affiliated by birth or marriage, or by analogous or comparable relationships â€” including domestic partnership, cohabitation, adoption, surname and (in some cases) ownership (as occurred in the... Look up goal in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Italic text This article does not cite any references or sources. ...

This idea of alienation can be observed in some other contexts, although the term may not be as frequently used. In the context of individual-society relation, alienation means the unresponsiveness of the society as a whole to the individuality of each member of the society. When collective decisions are made, it is 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. The Young Hegelians, later known as the Left Hegelians, were a group of students and young professors at the University of Berlin following Georg Hegels death in 1831. ...

In a broader philosophical context, especially in existentialism and phenomenology, alienation is the inadequation of human being or mind 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, and Theodor Adorno. The philosopher Socrates about to take poison hemlock as ordered by the court. ... Existentialism is a philosophical movement which claims that individual human beings create the meanings of their own lives. ... This article is about the philosophical movement. ... In ontology, a being is anything that can be said to be, either transcendantly or immanently. ... For other uses, see Mind (disambiguation). ... Subject (philosophy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... SÃ¸ren Aabye Kierkegaard (IPA: , but usually Anglicized as ; ) 5 May 1813 â€“ 11 November 1855) was a prolific 19th century Danish philosopher and theologian. ... Martin Heidegger (September 26, 1889 â€“ May 26, 1976) (pronounced ) was a highly influential German philosopher. ... Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (June 21, 1905 â€“ April 15, 1980), normally known simply as Jean-Paul Sartre (pronounced: ), was a French existentialist philosopher and pioneer, dramatist and screenwriter, novelist and critic. ... Max Horkheimer (front left), Theodor Adorno (front right), and JÃ¼rgen Habermas in the background, right, in 1965 at Heidelberg. ...

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, Entfremdung and Entäußerung, interchangeably.