Dimensions of Alienation
by
Bruce A. Russell
(Mentor: John P. Keenan. Ph.D.)
Presented to Columbia Pacific University in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, School of Health and Human Services.
Submitted:
August 1991
_______________________________________Date_________________
Dean's Council
_______________________________________Date_________________
Dean of School
Declaration of Authenticity
I declare that all materials presented to Columbia Pacific University is my own
work, or fully and specifically acknowledged wherever adapted from other
sources.
I understand that if at any time it is shown that I have significantly misrepresented
material presented to the University, any degree or credits awarded to me on the
basis of that material may be revoked.
Bruce A. Russell
September 25, 1991
Table of Contents
Abstract
Dedication
Referencing
Section 1--LITERATURE REVIEW
Alienation in Western Civilization Self vs. Other
Separation from God <i>
Separation from Self <ii> & Mind <iii>
Separation from Ownership <iv> & Or Affection <v>
Turning Away from 'Correct' Views <vi>
(or Diverting from Correct Use)
A Modern Use: Separation from Social or Political Power <vii>
Summary of Early English Usage of "Alienation "
Alienation in 19th Century German and Scandinavian Culture:
(Their Sources and Sociological Influence)
“Alienation" to Hegel, Feuerbach, & Marx
“Alienation" as Method <viii>
Feuerbach and Alienation by self <-i>
Marx and Alienation of the Worker <ix>
Alienation as Cultural Disorganization to Tonnies <x>
A Scandinavian ResponseAlienation of Existential Despair <xi>
Summary of Alienation's Use in 19th Century European Culture
Alienation in Western Civilization to the Mid-19th Century
Alienation from the Social System to Durkheim <xii>
Alienation of Unconscious Drives to Freud <xiii>
Max Weber's Western AlienationBeing Rationally Processed with an Ethic <xiv>
Alienation of the Rootless Mass to Ortega y Gasset <xv>
Summary of Alienation Usage to Mid-Century
Analysis of Alienation as a Methodological Concept
An Historical & Cultural Concept
General Orientations
Alienation as a Social Action Concept
Alienation as a Mass Cultural and Generational Concept
Literature Review Notes
Literature Review Bibliography
Section II--RESEARCH METHODOLOGY AND DESIGN
Qualitative Design with Survey Features
Research Objective and Multiple Methods
Survey Use in Historical Sociological Research
Maximizing Longitudinal Cultural Contexts in the Study
The Primary Research Instrument
Generation of the Item Pool
preface i
ii
iii
page 1
2
3
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4
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page 76
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82
84
Initial Dimensions
Historical Dimensions of Alienation
Designing the Inventory for the Alienated
Quality of Input Considerations
Comparable Categories
Contrast Categories
Individual Differences
Population Parameters & Problems of Analysis
Geographic Selection
Historical Selection
Culture, SubCulture, CounterCulture
Three Processes: Incorporation, Electrification, Education
Re-Defining the Terms: Culture and SubCulture
Cautions in Using Cultural Terminology in Alienation Studies
Methodological Notes
Methodology and Design Bibliography
Section III--Findings
Findings Introduction
Self and Other as Alien in Mid-Century America
Synopsis of Historical European Alienation
American Alienation: A Matter of Identity?
American Alienation Traditions:
(Psychohistory)
(Societal)
(Techno-lag <xvi>)
(Mythic-Awareness)
Alienation Traditions Grapple with Identity
Disentangling American Alienation
Detaching "Alienation" from Traditional Social and Personality Structures
(A Pessimistic Theme in My Surveys)
(Pessimism of 1973 Graduates)
Detaching Alienation from Progress and Some "Seeking"
(Progress Little Changed in My Surveys)
(Drug Abuse and boredom as Seeker Traits)
(Cliche' and Boredom-Motivation in my Surveys)
Deleting Materialism?
(Materialism Concerns and Protesting Among Youth in My Surveys)
(The Protest Generation Unit Among My Participants)
Prospective Summary of Post-Conventional Alienation
Mass Enculturation of Two Western Generations
Avoiding Sub-Cultural Labels
(Demography Alters the "World" of Generations)
(Historical Salience of Alienation)
84
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page 128
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141
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200
(Two Generations of Mass Culture and Youth)
Ethos of Three Decades
(A Broad American Ethos)
(An International Ethos) Generational Units Mediate Youth Alienations
Post-Conventional Western Alienation
(A General Psycho-social Alienation)
(Cultural Cornplexes and Triads) Global Alienation
202
204
204
209
214
217
219
Generalizing to Western, Regional,and Triad Youth
Findings Notes
Findings Bibliography
237
241
259
-iProspect
Sociologists of the classic period expressed deep concern about varying
dimensions of alienation , as countries entered into a new form of social
organization as industrialized states. Tonnies expressed concern over alienation
from folk society, a concern kept alive by Chicago sociologists of the 1920's like
Burgess and Redfield.
Durkheim expressed a concern suicides would rise as cultures lost their
integration, and normlessness (or anomie), and egoism increased. Karl Marx
expressed concern with the alienation of the worker, a concern which was
continued in the modern union movement as well as the work of industrial
sociologists like Blauner and Mayo. Max Weber expressed a concern over the
role of bureaucracy in the industrialized state, and its potential for alienating
humanity from an appreciation of cultural ends, a concern kept alive by Robert
Merton in his paradigmed focus on ritualism, the ultimate problem of placing
means above ends in a rationalized society.
Now, one hundred years of concern with the self-other problem is distilled in
the social commitments of post-war generations about to forge citizenship in a
global political order. The focus of this study is to utilize empirical insights on the
baby boom generation and its children to vivify dimensions for 21st Century
alienation studies.
Abstract
Dimensions of Alienation is a typological study in historical sociology, using
the methodologies of Max Weber and Florian Znaniecki to isolate key referents of
"Western Alienation," and link them with the attitude patterns of two generations
of Western American youth entering the 21st Century together.
Section I details seven early referents from which the self may be alienated
(one's god, persona, sanity, products and affections, sovereignty, and truth itself),
and eight european usages of “alienation" up to the mid-20th Century (alienation
of the worker, of existential despair, or of the rootless mass; alienation as mental
process, cultural disorganization, or rational processing with an ethic; and
alienation from the unconscious or the social system).
Section II discusses the study's methodological concepts and techniques, so
the reader may wish to advance to p128.
Sections III details alienation by tools as a unique American usage (technolag), investigates three other "traditions" based upon european usage (mythicawareness, psychohistory, and societal alienation), and synthesizes three
cultural complexes which approach century-long viability: "post-conventional
alienation, referring to a general pattern of psycho-social traits of autonomous
persons in post-modern society; "post-modern ethic," referring to a triad of
standards guiding social action in a post-modern economy, and 'Global
alienation," referring to the broadness of contemporary psycho-social alienation,
combined with a trend away from identifying with global citizenship. These three
are grounded in attitude patterns of Western youth surveyed, and are presented
as a typical bi-generational pattern entering the 21st Century.
-iiDedication
This dissertation is dedicated to my editor Jo-Ann Thome, friend and fellowtraveler, without whose support and keen eye for simplification this work would
be much denser and less communicative--if it had been written at all--and to Dr.
Maris van Blaaderen, a colleague, without whose faith in the worth of this effort I
would have despaired and given it up after the death of my father.
-iii -
References
Since this work includes referencing in its purposes, not just for location of cited
works, but for location of alienation concepts, central theories, research studies,
and research the referencing system detailed here was created:
<roman> A type of alienation discussed in the text. See p56 for overview, p129 for
application, & p145 for update
[arabic]
Notes at ends of each section: I, II, or III.
a)
A work found in the bibliographies of a section: I, II, or III, if directly
quoted.
(See pxx..)A reference to a page in this work.
(pxx)
A bibliographic page reference within a paragraph
where the reference is clear and Ibid is not stated.
(item xx) A reference to a survey item located in Appendix Ia.
Section I
Literature Review
-2"Alienation" in Western Civilization
Alienation has become a popular global term of humanity's dis-ease. No matter the
sphere of culture—labor, leisure, religion, production, politics—alienation has been
conceived as a distinctly modern process of social surrender and loss of vitality, in the
face of historical processes which will de-humanize the species: industrialization,
nationalization, secularization, urbanization, specialization, bureaucratization, and
massification.
Since the mid-20th Century especially, "alienation" in sociological literature has
exhibited concern with humanity's loss of a rich sustaining world view, and worthwhile
function in the world. Cultural referents of the word have proliferated and become
superficial, blurring its usage into a social psychological condition of general malaise.
Yet, the concept alienation has had a long history of concrete usages, with vital cultural
referents even into modern times.
Self vs Other
(A social-linguistic history of early usage)
"Alienation" is from the Latin, "alienare," taken from the word "'alius" meaning
another.[1] The source of the word in Western Civilization is tied up with humanity's
erstwhile concern over separation of self from Other, a distinctness of individual
consciousness from the whole. Such distinctness entails human concern over loss of
affection, resources another might represent, relationship with a deity, country, or even
products of intellect (truth), one's mind, or one's self.
Just such usages of 'alienation' were employed in England when the suffixed term was
carried by William the Conqueror's forces from
-3the continent (French, "alie'nation") and parlayed into the development of Middle
English from its Anglo-Saxon roots.[2]
Separation from God <i>
Wyclif (1384) used "alienation" to describe converts to the church at Ephesus in his
translation of the Bible (Il,vl2), "That weren in that tyme withouten Crist, alyaned, or
maad straunge."[3] Both separation from deity and social loss are implied, suggesting
the modern conception of estrangement from deity found in later religious existentialism.
Doctrinal rejection was associated with this strangeness, a theme sharpened by Milton's
reference to the eye of Ezekiel in Paradise Lost (H-Classics, iv, p99), "His eye
surveyed the dark idolatries of alienated Judah." This usage of "alienation" fostered
social commentary by later journalists who criticized a turning away from the "right" path
(See <vi>).
Separation from Self <ii> & Mind <iii>)
Lydgate's Chronicles of Troy (II, line 1653) in 1430, makes the self-other disjunction
particularly clear, "Fer from hym selfe, he was so alyanate." Nestor, angry at Antenor
and Priam, became another (Latin, alius), and was no longer himself. This is
suggestive of modern uses of "alienation" in ego psychology <ii>. The Monk of
Evesham ([1482] 1869, p20) implied more than shift of persona, however, when he
wrote, "That he had seyd hyt of grete febulnesse of his hedde, or by alyanacion of hys
mynde." The young man wept, lay prostrate on the church floor, and was taken up, "As
a man lyfeles without any mocyon of any membre of his body. Trewly his yes ware falle
doun dope into his heed..." The mind can become detached from traditional realities
<iii>.
This is the linguistic root of why early psychiatrists were
-4-
referred to as "alienists" at the turn of the century; they worked with those who had
become alien, psychotic or neurotic, restoring to them their minds.
Separation from Ownership <iv> And/Or Affection <v>
Feudal English society employed "alienation" with respect to material goods, as well as
treating the rights of individuals and estates in those goods (iv). Babinston (Works,
1583, 319) justified social controls on theft, "The forbidding of stealth which is an
alienation of an other mans goodes to our selves." This protected the owner from
alienation.
Hobbes (Gov & Soc. viii, 6, 130) says of the feudal noble, "The Lord may sell his
Servant, or alienate him by Testament." But alienating land was not an unencumbered
right. In English peasant society, tenancy was passed to male descendants. According
to Homans (1968, p158), a man had to pay a fee to his lord before he could marry,
recognizing the Lord's interests should the man die and his right in the land pass to his
wife for her lifetime. Marriage was only for men who held land, and if the land was
pledged in dower by the bride's father at the church door, a surviving wife had a special
right in the land which was not lightly alienated.
The court rolls of Dunmow, Essex, for 1315, document an appeal of a woman and her
husband—she had no brothers—to claim her dead father's tenancy (quoted by Homans,
p141), "The court says unanimously that said Annis is the nearer heir and that she
never was alienated or married with the goods of this Robert whereby she ought not be
admitted to obtain said inheritance. And seisin is granted them, saving the right of
anyone else."
In 1776, Adam Smith (W.N., 1969, II, vii, 455) said of feudal
-5-
relations, "The vassal could not of Senate without the consent of his superior." The
social meaning of this verb form of "alienation" is made more clear by Kenelm Digby
(Real Property, 1876, x, i, 368) "By alienation is meant the intentional and voluntary
transfer of a right." That is, sale of a vassal’s goods is conditional on transfer of rights
the lord may have in them. Homans (1968, p124) suggests vassals felt a similar social
estrangement of their rights when their king alienated property.[4]
Samuel Johnson (Rambler, 148, ii) asked of the parent-child bond, "Who alienates from
him the assistance of his children." Support from a child was important in English
peasant society, becoming a covenant for the court to settle before allowing an
inheriting son to marry (Homans, 1968, Ch XI). This alienation carried with it the
connotation of consanguineal affections which could be breached <v>. A later, but
related alienation of affinal affections arose in American law regarding spouses.
This issue of support by children was recently revived by Philip Longman in his book
Born to Pay, challenging the U.S. Congress over the financial burden of Social Security
to the young. It prompted Amitai Etzioni to reply, with Samuel Johnson (1988, p818822), "It is a dubious sociological achievement to foment conflict between the
generations."[5]
As theories of political economy developed to put aside English feudal arrangements,
and industrialization began in the 17th Century alienation, became a matter of social
debate. Witness Joseph Priestley's later concern with monetary economies
superseding exchange ones (Lect Hist V, 1768, iii, 405), "Price, however, supposes
alienation: and a common standard of value supposes a frequent and
-6-
familiar alienation.[6]
Turning Away from "Correct Views" <vi>
(or Diverting from Correct Use)
Early English essayists used the term alienation to imply a separation from prudent
policy. In l7l2, Addison (Spectator, 414) favored grazing for land use, putting the point
in its negative form, "To alienate so much ground from Pasturage." Swift, a Tory struck
out at his opponents who would overturn power and privilege of the Lords (Misc, 1745),
"The Whigs are.,.whoIly alienate from truth." Such journalistic usage to intrude a value
judgement has greatly expanded in the information age of the 20th Century, expanded
to the point its whole meaning becomes a negative value judgement.
A Modern Use: Separation from Social or Political Power <vii>
Building upon documents like the Magna Charta which lent precedent to new
constitutions and/or bills of rights, upon various doctrines of natural rights like that of
John Locke, and upon popular sovereignty as conceived during the EnIightenment, the
term alienation took on usages pertaining to all manner of social and political struggles.
The struggle among France, England, and the first "new" nation (the United States) was
to transform social and political relations as much as economic ones. Countries which
subsequently re-organized developed nation-states where sovereignty was equated
with the will of the people, a will which could not be legitimately alienated. Political
forces had to vie for such legitimacy.
England's Edmund Burke was quick to see an emerging problem of sovereign
mismanagement of England's American colonies in terms of alienation (State Nation
Wks II, 1769. p113). "Such projects have
-7-
alienated our colonies from the mother country <v>." Later (p275) said, "They grow
every day into alienation from this country.' Jefferson's announcement of "inalienable
rights" was not long in coming.
Rousseau had written in his Social Contract (1947, p23), to declare the "inalienable"
nature of legitimate rule, "I say, therefore, that sovereignty, being only the exercise of
the general will, can never alienate itself, and that the Sovereign, which is only a
collective being, cannot be represented but by itself: the power may all be transmitted
but not the will <vii>."
Power was not adequate for England to resist the general will of the American colony,
nor of India. nor of subsequent new nations. The Second World. today, is facing similar
independence movements in Baltic and Eastern European states, as a sovereign party
gives way to the general will.
Nationalization was a re-definition of alienation as it has used in English. Alienation
became a sharply political concept implying enforced separation from legitimate rule.
Today, political sociology retains such overtones of meaning in debates over "garrison"
states, over the efficacy of pluralist associations to mitigate nationalist powers, and over
the cohesiveness of socio-economic elites to exert influence over governments.[7]
Summary of Early English Usage of "Alienation"
From the Middle ages through early industrialization and disputes over nationalization,
English speakers employed the term alienation in the following ways: as separation
from a deity <i>, from one's persona <ii> or mind <iii>, from ownership <iv> and/or
affectionate relations <v>, from 'correct" opinions <vi>, and to describe a condition of
-8enforced separation from legitimate rule <vii>.
These usages were not peripheral to life; rather, they were vital concerns, central to
existence between self and Other. Implied referents for Other (Christ, persona, sanity,
goods, relative, doctrine, and sovereignty), were not only identifiable, but they were
main constellations of everyday social life in mercantile republics of Europe and
America into modern times.
-9-
"Alienation" in 19th Century German and Scandinavian Culture:
(Their Sources and Sociological Influence)
While England went through nationalization early (1600's), Central Europe—dominated
by a more agglutinative rather than isolative language—was historically late. German
dutchies were a patchwork of political geography into the mid-1800s. Their language
formed thoughts by joining together small parts to make more whollistic words, different
from the more linear units of English.
The less gradual re-organization of politics in Germany, and the less isolative linguistic
structure of its language, no doubt contributed to a greater sense of frustration and
strangeness of German unification. Long-held regional loyalties were uprooted
dramatically. Also, the language needed expansion to deal with modernization—a new
lexicon—and creating German vocabularies by prefixing, suffixing. and infixing old roots
became a challenging cultural endeavor.
German language and politics are useful for this discussion because they contribute
historical instances to "alienation" as a developing sociological concept. Znaniecki
(1952, pl07) has noted that German sociological terms tend to identify individual
psychology with group psychology. An analogy or metaphor then, may pertain to the
self-Other relationship with which alienation is concerned in the German language. [8]
Likewise, studies of national language and personality indicate differences among
English, Scandinavian, and German speakers. Hoijer (Language in Culture, 1959. p6)
reports morphological, phonological, and structural studies of French, German, and
English which hinge upon abstract thought tendencies versus synthetic tendencies,
-10-
respectively.[9]
German conceives personality wholistically with society, a metaphorical connotation.
Independent of mind and individualistic in personality. English and Scandinavian
speakers are less likely to identify the general will with their own, or otherwise conceive
of a spirit of the folk. Re-tracing German unification conflicts with the English and
Scandinavians makes clear how such basic cultural dttferences play into this review of
alienation usage.
German unification entailed a division from a potentially large and powerful Denmark
in the Schleswig-Holstein Question, an affair initially settled by England in favor of the
Danes (Protocol of London, 1852). Denmark, which had an isolative linguistic
structure like English, absorbed Schleswig and Holstein under the Danish king. The
duke of the dutchies alienated them—and many resident german-speakers--for a
price.
Bismark, author of realpolitik as a policy, and prime minister of Prussia which stood on
the sidelines of this dispute between Germany and Denmark, saw the opportunity to
move when the Danish king died and the dutchies re-asserted their political integrity.
Bismark induced the English ambassador to threaten a blockade by the English fleet if
Germany absorbed the dutchies, yet he agreed with Napoleon (unenthusiastic to field
an army for England) that northern Schleswig should go to Denmark on cultural
grounds. Further, Bismark provoked the German Diet into war and corroborated with
Austria in a new treaty.
