1959/12/01 by Melvin Seeman · 5 citations
Health Professions · Psychology · #Employment and Welfare Studies #Alienation #Meaning (existential) #Sociology #Psychology #Social psychology #Epistemology #Political science #Philosophy #Law
paper · doi:10.2307/2088565
openalex publication_date 1959/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/04
The problem of alienation is a pervasive theme in the classics of sociology, and the concept has a prominent place in contemporary work. This paper seeks to accomplish two tasks: to present an organized view of the uses that have been made of this concept; and to provide an approach that ties the historical interest in alienation to the modern empirical effort. Five alternative meanings of alienation are identified: powerlessness, meaninglessness, normlessness, isolation, and self-estrangement. The derivation of these meanings from traditional sociological analysis is sketched, and the necessity for making the indicated distinctions is specified. In each case, an effort is made to provide a viable research formulation of these five alternatives.