Theories of Alienation: Critical Perspectives in Philosophy and the Social Sciences

317 Pages·1976·12.999 MB·English

by  R. Felix Geyer, David R. Schweitzer (eds.)

Theories of Alienation
Theories of AI ienation
Critical perspectives in philosophy and the social sciences
edited by
R. Felix Geyer David R. Schweitzer
Netherlands Universities' Joint University of British Columbia,
Social Research Centre, Amsterdam Vancouver
tJvfartinus8Viihoff Social Sciences Division
CLeiden 1976
ISBN 978-90-207-0630-7 ISBN 978-1-4684-8813-5 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007.978-1-4684-8813-5
Copyright © 1976 by H.E. Stenfert Kroese bv, Leiden.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm or
any other means, without written permission from the publisher.
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1976
Preface
The original papers which appear in this volume were initially presented in a
series of sessions of the Ad Hoc Group on Alienation Theory and Research
at the 1974 World Congress of Sociology in Toronto, Canada. This group
was organized by the editors as a result of their longstanding research and
teaching interest in the field. The purpose of the Toronto sessions was to
provide an international forum where scholars and researchers could come to
gether for a personal exchange of ideas and research findings. To our know
ledge this was the first forum of its kind concerned specifically with aliena
tion theory and research. More than fifty theoretical and empirical papers
from thirteen countries and several overlapping disciplines were organized
into panels and workshops during the span of four days. The response to
these sessions indicates that interest in the study of alienation by philosophers
and social scientists continues unabated.
The Toronto sessions were organized largely around a fundamental
concern for further theoretical development and conceptual clarification
in the alienation field. The papers selected for this volume reflect this thematic
concern. Although many excellent empirical papers were presented, it was
generally felt that meaningful empirical research would benefit from a
continued elaboration and refinement of alienation theory. The present
collection is consequently geared to problems of meaning, theory, and
method. Considerable emphasis is also placed on a critical evaluation of the
alienation theme as it has evolved from social philosophy to empirical social
research.
At our request, and with this general unifying theme in mind, most of the
papers were considerably revised prior to their publication here, and there
fore represent the authors' most recent thinking. In a few cases, however,
earlier versions have been published elsewhere during the time that has
elapsed since the Toronto meetings.
Several people have assisted in the preparation of this volume. The authors
themselves have been exceptionally helpful in meeting the rather severe
publication deadline that we imposed. At the Amsterdam end, Felix Geyer
would like to thank the director and governing board of SISWO (Nether
lands Universities' Joint Social Research Centre) for their recognition, at
PREFACE VI
ane arly stage, of the importance of the alienation concept for the social
sciences, and for having given him the opportunity to devote part of his
time over the last five years to the study of alienation: first, for the prepara
tion of several bibliographies; then, together with David Schweitzer, the
organization of the Toronto sessions; and finally, the preparation of this
volume. We also extend our appreciation to Riet Nelissen of SISWO, who
tirelessly assisted with the final preparation of the manuscripts and the
intensive correspondence with the authors, and to publisher Hans van der
Sluijs, whose highly effective cooperation has been instrumental in enabling
us to publish this volume less than half a year after our first contact. At the
Vancouver end, we would like to thank Geoffrey Hayes for his invaluable
editorial assistance and useful suggestions. Finally, David Schweitzer would
like to acknowledge his intellectual debt to Melvin Seeman, John Horton,
and Dick Morris which began with the seminars on alienation and the socio
logy of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Amsterdam/Vancouver, The Editors
February 1976
Contents
Preface / V
List of contributors / IX
Introduction: Key issues in contemporary alienation theory and research
/ XIV
Evolution of the theory and concept
Peter C. Ludz
Alienation as a concept in the social sciences / 3
Extensions and reformulations in Marxist analysis
Joachim Israel
Alienation and reification I 41
W. Peter Archibald
Using Marx's theory of alienation empirically I 59
Psychiatric approaches
Frank A. Johnson
Some problems of reification in existential psychiatry: conceptual and prac
tical considerations I 77
S. Giora Shoham
The Tantalus Ratio. A scaffolding for an ontological personality theory
I 103
New conceptual and theoretical approaches
Richard Schacht
Alienation, the 'is-ought' gap and two sorts of discord I 133
vm CONTENTS
John Lachs
Mediation and psychic distance I 151
David G. Hays