When Austrian and Prussian armies entered the dutchies, Bismark politically
disarmed the Prince, and the Danish forces were defeated. Both dutchies fell under
Prussian and Austrian control. Not a larger Denmark, but a larger Germany resulted,
after Hapsburg and Prussian conquest in 1864. Prussia, based on Bismark as hero of
national unity, ushered in an era of German nationalism which inplemented the
general will of german-speakers through the Reichstag, for decades to come. Danes
and other Scandinavians retrenched into a wariness of German ideas and ideals.[10]
"Alienation" to Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx
"Alienation," from the old Latin, was a German concept in the 16th Century, according to
Feuerlicht (1978, p211). But it has seldom been used and bears no relation to
sociological usage. In the 19th
-11-
Century, however, other terms were created to express its meanings. These terms are
related to a perceived failure to be bound into some cohesive whole.
Within philosophy, Hegel's grand system stands as an exemplar of Germany holism.
His Phenomenology of Mind (1807) is centered on the self-Other dichotomy <ii> and it
employs the concept of "geist." His translators call it Mind (the pinacle of Hegel's
system). German actually has three levels of reference to spirit which can be used in
compound words; geist is the middle level and the one used to imply union with the Holy
Spirit of a Lutheran Protestant God <i>. "Sinne" is the level of spirit associated with
everyday thought. "Zauber" is the latent and extreme level of spirit in the inner mind.
"Entausserung" is the term for alienation which Hegel uses.[11] It is similar to the
concept of alienation used in English by Wyclif as an alienation from God or spirit <i>,
even though Hegel's use (Heiss, 1975, p107) implies a new trinity which make up the
Absolute: spirit, nature, and logos. In typical Neo-Classic fashion, this usage implies an
historical fall from perfect logos which may be achieved only in a golden age,
Alienation as method <viii>
Hegel posited essence as the fundamental phenomenal reality, "Spirit is the immovable
irreducible basis and the starting point for the action of all and everyone: it is their
purpose and their goal."[l2] His system of philosophy attempts to derive a unity, a
synthesis of knowledge from this starting point, using the dialectical method of
alienation: thesis, antithesis, synthesis. As Heiss says (1975, p85), "The development
of the whole is strictly trichotomous. The Science of Iogic consists of three books, each
book again has
-12-
three sections, each section is divided into three chapters, and so on it goes. Only
seldom does Hegel depart from this triadic scheme... The Phenomenology of Mind is
likewise arranged in threes. This theme has organic parallels: bud. blossom, and fruit.
Alienation, then, is a method to be followed in order to arrive at learning. The "law of
dialectical evolution" binds all knowledge into a single synthetic unity, which Hegel calls
(Ibid, p97-98), "The only scientific way of knowing things...Only that method can be right
and true which includes all regions of thought and elucidates the whole of thoughts."
Hegel describes the alienation process (1931, p250-251), "Thus we have here that
dualizing of self-consciousness within itself, which lies essentially in the notion of mind:
but the unity of the two elements is not yet present. Hence the Unhappy
Consciousness, the Alienated Soul which is the consciousness of self as a divided
nature, a double merely contradictory being. (ph) This unhappy consciousness divided
and at variance within itself, must, because this contradiction of its essential nature is
felt to be a single consciousness, always have in the one consciousness the other also:
and thus trust be straightway driven out of each in turn, when it thinks it has therein
attained to the victory and rest of unity." This approach clearly attempts to (Heiss.
p175), "Change 'fixed and fast concepts' into 'fluid' ones..."
These features of dialectical thought—focused on building up encyclopedic
knowledge—were to influence American education through the University of Chicago in
the 1920's and 1930's: the Chicago School of sociology, the social psychology of
philosopher G.H. Mead, and the educational method of John Dewey.[13]
-13-
Park, author of the "Green Bible" of scientific sociology, introduced social processes as
basic concepts of the field, fluid by their very nature. G.H. Mead introduced a concept
of social self based upon "taking the role of the other," the essence of self-alienation
<ii> and the foundation for "socialization" as sociology's most basic concept.[14]
Dewey introduced the thesis, antithesis, synthesis model into U.S. education, making
that social institution sensitive to social change. In each case, self-alienation was
promulgated as central to academic life. Park made an accommodation to the
alienation of urbanites from their ethnic identities. This was, possibly, an extension of
Simmel’s positive treatment of "the stranger" (Wolff, 1950, p402), one who promotes
learning by, "Both being outside (the group) and confronting it." This is a kind of
estrangement [15], but a kind which facilitates action of the intellect over information
<viii>.
Significantly, alienation as method <viii> was taken to be social stimulation, not social
problem, at this university so well known for addressing itself to practical problems.
This was a more optimistic usage than Hegel's 'Unhappy Consciousness," even though
Heiss makes clear that Hegel’s subject sees the process of education in general (p62),
"The means whereby the individual here has validity and actuality is education. Its
(education's) true original nature and substance is the spirit of estrangement of natural
being." In the Science of Logic Hegel said (p542), "Alienation of self is really selfpreservation."
Hegel's philosophical progeny, however, made a habit of using the dialectical method
while repudiating his starting point, the essence
-14-
of consciousness. Instead, each chose some trait or feature of existence. Feuerbach
chose nature. Marx chose class struggle (Heiss, p107). Kierkegaard chose
experiences of fear and nothing as starting points. Wartofsky (1977, pvii) says of
Feuerbach, "Hegel’s systematic elaboration of dialectics as a process of selfobjectification and self-alienation provided his student, Feuerbach, with both a theory of
dialectic and a host of applications." Heiss says of Kierkegaard and Marx (p107), "For
them, too, the dialectical instrument sees a means of arriving at the Absolute." Thus,
their concepts of alienation are built up in the same fashion, but on a different
foundation. Each is a monument to human synthesis of a new absolute.
Hegel's more positive view of "alienation" has been partly lost to modern society through
the new absolutes of his students. As Heiss says (p230), "If Hegel had taught that
everything negative is just as much positive, from the new point of view everything
positive was just as much negative," a significant factor in how "alienation" came to
represent general malaise. European writers and U.S. immigrants shaped the course of
American sociology on alienation, and transferred negative reactions to Hegel’s more
positive view.
Feuerbach and Alienation by Belief <-x>
Fuerbach (1840) identified religion itself as the source of alienation. He stood
alienation from Christ on its head <-i>. A young Hegelian, Feuerbach transformed
the concept into a critique of religious institutions and their inhibiting effects for
humans in the modern world; a fundamental feature of 20th century "scientific"
attitudes opposed to spiritualism, and the culmination of the thought of the
Encyclopedists during the Enlightenment. For Feuerbach. (Feuerllcht, 1978, p138).
'Man projected his own good qualities into
-15-
the outside world and then adored them as God...Feuerbach's religious alienation can
be overcome by reason..." [16]
Feuerbach used a form of "entfremdung," or estrangement, to indicate the condition
of humanity as separated from its true being (Lichtheim, p264). This resulted in
"selbstentfremdung," or self-alienation. This argument had historical salience for
Germans in a milieu which Lewis Coser describes as follows, "German culture was still
dominated by an unenlightened and oppressive religiosity. Hence the critique of religion
became to them the major philosophical task of the day." [17]
Religious institutions in England had been subjected to secular controls two hundred
years earlier. In France, controls on the clergy had been instituted by the beginning of
the 19th Century. Eastern and Southern Europe, however, had remained the
province of the Hapsburgs (The Holy Roman Empire) long after the Enlightenment
and into the development of modern sciences. When Feuerbach's synthesis came, it
was naturalism replacing theology as a social value <-i>. In fact, Feuerlicht (p241)
says Feuerbach's use of "entfremden" was pre-Hegelian, indicating separation from
nature itself; "fremd" meaning made a stranger. Secularization became a purposive
focus for preventing self-alienation <ii> through a return to nature.
Such secularization was to provoke tortured comment by Friedrich Nietzsche and
contemporary German intellectuals. Heidegger's Nietzsche (1982, p9) delineates his
main concepts: "The five main rubrics we have mentioned--'nihilism,' 'revaluation of all
values hitherto,' 'will to power,' 'eternal recurrence of the same,' and 'Overman,'-each portrays Nietzsche's metaphysics from just one perspective, although in each
case it is a perspective that defines the whole." Nietzsche's 'will to power' was the
prime motivator for secularized man, a will which would lead to Overman, the
superman idea later claimed by Nazis.
He described the inexorable "advent of nihilism," in more pessimistic terms than its
creator, Turgenev, and other Russian authors.[18] Instead of just a destruction of
existing organizations, ethics, and aesthetics, Nietzsche described nihilism
(Heidegger, 1982, p4-5), "All being loses its worth and meaning...all prior aims of
being have become superfluous." This secularizing notion became associated with
the concept of alienation for many--Nietzsche used the term selbstentfremdung--and
its use persists in atheistic
-16existentialism today.[19]
Sartre, himself, says in Being and Nothingness (1943) "All human activities are
equivalent, all are destined by principle to defeat." Nihilism steps beyond Feuerbach
into pessimism, by denying that thought (conscious or unconscious) can achieve
union of the self. This also became a cultural feature of mid-1960's theater in France.
Ionesco and Beckett's plays in the "theater of the absurd" utilized similar existential
notions, based upon Camus' philosophy of the absurd.
Marx and Alienation of the Worker <ix>
Marx, a young Hegelian, transformed Hegel's concept of alienation (entausserung) into
a critique of political economy with worldwide economic implications. He gave to
alienation a specific historical age of alienated labor, where self-realization was
prevented by class exploitation. The Young Marx's purpose was to achieve
Enlightenment goals via radical, political economic re-organization and begin a new
historic age. His Sociology of Knowledge retained Feuerbach's <-i> value inversion of
religion/natural world, treating religions as ideologies, and as exploitations by a ruling
class.
Feuerbach had substituted one idea (a naturalist anthropology) for the idea of God. But
Marx stood Hegel's idealist philosophy on its head and substituted a material purpose.
Alienation was a human condition of separation from the economic products his efforts
engendered <iv>, becoming a commodity in the process <ix>, Daniel Bell (1959, p934
& p941) states that the mature Marx (1846) deleted "self" from his arguments and used
alienation only as "the fetishism of commodities." He further asserts it is 'myth-making'
to take alienation as a central theme of Marx.
To be accurate, Marx's concept of alienation is a robust term, and includes references
to self-alienation and most other concerns of early English and German usage. The
worker is separated from the
-17-
product of his work, which Marx defines as part of the proletarian <ii>. The worker is
separated from an aspect of his practical mind <iii> because he is kept from knowledge
of his true interests. The worker is separated from power by a class monopoly on it
<vii>, and from identification with party truths <vi>, the necessary consciousness to
engage in action or praxis <viii>. Engles (Marx's collaborator) extended these notions
of the alienated worker into estrangement from affectionate relations <v> in an
institution of marriage linked with private property.[20]
The foundation of Marx’s thought on alienation is evident in this passage under the
heading Alienated Labor (1975, p324), "All these consequences are contained in this
characteristic, that the worker is related to the product of his labour as to an alien object.
For it is clear that. according to this premise, the more the worker exerts himself in his
work, the more powerful the alien, objective world becomes which he brings into being
over against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, and the less they
belong to him. It is the same with religion. The more man puts into God, the less he
retains within himself."
It would not be an exaggeration to say Marx re-formed the concept of alienation in each
aspect then current in usage; his influence on modern usage is difficult to render with
understatement. He created a culture complex of entfremdung <-i to ix>, using the
Hegelian dialectic.
Alienation as Cultural Disorganization to Tonnies <x>
Tonnies (1855-1936), from Schleswig-Holstein—a territory in dispute in his lifetime—
saw a dualism developing within human volition, two cultural traditions--two doctrines of
social behavior
-18-
from two different societal models. These cultural traditions of right action <vi> were
often in conflict, as one might expect in the daily experiences of Germans during
nationalization. He labeled them as two kinds of will, wesenwille (intuitive and
traditional) and kurwille (calculative reason) in his book Gemeinschaft und
Gessellschaft. These are types but not classificatory terms, that is, they vary with
respect to empirical conditions surrounding the actor.[21]
Their conflict, as cultural folkways in the actor's will <ii>, has personality overtones.[22]
Implicit in Tonnies' formulation of two dynamic culture complexes at-war-in-the-will is a
host of modern anthropological and sociological terms bearing on the development of a
divided persona <ii>: culture conflict and culture shock, community vs. society, primary
versus secondary association, folk versus urban culture, and even a basis for viewing
ethnic pluralism as a nascent alienative social condition.
The condition of culture, in this view, is systematically related to the condition of
personalities. For this reason, Barnes and Becker (1961, p888) refer to Tonnies as the
first systematic sociologist. Consequently, a culture complex of core traditional ideas
and personalities themselves may become disorganized by empirical exposure to the
free action of kurwille.
Tonnies's summary of his work (1931) begins with four dichotomies, the first of which is
acquaintanceship and strangeness. "Strangeness," he says (p238) implies a tendency
toward mutual negation. Further, "strangeness" is related to antipathy, mistrust, and
freedom from social bonds. These later descriptions are important to keep in mind
compared to his earlier work (1887) when analyzing the
-19term alienation or estrangement..
His first work describes the organic nature of gemeinschaft organization which rests
upon (1964, p37) "the assumption of perfect unity of human wills...the coherence of
vegetative life through birth and the fact that the human wills...are and remain linked to
each other by parental descent and by sex, or by necessity become so linked." This
unity of wills he calls "verstandnis," (Ibid, p47), "Reciprocal, binding sentiment <v>...the
special social force and sympathy which keeps human beings together as members of a
totality...The real organ of understanding (verstandnis), through which it develops and
improves, is language...It is itself the living understanding both in its content and in its
form."[23]
He uses wesenwille (integral will) to discuss intellectual life as well (p247), "Intellectual
will gets along well with subconscious motives which lie deep in man's nature, whereas
rational will eliminates such disturbing elements and is as clearly conscious as
possible."
Kurwille and gessellschaft are presented as polar opposites to these traits (Ibid, p65):
"We find no actions that can be derived from an a priori and necessarily existing
unity;...no actions...take place on behalf of those united with him... everybody is by
himself and isolated, and there exists a condition of tension against all others;" and
(Ibid, p134) "Thinking frees itself...to become means and useful cause in successful
attainment of ends...like Hobbes’s human being and their descendants in my
'Gesellschaft,' enemies by nature, mutually exclusive and negating each other."
Alienation, for Tonnies, then, is an attrition of the ethos of a culture which facilitates
understanding (verstandnis) and reciprocal,
-20-
binding sentiment in a gemeinschaft of descent, sex, and locality. Cultural
disintegration is promoted, of course, by gesellschaft society with its rational approach
to commercial life, especially in urban areas.
Urbanization became a dominant social process in western Civilization in the 19th
Century. Kingsley Davis says the most rapid growth in England was between 1811
and 1851, between 1861 and 1891 in the U.S., and between 1870 and 1910 in
Germany. By 1901, 58% of England's population lived in urban areas of 20,000 or
more.[24]
It became a sociological specialty at the University of Chicago through the efforts of
Robert Park, a meliorist if not a progressive. Coser (1971, p374) attributes his
interest in features of urban life, in part, to an influence of Tonnies who discussed
estrangement as a personality feature of urbanization. Simmel's notion of "the
stranger' has already been mentioned. Simmel lived in Berlin, a city which
quadrupled its population in one decade. His essay (Wolff, 1950, p409), "The
Metropolis and Mental Life" must be added to his influence on Park. But the influence
of Tonnies (best friend to a mentor of Park's) was to have an indirect influence on
Robert Redfield in his formulations on folk cultures in contrast with urban
civilizations.[25]
SocioIogists of sociology have noted that many early American sociologists were from
religious families and sought to promote values implied by wesenwille.[26] Chicagotrained anthropologists, confronted by the rapid disintegration of native cultures,
became devoted to a similar value, in writing ethnographies to preserve cultures
before they disappeared. Park, however, was a conscientious meliorist, and ethnic
values in Chicago neighborhoods were counter-posed to his process-concept
"assimilation" (assimilation parallels "acculturation" in sociological use) which
suggests a replacement of an old identity with a new one. The transition could be
viewed as creative adaptation. If the individual did not isolate himself from social
interaction (this value choice is understandable for a time when ethnicity meant
"race," and in a place where status competition was considered a pragmatic
substitution for racial conflict). Instead of defining self-alienation as due to culture
conflict, then, alienation for sociologists became associated with social isolates and
those socialized to a deviant identity <-x>.
Stonequist, building upon Parks's treatment of culture contact in "Migration and the
Marginal Man" did describe in detail the development of "double consciousness."
This personality feature he attributed to his Marginal Man (1937, p144). "As a
consequence of the crisis experience the
-21individual finds himself estranged from both cultures <x>." This was a valuable
addition to studies of migration, and the persona-switching involved <ii>.
Much of early sociological literature on socialization (and sociometry) was concerned
with social isolates from human interaction <-x> is from studies on feral children
through Kingsley Davis' studies of Anna and Isabel. Also, differential association of
delinquents was a central socialization study. The asocial or anti-social child was
considered the failure of its socialization agent.[27] Such a view persisted until
Dennis Wrong issued a corrective, decades later, in his essay, "The Oversocialized
Conception of Man in Modern Sociology."[28]
Chicago sociologists did address cultural dis-organization—they called it social
disorganization--in their treatment of social change. The genesis of a social problem
was seen as resulting from social change from one partially integrated culture to
another, much as Tonnies had discussed between folk and commercial cultures. Park's
attempt at "a natural history" was- used to discuss its stages of development, and "the
problem" was viewed from an equally abstract standpoint. However, Park suppressed
biological overtones of this treatment of social change in his, "Natural History of the
Newspaper," possibly treating it more concretely since he had been a
newspaperman.[29]
William Ogburn's social change model also preserves the positive valuation of
assimilation at the University of Chicago <-x>, though he proposed his dialectical
cultural lag theory in the first decade of the l900s. He was of the opinion that the great
need of our time is to reduce the time lag, not slow down the transition.
He reflected the positive American valuation of technological progress, giving examples
of technological changes which resulted in changes in ideological culture, with an
intervening time lag which produces serious problems and maladjustments. This
resembles
-22-
Stonequist's cultural estrangement idea, and approaches alienation as a negative
concept when adaptation is not immediate. He stated reverse causation could also
apply, the independent variable could be an ideology or a nontechnological variable, but
he said he had grounded lag theory in economic determinism. He effectively replaced
Tonnies' commerce idea with tool-making, as an instrument of cultural disintegration.
Though he fails to mention it, there is an ancient archaeological tradition which stresses
tool developments (stone, bronze, and iron) as resulting in new "ages" of civilization.
This technological primacy over cultural factors is the usual way Ogburn's lag theory is
applied, and it is likely the historical antecedent of his theory. Assimilation to
technological progress is positively valued, even though it represents cultural
disintegration in the process <-x>. Only later did Ogburn's lag hypothesis become the
foundation of negative alienation concepts (See Section III, Techno-Lag <xvi>).
