Lauren Langman

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Loyola University Chicago

For Marx, the alienation of wage labor and inherent crisis tendencies of capital would foster collective grievances and support for communist movements promising revolution and the abolition of private property, creating a society wherein “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” But a combination of material...

The burden of this paper is to show how, despite a multiplicity of interpretations and a great number of conceptual critiques, alienation theory remains a valuable analytical tool in the social sciences. By looking at social reality in the twenty-first century with the theoretical apparatus derived from analyses of alienation, we commit ourselves a...

For a number of social theorists, the contemporary era, fundamentally different from the past, is often called “postmodern.” It is constantly bombarded by and defined by an endless barrage of mass‐mediated simulations, contrived, mass‐produced representations of a “reality” where an original may have never existed. It creates models of the real whe...

Every society has a dominant set of values and norms regarding appropriate beliefs and practices that attempt to (1) regulate behavior to make social life possible, and (2) provide a meaning for life. At the same time, as Durkheim showed, societies also foster a variety of pressures toward deviance, the transgression of accepted norms and values, w...

While cities have existed for millennia, with the rise of modern capitalism the city became the center for the new, rational, exchange economy based on profits measured by cash values. Georg Simmel was one of the first sociologists to study the nature of the modern city, not only in terms of its architecture and commerce, but in terms of the cultur...

For a number of social theorists, the contemporary “postmodern” era is constantly bombarded by and defined by an endless barrage of mass‐mediated simulations, contrived, mass‐produced representations of a “reality” when an original may have never existed. Billboards, movies, and television, along with cell phones, tablets, and computers also provid...

In the 1980s, Jürgen Habermas moved the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory from the critique of political economic and ideological domination to a discursive theory of “distorted communication” limiting the realization of the project of a democratic modernity. But with this move, much of the direction of the early Frankfurt School was eclipsed, as...

The election of Donald Trump raises a number of questions about how and why he was supported by the voters to gain electoral college victory. His election was not due to economic hardships but rather due to his unique ability to mobilize three primary constituents of the republican party: its billionaire elites, evangelical Christians and racist wh...

This response pertains to the review of our book, God Guns Gold and Glory—American Character and its Discontents, reviewed in this journal by George Gonzalez. Our response contends that the “review” is not really a critical reflection on our book, but something more like a dismissal. In essence, Gonzalez says that this is not the book he would have...

This chapter suggests that, while not easily discerned and indeed denied, Marx did have an implicit notion of “human nature” and elements of an implied social psychology of (thwarted) desire that informed the 1844 manuscripts. Why was alienation onerous? People felt pain! More specifically, the class relationships of market society, based on privat...

The concept of alienation has a long and complex history as it has been used in Judeo–Christian theology, Roman law, medieval concepts of insanity, German Idealism especially in Hegel, in the dialectical materialism of Marx, and more recently, in Frankfurt School Critical Theory and in existentialism. As adopted and adapted to different disciplines...

Although it is often condemned as an imprecise concept, alienation continues to flourish as critique in contemporary philosophy, theology, and psychology, as well as in sociology. Historically originating in Roman law, where it referred to the transfer of land ownership, alienation has since been applied extensively to analyses of labor relations,...

One of the more fundamental questions for sociological theory and research is the extent to which rule though consent is generally far more effective than coercion, but how do ruling classes, or perhaps status groups, engineer that very consent? How do elites get large masses of people to “willingly assent” to their claims of entitlements to their...

PurposeTo resurrect and renew the tradition of the early Frankfurt School, whose of Marxist–Hegelian dialectical approach to understanding the societal conditions of its emergence – post World War I Germany, the rise of fascism, New Deal politics, the defeat of fascism, and the subsequent rise of consumer society – remains relevant to studying pres...

How do we assess Arab Spring/Occupy almost 3 year later- the hopes for the emergence of popular democracy have now faded-or have they? We might note that the traditional dynamics of the rise of democracy or dictatorship in West, contestations/alliances of various groups, esp landlords/peasants did/does not really apply today. Most of the MENA count...

How do we understand the world wide spread of social movement of our age, from various fundamentalisms to the progressive thrusts of Arab Spring to Occupy. How have such movements fared? We will argue that the roots of these movement can be found in the consequences of neo liberalism that has not only fostered greater inequality and hardship for mo...

