Social Alienation: A Review of Current Literature

Abstract

In recent years considerable attention has been focused on delineation of the concept of alienation and on measurement of its relationship to modern social structure and function. This paper reviews the alienation literature, largely empirically oriented, for the last decade. Included with works of primarily theoretical and methodological importance are substantive studies of the relationships between the alienated individual and his social order. Suggestions for further research are given.* This article was prepared with the assistance of State of the Field Editor, Irwin Rinder.Social Alienation g i of a new world, including the creation of man himself. As private property and the division of labor develop, however, man's labor loses its character as an expression of his powers and assumes an existence separate from him. The products of his labor also stand opposed to him as a power independent of the producer. Man is thus alienated from his labor, from the product of his labor, and, in a sense, from himself. Because capitalism is the instrument that severs these relations, Marx attacks it and its institutions. The positive abolition of private property is thus for Marx the positive abolition of alienation and the return of man to his human, that is social, life (Marx, 1956).Other nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century sociologists concerned with

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Beyond Anomie: Alienation and Crime

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