To be sure, both Chicagoan conceptualizations <x and -x> were influenced by
Durkheim. But sociologists who studied cultural disorganization, especially within the
sub-discipline of Culture and Personality, applied Tonnies' root idea directly. This is
most clear in Edward Sapir's concept of "genuine" culture (1945, p82-84), "A cultured
ideal...its selection of the particular treasures of the past which it deems worthiest of
worship.. Culture thus becomes nearly synonymous with the "spirit" or "genius" of a
people." [30] Boaz, Sapir, and Whorf have transmitted this concern for "world view"
into modern anthropology and linguistics, contrasting it with the more value-neutral
usage of culture by many sociologists.[31]
-23-
A Scandinavian Response
Alienation of Existential Despair <xi>
A Danish critique of Hegelian alienation as method [32] set the tone of religious
existentialism toward alienation as a concept, into the 20th Century. Kierkegaard—of
Copenhagen—critiqued Hegelian philosophy in a classic attack upon grand theory as
ignoring the primacy of individualistic inner experience <-viii>. Heiss (p207) portrays
Kierkegaard as a social isolate, "Kierkegaard's inner life was of enormous importance...
he was a solitary..."
Kierkegaard's concern with alienation (and later Niebuhr's) is at the same linguistic level
as Hegel's: humanity separated from God <i>. But the spiritual essence, geist, is not
the starting point. Hegel saw geist as instrumental to Mind, and Tonnies saw geist as
instrumental to will in a gemeinschaft. Both highlight the essence of geist. But
Kierkegaard isolates psychological traits of existence: sickness (sygdom, <xi>), or much
doubtfulness (fortvivle), or hopelessness (haabloshed); without expectation. If he had
chosen a Danish gloss of alienation it might have been "selvstaendighed," which implies
reluctantly standing with friends more than one becoming alien to himself (an
individualistic focus).
Kierkegaard introduced a new element into alienation: he caused his reader to
experience doubtfulness directly, by experiencing partial truths of a paradox. By his
indirect method, which included posturing with pseudonyms like "Anti-Climacus," he
drew his reader into a religious synthesis experienced as, "The passage from aesthetic
despair to a love of God equally despairing."[33] He divided existence sequentially into
this pattern: esthetic, ethical, and religious indeterminacy, counting the first two as
canceling one
-24-
another out and leading to religious despair and a shift in assumptions for living.
A similar method of experiencing doubt became the method of Scandinavian
dramatists. Reinert (Drama, 1961, p299) says of Ibsen—Norway’s founder of modern
drama—"Together with 'An Enemy of the People,' 'The Wild Duck (1884)'
demonstrates Ibsen's habit of seeing every issue from opposite sides...Truth conquers
the protective lie, and the result, ironically, is disaster for the one innocent and wholly
lovable character..."
Strindberg, Sweden's misogynist playwright and founder of expressionist drama, is
attributed the following purpose by Reinert (p463), "In the 'Ghost Sonata' Strindberg
enters hell... a state of mind, a climate of soul, something experienced rather than
understood...The play's theme is the universality of evil, the suffering of the innocent,
the ambiguity of human motives." Later, (p465) he says, "Anticipation,
disillusionment, suffering—these are the phases of life...Salvation is hardly more than
a pious hope and prayer set to soft music before a sentimental picture." While this
may be more than Kierkegaard offers in fulfillment with his God of despair, it is a
similar experience and dialectic.
Reinhold Niebuhr (Beyond Tragedy; 1937, p302) is able to set some distance from
the pain evident in earlier religious existentialists when he says, "The idea of
fulfillment of life is very difficult, partly because of the dialectical relation of time and
eternity and partly because of the dialectical relation of the individual and society.
The old classical idealism resolved the difficulties by denying the significance of time
and history: and modern naturalism seeks to resolve it by seeking to make time and
history self-sufficing."
H.R. Niebuhr offered his synthesis in Christ and Culture (Harper and Row, 1951), and
detailed a "social existentialism" in contrast to Kierkegaard's, which had confronted a
solitary self with a solitary Christ. Niebuhr's self is part of the kingdom of God on
earth, a self (p249), "In the presence of historical beings whose history has been
made sacred by the historical remembered actions of the one who inhabits eternity."
In Existential Religion (1972, p33) Richard Niebuhr says of this self, "Religious man is
man taking stock of himself" in an historical, ecological world—he calls it "radial "—
which is filled with coercive, persuasive, and powerful agents, with strength to affect
humans.
In chapter ten of Beyond Tragedy, Reinhold Niebuhr had answered Nietzsche's
challenge to the self retaining human values, "The answer is that if history should
itself turn over
-25its own values and periodically cast the mighty from their seats and exhault them of
low degree, this would happen only because history is forced partly to validate,
though it usually defies, the standards of the Kingdom of God." Niebuhr asserts an
historical telic force which operates upon history as a stage, keeping human ethics
viable in a modern world.
This conception is perhaps the closest to Hegel’s of modern existentialists. Orynski
(Hegel, 1960, pviii) wrote of modern existentialists, "Existentialism today...leaves us
with despair, fear, and trembling. Its alienation or estrangement technique is not
predicated upon an original overriding unity and hence is incapable of producing
eleusinian solutions." The Niebuhrs, Christian existentialists, retain some measure of
self-realization consistent with Hegel’s logos.
Summary of Alienation's Use in 19th Century European Culture
Many sociological concepts of alienation derive from German intellectual usage of the
19th Century. Hegel created a method of dialectical knowing <viii>, entausserung,
which influenced anthropology (Feuerbach), political economy (Marx), ethics, drama
and theology (Kierkegaard and the Niebuhrs), social psychology (G.H. Mead), and
sociology (Park). Hegel conceived it as a method of self-alienation in a self-preserving
pursuit of encyclopedic knowledge.
Secularization was a dominant concern of these authors and many associated cultural
referents of their own with alienation. Feuerbach understood religion as separating
humanity from its true nature <-i>, entfremdung, resulting in selbstentfremdung <ii>.
Marx, using Hegel’s term and Feuerbach’s terms, centered on goods <iv> and detailed
a worker’s separation from the products of labor through capitalism <ix>. Tonnies
focused on two personas moderns apply in social action wesenwille and kurwille, a
strangeness which results from cultural disorganization of gemeinschaft society <x>
through commerce. Kierkegaard provided a Scandinavian rejection of Hegel’s
synthesis
-26-
<-viii>, substituting a haabloshed (hopelessness) of personal relationship to God <xi>.
-27Alienation in Western Civilization to the Mid-20th Century
Intellectuals of the first half of the 19th Century circumscribed their range within unique
disciplines. Durkheim and Weber, respectively professors at the Sorbonne and
Heidelberg, were among the first recognized sociologists per se. Their academic
interests covered eastern or primitive religions, medieval economics or law, and a host
of other topics. Both were uneasy with specialization, though special professions were
becoming the rule.
After World War I, specialization took on a bureaucratic cast in modern nations, and,
following Weber, bureaucratization became an important analytic tool for describing
historic trends. Europe's population explosion, into the 1930's, also became evident
after the war, tripling during the previous century. This "massification" impacted public
places dramatically. Finally, mass migrations continued through the 1920's, accounting
for at least 20% of U.S. growth each decade from the 1850's to 1930.[34]
In spite of these four processes: massification, migration, bureaucratization, and
specialization, some academics continued with universal interests, including founders of
sociological schools like Florian Znaniecki in Poland and Pitirim Sorokin at Harvard.
These thinkers were able to encompass dimensions of culture in civilization as a whole,
using broad definitions of culture.[35]
Even Freud had interests outside psychoanalysis, his chosen field after neurophysiology, and wrote a short sociological work on alienation. Jose' Ortega y Gasett
likewise retained wide interests in human culture, and developed a new approach to
alienation between the World Wars. Thus, intellectual nuances of 19th Century
concepts of alienation continued their development into the 20th Century.
-28-
English intellectuals, students of modern society in the 19th and early 20th centuries
retained an individualist orientation discussed earlier, which drew upon the works of
Adam Smith, J.S. Mill, and Herbert Spencer to confront specialization of these authors.
To these authors collective happiness of the greatest number of individuals was the
dynamic telic force behind structural growth and differentiation. Only as England's
colonial empire declined and competition from the U.S. and Europe affected its markets,
did debate ensue over models besides "institutional progress."
Alienation, then, was more a theme in English humanities at the turn of the century than
in analysis of society. For example, T.S. Eliot, an expatriate in London, saw culture as
decaying, and said of egoism in "The Waste Land," "We think of the key, each in his
prison Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison..." Social life appeared as a
wasteland.[36]
Alienation from the Social System to Durkheim <xii>
Emile Durkheim's doctoral thesis, The Division of Labor (1893) was in some respects a
direct attack on the sociological influences of German thinkers of the 19th Century, and
in other respects their vindication.
At the turn of the century, France was dominated by scientific and positivist thought
oriented around natural laws. Durkheim critiqued Tonnies' work in 1887 from this
standpoint.[37] Instead of preserving Tonnies' conception of gemeinschaft as organic
and gessellschaft as mechanistic, Durkheim reversed the alienation usage in Division of
Labor ---and the social values of the two forms of social organization. He asserted that
gemeinschaft societies were mechanistic, in the
-29-
sense any individual could be replaced by another without the social organization losing
integration. In contrast, modern societies, due to high degrees of specialization, would
suffer a loss of integration from such a substitution. For Durkheim, the historical
dynamic between types is a function of population density.
This effectively turned Tonnies' idea of alienation on its head <-x>. Gesellschaft
society, founded on an organic solidarity of interdependent specialties, was a social
environment in which individual differences were fundamental, and gemeinschaft
societies, being fundamentally opposed to functional differences, was a more alienating
condition, an alienation from the social system <xii>.
Hence, Durkheim's influence on the Sociology of Education, and American sociology
generally, substituted a new concept of alienation which he developed as the systemic
idea of "anomie." Tonnies criticized Durkheim for not grounding his concepts with
reference to the human psyche [38], but by then (1898) Durkheim had applied a
methodology which treated society as a reality "sui generis," and individuals as role
players in a social structure in his Suicide (1897). He formalized this approach later in
The Rules of Sociological Method (1964). Unlike the English model of society, the
whole does not equal the sum of the parts, and unlike German 19th Century intellectual
thought, the whole and the parts are not a reflection of one another. Instead, the whole
is greater than the sum of the parts. Durkheim rejected alienation as a psychological
concept and made anomie a function of society, not culture.
He was concerned with maintaining coercive norms in society to minimize
disorientation of the populace, based upon an assumption about human nature and
deviance in society which requires external
-30-
social controls on an insatiable being to ensure stability of the State. Such an
assumption made historical sense in the Third French Republic; the populace
experienced internal chaos (revolutions, eight regimes, and fourteen constitutions in a
century). Durkheim, who Robert Bellah refers to as (1973. pxvii), "A theologian of the
French civil religion," proposed in his thesis that specialization, while mostly positive,
does generate some pathological conditions.
Included in such "pathology" is the "anomic division of labor." The rise in commercial
failures, labor-capital conflicts, and isolation of academics all fall into this category.
However, Durkheim states (1969, p368), "Anomy is impossible wherever solidary
organs are sufficiently in contact or sufficiently prolonged.' Thus, a cure for academic
anomy, for example, is to promote professional associations with strong ethics and legal
sanctions. Durkheim began the Anne'e Sociologique, one of the most influential journalbased associations in the history of sociology.
Durkheim also discussed the anomic individual as a potential product of specialization
(1960, p371): "It has often been accused of degrading the individual by making him a
machine. And truly, if he does not know whither the operations he performs are
tending, if he relates them to no end, he can only continue to work through
routine."[39]
Durkheim's first concept of individual anomie, then, is a loss of conscious ends for
human action, a theme Robert Merton later called "ritualism" and identified as a polar
type of bureaucratic society in "Social Structure and Anomie."[40] To many
sociologists, this was later seen as an influence of Max Weber, though it appears as
"routine" in The Division of Labor. In this condition, the individual has surrendered all
internally-as Sapir would say-and merely reinforces the system.
Merton labeled "anomie,"—in that same article—the result of a contrasting polar type
of society which disproportionately accents ends over legitimate means. This idea
formed the basis of U.S. deviance literature in the mid-1900's, partly through his coeditorship of the college text Contemporary Social Problems with Robert Nisbet,
-31through many editions. Merton considered both types of polar societies as producing
social problems due to "structural inconsistencies." He saw American society as the
anomic polar type, with its high rates of innovative and criminal behavior, its strong
goal of monetary success, and its restricted access to legitimate means for lower
classes. Merton adapted Durkheim’s second notion of anomie to American culture.
Durkheim's update to his concept of anomie appeared in Suicide, where he pursued his
assertions of social structure entailing "exteriority" and "constraint." He saw religious
symbols and legal sanctions as central in a nation state, since these served primary
functions of social integration and control. The term anomie, appropriately, is an old
term meaning disrespect for law.[41] Bellah says (1973, pxxix) that Suicide was a
diagnosis of the ills of modern society summed up by Durkheim's phrase, "We no longer
know the limits of legitimate needs or perceive the direction of our efforts." This
describes a lack of collective conscience and consciousness.
Durkheim found the social pathology of anomic suicide occurs in groups and societies
which offer minimal normative sanctions and symbolism to their populace, especially in
times of crises. "Anomie" became associated with low normative sanctions and
symbols. Thus, anomie was conceived as too little "moral" control by gesellschaft
society <xi>, whereas too much cultural influence of gesellachaft and kurwille had been
the German concern.
Durkheim's faith in a nationalist religion which would minimize the "abnormal" condition
of anomie faded with time. Bellah says he abandoned his inversion of mechanical and
organic solidarity after his thesis (1973, pxl). Linking primitive life with machines is not
an intuitive usage. Durkheim stated later in life (Ibid, p163), that human experience was
a duality of organic individuality versus
-32-
external society, "All evidence compels us to expect our effort in the struggle between
the two beings within us to increase with the growth of civilization."[42] Perhaps it was
his late but lengthy exposure to Australian religious life which brought him to a near
vindication of a gemeinschaft totality which minimized such struggle.
Durkheim's idea of structural anomie had a major impact on American sociology
through the works of Talcott Parsons [43] and through generations of his students e.g.
Merton, who joined his efforts with the researcher Paul Lazarsfeld, an advocate of
Durkheimian methods. Occupational statuses and roles (role theory) became a
dominant form of sociological analysis mid-century, and anomie was variously
identified with role strain, role conflict, and status inconsistency, all induced by social
expectations in a social structure. Survey methodology predominated, often taking a
mean as reflecting consensus, not just an average. Where role-set replaced
occupational statuses as the focus of research, the meaning of anomie was
broadened to cover virtually any individual experiencing contradictory or stressinducing expectations (external constraints).
Alienation of Unconscious Drives to Freud <xiii>
While Durkheim sought the sources of social pathology by applying Aristotelian logic,
Freud explored psychological pathology using the dialectical methods of the Young
Hegelians. Living in Vienna, seat of the Hapsburg Empire, and working mostly with
middle class patients with neuroses, he applied a naturalist perspective to the genesis
of these diseases [1898], "We may justly hold our civilization responsible for the spread
of neurasthenia." [44]
He viewed mental illness as an alienation of the inner needs of people, their "id." The
two other parts of the personality engaged in a dynamic and dialectical relationship with
the id, the super-ego repressing natural instincts, and the ego mediating the dialogue in
consciousness. Alienist therapy with the mental patient <iii> intended to make this
dialogue more conscious (less repressed). Freud wrote about everyday people too, and
he retained much the
-33-
same opinion about civilization.[45] Later, in Civilization and its Discontents he states
his thesis [1958, [1930], p81), "Guilt is the most important problem in the development
of civilization and to show that the price we pay for our advance in civilization is a loss of
happiness through the heightening of the sense of guilt."
The term Freud uses for civilization’s discontent is "unbehagen," best translated as
malaise. It results from a problem of economics in the individual’s libido in which
civilization requires the renunciation of instincts toward aggression and sex, often
sublimating them into an intellectual form. The dynamic process involved is a two stage
alienation. First, aggressive desires—"The greatest impediment to civilization"—are
inhibited by (Ibid, p70) "weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency within
him to watch over it, like a garrison in a conquered city." This is the fear of authority. But
the second stage is a fear of the super-ego itself (Ibid, p74) which "Presses for
punishment." It (Ibid, p70) "Is ready to put in action out against the ego the same harsh
aggressiveness that the ego would have liked to satisfy upon other, extraneous
individuals."
The same argument applies to religion's influence on individuals (Ibid, p31). "Religion
restricts this play of choice and adaptation...depressing the value of life and distorting
the picture of the real world in a delusional manner... (Ibid, p38) Man has, as it were
become a kind of prosthetic God...we will not forget that present-day man does not feel
happy in his Godlike character."
Freud's view is much like Feuerbach 's naturalism, as applied to the psyche <-i>. In
fact, Freud’s book on civilization begins with his rejection of religious feelings, in
contrast to an idea suggested to him by Romain Rolland. Freud replied (lbid, p12), "I
cannot discover this 'oceanic ' feeling in myself."
-34This is related to his conflict with C.G. Jung over the libido and the unconscious. Jung
saw Freud's concept of the unconscious as overly private and alienated (1959, p287),
"A more or less superficial layer." Jung promoted a deeper layer called the "collective
unconscious" which is the repository of archetypes and requires the very feelings
Freud could not discover in himself. Jung says (Ibid, p443), "I point out that the soul
possesses by nature a religious function...I stipulate that it is the prime task of all
education (of adults) to convey the archetype of the God-image..." Thus, while Freud
saw the unconscious as alienated through excessive guilt by religious-like forces,
Jung saw the collective unconscious as alienated by social forces opposing religious
thinking <xiiib>. They fundamentally disagree on the evaluative level.
Likewise, Jung—who worked more with schizophrenics and other psychotics—saw
the libido as morally neutral, just psychic energy, while Freud insisted upon evaluating
its dark character and conceiving an allied death instinct which is distorted from erotic
drives.
Thus, Freud simply initiated descriptions of the unconscious and forgotten parts of the
psyche which are alienated in everyday civilized men. Other students of the psyche
have re-formulated and detailed such descriptions. Freud's dark unconscious found
historical parallels in the atrocities of World War II, and stimulated research on
authoritarian personalities. With Durkheim, he saw the unconscious as troublesome
to society, even as he disagreed with the youthful Durkheim on the State's moral
authority as a cure for individual malaise <-xii>.
Freud also invented a three stage development process of human personality which is
relevant to alienation because the stages involve separations or alienations from
neurological satisfactions: oral, anal, and phallic. This influenced a number of neoFreudians, notably Erik Erikson, to expand the dialectical process of personalityformation through-out the life process, and include non-neurological satisfactions.