The rise of the market economy in turn prompted individualism, humanism, and the separation of a private sphere (household) and its personal interests as a realm apart from the public realms of work and the state that together eventually enabled the rise of “civil society.” Within civil society, there emerged a “bourgeois public sphere” (Habermas 1...

n the editors’ introduction they noted how the various mobilizations starting in 2011 raised important questions for social movement scholars. The various articles in this issue have explored the emergence, dynamics, and significance of the social mobilizations, contestations, and confrontations that started with the Arab Spring mobilizations and c...

We have recently seen the proliferation of a variety of progressive, democratic social movements across the globe. In the wake of various contradictions and implosions of capitalism, from the meltdown of the US banks to the euro crisis, vast numbers of people have challenged neoliberal globalization. In this article the authors offer a theoretical...

The present monograph issue focuses on the 2011–2012 global wave of protests that began in Tunisia in 2011. This introductory article notes that two streams of mobilization can be distinguished in terms of the specific grievances they express, and the socioeconomic and political contexts in which they have emerged. The article argues, however, that...

The recent mobilizations in the Middle East, Southern Europe, and United States were both inevitable given the implosion of global capital, and at the same time unexpected and unpredictable. How are we to understand these mobilizations? This article suggests that NSM, New Social Movement theory, with its concerns for identity, culture, and meaning,...

Throughout the world we have seen proliferations of progressive, democratic social movements in which vast numbers of people have challenged neo liberal globalization and the legitimacy of its elites whose self interested policies have ill served the majorities. From the Zapatistas to the Global justice movements, and more recently Arab Spring, Isr...

The classical formulations of Marx concerning alienation (objectification/estrangement) described in the 1844 Manuscripts moved the concept from Hegelian idealism to material conditions, the consequences of wage labor and private property. For Marx, when people worked for wages, they alienated their labor power, selling their labor as a commodity t...

Right wing populism has typically consisted of anti-statist/elitist mobilizations by the ‘common people’ opposed to government policies and/or various out-groups. Such cycles of contention, typically prompted by various social changes and/or crises, have long been an essential feature of American society. The Tea Party (Parties) appeared in 2009 as...

The authors analyse a complex interplay between the identity politics and the Net. Using post-structural and critical paradigms the authors critique the on-going struggle between the self, ideology and the global culture. In examining ?the dialectic of internet identities? the authors depict a post-modern condition of the ?multiple selves?, ?dead c...

One of the most important and brilliant contributors to the Frankfurt School understanding of character was Theodore Adorno. For Adorno, domination was not simply due to class relations, but the totality of market society in which Reason as the logic of exchange relationships migrated into the family and was insinuated within the person to colonize...

Every social epoch fosters certain distinctive kinds of `social character' — a widely shared constellation of values and self-identity. Today, as the crises of capitalism become more and more evident, we have also witnessed the emergence and diffusion of the `carnival character' for whom public rituals of moral transgression express a critique of c...

Massive Change, a museum exhibition with accompanying book that has traveled widely in North America, consists of demonstrations and displays of the role of design in dealing with various complexities of modern life. Exhibits and displays show renewable resources and energy, ecologically friendly buildings, energy-efficient trains and recyclable ca...

The sources for studies of alienation can be found in the theoretical explanations of modernity proposed by thinkers in the 19th century. Following on extensive changes in the processes of production in the 20th century and the ongoing digitalization of industry into the current century, alienation has taken on new forms, with a focus on the manage...

Following work by Michel Foucault and Bryan Turner, the body has become an important topic for social inquiry. One major debate concerns the nature of social control vs agency. For Foucault, the gaze, surveillance, imposes disciplinary practices that inscribe identities upon docile bodies. Yet he also notes that domination fosters resistance. For o...

Arthur Schlessinger (1983) suggested that the contradictions and paradoxes of American foreign policy reflected contradictions and paradoxes in the underlying character of the people. We would go further to suggest that the early years of colonial life, much like the early years of a person's life, had major consequences ever since. The intersectio...

Purpose – To pay tribute to Felix Geyer's contributions to the activities of Research Committee (RC) 36, alienation research and theory, of the International Sociological Association. Design/methodology/approach – The author recollects his involvement with RC36 and his longstanding relationship with Felix Geyer. Findings – The establishment of RC...

The foundational critique of modernity, (DoE), showed how the quest for domination, rooted in the Greek pursuit of control over nature, articulated in the emancipatory promise of Enlightenment based rationality, indeed led to new forms of totalitarian thought and practice. While the (il)logic of capital and the erosion of meaning disposed WWII and...