On 'alienation'; an essay in the psycholinguistics of science I 169
R. Felix Geyer
Individual alienation and information processing; a systems theoretical con
ceptualization I 189
Work and politics
Albert B. Cherns
Work or life I 227
Marvin E. Olsen
Political powerlessness as reality I 245
Currant research findings
Melvin Seeman
Empirical alienation studies; an overview I 265
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
PETER ARCHIBALD studied psychology and sociology at the University of British
Columbia (1964-1966), and the University of Michigan (1966-1971). He considers
himself a laboratory-experimenter type social psychologist. At the moment, he is
an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario. Political
involvement stimulated his interest in alienation, and this was further enhanced by
a year at the University of Bielefeld, Germany, where he wrote the first version
of his present contribution. His book, Social Psychology as Political Economy,
which uses Marx's theory of alienation as its organizing concept, is nearing
completion.
After graduating in Psychology from Cambridge, ALBERT CHERNS held a series of
research posts before occupying senior positions in government social science
administration. He returned to university life as Professor of Social Sciences and
Head of the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University in 1966.
Among other appointments, he has been Chairman of the Social and Occupational
Sections of the British Psychological Society, of which he is a Fellow, President of
the Sociology Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
and a member of the Research Council of the International Sociological Association.
He is a Governor of the British Steel Industry's Ashorne Hill College and a member
of the Council of the Tavistock Institute, and on the Editorial Boards of several
journals. He has served as Consultant to both UNESCO and OECD. He was a
founder member of the International Council for the Quality of Working Life and
is a member of its Executive Committee. He has published numerous articles on
the organization and utilization of social science research, and on the social
psychology and sociology of work in organizations.
FELIX GEYER studied sociology at the University of Amsterdam, from which he
graduated in 1961. Since 1968 he has headed the methodology section of the
Netherlands Universities' Joint Social Research Centre, a semi-government institu
tion which coordinates the research activities of the Dutch social science depart
ments. He has a long standing interest in applying principles of General Systems
Theory to the social sciences, and was a board member of the Dutch Society for
General Systems Research. He has published several articles on alienation and has
prepared two bibliographies on the subject. Together with David Schweitzer, he
organized the World Sociology Congress sessions of the Ad Hoc Group on
Alienation Theory and Research in Toronto, on which the present volume is based.
Now, combining his fascination with both alienation theory and General Systems
Theory, he is writing a book which focusses on a reformulation of alienation
theory in terms of an expanded and non-mechanistic General Systems Theory,
x
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
which is reformulated, in turn, to incorporate recent social science research data
and theories pertaining to human information processing.
DAVID HAYS is Professor of Linguistics at the State University of New York,
Buffalo. His doctorate in sociology was awarded by Harvard University in 1956.
He considers himself a generalist in social science, but with a permanent concern
for the mechanisms and structures of understanding. His Introduction to Com
putational Linguistics (1967) followed several years of work on machine translation
and other problems of computer use in the study of language. He is currently
working on a theory of cognitive structure, relating conceptual forms to processes
of perception and communication; surmounting the system is a mechanism of
abstraction, uniquely human, which accounts for natural logic and the complexity
of language, both lexical and grammatical.
JOACHIM ISRAEL is Professor of Sociology at the University of Lund. Besides
numerouc; articles, he has written eighteen books altogether, generally in Scan
dinavian languages and covering various fields. His book Alienation,/rom Marx to
modern sociology has been translated in eight languages. His other books include a
textbook on social psychology (in Swedish, also appearing in German), a two
volume text on basic sociology (in Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian), and a text
on deviance and social control. Together with H. Tajfel, he has edited The Context
ofS ocial Psychology - a critical evaluation, in which he also contributed a chapter on
epistemological and methodological problems. This work was followed by two
books in Swedish (and Danish) on problems of epistemology and the philosophy of
the social sciences. His most recent work, Methodological/oundations ofa dialectical
social science, is nearing completion.