Erikson places the ego between two alternatives for each of eight stages in life, thereby
making a dialectical alienation process of each stage personality development.[46]
Both Freud and Neo-Freudians see the successful resolution of each stage as important
to advancing to the next level of development. This parallels the practice of Chicagoan
-35-
sociologists to take historical allenation themes and convert them to biographical
ones.[47]
Max Weber's Western Alienation
(Being Rationally Processed and Enculturated with an Ethic <xvi>)
Weber, son of a prominent parliamentarian in Bismark’s Berlin, transformed the
theoretical constructs of many of the intellects of his age into methodological guidelines
for sociological research. Thus, instead of reified (overly abstracted) concepts posited
as real, Weber’s concepts are merely names which have a practical use to the analyst
of societies (nominalism). The most fundamental example is his use of "verstehende"
to mean a methodology of understanding social actors as subjects, not objects. Weber
proposed a verstehende sociology concentrating on interpretive understanding without
confining sociology to social action.[48]
Tonnies, who Weber quotes in his first chapter of Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft,
developed a series of ideal types which described gemeinschafts as founded upon
"verstandnis," or sympathetic understanding. Weber chose a methodology for his
sociology which incorporated this trait in his study of gesellschaft phenomena,
"verstehende." By this tactic he ensured scientific sociologists would retain an element
of gemeinschaft in their work. The tactic is a clear answer to Nietzsche's nihilism;
sociology will retain meaning as its focus. The meanings are meanings of actors and
pluralities for the most part, except when employing "ideal types," but they are
meanings nonetheless. He was not alone in this tactic. Florian Znaniecki named the
same concept the "humanist coefficient" and both saw its use as essential to
sociological analysis. This is a first means of addressing alienation for Weber. A second
parallel with Tonnies is clear in Weber's methodology.
-36Tonnies referred to kurwille (calculative reason) as the type of thinking in gesellschaft.
Weber differentiated two more types of social action based upon ideal types of thinking
(Ibid, p24). "Zweckrational" is calculative reason. "Wertrational " pursues a value as an
end in itself. "Affektuell" is a reflection of psychological affect, and "traditional" derives
from habitual action. The last three are common in gemeinschaft and Tonnies affirmed
their equivalence with wesenwille.[49]
Like Tonnies, Weber sees rationalization as an increasing cultural pattern in modern
gesellschaft, and it plays a dominant part in his sociological research. In fact, many
fault Weber as exclusively rationalistic. Even Znaniecki criticizes him (1952, p205), "We
disagree with his theory that the most important ideal type... is that of rational actions in
the teleological sense." Nevertheless, Barnes and Becker consider Weber's
methodology the best for historical sociology to date.[50] True, he did style his
arguments in a pure reason form for an audience he expected to respond primarily to
that mode, but he was candidly of a different opinion.
He qualifies all four forms of social action as meaningful and thus as subjects of
sociological research. Only the research need proceed rationally.[51] Under affectual
action he alludes to both sublimation and rationalization with at least the latter being
used in its psychological sense. Gerth and Mills (1946, p20) do report his unglamorous
view of Freud's publicists but that is hardly a denial of the unconscious in social action,
"A loose way of life draped in...a shifting clinical theory."[52]
Weber also reports that (1968, p22), "The ideal type of meaningful action where the
meaning is fully conscious and explicit is a marginal case. Every sociological or
historical investigation, in applying its
-37-
analysis to the empirical facts, must take this fact into account. " In this opinion, Weber
is in concert with Tonnies that much intellectual thought is consistent with wesenwille
deliberation rather than kurwille. Freedom, too (Ibid, p73), "Is identified with irrational
sentiment and privacy."
A special case of rationalization, to Weber, is that of bureaucracy, something of whIch
many American sociologists have made a great deal, often to rebuff Marxists. Gerth
and Mills say that Weber considered Marx's theory of worker alienation (1946, p50),
"Merely one special case of a universal trend. The modern soldier is equally separated
from the means of violence; the scientist from the means of inquiry, and the civil servant
from the means of administration." Weber, then, held a broader view of occupational
alienation than did Marx <ix>. This is more than just division of labor; rather, it is a trend
of Western history, bureaucratization.
His treatment of bureaucracy is quite detailed, and constitutes the foundation of much of
Complex Organizations as a sociological specialty. He specifically characterizes it as a
long-term form (Ibid, p228), "Once it is fully established, bureaucracy is among those
social structures which are the hardest to destroy." He states (Ibid, p232), "That
bureaucratic organization is technically the most highly developed "means of power"
and it often keeps "official secrets." It prefers a "specialist" to a "cultivated man," and it
operates rationally; that is, it puts a premium on (Ibid, p244) "rules, means, ends, and
matter-of-factness."
Western bureaucracy was developed, according to Weber, in concert with a culture
complex he calls "The Protestant Ethic," resulting in alienative social conditions. "The
Puritan wanted to work in a calling:
-38-
we are forced to do so. For when asceticism...began to dominate world morality, it did
its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order...which to-day
determine the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only
those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force."[53]
Bureaucratic traits and its character as an ascetic calling led Weber to describe it as
"the iron hand of bureaucracy," implying it subsists on the powerlessness of its
underlings <viii> and deprives them of their personas <ii> as a machine would.
Bureaucracy is a cultural complex of alienative dimensions predicated on rationalization,
in multiple aspects of human endeavor <xiii>.
Harvard sociologists Pitirim Sorokin and Talcott Parsons were influenced by Weber’s
concept of "wertrational" thinking and its action orientation towards specific values.
Sorokin reviewed Weber’s sociology for his students, calling it "not only a sociology of
religion but of all culture... Weber takes the "Wirtschaftsethik" of the six world
religions: Confucianism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, and
studies the character of the Wirtschaftsethik of each of them, with its effects on the
economic organization and life of the peoples who belong to one of these
religions."[54] Sorokin was aware of the centrality of ideology to Weber, in forming
social action. Likewise, he appreciated the reciprocal causation between religious
ethics and economics. He calIs Weber (Ibid, p875), "a pluralist and a functionalist."
Parsons, Sorokin's student, developed a cultural complex called "pattern variables" to
describe five value contrasts which a social actor can choose among to apply in a
given social situation. This approach built upon Durkheim's rules of sociological
method to some degree, attempting to give the sociologist an external method of
ascribing motives, without necessarily understanding social actions subjectively (i.e.
he reified them).
"Reification" Parsons describes in a footnote as, "used naively as though it provided
an adequate total description of the concrete phenomenon in question."[55] Nisbet
used the term "hypostatize" for reification, giving the concept its common meaning,
making an abstraction real, for example, speaking of community’s "wants." A quite
different meaning is attributed by the Hungarian Marxist Lukacs who wishes to make
reification "verdinglichung," and equate it with
-39Hegel’s "entausserung," thereby labeling such a realist usage as an alienating one
because it makes an object (a social fact) of an ideal type.
With a contribution of Sorokin, four of Parson's types were added to Weber's rationaltraditional polarity to make a composite for Loomis and Mckinney’s comparative study
prefixed to their translation of Tonnies' Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft.[56] They
identified these six patterns of cultural values which discriminated a folk society, San
Juan Sur, from an urban one, Artirro in Costa Rica: affectivity, particularism,
ascription, diffuseness (Parsons), traditional (Weber), and familistic (Sorokin).
It is curious the authors say (Ibid, p24), "Our types are applied to social systems, not
cultural systems or personality systems," even though they are aware (Ibid, p28) that
the types used in the study are "epistemological and nominalist" and not "ontological
and dogmatic." While they undoubtedly used Parson's "social system," nonetheless,
only gemeinschafts, they assert, employ a "mode of thought...of conceptual realism."
But then, this was before the degree of Parsons' reification of his social system was
broadly recognized.
The above development of detailed value orientations as a focus of sociological
analysis may be interpreted in an alienative fashion <vi> i.e. if a person in both
gemeinschafts and gesellschafts acts according to one pattern to the exclusion of the
other, that person may be said to be alienated from the contrasting pattern of values.
Even popular usage today employs the term alienation to refer to human actors being
impeded in realizing specific values, their "wertrational" ends <vi>.
Alienation of the Rootless mass to Ortega y Gasset <xv>
Max Weber had noted the great power of emerging party organizations in Western
Civilization, even studying U.S. political machines and the Russian Revolution after
World War I. Parties, he suggested were key social structures. Durkheim had fostered
the growth of pluralist social structures in France, and advocated coercive norms of the
State to blunt what he saw as intrusive egoism. Likewise, in the U.S., Tocqueville had
observed voluntary associations and separations of power as vital to the U.S. avoiding a
tyranny of its majority over its many minorities.[57]
-40-
Ortega y Gasset, positioned in the seat of the old Hapsburg monarchy where he began
an important newspaper, Spain, observed the rapid growth of radical (Bolshevik) and
conservative (Fascist) parties in Europe. He noted their opposition to liberal democratic
institutions (largely middle class) and their opposition to aristocracies (upper class and
high cultures) which resisted rationalization. These they intended to sweep away rather
than reform. Arendt says (1958, p308), "After the first World War, a deeply
antidemocratic, pro-dictatorial wave of semi-totalitarian and totalitarian movements
swept Europe." Ortega y Gasset saw in this a new revolution in his book, The Revolt of
the Masses.
It is based; he says, upon "mass men" with "formidable appetites" creating a "mass
scarcity” in which all minorities are subjected to the tyranny of the majority. They
institutionalize low cult Ideas and ideals such that even scientific foundations of
"technicism" may not survive. They prop up the nation-state with their superficially
considered votes (rather than discover the state's true nature and create a new frontier),
then this mass of men engages in territorial expansion through war.
Instead of reasoned debate by established norms, Ortega saw the "reason of unreason"
allaying discussion, taking “direct action," and ignoring what he saw as the lesson of
history (past estates are best supplanted by ignoring them). His analysis, unlike Marx
but in line with Weber, was focused upon the State as the most bureaucratic and
dangerous institution.
These ideas he published in English in 1932, applying the "revolt" theme to all aspects
of culture. By the end of World War II, with Europe once again in a painful
reconstruction, his ideas of mass
-41 -
society and "the mass" developed adherents among theoreticians who set to analyzing
the history of the Third Reich as a mass phenomenon.[58] Significantly, Ortega y
Gasset viewed the United States as the first mass society, largely on the grounds it is a
mass migration society founded on leveling as a social process.
Ortega y Gasset's mass society is sociologically credible not because it addressed
itself to European liberal democrats to forestall World War II or the Cold War. True,
Merton and Bell have both written on the impacts of European pessimism, after both
wars, on American thinkers in government and social science.[59] But mass society
has a clear relationship to alienation.
First. it is the opposite of the Rousseau-type alienation from political power. In this
case, the majority persecutes minorities without thinking of itself in historical terms, that
is, it is alienated from its political roots in constitutional democracy which underlie the
structure of the State <-vii>. Mass man is <xv> deracinated or rootless, and engages in
a "falsification" of himself by negating a free-discussion in his political system <ii>. He
seeks no greater goal than individual material comfort, preferring an absolute regime to
a limited one, and engages in vilification of learned or scientific intellectuals as
dilettantes.[60]
This is a concept of alienation tuned to an age of mass education, massive populations
with universal sufferage, floating loyalties, mass production, mass migrations, mass
transportation and mass media, no matter that much of Ortega y Gasset's analysis is
painfully value-laden. He used the term "hermetism" to describe a person who is (1932,
p67), "Deficient in the faculty of giving attention to what is outside themselves, be it fact
or person."
-42-
Ortega y Gasset connected this enculturated incapacity with living on the high end of
economic cycles, where prosperity seems assured. When the downside comes, the
persona is prepared to become militaristic and violent at the expense of minorities.
Ortega y Gasset expanded his analysis of the self-other relationship in Man and
Crisis.[61] For him, the real self is the man in solitude, one who is centered in himself
("ensimismarse"). In ages of crisis, like his current age, (1959, p119) "Modern man
begins by being disoriented with respect to himself, de 'payse', he is outside of his own
country." Rather than submit to "alteracio'n," (re-socialization) which would only deepen
a sense of otherness, the individual must withdraw into his own creativity to re-discover
himself.
Hannah Arendt expanded the notion of political isolation and potential aggressiveness
of mass man by detailing a political organization based on the model of secret
societies, with secret police implementing purges to further atomize society. She
continues (1958, p475), "But totalitarian domination as a form of government is new in
that it is not content with this isolation and destroys private life as well. It bases itself
on loneliness, on the experience of not belonging to the world at all, which is among
the most radical and desperate experiences of man." This was the experience of
many tribal nationalists who joined the movements, and ethnic minorities and
refugees who were persecuted by them during the great wars.
The loneliness theme of an atomized society was developed in the U.S. at the same
time by David Riesman [62] and William H. Whyte Jr.[63] In both, the concern is with
other-directedness, taking the expectations of others as primary in social action, not
the inner self. The concept of other-directed personality is drawn from Fromm and
C.W. Mills, and applies primarily to the new middle class (white collar), socialized by
peers and mass media and taught to adjust. Riesman says (1950, p288-289). "The
rise of other-direction may drive inner-directed as well as tradition-directed types into
anomie...anomics...arise as by-products."
Saying (Ibid, p232), "I have profited greatly from her work," Riesman is concerned
with Arendt’s mass man. He uses
-43"anomie" for (Ibid, p13) "rootlessness...trapped malaise" and identifies anomic
individuals in the following way, (Ibid, p290), "Taken all together, the anomics—
ranging from overt outlaws to 'catatonic' types who lack even the spark for living, let
alone for rebellion—constitute a sizeable number in America." Riesman characterizes
them politically (Ibid, p289). "The anomics, also offer a cadre of those who are
potentially willing to do the political dirty work of totalitarianism..." Remember that
Ortega y Gasset's mass man had an inability to (1932, p69), "Go out of himself for a
moment and to transfer himself to his neighbor <ii>." Riesman’s mass Americans are
so status conscious they seek to (1950, p373), "Assuage their loneliness in a crowd of
peers," something Riesman debunks as though "one can assuage one's thirst by
drinking sea water."
Whyte's study explores massification within a bureaucratic structure, and is concerned
with a new corporation ethic (1956, p7).. "Which makes morally legitimate the
pressures of society against the individual. Its major propositions are three: a belief in
the group as the source of creativity: a belief in "belongingness" as the ultimate need
of the individual; and a belief in the application of science to achieve the
belongingness (social engineering)." He uses neither "anomie" nor "alienation"' as
concepts but says of loneliness (Ibid, p389), "In the battle against loneliness even the
architecture becomes functional...(Ibid, p384)...Planners can argue that if they can
find what it is that creates cohesiveness it would follow that by deliberately building
these features into the new housing they could at once eliminate the loneliness of
modern life."
In true Whyte fashion, an Australian, Edwin Dowdy, suggested in 1966 that
Americans are acculturated to such an ideology and thus researchers neglect to
measure legitimacy of roles and values when studying alienation.[64] Whyte,
narrowing his focus more than Riesman’s class approach, however, becomes lost in
American institutions of the middle range, as his new ideology is narrowed. It is clear
he did not mean a head count when he said (Ibid, p3), "They are the dominant
members of our society."
Robert Nisbet, student of Teggert and follower of Edmund Burke and Alexis De
Tocqueville, centered his 1953 book Community and Power on the concept of
alienation, interpreting it in mass society terms (1962, p25), "Mutilate the roots of
society and tradition, and the result must inevitably be the isolation of a generation
from its heritage, the isolation of individuals from their fellow men, and the creation of
the sprawling, faceless masses." Alienation, for him, is a remote social order deprived
of its authority, separating man from his historical roots <xv>, from place and nature,
and from things (hard property).
-44-
These last two are strong associations for Nisbet, revealing his concern over a lost
estate system. In place of the feudal estate he substitutes "community," as a utopian
ideal, by which he signifies this lexicon of sociological terms (Ibid, p23): "integration,
status, membership, hierarchy, symbol, norm, identification, and group." These terms
he considers ascendent among modern intellectuals, and as implicit critiques of:
centralized schools, nationalist slum clearance, creation of suburban "hordes," and
promotion of determinist social theories. Nisbet even treats the dispossessed
proletarian as deracinated from his statuses by the escalating power of the State.
His personal critique is to re-inspire respect for particularism and the social bond,
while reformtng the direction of public administration (Ibid, p273), "In power the
contemporary State is, and must be, sui generis.. .But the centrality of sovereignty
does not lead logically to the centralization of administration in public affairs.
To him, utopia consists of pluralist competition among voluntary associations or status
groups, as checks on federal power (lbid, p265), "Freedom thrives in cultural diversity,
in local and regional differentiation, in associative pluralism, and above all in the
diversification of power."
Daniel Bell pronounced an epitaph on ideological alienation in his book The End of
Ideology.[65] Mostly focused upon The German Ideology of Marx and Engels, Bell
stated (1960, p15), "The themes of alienation and exploitation are central to the
radical ethic, and the exploration in the history of these ideas seeks to lay bare the
crucial insights and failures of Marxism (Ibid, p16)... In the last decade, we have
witnessed an exhaustion of the nineteenth-century ideologies, particularly
Marxism...what is left for the critic is the hardness of alienation, the sense of
otherness...not nihilism but a positive role, a detachment, which guards against being
submerged in any cause."
He took refuge in Hegel’s advice to the skeptic, and the optimism of American culture.
It would be thirty years, however, before Marxism ceased to be the uncontested
ideology of the world's second largest power. It remains the ideology of the world's
largest national population.
The mass society ideology he attacked at what he considered its root (Ibid, p27), "Nor
is alienation deracination...a denial of one's roots or country (Ibid, p28)...The fear of
the 'mass' has its roots in the dominant conservative tradition of Western political
thought (Ibid, p38)...The theory of the mass society...an ideology of
-45romantic protest against contemporary life." Bell saw the U.S. as having no
aristocratic institutions and appraised the culture as change-oriented, not romantically
focused on the past, so mass society alienation, conceived by european sociologists
(including Simmel), he concluded did not apply.
"Ideology, which once was a road to action, has come to be a dead end (Ibid, p393),"
Bell stated, and he undergirded his point by summarizing the previous four decades in
the U.S. in terms of ethos. The twenties, he characterized as nihilist and antibourgeois; the thirties, creed-oriented, as leaders fought capitalism, fascism, and
Stalinism, then (Bid, p305) "Tasted power and became corrupt;" the forties, as
existentialist and inadequate for politics because (Ibid, p308), "It drew from alien
experiences" like the death camps; and the fifties, as neo-orthodox or Freudian,
preoccupied with status anxiety but with only "seeming political content" by giving lipservice to the "alienation" of the young Marx.
Bell gave institutional and cultural reasons why ideology and alienation were dead
issues: the welfare state, decentralized power, a mixed economy, economic
development, and political pluralism. These consensus institutions were driven by
beliefs in universal, humanist, and social equality ideals which were parochial or
instrumental values to modernization, not political ones. "At the end of the fifties, a
disconcerting caesura."[66]
As if taking Bell literally, sociological work on alienation became dominated by
technical meanings for alienation, as created for specific research purposes in various
sub-fields of sociology. The middle range of American society was its focus—or the
atomized individual—and socio-political action was in large measure severed from the
actors by its positivist orientation.
Summary of Alienation Uses to Mid-Century
Major historical processes of the 20th Century (specialization, bureaucratization,
massification, and migration) had an impact on the concept of alienation as conceived
by European intellectuals and sociologists. Durkeim, focusing on specialization as
entailing mal-integration, developed the notion of anomie as an estrangement from the
State, a legitimate social system of moral constraints <xii>. Freud gave substance to
the orientation of Feuerbach <-i> about
-46-
religious constraints alienating one from nature. They heighten guilt, resulting in mental
illness <iii> or malaise (unbehegen) in the normal population. This occurs dialectically
within the individual as an alienation of legitimate unconscious drives toward
neurological satisfactions <xiii>.