From the early 1990s when the EZLN (the Zapatistas), led by Subcommandte Marcos, first made use of the Internet to the late 1990s with the defeat of the Multilateral Agreement on Trade and Investment and the anti-WTO protests in Seattle, Quebec, and Genoa, it became evident that new, qualitatively different kinds of social protest movements were em...

Globalization, advanced by technologies of production and information, created seamless world markets with profound impacts on the world economy. Vast amounts of wealth have been created, but that wealth has been unequally distributed. Such inequality has meant that large numbers of young people have not been able to find the kinds of jobs and care...

The work of Philip Rieff remains seminal for sociological concerns with morality and values. Informed by Freudian theory, noting the impact of Freud in fostering a `therapeutic culture' in which `psychological man' places `feeling good' over community-based, transcendental systems of meaning and value, Rieff, like many intellectuals of his age, def...

The article argues that capitalism has reconstituted itself as a globalized system of transnational corporations and that a universalized, mass-mediated, consumer culture sustains its legitimacy in face of massive redistributions of wealth. The author argues that consumerism and privatized hedonism provide, on one hand, the basis for profits as wel...

L'affaire Clinton, a president lured by the thong of temptress Monica, became the major media spectacle of the late '90s. Rural, Southern, conservative Christians regarded him as the symbol of the social, sexual, and civil rights revolutions of the '60s that had been an affront to their values. The attempt to remove him from office was a “culture w...

With television, electoral politics has been transformed from competition between groups over interests to competitions between elites for audience share. How has electronic reproduction impacted the “aura” of politics in an “amusement society”? Douglas Kellner illustrates how media-produced images and spectacles of the presidency are similar to mo...

In recent years there has been a veritable explosion in Fanonian studies and this would be a welcome development given the scope and depth of Fanon's insights. Unfortunately, Fanon's work itself has been “post-alized” in recent years especially in the Western literary academy. This exploration of Fanon's work has, for the most part, been in the for...

Today, among the actors and forces which would foster particular identities stand powerful multinational corporations (MNCs). Their profits and legitimacy depend on consumer-based identities. Promises of the ‘goods’ life sustain the hegemony of the MNCs or at least secure tacit acceptance of the new global system. Much like religious or patriotic i...

How can we best understand contemporary reactionary movernents? What are the continuities and differences with classical fascism, what qualities are invariant,. what qualities are historically contingent? Marxian analyses, especially after the Second Internationale, critiqued capitalism from the standpoint of wage labor. But Fascism was far more th...

Alienation, a legacy of the Marxian Hegelian critique of domination, remains one of the most heuristic yet ambiguous concepts in social thought. Yet there endure questions of its definition, indications, level of analysis, relationships to capitalism or modernity in general. To speak of alienation raises a notion that there was once either a pristi...

Complex societies are stratified—divided into a hierarchy of classes or status groups that show systematic variations in available resources, values and lifestyles. The basis of stratification differs, of course, in various societies. Our present concern is with advanced industrial society, particularly the United States—though certain similar patt...

A systems approach to the family as a self-regulating, goal-directed system is developed. It is viewed in terms of socio-legal boundaries delimiting certain role relationships and interactional patterns or action-strategies, which are regulated by a hierarchy of steering principles and meta-principles. Steering principles include adaptation, self-r...

Affects, which are inborn biological programs and become signals of system functioning, are elicited by situational events and foster corrections by feedback and feedforward processes. The paper considers these affects in the context of sociological approaches to personality, as well as the relation between the former and pattern recall.

Examines the diffusion among mostly Catholic blue-collar youth of certain countercultural values, viz. those pertaining to general orientations to life and work: 117 out of a random sample of 200 students selected from lists of 4000 liberal arts students at Loyola University completed a questionaire. (Author/JM)

The end of the 60's witnessed the growth of a “youth counterculture” manifested in alternative life styles and political protests. Although the actual participants may have been a minority, the influence of this minority has extended to a wide sector of youth. This study shows that “countercultural” values have diffused from affluent middle-class s...

consequences may endure for generations. His less than compassionate conservatism has seen massive retrenchments from already niggardly social programs, and his disregard of the environment accelerated global warming. His economic policies created the largest budget deficit ever. His unilateral invasion of Iran has not only been a disaster for the...