FRANK JOHNSON is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the State
University of New York, Upstate Medical Center, Syracuse. He has published
an edited book on alienation (Alienation: Concept, Term, and Meanings (1973)
which was devoted to the exposition of the etymological, semantic, and operational
uses of alienation. Although interested in the use of the concept in the social
sciences, he has been especially concerned about its application to personality
theory and to Western psychotherapeutic situations. Professor Johnson is currently
working on a definition of interpretational acts occurring during psychotherapeutic
transactions, using aspects of alienation theory as a model. His other writings
have been connected with crosscultural contrasts of interaction, particularly in
regard to Japanese-Americans.
JOHN LACHS is currently Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, Nash
ville, Tennessee. His interests focus on metaphysics and political philosophy where
they intersect in theories about the nature of man. His earlier work includes articles
on American philosophy, German idealism, and the British empiricist tradition.
Marxist Philosophy: A Bibliographical Guide (1967) was followed by further work
in materialist philosophies and the critique of culture. Animal Faith and Spiritual
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS XI
Life (1967) presented work on the American philosopher, George Santayana.
His most recent book is Intermediate Man, currently under consideration by a
publisher. In it the concepts of mediation and psychic distance are developed in
detail. They are applied to a wide range of phenomena ranging from centralized
government to the drug culture to yield what he hopes is a novel approach to
alienation.
PETER Luoz is currently Professor of Political Science at the University of
Munich and Director of Studies at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, Eben
hausen - educated at the universities of Mainz, Munich, Berlin (Free University)
and Paris (political science, sociology, philosophy, economics, history); diploma
in economics, Ph.D. and Habilitation in sociology and political science; Director
of the Department of East European and East German affairs in the Research
Institute of Political Science at the Free University of Berlin (1958-1968); Professor
of Political Science at the Free University (1967-1969) and the University of
Bielefeld (1969-1973); political adviser to the Brandt and Schmidt governments
in the F.R.G. (since 1969); Visiting Professor and Senior Research Fellow at
Columbia University, New York City (1968-1970, Spring 1971, Spring 1972);
Theodor Heuss Professor of Political Science at the Graduate Faculty of the New
School for Social Research, New York City (1974-1975). His main publications in
English include:The German Democratic Republic from the Sixties to the Seventies
(1970), The Changing Party Elite in East Germany (1972), Two Germanys in One
World (1973).
MARVIN OLSEN is Senior Research Scientist in the Social Change Study Center
of the Battelle Human Affairs Research Centers in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A.,
and is also an affiliate Professor of Sociology at the University of Washington.
He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan in 1965, and
taught in the Sociology Department at Indiana University from then until going
to Battelle in 1974. From 1970-1974 he was also Director of the Institute of Social
Research at Indiana University, and during the 1971-72 academic year he was a
visiting member of the Sociology Department at Uppsala University, Sweden.
He served as Book Review Editor of the American Sociological Review from
1969-1972, and is presently an Associate Editor of Social Forces, Sociometry, and
the Journal of Political and Military Sociology. His publications include The
Process of Social Organization (1968) and Power in Societies (1970), as well as
numerous articles in professional journals. At the present time, his research
activities at Battelle center largely around social aspects of energy and environ
mental conservation, although he is also doing research on citizen participation
roles in public policy formation.
RICHARD SCHACHT is currently Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University
of lllinois (Urbana-Champaign). He graduated from Harvard College in 1963,
attended Tiibingen University (Germany), and received his Ph.D. from Princeton
University in 1967. His main interests lie in the areas of philosophical anthropology,
metaphysics, value theory, and social and political philosophy. The courses he