Weber described the growth of "zweckrational " in Western Civilization <x>, especially
through bureaucracy (which he saw as an iron hand), and through the ethic of aescetic
protestantism. Both forces de-mystify existence. But for the role of charismatic leaders,
to live is to be processed <xiv>. Jose' Ortega y Gasset observed that massification
threatened to undo the remedy for alienation of Roussea <vii>. Due to the rootless
nature of mass man (deracination), his hermetism towards minorities, and an
organization for terror by the majority, the atomized and lonely nature of individuals is
ensured <xv>.
In self-Other terms, sociological thinkers of the early 20th Century detailed the
structures within the self and within Other, which leads to a sense of malaise or
strangeness. A specialized State re-makes the self to manage its own tensions as a
system, processes it through omnipotent bureaus into an ethic consistent with itself,
installs a monitor to repress unconscious but legitimate drives, and turns selves into
rootless atoms which aggregate for the purpose of oppressing minorities.
Like 19th Century thinkers, those of the 20th had wide-ranging influence upon European
and American populations through their printed works, activity in professional
assoctations, and/or training of students. Their ideas passed into the culture of Western
Civilization.
-47-
Analysis of Alienation as a Methodological Concept
An Historical & Cultural Concept
Alienation is the quintissentially historical concept. From medieval use to the mass
society usage of Ortega y Gasset, the term is time-bound; it reflects conditions of the
self-Other relationship of each historical age.
Across time, there is some continuity of meaning within single referents of the term, as
between Wyclif and Niebuhr on alienation from God <i>; between Lydgate and Ortega
y Gasset on alienation from the self <ii>; between the Monk of Evesham and Jung the
alienist of the mentally ill <iii>; between Babington and Marx on alienation from
products of economic endeavor <iv>; between medieval filial affection and Engles'
alienation in property-based marriage <v>; between Addison's vested opinion on
pasturage in the English countryside, and vested opinions of Sierra Club members
against deforestation <vi>; between Rousseau’s alienation from sovereignty and C.W.
Mill’s alienation from political input because of power elites <vii>.
There is even some continuity across time in usage of the alienation ideas created by
19th Century authors: between Hegel and G. H. Mead on method <viii>; between
Feuerbach and Freud on inhibitions of religion to natural traits of humanity <-i>;
between Marx and Lucaks on alienation from production <ix>; between Tonnies and
Stonequist on cultural disorganization <x>; between Kierkegaard and Niebuhr on
theistic expectations <xi>; between Durkheim and Merton on anomic social structure
<xii>; between Freud and modern psychiatry on dialectics with the unconscious <xiii>;
between Weber and Parsons on bureacrat ic ideals <xiv>; and between Ortega y
Gasset and Riesman on rootless mass man <xv>. But the concept is fluid.
-48-
With so many revisions and versions of the concept aver so long a time, one is tempted
to view alienation as merely part of the human condition on the one hand—an
existential or humanist tendency—or to declare each new version of it as unique to a
unilinear stage of history—an evolutionary tendency. Considering alienation writ large,
both are wrong. Weber is clear that bureaucratization and ascetic religious ethics
existed in other cycles of history. In fact, it is difficult to imagine the pyramids at Giza
and the world's largest ceremonial building at Cholula, Mexico being built by anything
but bureaucracies, with rigorous religious devotion. So, alienation in the broad sense
may not be uniquely modern. In one sense certainly, alienation from God, the concept
of alienation is almost timeless.
But in some usages, alienation may be a modern feature, at least for the bulk of a
population. Production for world-wide consumption <ix & x>, mass democracy and
totalitarianism <vii & xv>, and endless division of labor <xii> all appear to have
associated alienations. Likewise, some of the technological and rate of change
alienations of the last half of the 20th Century have close associations with modernity,
though some have been changed by automation and cybernation processes.
As a process formulation, alienation permits use with new referents, tailor made by the
thinkers of an age e.g. Rousseau. This feature makes intellectual history—as Weber
would conduct it—appropriate to its study. Such a study is oriented by usage,
according to Weber, just as this review is so oriented.[67]
In the Middle Ages, alienation from God was a cultural focus, a population consensus,
just as consensus centered around the Nation-State at the turn of the century in the
U.S. Alienation, as a
-49-
process term, adapts to such a switch of referents. But sociological use of the term
dare not obscure the referents as some researchers have done, by making the loss of
psychological attributes the focus of alienation: power, meaning, concept of self, internal
norms, a cooperative attitude, and a desire for human contact.[68] Such an approach
lifts alienation out of history altogether, tends to assume rather than establish the
primacy of a particular social structure to respondents, and ignores much of the role of
values and ideology in human action.
Alienation even permits contradictory usage, as in the contrary usages of Wyclif and
Feuerbach, Tonnies and Durkheim, Rousseau and Ortega y Gasset. Partly, these are
analytic contrasts, but alienation permits diametrical value contrasts as well. Hegel’s
alienation process is positive. Marx’s is not. Freud has a negative view of a collective
conscience while that is Durkheim’s remedy. Durkheim would maximize socialization by
the State while Ortega y Gasset and Riesman see good in social isolation from its
power. Tonnies and Park would defend gemeinschafts against societal disruption, while
Parsons would foster universalist values. In addition, the existentialism of Kierkegaard
views the alienative technique as offering the dread of self-knowledge.
Such contraries suggest that historically up-to-date usages might be adopted while outof-date usages might be deleted, for example, the use of "alienation" to refer to neurosis
and psychosis <iii>. After all, modern cIinical terns for an alienist’s work have virtually
supplanted this archaism. But, should the student of alienation, for example, deny the
use of "social alienation," to a professional like Thomas Szasz who wishes to explore
alienative relations between the
-50-
self and society, simply because it is arcane to the majority? Probably not.[69] Value
dis-unity is a feature of contemporary culture; it must be tolerated—even stressed—by
sociologists of alienation.
Alienation permits use with a singular referent (e.g. Milton's alienation from correct
doctrine), and it permits use as a cultural complex (e.g. Marx's convoluted alienation of
an exploited class). As mentioned before, Marx's concept of false consciousness is
really an alienation corcept, referring to separation from correct doctrine. But as a
sociological concept per se, alienation is multi-dimensioned, and has no singular selfevident meaning.
Alienation is also place-bound. The historical processes of industrialization,
nationalization, secularization, urbanization, assimilation, specialization,
bureaucratization, and massification; all of which engender alienation, are themselves
linked to concrete places and concrete populations. Alienation became a focal concern
of 19th Century Germans precisely because so many of these processes were in
evidence in Germany at the same time. The sociological use of "alienation," particularly
in Second World countries, must be cognizant of different stages and combinations of
these processes in an empirical situation. Perhaps, this concern for concreteness is
why Znaniecki advises cultural sociologists to beware of taxonomies, preferring instead
the grounded typology as a tool.[70]
Alienation is specific to national culture and personality. Linguistic conventions of
English, German, and Scandinavians, as well as the national personalities of the
populations which speak them—at war with one another when the terms were
generated—affects usages of alienation terms. Linguistic methods for forming thoughts
in these
-51-
languages is a case in point, and is evident in the term alienation itself.
In English, the concept of making strange is linked to a noun suffix, to make the
concept, and the rest of the sentence gives its context and referent e.g. alienation of the
self. In German's selbstentfremdung, selbst is self, ent is withdrawn from, fremd is
alien, and ung is an ending for abstract nouns. In concert with Whorf’s hypothesis
(1956), we must consider these isolative versus agglutinating cultural influences as well
as national cultures when interpreting usage. Self and society may be conceived as
twin-born, a balance of interests, or a natural antipathy with one or the other in
legitimate control. Such cultural differences are not insignificant regarding alienation.
Individual differences apply to the uses of alienation. The Danish social isolate
Kierkegaard uses the concept alienation differently from a contemporary ex-patriot
factory manager in England, the revolutionary Engles; just as the German academic
Hegel uses it differently from the Romanian dramatist Ionesco, or the Hungarian
revisionist Lukacs whom he influenced. Neither contemporariness nor historical link
ensures uniformity.
Finally, alienation is a broad culture term; it is not confined by usage to any special
aspect of either self or Other. This review has traced the term into modern theology,
psychoanalysis, sociology, social psychology, drama, political economy, ethics, and
psychiatry from its roots. In the succeeding four decades, it will be traced through
popular culture as well. This broadness is also paralleled by Mid-20th Century usage.
Eric and Mary Josephson listed over a score of social categories considered alienated
in the U.S.[71] They
-52-
concluded, "Obviously, we are dealing with a word that lends itself to many different
meanings." However, alienation also presents itself as more than a minority
phenomenon. Using a common measure, a Harris poll reported a doubling in the
alienated in the decade after 1966, to over 60%, the majority.[72] It is prudent, then, to
use a broad conceptualization of culture when studying alienation.
Two definitions—or orientations—are most appropriate, those by Pitirim Sorokin and
Florian Znaniecki, U.S. immigrant sociologists who retained all of culture as the subject
matter of sociology. Both approaches encompass the phenomena described here.
Sorokin uses the term "superorganic" for the subject matter of sociology, "Science and
philosophy, religion and ethics, the fine arts, technological inventions, and social
institutions."[73] Znaniecki's list for culture displays the same orientation, "The
concept... includes religion, language, literature, art, customs, mores, laws, social
organization, technical production, economic exchange, and also philosophy and
science."[74]
To empirically study such diverse fields requires a method of cultural study to isolate
unique features of alienation from those attempted, then provide a basis for studying
and typifying the concrete forms of alienation relevant for the youth involved in this
study. The first methodological inference for exploring alienation, then, is that it must be
studied with methods of historical and cultural sociology, disciplines which take its
unique character into account. Methodologies of Max Weber, Florian Znaniecki, and
Pitirim Sorokin are ones chosen pursuant to this task.
General Orientations
Alienation is not a nomothetic variable for use in natural laws,
-53-
to use the terms of an old debate of historical sociology.[75] It is ideographic, that is, its
study is the study of the particular in the context of larger wholes, not the assembling of
time-free, space-free, culture-free, and personality-free units into wholes of causative
efficacy. Sorokin’s general sociology studies the entire "socio-cultural universe," in a
manner notably different from the natural sciences, but in a "generalizing" way. [76]
Weber’s historical sociology studies social action by the method of "verstehende."
Znaniecki’s cultural sociology studies culture in terms of "analytic induction."[77]
Znaniecki's analytic induction is the process of isolating "typical cases" based upon
"essential characteristics."[79] As applied to the usage of "alienation" in Western
Civilization, fifteen types or classifications of alienation have been identified <i-xv>.
These types have not been generated by the methods of social behaviorism, which
Znaniecki called "enumerative induction." The types have been identified by focusing
upon meaningful differences rather than frequency counts. According to Znaniecki, "It
may be said that analytic induction ends where enumerative induction begins; and if
well conducted, leaves no real and soluble problems for the latter."[79]
A guideline of Sorokin's was used in the identification of these types. His
"fundamentum divisionus" excludes residual categories, is complete, not vague or
artificial , and applies the same criteria to each type.[80] According to these guidelines
he faults such classification schemes as those of Malinowski and Cooley.
The fifteen types of alienation l have delineated fall short on some of Sorokin’s criteria.
First, I excluded some authors from
-54-
consideration altogether, concentrating on much-cited authors. Those I could not
exclude, to keep the typology manageable, like Nietzsche, Simmel, and Feuerbach, I
discussed but did not assign a type, linking them to more modern figures with similar
concepts. Thus, Nietzsche's nihilism is treated in a history of atheistic existentialism up
to Sartre, and paralleled with Kierkegaard’s stress on despair, which I consider at the
root of nihilism. Simmel is treated as seminal to the urban sociology of the Chicago
School which later developed alienative dimensions in social psychology, and
Feuerbach’s naturalism is tied to Freud's stress on natural needs of the unconscious.
To minimize vagueness or artificiality I focused each author's concept on a fundamental
referent around which additional ideas were clustered, but this left at least one category
which night be termed residual. Daniel Bell refers to this centering on a key phrase or
word as an "axial principle" around which the idea turns.[81] While Bell does not cite
him, this is quite similar to Znaniecki's use of the term "axionormative." By this term he
means (1963, p298) surrounding a central concept with a body of norms and standards
for its application in social action.[82]
By the criteria of Sorokin, Bell, or Znaniecki. the type <vi> has a vaguely defined axis.
This usage is retained for several reasons, though it is an early usage. First, it is related
to Western man's cultural predisposition to a rightness of doctrinal opinion; it is culturally
salient. The usage has been prominent in journalistic circles with the clear expectation
that a "loose" usage is permitted, even required in the secular homiletics of the press.
Finally, the literal explosion of popular referents for "alienation" should permit at least
the dignity of debate within a type which allows for adding
-55-
Eastern concepts or "new" gospels.
Clearly, consideration was given to limiting and centering the study of alienation in the
most elaborate formulations, in the author's works themselves, rather than in social
movements. This avoids appending all sorts of modifiers to each term to account for
variants of the concepts treated by revisionists of all kinds. Instead, I intended to provide
what Weber would call the "customary" usage for alienation—as opposed to fashionable
usage <i-vii>, link an author's concerns with it and to any "modern" uses <viii-xv>, and
detail the axionormative usage the author gave it. This study will allow more attention to
social movements, of course, over the last forty years.
With regard to completeness, I have already corimented on the need for a broad net,
while attempting to tighten it where the concept developed into a cliche for malaise,
nervous tension, for performing more than one life role at a time, or for disenchantments
of various kinds, with no referent or vague referents. These uses of alienation I have
characterized as largely ahistorical and difficult to study therefore, by the methods
applied here. They also tend to ignore the frequency of malaise, tension,
disenchantment, and role confIicts in the kinship systems of prehistoric societies.
One area of alienation not detailed from the 19th Century is that connected with U.S.
consumerism, originally linked by Thorstein Veblen with a cultural trait of the U.S.
"leisure class," a trait exploited by efficiency-minded managers as working classes
altered their value orientation in favor of leisure.
Consumer alienation at first appears as a unique axionormative type, and one much in
evidence mid-century. On close examination,
-56however, Weber's concept of non-emotional management, (rational-legal), Merton’s
bureaucratic personality idea, and later literature treating scientific technique as
alienative (means made into ends) accounts for much, if not most, of such a type. The
consumer is a concerted target of technique, but not uniquely so. It is also useful to
allow application of the fifteen types to Western Civilization as a whole, up to midcentury, leaving special U.S. traditions for idependent discussion. The central ideas of
alienation generated here by analytic induction are scattered through the text and Iisted
below as a gloss for the concepts discussed:
<i>
separation from God,
<-i> by religion (selbstentfremdung)
<ii> separation from self &
<iii> separation from mind
<iv> separation from property &
<v> or affection
<vi> separation from correct doctrine
<vii> separation from sovereignty
<-vii> atomizing tyranny of the majority
<viii> alienation as a method of thought (entausserung)
<-viii> futility of a grand synthesis (haabloshed)
<ix> alienation of the worker from production (entfremdung)
<x>
alienation via cultural disorganization
(lack of verstandnis)
<-x> social isolation from civilization
<xi> alienation of existential despair (sygdom)
<xii> alienation from the social system (anomie)
<xiii> alienation of the unconscious (a) (unbehagen)
alienation of the collective unconscious (b)
<xiv> alienation as processing by bureaucracy and an ethic (zweckrational)
<xv> alienation of the rootless mass (de 'payse')
-57-
This typology provides a means of locating dimensions of alienation in history, with a
corpus of works from which to draw. Since many of these ideas have passed into the
common culture of Western Civilization, the typology may also be useful in an
axionormative fishion; that is, it may provide for use in social action regarding alienation.
Furthermore, it provides a fund of cultural material which may inform or direct social
action of informants in alienation studies. This latter use of the typology, to assist in
identifying cultural phrases which embody alienation attitudes is the primary use to
which it is put here.
Alienation as a Social Action Concept
George Ritzer, in Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm, drew out from his study
of sociological research the generalization that three levels of work are engaged in:
those at the micro level, those at the meso level , and those at the macro level.[83] He
suggested each level is pursued with methodologies to study persons as actors and
objects. Neil Smelser, in his Handbook of Sociology, incorporated Ritzer's breakdown
in his review of sociological theory since Faris' handbook in 1964.[84] He suggests
Parsons was wrong, mid-century, in suggesting sociology had been differentiated from
philosophy and social problem and moral concerns. The three-way breakdown of Ritzer
is useful in illustrating social theory's continued differentiation along these lines. In
short, both social research and social theory may be analyzed by Ritzer’s breakdown,
acknowledging the diversity of paradigms within sociology.
This study is conducted with a focus on the self-Other relationship, and thus maximizes
use of models at the micro and macro
-58-
levels. To the degree it focuses on subjective meanIngs of actors—the primary focus
thus far—it is micro subjective sociology. Since the typology of alienation developed
has cultural significance at the level of Western Civilization over several centuries,
however, the typology is macrosociology. The historical and cultural methodologies of
Weber and Znaniecki were designed to operate at both the macro and micro levels,
levels which inform one another in historical actions of human beings. They are
commonly referred to as social action theories.
The study of alienation, as an historical study, is best suited to such a methodological
orientation to macro and micro levels simultaneously, and to the nominalist
terminologies of these theories. This is also consistent with the suggestion of C.W. Mills
for sociological work in the last half of the 20th Century, "The sociologist's ideal task
during the next decades is to unite the larger problems and theoretical work of the 19th
century, especially that of the Germans. with the research techniques predominant in
the 20th century, especially that of the Americans.[85]
As a clear example for applying such terminology, take the value-reversal problem
already discussed in the alienation Iiterature. Alienation authors have non-consensual
values about alienation as a process; some have positive views, some do not. They
see different social and cultural entities as conducive to alienation, such as
Feuerbach and Jung on religion, or they fundamentally disagree on the worth of
participation in this or that social or cultural endeavor.[86]
In Weber’s social action terminology, this is the issue of legitimacy. and it is best
investigated in terms of types of authority
-59-
and the power they represent. Thus, Jung sees legitimacy in the God-Image of the
collective unconscious and seeks to expand its authority (charismatic?) in the power
systerms of psychoanalytic therapies. Feuerbach, on the other hand, sees religious
belief as an impediment to naturalistic science, his choice for legitimacy in human
institutions. Tonnies sees legitimacy in traditional gemeinschaft conventions of
sociation, and so establishes its authority cognitively, even as it is disintegrating, while
Durkheim sees legitimacy in the State and secondary associations, and employs
"rational-legal" authority of his offices to promote a new moral authority which will
stabilize the country. It is this feature of social action theory—its linkage of macro and
micro levels—which is so valuable to the study ol alienation.
This fact is recognized by Peter Berger and Hansfried Kellner, two prominant
humanistic sociologists.[87] Noting that relevance and meaning are two focal concerns
in the data of interpretive sociology, they discuss the legitimacy and authority problems
of ideology in relation to technocratic societies. To them, the problem of the increase of
"anomie" along with the increase of material wealth constitutes the "crisis of the modern
world." Sociologists are involved in this crisis in an integral way, as their professional
actions affect professional culture and societies to which it is applied. This is a renewed
perception of what Florian Znaniecki said about the scientist-humanist as "A creative
participant in the historical evolution of culture.[88] He not only discovers fact and
problems, but he provides "A synthetic and dynamic view of knowledge" which others
use in their social action.
-60-
Alienation as a Mass Cultural and Generational Concept
Mid-century in the United States, two technologies promoted the massification of culture
in a way never before possible: paperback books, and television. Without going into
detail on this communications revolution, it is evident that dissemination of ideas of
social science to a vastly broader audience became possible through these mediums.
To the degree this was done, within a population over half of which had some college
education, it is possible to speak of rudiments of social science ideas as part of mass
culture.
Was the idea of alienation, in its multiple forms, an idea of mass culture? The notion is
so nearly self-evident it barely requires documentation. One of the first comprehensive
paperbacks on alienation was Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society, a 600 page
book selling at the time it was printed for 95 cents.[89] It contained references to almost
all of the authors contained in this review of of alienation. Another significant paperback
on alienation was released by Orrin Klapp, Collective Search for Identity.[96]
Together, they merely codified a much deeper exploration of alienation literature which
was already out in popular form, or was rapidly re-issued in paperback. Much of this
popularization of "alienation" was through release of books written at the micro level, the
self level, especially from the perspective of students of the psyche: Erich Fromm,
Bruno Bettleheim, Carl Rogers, Karl Jaspers, Eric Erikson, and Clark Moustakas.
A second type of alienation literature released in paperback was books employing the
"mass society" theme, a concept which was widely apprehended as signifying only
secondary sociation now exists, not primary: David Riesman, C.W. Mills, William H.
Whyte, Eric Hoffer, and
-61-
Hannah Arendt. New socIologists and anthropologists of the Chicago School released
works to the public of the contrary kind, establishing the situated nature of contemporary
face-to-face interaction or collective behavior. Much of this was undoubtedly in
vindication of G.H. Mead’s concept of the self, "The structure, then on which the self is
built is this response which is common to all, for one has to be a member of a
community to be a self..."[91] Television commentators made frequent use of the term
"alienation" mid-century, and feature stories on "alienated" groups increased in the
1960's. Sociological debate was carried out, with the '"general" public as its public.
In the empirical study of the last part of the 20th Century, then, the alienation literature
may be presented as largely public information, not just the possession of professionals
at professional meetings or publishing in professional journals. Instead of schools of
thought and debates among social behaviorists, structuralists, and revisionist Marxists,
it is meaningful to analyse alienation as an ideologIcal concept of mass culture. A
methodological concept consistent with this joins demographic analysis of cohorts with
historical sociology. Developed by Jose' Ortega y Gasset, that concept is the
generation.
Generation methodology was first proposed by Ortega y Gasset in The Revolt of the
Masses to deal with the revolution of the masses he was describing (p93), "A revolution
does not last more than fifteen years, the period which coincides with flourishing of a
generation. A generation lasts about thirty years.. during approximately one half, the
new generation carries out the propaganda of its ideals, preferences and tastes, which
finally arrive at power and are dominant in the second half of its course."
-62-
In The Modsrn Theme, he recapitulated his lecture notes of the 1920's on generation
methodology, touting it as an historical concept (p15), "The generation is a dynamic
compromise between mass and individual, and is the most important conception in
history.[92] Defining a generation's "world" as the ideals, preferences, and tastes
already mentioned—a concept strongly suggestive of Alfred Schutz' later concept "the
taken-for-granted world"—he extended his analysis to three 15 year cycles, by adding a
formative one in which the new generation is socialized to the ideology of its
parents.[93]
In Man And Crisis, Ortega y Gasset discussed how a new generation. "Carries the
previous generation within itself," [94] yet, with its (Ibid, p43) "coavals in the circle of
modern living together," shares an "essential destiny" with its peers. It confronts two
elder generatIons beyond it, the one developing a "world," and the one whose world
dominates. Thus, (lbid, p79), "Each generation willingly or not, effects.. a change in the
general tonality of the world."
Clearly, this is a methodological concept which is useful to the study of alienatIon, for,
not only does it fit an age-graded society—which the United States became midcentury—but it focuses upon cultural inversions of basic theoretical ideas (i.e. the revaluations of alienation through time), while carrying an implicit notion of alienation from
a previous generation's culture. This notion is not so useful with a traditional society,
but it furthers the interpretation of reality in societies with rapid social change. Ortega y
Gasset suggests a succession of legitimate order every generation, with the succession
of a different generation to power.
In Weberian terms, the task of each new generation is to
-63-
establish the legitlmacy of the new order so that when it is in power it dominates with
authority. In times of crisis, this succession of cultures becomes more complicated,
and that very comptication affects the new generation (Ibid, p101), "Culture intervenes
between the real world and his real person (Ibid, p110-111)...He has received so many
thoughts.. Hence the restlessness, the deep otherness, which so many modern Iives
carry in their secret selves." The implicit alienation between generations, In his
analysis, becomes the occasion for a deep self-alienation. Notice, however, that this
can happen in any crisis period of history. The crisis, and attendant self-alienation of
the mid-20th Century need not be historically unique in this analysis.
This study proceeds by identifying two coeval age-graded populations which succeed
each other. A twenty year period is selected rather than fifteen, primarily to allow for
use of descriptive population parameters on cohorts separated by two U.S. censuses.
Common features of both "worlds" are examined in terms of mass culture and
contemporary sociological ideas. Also, relevant generation case studies are reviewed,
as iterns from an alienation inventory are discussed. Both age cohorts describe
themselves on the same inventory of alienation, twenty years apart, but surveyed at the
same chronological age. Age-comparable aggregates—in terms of mean age—are a
beginning point for the analysis. Patterns of alienation are discussed in terms of mass
trends and minority variabiIity.
Method of placing these generations in time is done in a slightly different fashion than
that used by Ortega y Gasset. Instead of dating the stages of life of a seminal thinker,
as with intellectual history, this study fixes upon 1969-197 as a pivotal year in social
movements in the U.S. based upon the core concept of alienation. The
-64-
ten year period previous to it is taken as the primary enculturation period of the
generation surveyed in 1969-1970, and the 1989-90 survey is chosen for being twenty
years later. Actually, the twenty year interval is pragmatically very close to Ortega y
Gasset’s interval, accounting for greater longevity and extended generational confiict for
the over-sized baby boom generation.
1969-1970 is not only pivotal to generational social movements—a point taken up later.
It is also the mid-point between earlier and later works of most alienation commentators
mid-century, a fact which is evident through perusal of the bibliography of Section Ill.
Users of "alienation" as an analytic concept tended to issue works in expectation of
social action prior to 1969-1970, and in reformational retrospect after 1969-1970.
-65Literature Review Notes
1 Oxford English Dictionary "Alienation."
2 Feuerlicht (1978,Ch 7) contests an Old French origin and minimizes the significance of English
usages, especially in religious contexts.
3 The Eph 4:18 and Col 1:21 translations are clearer support for alienation as separation from God.
4 The German term "verfremden" carries a similar meaning.
5 Etzioni, Amitai in The Nation, 246: p818-822.
6 A hundred years later, George Simmel built upon this perception in social terms.
7 For example, C.W. Mills' The Power Elite. This is the sense of alienation which communicates
political powerlessness.
8 Reinhard Bendix commented on this cultural theme's relation to ideology in the process of
German industrialization [1967].
9 Bally, Mueller, Weisgerger, and Jesperson—Mueller snakes the agglutinative argument made
here. Also, see Benjamin Whorf on linguistic relativity in Language Thought, and Reality: Selected
Writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf (ed) Carroll, J.B., Cambridge, Technology Press, 1956), & Ernst
Cassirer (An Essay on Man, Yale, 1944, p143), on language and world view as "twin brothers."
10 Abstracted from Eyck, Erich Bismark and the German Empire N.Y., Norton, 1958.
11 Lichtheim (IESS, p264) says this usage results from Luther's translation of "hat sich selbst
geaussert" from the Pauline Epistles, meaning "has itself alienated."
12 The Phenomenology of Mind, p458.
13 See Faris, Robert Chicago Sociology, U of Chicago, 1970.
14 Sociology has used "socialization," though the anthropologist's "enculturation" more accurately
reflects Hegel.
15 Toynbee's A Study of History utilized a similar idea, suggesting culture contact (challenge)
promoted cultural advancement (response).
16 This projection later became a fundamental attitude behind Durkheim's sociology of religion.
17 Coser, Lewis Masters of Sociological Thought, 1971. p73.
I8 Turgenev, Ivan Fathers and Sons, 1961.
19 Referred to as the Death of God.
-6620 Engles, Friedrich "On the Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State" in Selected
Works," Vol II, Moscow, For. Lang. Pub., 1962.
21 Heberle, Rudolph ASR, II, 1, 1937.
22 In Nisbet’s The Sociological Tradition which has an important essay on alienation, Nisbet
contrasts the English terms community and society with reference to social values they would
preserve: tradition through concern with alienation, and positivism through concern with progress.
23 The Greek term "ethos" he associates with verstandnis, as well as the German term for habit,
"gewohnheit."
24 Davis, Kingsley "The Origin and Growth of Urbanization in the World," AJS 60, March, 1955.
25 Robert Redfield was Park's son-in-law and was the author of "The Folk Society," AJS 52, Jan,
1947.
26 See Hinkel , Roscoe and Gisela The Development of Modern Sociology, N.Y., Random House,
1954.
27 This negative condition was underscored by stressing "humanization" as a subset of
socialization, in the first case, and the need for more differential association with non-delinquents on
the other.
26 Wrong, Dennis in ASR, April, 1961.
29 In AJS 29, Nov. 1932.
30 Culture, Language and Personality, Ed. David Mandelbaum, L.A., U of C, 1949, p82-84.
31 Tonnies also influenced American sociology through the Harvard school of Sorokin, Parsons,
and Merton, culminating in Loomis and Mckinny's 1957 edition of Tonnies' book, (Michigan State,
East Lansing) with their short empirical study contrasting six polar traits of human action. Since this
influence was mediated by Max Weber it will be discussed with his formulation of types of social
action.
32 Klerkegaard's "Danish Dialectics."
33 Grene, 1948, p40.
34 Weeks, John Population, Belmont, California, Wadsworth, 1978, p37.
35 Florian Znaniecki immigrated to the U.S. & the U of Chicago, teaching with W.I. Thomas.
Pitirim Sorokin emigrated from the U.S.S.R.
36 Eliot, T.S. "The Waste Land."
-6737 Loomis, 1964, p277 (see Tonnies in bibliography).
38 Loomis, Ibid. p278.
39 This is probably related to Durkheim's assessment of the difficulties of a primitive transferring
into a specialized civilization as greater than those posed for him entering a completely different
mechanistic society. Organic society is rationally organized towards ends using specific means,
something the primitive finds difficult to understand. Such detailed social structures can disorganize
personalities, especially during high rates of social change. A similar explanation was used by
Toffler in the 1960's for undergirding his concept of "future shock," a variant of alienation.
40 In ASR 3, Oct, 1938.
41 Hoult, Thomas Ford Dictionary of Modern Sociology, Littlefield, 1972.
42 In "The Dualism of Human Nature," [1914].
43 E.G. The Structure of Social Action and The Social System.
44 In "Sexuality in the Aetoiogy of a Neurosis."
45 E.G. Psychopathology of Everyday_Life, 1901.
46 In Identity, Youth, And Crisis, Norton, 1968.
47 In a discussion of six major schools of American Sociology by this author (see bibliography), the
Chicago school includes both the Human Ecology and Situational schools. The Harvard school is
the Structural school. Two other modern schools are: the Neo-Positivist and Neo-Marxist schools.
The sixth school, Humanistic Sociology, is represented by Sorokin and Znaniecki at Harvard and
Chicago, respectively.
48 Weber, 1968, VI, p24.
49 In Einfuhrung in die Soziologie, Stuttgart, 1931, p6.
50 Social Thought from Lore to Science, N.Y., Dover, 1961, p790.
51 Eldrldge, Max Weber: The Interpretation of Social Reality, N.Y., Scribners, 1971, p57.
52 See Weber in bibliography.
53 Weber, 1952, p181.
54 In Contemporary Sociological Theories, N.Y., Harper, [1928], 1964, p674-683.
55 Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, p103.
-6856 See Tonnies in bibliography, p12
57 Democracy in America.
58 E.G. Hannah Arendt's The Origins of Totalitarianism, N.Y., Meridian, (1951) 1958.
59 In Social Theorv and Social Structure and The End of Ideology, respectively.
66 Weber used that term for ritualist bureaucrats.
61 Man and Crisis, N.Y., Norton, 1958, p9-90.
62 Riesman, David et al The Lonely Crowd, New Haven, Yale, isse.
63 William H. Whyte Jr. The Organization Man, N.Y., Doubleday, 1956.
64 In "AlienatIon and Legitimacy," ANZJS, 2 (1), 938-44.
65 The End of Ideology, Free Press, 1960.
66 1976, p402.
67 1947, p121.
68 E.G. Srole [1956], Seeman [1959], Nettler [1959], and Dean [1961].
69 The Myth of Mental Illness, Holber-Harper, 1961.
70 1952, p179.
71 1962, p13.
72 N.Y. Post, Dec. 6, 1973 & Mar 25, 1976, p39.
73 1969, p3.
74 1952, p9.
75 See Higham, John History:The Development of Historical Studies in the United States, PrenticeHall, 1965, p347 for the ideographic consensus of historians. See sociologists discussed here on
ideographic data in sociology.
76 1968, p18.
77 Alienation is fundamentally a different methodological concept from what Durkheim made of
"anomie" a variable intended for measurement, diagnosis of social "disease," attribution of structural
cause, and prescription of systemic remedy. Ideally, Durkheim wished to vary suicide rates by
varying integration of a Nation-State, with the individuals assumed to display constant, knowable
traits. Durkheim's anomie can be studied as an ideographic concept alongside others, noting that it
was so popular mid-century, for example,
-69that it was used by Riesman to discourage the very participation the social system demanded.
Perhaps, it was just a word he thought people would find familiar. But anomie is but one variant of
the self-Other relationship.
AlIenation study includes far fewer assumptions about a uniform human nature, uniformity in the
efficacy of normative constraints, uniformity in salience of social systems to individuals, and
assumptions about the random and negligible affects of time, space culture, and personality
"variables." In short, Durkheim's rules of sociological method for studying anomie externally are
not appropriate to the study of the ideographic concept of alienation, which is far more problematic.
Alasdalr MacIntyre, in Against the Self-Image of the Age, N.Y., Schocken, 1971 details the contrast
between a science devoted to explanation and one devoted to prediction in his contrast of
Durkheim's method with that of Peter Winch, in his chapter "The Idea of a Social Science."
78 The Method of Sociology, Octagon, 1968.
79 1968, p250.
80 1968, p161.
91 In his The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, N.Y., Basic Books, [1973), 1976.
92 Weber defines social action as that part of human behavior (both overt and internal to the
individual) to which the individual attaches subjective meaning and which takes into account the
behavior or others.
93 Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm, Boston, Allyn & Bacon, 1981.
84 Handbook of Sociology, London, Sage, 1988.
85 "Two Styles of Research in Current Social Studies" in Philosophy of Science, Vol 20, 1953,
p265-75.
96 E.G. Tonnies on gemeinschaft and Durkheim on a national social system.
87 In their Sociology Reinterpreted, Garden City N.Y., Anchor, 1981.
88 The Social Role of the Man of Knowledge, Chapter 4.
89 Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society, N.Y., Dell, 1962.
90 Collective Search for Identity, N.Y., Holt, Reinhart & Winston, 1969.
91 1934, p152-164.
-7092 The Modern Theme, N.Y., Harper, 196l.
93 In The Phenomenology of the Social World, Northwestern Press, 1967.
94 Man and Crisis N.Y., Norton, 1958, p53.
-71Literature Review Bibliography
Arendt, Hannah The Origins of Totalitarianism, N.Y., Meridian, (1951) 1958.
Barnes, Harry, Elmer, and Becker, Howard Social Thought from Lore to Science, N.Y,, Dover, 1961
Bell, Daniel The End of Ideology, Glencoe, Illinois, Free Press, 1959, and "The 'Rediscovery' of
Alienation" ASR 56, November, 1959 and The Comning of Post-Industrial Society, N.Y., Basic
Books, (1973), 1976.
Bendix, Reinhard "Preconditions of development: A Comparison of Japan and Germany" in
Aspects of Social Change in Modern Japan, ed. Dore, R.P., N.J., Princeton Univ. Press, 1967.
Cassirer, Ernst An Essay on Man, Yale, 1944.
Coser, Lewis Masters of Sociological Thought, N.Y., Harcourt, Brace and World, 1971.
Davis, Kingsley "The Origin and Growth of Urbanization in the World," AJS 60, March, 1955.
Dean, Dwight G. "Alienation: Its Meaning and Measurement," ASR 26 (5). p753-758, 1961.
Dowdy, Edwin H.R. "Alienation and Legitimacy," ANZJS, 2 (1), 1966, p38-44.
Durkheim, Emile The Division of Labor, Free Press, 1960, Suicide, Free Press, 1951, and "The
Dualism of Human Nature," in Emile Durkheim On Morality and Society ed. by Robert Bellah, U of
Chicago, 1973.
Eldridge Max Weber: The lnterpretation of Social Reality, N.Y., Scribners, 1971.
Eliot, T.S. "The Waste Land" in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, N.Y.. Norton, p2172 &
p2195.
Engles, Friedrich and the State, "On the Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State," in
Selected Works , Vol II, Moscow, For. Lang. Pub.,1962.
Erikson, Erik Identity, Youth, and Crisis, N.Y., Norton, 1968.
Etzionl, Amitai "Spare the Old, Save the Young" in The Nation, 246: Je 11, 1988, p818-822.
Eyck, Erich Bismark and the German Empire, N.Y., Norton, 1958.
Faris, Robert Chicago Sociology, U of Chicago, 1970.
-72Feuerbach, Ludwig The Essence of Christianity (Forward by Niebuhr) N.Y., Harper, 1957.
Feuerlicht, Ignace Alienation" from the past to the future, Greenwood Press, 1978.
Freud, Sigmund Civilization and its Discontents, Garden City Doubleday, 1958, and "Sexuality in
the Aetiology of a Neurosis," and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, 1901.
Grene, Marjorie Introduction to Existentialism, U of Chicago, 1948.
Harris Poll N.Y. Post, Dec. 6, 1973 & Mar 25, 1976, p39.
Heberle, Rudolph ASR, II, 1, 1937.
Hegel,Georg Wilhelm Friedrich The Phemenology of Mind (1807) trans. J.S. Baille, N.Y.,
Macmillan, Revised ed., 1931 and Hegel's Science of Logic (1812-1816) London, Allen & Unwin,
1951.
Heidegger, Martin Nietzsche San Francisco, Harper & Row, 1982.
Heiss, Robert Hegel, Kierkegaard, Marx, Dell, 1975.
Higham, John History: The Development of Historical Studies in the U.S., Prentice-Hall, 1965.
Hinkel , Roscoe and Gisela The Development of Modern Sociology, N.Y., Random House, 1954.
Hoijer, Harry Language in Culture, UofC, 1958.
Homans, George C. English Villagers of the Thirteenth Century, Harper, 1968.
Hoult, Thomas. F. Dictionary of Modern Sociology, Totowa, N.J., Littlefield, 1972.
N.Y.,
Josephson, Eric and Mary (eds.) Man Alone: Alienation in Modern Society, New York, Dell, 1962.
Jung, C.G. "Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious" in The Basic Writings of C.G. Jung ed. by
Laszlow, Violet Staub. N.Y., Modern Library, 1959.
Kierkegaard, Soren Fear and Trembling (1843) and The Sickness Unto Death (1849), Princeton
Univ. Press, 1973.
Klapp, Orrin E. Collective Search for Identity, New York, Holt, Reinhart Winston, 1969.
Lichtheim, George International Encycopedia of the Social Sciences, ed. David Sills, Vol 1, N.Y.
MacMillan, 1968, p264-268 & 1979.
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Longman, Phillip Born to Pay: The New Politics of Aging in America, Houghton Mifflin, 1987.
Lystad, Mary Social Aspects of Alienation, NIMH, supt of Documents, 1969, 74-604666.
Maclntyre, Alasdair Against the Self-Images of the Age, N.Y,, Schocken, 1971.
Marx, Karl Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 in Early Writings New York, Random
House, 1975.
Mead, G.H. Mind, Self, and Societv UofChIcago Press, 1934.
Merton, Robert Social Theory and Social Structure, New York, Free Press, 1968, and "Social
Structure and Anomie," ASR 3, Oct 1938, p672-682.
Moustakas, Clark E. Loneliness Prentice-Hall, 1961.
Mills, C. Wright The Power Elite, Oxford Univ. Press, 1956, and "Two Styles of Research in Current
Social Studies" in Philosophy of Science, Vol. 20 Williams & Wilkins, 1953.
Nettler, Gwynn "Antisocial Sentiment and Criminality," ASR 24 (2), p022-208, 1959.
Niebuhr, H.R. The Responsible Self: An essay in Christian moral philosophy, Harper and Row.
1S63, and Christ and Culture, Harper and Row, 1951, & Reinhold Niebuhr Beyond Tragedy, 1937.
& Richard Niebuhr Experiential Religion Harper and Row, 1972.
Nisbet, Robert Community and Power, N.Y., Oxford Press, 1962 and The Sociological Tradition,
N.Y., Basic Books, 1966.
Ortega y Gasset Jose' Man and Crisis, N.Y., Norton, 1958, p89-90, The Modern Theme, N.Y.,
Harper & Row, 1961 & The Revolt of the Masses, Norton, (1932), 1960.
Oxford Eng1ish Dictionary (The), 2nd Ed., J.A. Simpson & E.S.C. Weiner, Clarendon, Oxford, 1989,
p315-316.
Orynski, Wanda "Preface" to Kurt Leidecker's Hegel, Philo Library. 1960.
Park, Robert Ezra On Social Control and Collective Behavior, U of Chicago, 1967.
Parsons, Talcott Max Weber: The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, Toronto Free
Press, 1964.
Redfield, Robert "The Folk Society," AJS 52, Jan, 1947.
-74Reinert, Otto Drama, Boston, Little, Brown, 1961.
Riesman, David et al The Lonely Crowd, New Haven, Yale, 1950.
Ritzer, George Toward an Integrated Sociological Paradigm, Boston, Allyn & Bacon, 1981.
Russell, Bruce "Toward a Teaching Typology of Sociology for the Professions, with Attention to
Health Care at 7 July 1979 SAANZ Conference, Canberra, Australia.
Rousseau, Jean Jacques Social Contract (1762), 1947.
Sapir, Edward Culture, Language, and Personality, Ed. David Mandelbaum, L.A., U of Ca, 1949.
Schutz, Alfred in Phenomenology of the Social World, Northwestern, (1932), 1967.
Seeman, Melvin "On the Meaning of Alienation,” ASR 24, (6), p789-791, 1959.
Simmel, Georg The Sociology of Georg Simmel ed. Wolff, Kurt H., New York, Free Press, 1950.
Sorokin, Pitrim Contemporary Social Theories, N.Y., Harper, 1964, & Society Culture and
Personality Their Structure and Dynamics, New York, Cooper Square, 1969.
Srole, Leo "Social Integration and Certain Corollaries: An Exploratory Study," ASR 21 (6), p709716, 1956.
Stonequist. Everett V. The Marginal Man, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937.
Srasz, Thomas The Myth of Mental Illness, Holber-Harper, 1961.
Tocqueville, Alexis Democracy in America, N.Y., 1966.
Tonnies Ferdinand Community and Society trans Charles Loomis, Michigan State Univ. Press,
(1957), 1964.
Toynbee, Arnold The Study Of History, Oxford, 148.
Wartofsky, Marx W. Feuerbach, Cambridge Univ. Press, 1977.
Weber, Max From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology ed. Gerth & Mills, Oxford Press, 1946,
Economv and Society, VI, ed. Roth & Wittich, N.Y., Bedminster, 1968, & The Protestant Ethic & the
Spirit of Capitalism. N.Y.. Scribners, 1952.
Weeks, John Population, Belmont, California, Wadsworth, 1978.
Whorf, Benjamin Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings o Benjamin Lee Whorf (ed)
Carroll, J.B., Cambridge, Technology Press, 1956.
-75Wolff, Kurt (see Simmel).
Whyte, William H. Jr, The Organization Man, Simon & Schuster, 1956.
Wrong, Dennis "The Oversocialized Conception of Man in Modern Sociology," ASR, April, 1961.
Znaniecki, Florian Cultural Sciences: Their Origin and Development, Urbana, U of Illinois, (1952),
1963 and The Method of Sociology, Octagon, (1934), 1968.
Linguistic Support Bibliography
Russell , Bruce Albert (father)--German and Danish characteristics, infixes, and literal alienation
terminology.
Maris Van Blaaderen, Andreas (Eastern Montana College) Native speaker of Niederlandische,
German, and Friesian, and sociology lecturer on Northern Europe—cultural connotations of
alienation terminology.
-76-
SECTION II
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
AND DESIGN
-77-
Research Methodology and Design
Qualitative Design with Survey Features
Qualitative and quantitative research designs in sociology pursue--at worst-opposing paths. In professional practice, their sequential application is often chosen
as the rationale for allowing some tolerance toward the other camp: 1) Quantitative
researchers allow that qualitative research is acceptable exploratory endeavor prior
to prediction-focused quantitative wok.[1] 2) Qualitative researchers allow that
prediction-focused reductionist research is acceptable prior to explanation-focused
qualitative research. Each reserves to itself the more vital term, validity or reliability.
Qualitative researchers claim greater research validity, quantitative researchers
concern themselves to accomplish reliability.[2 ]
But, as Glaser and Strauss report, new canons of procedure are required to narrow
a wide but unclosed gap between theory and research.[3] This is particularly true
with respect to alienation theory and research. Keniston, after doing one and a half
decades of psychological alienation research stated (1971, p280), "Most important,
the study of student radicalism exposes the ideological bias and the theoretical
inadequacy of many of the concepts by which we have attempted to understand the
relationship of men to politics and society."
Theory must be generated from the data for the theory to be grounded, and Glaser
and Strauss propose general comparative analysis as an aid to that end, utilizing
theoretical sampling. In this study, the data is a product of primary concern with
their two criteria, "theoretical purpose and relevance" (1967, p40), which can result
in
-78-
groundedness. Theoretical sampling is employed from the outset, and comparative
analysis is fundamental to the procedure. This study, is a broadly qualitative design
with survey features.
Research Objective and Multiple Methods
The primary objective of this study is to generate a typology of alienation relevant to
Western U.S. males into the twenty-first century. Multiple methods are utilized, as
with most in-depth empirical studies of culture, but the dominant method is analytic
induction of concepts from attitude patterns of two generations of Western males
separated by twenty years, as expressed on culture-based items of an original
alienation inventory.
Reducing the focus to just youth, just in the U.S. West, and just in a twenty year
period is necessary limitation for an empirical study. Despite such limitations,
however, the empirical focus is considered from a stance of broad concern with
alienation as an historical theme in self-Other relationships. Likewise, this study's
objectives are conceived within a methodology sensitive to Keniston's assertion
against "devitalized reason" (1965, p342), that technocrat values implicit in social
research may be alienating. Researchers may concentrate on issues of instinct,
comparison, and conformity which mold egos toward a "dictatorship of the ego,"
rather than liberate "creative potentialities" advocated by Fromm.
Mid-century concern with science as reductionist (analytic), and therefore alienating,
is compensated for by the inductive half of the phrase "analytic induction." Induction
synthesizes concepts--the opposite of reductionism--and is the primary methodology
of such alienation authors as Karen Horney ("the real self"), Harry Stack Sullivan
"personifications of the good me"), Erik Erikson ("positive
-79-
identities"), and Thomas Harris ("I'm O.K.") The synthetic approach in social science
is the balance with reductionism which directs science away from an alienating ego
strength. towards authentic concern with humanity.
Three points of view are assumed as basic to the analytic induction procedure
followed. This is consistent with Denzin's methodological focus on "triangulation."
Denzin not only saw triangulation as an expression of faith in multiple methods to
generate theory, but he identified it as a general method commencing with
differentiation of key concepts, proceeding with a minimum of tri-partite indices, and
ending with negative case testing in natural settings.[4] He even recommends
alienation research proceed along such lines.[5] Attempt is made in this study to
follow all these suggestions, and they influenced selection of the following specific
methods: intellectual history, case study, survey, content analysis, and participantobservation.[ 6]
Likewise, his focus upon mutability of participants' perspectives (due to maturation,
historical change, attitude change, and researcher interactions) is specifically
allowed for in this research. Attitude change is excluded and researcher interactions
are minimized by surveying coeveal age groups but different participants, while
using the same researcher and standard inventory presentation. Maturation is held
relatively constant by surveying the same age range (with age solicited as a
control).[7] Historical change (variation in the meanings of self and Other) is the
research variable, in all its multi-form diversity, approached through basic units of
culture, not personality.[8] Self--Other is locked in a mutually determining endeavor,
from the point of view of this research.[9]
-80-
Thus, the dimensions of alienation discussed in this study are not two-ended
continuums easily quantified into "variables."[10] Likewise, culture complexes
formulated as aspects of "alienation" incorporate at least three characteristics or
attitudes per cluster.[11] Cross-checking with historical sources is pursued throughout the study, especially as generalizations made require testing against possible
negative cases.[12]
The cluster of concepts generated display internal relations, a condition relevant to
developing social theory at the micro and macro levels simultaneously. As
qualitative research, with inductive theoretical goals, then, this approach in
consistent with and sensitized by social action theories of Weber and Znaniecki,
pursued with minimalist sociological concepts of alienation and generation.[13]
The methodological social concepts of this study have historical character.
Generations are loosely conceived as cohorts separated by twenty years in the
study, sharing a common cultural "world" over a twenty year period.[14] Diachronic
content analysis of the world of two such generations is performed--corresponding to
the 1970 and l980 censuses--as instrumental to developing a typology of
generational alienation, and a survey of major sociological studies of youth society is
done on each generation. Also, the researcher was only slightly over the age of the
baseline generation, as a young adult in 1970. He shared in the world of the
baseline generation, and later exercised "double vision" (Keniston, 1971) with the
succeeding generation. His activities and experiences in the Western U.S.
constitute participant-observation coeval with the first study cohort.[15]
-81-
The first part of this research report established the usage of fifteen types of
alienation in Western Civilization up to mid-century. As historical background, these
types are historically related to alienation in 1969-1970 and 1989-90 as well. They
are inter-related with data from informants and findings of case researchers of
alienation during the intervening years in Section Ill of this research report.
Survey Use in Historical Sociological Research
Glaser and Strauss were trained in the tradition of Paul Lazarsfeld's survey research
at Columbia and the Chicago School tradition of field research respectively, and this
cross-training led to their attempt to join survey research with case study methods.
They assess the situation thusly (1967, p53), "Only a handful of survey researchers
have used their skill to create multiple comparison subgroups for discovering theory.
This would be a very worthwhile endeavor." Survey research can be utilized within a
qualitative research design. Such an endeavor is pursued in this alienation study.
But, in 1967, Glaser and Strauss were treading on a long tradition separating survey
and longitudinal case data. In 1969, Lazarsfeld himself re-asserted the distinct
character of survey data in contrast with case data [16]: "Survey methods...do not
use experimental techniques; they rarely include objective observations: they deal
with aggregates of individuals rather than with integrated communities; they are
restricted to contemporary problems--history can be studied only by use of
documents remaining from earlier periods." The distinction is two-fold. First, survey
data has limitations which do not let it stand alone except on contemporary
problems. Second,
-82-
such data is contemporary and thus by definition, not composed of historical
documents.
Both Lazarsfeld's distinctions can be mitigated. Survey limitations may be
addressed by using multiple methods and theoretical sampling. For example,
objective population data from which an aggregate is drawn can supplement the
attitude data. Further, a theoretical sampling approach can be used to identify
aggregates as unique by choosing "types" from contemporary case studies for
comparison.[17] Finally, survey techniques can be used which maximize
longitudinal cultural contexts for participants. All three approaches are used in this
study.
The "document" issue is less thorny. Znaniecki introduced the "personal document"
to sociology.[18] Besides interviews, he used diaries of events reflected upon soon
after they happened; multiple methods. Consequently, he was able to conduct
cultural sociology within an historical dimension. As reflections based upon past
events, formulated life attitudes of the participants become "documents." This
research, founded upon a diachronic survey, mitigates not only the limitations of
survey methodology, but it also attempts to employ techniques which maximize the
personal nature of information the participants share, so it may be regarded as
longitudinal documents of selfhoods within an historic milieu.[19]
Maximizing Longitudinal Cultural Contexts in the Study
Identification of those cultural clusters of alienation salient to Western male youth at
the baseline of the study, 1969-1970, is primary to comparing with attitudes of 198990. This involves a number of theoretically-directed procedures towards a number
of different kinds of culturally contexted data:
-83-
l) Intellectual History--Section I: determination of "alienation" usage up to midcentury in Western Civilization (cultural & theoretical background for contexting
alienation items);
2) Review of Sociological Case Studies--Section IIl: explication of popularized
alienation case studies of U.S. youth mid-century (culture-specific influences);
3) Survey Research--Section II: selection of a pool of alienation items containing
contemporary alienation themes, and administration to an age-segregated
aggregate in the U.S. West;
4) Content Analysis--Sections I, end of Section II, & Section lII alienation concepts
and related cultural, societal, and social movements;
5) Participant Observation--see Appendix lI for details on relevant, sociocultural
participant-observation.
In the succeeding section, this concern with cultural context is also pursued through
discussion of comparison and contrast social categories, to ensure the primary
research instrument taps cultural differences. A related cultural dimension is how
time is handled methodologically in the study. In this research report, the apparent
lapses into and out of the historical present are often related to keeping time order
straight concerning when methods were applied. To do otherwise would confuse the
reader regarding the interface of verstehende and historical culture complexes under
study, favoring stylistic uniformity over accurate reporting.
-84-
The Primary Research Instrument
Generation of the Item Pool
Unless the items chosen are theoretically relevant to a theme of alienation for the
young males studied, the study is unlikely to provide for a meaningful typology. As
already mentioned, the type of item chosen for the social-psychological scales of
positivist researchers in mid-century sociology was ahistorical, and sought a psychic
response without clear cultural or social referent. Instead, items with at least minimal
cultural and social referents are involved in generation of this item pool.
Initial Dimensions
At the time of the instrument's construction, the researcher was concerned to
expand the dimensions of alienation beyond the limited number of variables in
contemporary research during the 1960's, especially peer mass culture versus
"establishment" mass culture, dimensions of ultimate political values, and existential
dimensions.[20]
Two cultural cliche scales were generated. The first focused upon cliches in
common use in English culture back to the time of Shakespeare. Cliches are
cultural patterns useful in American values research (See the "values projective
technique" of the Spindlers, 1990). The scale approximates "traditional" Anglo
culture. The second was taken from recurring phrases in the underground press of
the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco in the summer of 1967. In Weber's
terminology, these scales represent two, or perhaps three of Weber's "modes of
orientation of social action."[21]
The traditional cliche scale is equivalent to custom through long familiarity. The
counter-cultural cliche scale contains
-85-
items resulting from cultural uniformity due to fashion and actual practice. Neither
scale was conceived as tapping Weber's rationalization <xiv>, though the item, "Do
your own thing" could be related. More directly, scales could be interpreted in a proFreudian fashion, affirming demands of the unconscious <xiii>.
Two scales of attitudes on political economy were included. Phrased as choices of
"social ideal," such themes as mass versus primitive, communal versus
individualistic, simple versus technological, and traditional political action versus
radical political action were included from popular press issues of the time. Some of
these touched upon Gasset's notion of rootlessness (xv), Marx's notions on
alienated production <ix>, and Rousseau's notion of alienated sovereignty <vii>.
Items relating to atheistic and religious existential despair <xi> were drawn from
popular mid-century publications read by college students in literature and
philosophy courses. They were fashioned into a scale of existential or philosophical
alienation. Items related to Durkheim's secondary concern with moral norms
integrating a social system <xii> were fashioned from mass media pronouncements,
especially those invoking a near-religious loyalty to nation.
Together, the cliche scales were considered to afford a measure of cultural
identification with traditional versus counter-cultures. Merton's extension of
Durkheim's anomie concept specifically singles out non-conformists as potentially
alienated, citing drug abusers as "retreatists."[22] To accommodate this viewpoint, a
scorable drug terminology questionnaire was included in the pool of items, along
with a crude cultural measure of escapism.
-86-
Historical Dimensions of Alienation
From the outset of this research, the multiple values of alienation theorists was
acknowledged. Thus, an item like "God is dead" could be viewed as a positive
disentanglement from religion in Feuerbach's view <-i>, and a positive liberation of
the unconscious in Freud's view <xiii>, even as it could be seen as negative in the
traditional Christian view <i>, or escapist in the stoical, religious existentialist view of
Kierkegaard <xi>.
However, the items were generated before the types of alienation discussed in this
research were concretized, and scales for each of those types were not constructed
at the outset (<i> through <xv>). Participant-observation of the researcher was
instrumental to item selection. Items, however, touch upon many classic alienation
dimensions: "Life is a struggle with one's self," "I sometimes feel I am merely an
observer of my own actions," and "I have thought about ending my life." Each
reflects self alienation <ii>.
"The modern world is a lonely place," "I am a rock, I am an island," "What the world
needs most is love," and "I am close to a great many people" are affection-related
<v>. The cliche' items can be seen as reflecting doctrinal positions <vi>, and, as will
be discussed later have elective affinities." "Man has a free will, he makes some
decisions free of outside forces," "Detachment is more important than involvement, "
and "Commitment is more important than understanding " have a bearing on
alienation as a learning method<viii>. So, initial dimensions in English get some
coverage in the inventory, in addition to scales based upon alienation types still
represented in the culture from the 18th and late 19th century <vii-xv>.
-87-
Designing the Inventory for the AIienated
There are also design features of the inventory which are conditioned by sociological
research on alienation. First is form. Keniston (1960, p100) makes clear that
alienated youth routinely chose a negative answer over a positive one.[23] By
phrasing items in a reverse fashion, the impression is generated for the alienated
participant, that it is designed for him.[24] Either-or answering also affected
analysis. Instead of interval-level analysis, quartile frequencies were deemed more
relevant to the design.
In a similar fashion, Keniston reports the alienated are argumentative by nature. By
encouraging margin notes in the instructions, the alienated participant may give
vent to his argumentation, just as inclusion of a "degree of falsification" item matches
his disposition to regard set categories as deserving of lampoon or falsification. The
latter was added as a validation measure, attuned to alienated personality.
A second level of adaptation to alienation findings is to administration of the
inventory. The 1969-1970 administrations were presented in the role of a peer. The
researcher indicated he was not an officer, the questions were his, he was doing his
own research for independent publication while in the draft Army, and he did not
want any identifying information on the inventories because of the near-military
setting of the administration.
The 1989-1990 administrations were presented in one of these roles: an ex-drug
counselor asking how to update his understandings, an independent college
researcher seeking high schooler's insights, or a college introductory professor
providing a self-knowledge inventory to students as an example of a survey research
style. All these roles
-88-
avoid participants' identification of the research instrument with "domination, futility,
and isolation."[25]
A third level of design in adapting to research findings is in terms of theory. A few
alienation concepts are exclusively ruled out. Only youth were surveyed in 1969 1970, not children, the middle-aged or the aged. The middle-aged are conceived by
theorists as least alienated in society--the least rootless--except, of course, among
assembly-line workers (the proletarian focus of Marx).[26]
Children have inadequate social experience for many alienations described in
Section I of this report, and so were excluded. This research intentionally resists
recognizing child psychology as the most relevant sub-field. Lastly, the aged were
excluded. Many studies have shown the aged in post-industrial societies feel bypassed in distinctive and expected ways, and are often highly alienated.[27] This
research was conceived to explore unexpected--or at least inadequately explained-alienations of new generations of the late 20th Century.
Youth alienation, for most theorists, is tied up with identity forma ion.[28] Political
scientists view identity-formation in college years as instrumental to adult political
memberships.[29] Thus, this study, seeking to include most alienations of Western
Civilization, has concentrated on youth.
A final finding of alienation research, one which threw many studies into a limbo of
significance as alienation of the poor and dispossessed became significant to the
Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's, is alienation's association with socioeconomic
status.[30] This is hardly surprising since American measurements of SES reflect
occupational prestige in a status-oriented, work-centered culture.
-89-
Since this is a Weberian cultural study, a self-report item was included in the
inventory to allow a crude identification of poor participants, "My family while I was
growing up was poor."
Crude scales of items were assembled into an inventory and participants selected
degrees of agreement with them, writing personal notes. Then procedures for
establishing salience of the overall item pool required a comparison among
theoretical groups on these dimensions, plus post-interviews with individuals profiled
on the various preliminary scales.
-90-
Quality of Input Considerations
It is conventional in survey research to provide for validation of items, scales, and
response categories. These validation procedures are conceived at the technique
level of research, and are secondary to methodological concern with the worth of the
data to inductive theory. The worth to theory concern is primarily pitched at insuring
valid input to the research design employed, a goodness of fit concern.
As this is an historical sociology study, data should: 1) display sufficient salience for
study participants that a persistence of individual attitudes through time is a
reasonable expectation, and 2) display an attachment of expressed attitudes to
social categories or groups of participants which are relevant to contemporary social
action. Only when these features of social attitude are demonstrable (salience and
social attachment) is persistence through time probable.[30] Consequently, validity
of the input at the baseline of this study is largely focused upon concerns of the
methodological level, not technique leveI. Details of validation techniques are
included within the framework of this methodological discussion.
Baseline participants are inductees into the draft U.S. Army from southern Texas.
Theoretical sampling within the inductee population provided comparison and
contrast groups such as described by Glaser and Strauss [31] in order to validate
the relevance of the item pool to comparable groups, contrast groups, and individual
differences.
Comparable Categories
Drafted (US) and enlisted inductees (RA's) took the inventory. Average group
scores on the scales were calculated.[33] As expected the drafted group showed
more alienative elevation of the scales.
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In order to provide a standard for comparison of the groups, a quasi-norm group was
solicited from a South Texas induction center inducting young men from Bexar
County in San Antonio. Since the induction of these men by draft approached
randomness from the Bexar county Population of young men, the participants have
norm-like characteristics. This group's mean scores on the scales were taken as a
comparison standard.[34]
US (draftee) and RA group scores were profiled on a chart where the mean of the
norm group was taken as the zero point. The two groups showed related profiles
when scale scores were plotted on this chart, suggesting the instrument was
measuring common cultural themes to both categories of inductees. National Guard
(NG) and enlisted reserve samples (ER) were gathered from a U-S-wide population
within the same age range. Again, the scale profiles showed some similarity, but an
expected moderation of the scale profiles was observed on these groups.
Contrast Categories
Having found similarity across broad categories of the young male population,
contrast category participants were solicited, and their group scale scores computed
and profiled. Fundamentalist Bible college students were solicited as participants
from an Ohio college.[35]
Drug abusers were solicited from youth being drug-screened for army induction by a
Texas mental health clinic where this researcher worked. The Bible college
inventories displayed reverse profiles on a number of scales from that of drug
abusers. Furthermore, the abusers rejected from army induction, due to narcotics
addition, displayed high selection of correct answers on narcotics items of the drug
-92-
terminology scale, while inducted drug-abusing youth displayed a differential
"correctness" on hallucinogenic items.
Individual Differences
With such category differences and similarities being reflected in differences in the
scale scores and profiles of the inventory, the individual level was probed. If the
instrument solicits theoretically-relevant dimensions, individual scale profiles should
display modal patterns within the focal categories discussed (US to ER's plus Bible
school and drug-abusing groups). Two steps were involved. First, within focal
categories, profiles were sorted into recurring patterns, and discovered to result in a
few distinctive patterns each. When the profile patterns were compared to profiles
within other categories, some of the same patterns appeared. However, they
appeared as minority patterns to the distinctive modal pattern focal categories. The
instrument appeared to be differentiating individual patterns at the level of social
categories.
Second, participants who had been profiled on the crude scales were interviewed
and given an interactive commentary on the meaning the scale scores for them; in
other words, feedback. The purpose was to solicit negative case comment from the
informants. After this procedure produced almost negligible negative feedback within
a number of different categories, it was concluded the inventory was sensitive to
individual differences, not just category differences.[36]
As a control for bad data on the inventory, an eight point scale was constructed.
Four items from the MMPI falsification scale were interspersed in the inventory: (l64F) I get angry sometimes, (178-T) I have nightmares every few nights, (180-T) am
troubled by attacks
-93-
of nausea and vomiting, and (191-T) I have a cough most of the time.[37] Also, a
four point item was put on the inventory asking "how honest" the informant had
been. Together, these formed a scale for evaluating both concerns of falsification
and lying. High lie and falsification inventories are omitted.
By these theoretically-guided procedures, the item pool was deemed acceptable for
future use in a broad historical sociology study of Western U.S. males, and their
distinctive alienations. The instrument had met tests of salience and of attachment to
social categories.
Initial scales were dis-assembled back to a general pool, for use over an historical
period of twenty years. Items insensitive to group or individual differences were left
in the inventory rather than alter the succession of meanings and length of the
inventory. The primary logic in dis-assembly was the time-bound nature of many of
the cultural items. Over a period of twenty years, the scales validated on a 19691970 population could be expected to lose relevance and lead to misleading
interpretations over small scale score changes. By drawing back to an item analysis
level of interpretation, historical cultural change could be allowed for. Of course, any
scales which retained historical salience over twenty years could be re-constituted
and utilized in the study as the scale is re-qualified.
-94-
Population Parameters and Problems of Analysis
Geographic Selection
For generating a typology from a small pool of participants, it is advantageous to
select geographically within the U.S., centering on locations where significant
changes in social processes usually associated with alienation are in recent
evidence.[38]
Since indicated social processes go back over two hundred years in Western
Civilization, those U.S. states and regions with long established industry
(Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, lndiana, Illinois etc.), long centered upon urban life
(East and West coastal cities, Chicago, St. Louis, and New Orleans), long
established specialization solidified into a well-recognized stratification system, (the
original thirteen colonies); these are best ruled out.
To avoid confounding alienation with other contemporary social factors those
regions undergoing population ingress and egress, highly-colored by racial or sexual
discrimination are best omitted: the Deep South, the Yankee North, and the Far
West. This is migration involving more than dislocation factors. Likewise, sunbelt
migration into Florida and Southern California involve both age-sensitive factors and
leisure-use factors which confound alienation themes. Continental regions and other
states with unique transportation, communication, or ethnic pluralities are likewise illadvised e.g.: Alaska, Hawaii, Samoa, Puerto Rico, Louisiana, Minnesota, and much
of New England. The region remaining from this exclusion process includes the MidWest, West, Northwest, and Southwest.
This geographic selection is certain to disappoint many readers of this report. First,
the reader who sees this region as exclusive rural and traditional, while defining the
alienated as those active in
-95-
political protest on elite college campuses, will see little merit in such a selection.
But such a viewing point is exceedingly inaccurate. Less than 5% of the U.S.
population is involved in rural agriculture, even in states with low population density,
the major portion of the population is urban or suburban. Keniston's studies of elite
student activists at Harvard and Yale, furthermore, discovered minimal features
unique to like institutions. Student activists were similar to one another throughout
Western Civilization, yet they accounted for a very small proportion of alienated
youth. Perhaps, due to traditionalist standpoints, much of the corn belt and part of
the wheat belt should not be included, but the Western region is the best location for
a general study.
Then there is the reader who wishes to see alienation from only a Marxist
perspective. Little heavy industry with sweatshop conditions pervades these states,
except perhaps the least safe hardrock mines and smelters. However, as will be
discussed later, the mid-century alienation argument on the workplace has owed
more to Weber than Marx since mid-century. Industrialization of the American West
during the last twenty years retains such bureaucratic features. True, assembly line
work in a clean beer can plant has no soot-stained smokestacks or black lung
disease typical of a coal-fired foundry, but neither theory mentions such
environmental factors.
Finally, there is the reader who doubts alienation can be productively studied apart
from the intellectual and political centers of the nation. Intellectual history of elites
seems coterminous with alienation. This is perhaps the most serious error both in
theory and method. It is an error of theory to ignore the effect of mass
communications and movements wresting ideology and politics from the
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exclusiveness of intellectual elites. It is an error of method, because it plays into the
reverse snobism of anti-intellectuals in American culture. Alienation has been a
majority phenomenon in American life over the last generation. It can, and should,
adapt its methods of study to the contents of mass media and movements, and that
attitudes of average citizens.
Historical Selection
A second concern for selection of participants relates to the time dimension. A
general pool of participants is best chosen where all types of alienation may
reasonably be expected to affect the generation in question. Historically alienating
processes affecting the baby -boom generation all at once, are also best found in the
U.S. West. World Mark Encyclopedia of the Nations (1965, p267) states, "During
and after World War II, industrial activity within the country continued to expand
southward and westward. Louisiana, Oklahoma, and especially Texas were centers
of industrial expansion based on petroleum refining, paper manufacturing,
magnesium, and aircraft manufacture."[39]
The West was the most recently nettled by inhabitants from Western Civilization. It
preserved significant prescriptive religiosity, in common with the alienated historical
situation of German and Scandinavian existentialists, retaining fundamentalist
Protestant beliefs. It served as a cultural model of "the pioneering spirit" during this
generation, supposedly enshrining values particularly identified as American.
Furthermore, significant degrees of change in industrialization, urbanization,
migration, secularization, specialization, and other alienative processes occurred for
its baby-boom generation, which serves as baseline for
-97-
this research. The only confounding culture complex of note is that of "frontier"
enthusiasm for change, though true innovation in this period of time is generally
thought to be in the Far West.
The coalescence of these historical processes is propitious for this generational
study. However, due to low population densities in these large states, participants
are best drawn from counties containing Iarger cities, ones where participants may
reasonably be expected to have grown up in a nearly equivalent mix of urban,
suburban, and rural settings.[40] The first pool of participants is drawn from Bexar
County, Texas which includes San Antonio, Texas, one of the 21 U.S. municipalities
over 500,000 in 1960, and a city of three quarters of a million people in 1970. The
second pool is drawn from Yellowstone County, Montana, containing Billings, the
largest city in that state, along with three petroleum refineries. In both cases,
significant farm and ranch cultures were in evidence in the immediate environs of
these marketing and production centers.[41]
Since this is a typological study, not one concerned with the percentile distribution of
traits within a population, the random selection of a sample of youth within each
county is not required, so long as it is sufficiently representative to provide for
inclusion of relevant types of alienation. A true stratified random sample of youth in
both counties would afford more reliable comparison across time for whole
aggregate comparisons. But these are not the prime method of this study. Rather,
internal cultural integration of attitudes and alienation trends are the focus, the
pattern of opinions. Where aggregate comparisons are engaged in, qualitative
features like systematic skew and patterning of multiple distributions is pursued
rather than close measurement of changes on individual
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items. In addition, a mailed questionnaire to a sufficiently large stratified sample
would be unlikely to provide an adequate response rate from alienated members of
the youth population to provide as valid data as achieved by the selection means
used in this study.
The age range of participants is largely determined by existing theory on attitude
formation, and the case data observations of alienation theorists mid-century.
Eighteen was initially taken as the lower bound, in large measure because high
school graduation at eighteen entails separation from the family residence for youth
of the U.S. West, significant for decision-making to youth. The upper bound is placed
beyond twenty-one, both because U.S. legal responsibiIity commenced at that age
in 1969-70, and because twenty-one represents entry into the post-college job
market for many youth (four years of college, in sequence, was the prevailing pattern
for college attendees in the baseline generation).
Studies have shown the intervening years 18-21 to be important developmentally in
the formation of adult attitudes for American youth, particularly in politics. For
example, Marvin Rintala [42] makes this clear when he says, (p93) "Late
adolescence and early adulthood are the formative years during which a distinctive
personal outlook on politics emerges, which remains essentially unchanged through
old age. The crucial years are regarded as approximately 17 to 25."
To set an upper limit of 21 is too low for an alienation study. Kenneth Keniston
found his Vietnam Summer activists in 1967 to range in age from 19 to 27, and his
formulation of "youth" as a period between adolescence and adulthood is consistent
with that range. This study uses ages 18-27 as its widest age spectrum, with a
mean age near
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twenty (See Appendix 3 for details).
Culture, SubCulture, CounterCulture [43]
By mid-century, the analytic terms culture and subculture had to be altered by
professionals to be meaningful for majority segments of populations, especially in
Western Civilization. Processes in action in the 20th Century--which must be termed
social because of their perceptual and associational effects--altered the "world" as
experienced by the baseline generation. This poses interpretation problems in this
study of Western America relative to space and time, geography and history.
Professional usage "after the fact" is required, where alienation researchers
exercised a "before the fact" perspective.
Culture, through the 19th and early 20th centuries, was meaningful within
nationalistic boundaries, as diffused through face-to-face contact, ground
transportation, and mechanically-printed media. Diffusion media themselves (e.g.
newspapers) were identified with these cultures, and only diplomats regularly
experienced the world as one. Subcultures were usually geographically-locatable
within such nations, often within identifiable ghettos or communities.
Three Processes
Societal processes of incorporation, electrification, and education radically changed
the world-as-experienced by the majority of Americans by altering two fundamental
categories of neo-Kantian social analysis, space and time.[44]
First, incorporation resulted in multi-national corporations with assets and
administration of work-time personnel rivaling the assets and citizen workforce of
nations. These extra-national entities
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belied geographic-based culture and provided a political base actively criticized by
national spokesmen in the United States from Eisenhower on. Much such criticism
labeled incorporation an alienating process. For example, its mass characteristics
were treated by Riesman and Whyte as generating mass society alienation.[45]
(Electrification)
Electrification, to use a very broad term, made a new form of human consciousness
possible, less dependent upon both space and time. As a process operating at the
speed of light, it shortened the experience of space and time for the psyche,
perceptually and conceptually, and necessitated new assumptions about cultureformation.
Through the internal combustion capacity of electrification, of course, mass
transportation at near sonic speeds became routine for world tourism and trade, and
the majority of households in Western Civilization today are linked to at least oneway television communication of world cultures. In the U.S., even rural households
had TV during the enculturation of the baseline generation.[46]
Transportation gave way to electronic communications as the primary mode of
diffusion, beginning with the telegraph on up to person-to-person cellular telephone
links via geosynchronous satellite today. Such links can presently connect on-site
builders with quarrymen a world away. Two fax machines, using the same phone
link can likewise provide the technical backup to specify exact meanings for linguistic
concepts in the oral conversation. Such instant contact over such irrelevant distance
collapses culture as a space a time-bound concept. Marshall McLuhan expressed
this idea early (1964, p302), "It is a principal aspect of the electric age that it
-101establishes a global network that has much of the character of our central nervous
system...it constitutes a single unified field of experience."
Public space and occasions have undergone social re-definition, partly due to
electrification. Instead of assembling in large auditoriums to hear politicians or
actors project their natural voices to a publicly-dressed crowd over footlights, the
listener wears class-denying denims to an amplified and dark movie theater, or sits
at home before a TV or VCR. Public space became private space, which is at the
same time universal space.
A related example of this is the electronic "town meeting" of the 1990's. Via satellite
link, the Supreme Soviet, in session, has been broadcast with the U.S. Congress,
discussing world issues with world leaders, technical experts, and pressure group
advocates. Its purpose is culture --formation and world-wide diffusion of ideas on
world scale problems.
Likewise, electronic media vastly increased the potential for expressive cultural
display in drama and music, especially intimate communications. For taped events
of private communications, social impacts have been largely confined to interactions
after the experience, at least until VCR viewing for small groups became possible.
For events like rock festivals, where the performer assumes a larger-than-life aspect
in a heavily-amplified theater, social effects have been largely confined to mass
participation in collective behavior. Private talk and gesture thus took on a universal
character very different from the public formalism so common mid-century.
Electrification has provided for a new world view, a new set of basic concepts for
interpretation. Space and time were collapsed into
-102-
a single set of dimensions--bent together--by Einstein, in response to
electromagnetic deviations from Newtonian phenomena. Conceptual adaptations to
this cultural shift in world view now inform much scientific endeavor,[47]....and most
science fiction. But everyday distortions of human action, in time--space, is evident
to everyone in Western Civilization. Movies and compact disks of long-deceased
actors and singers, instant videotape replay of touchdowns, and news footage of
assassinations in Dallas or VietNam turn human action into instant and re-playable
history, requiring new attitudes about reality: in perception, interpretation, and in
response. American children, for example, experienced missile attacks on lsrael-seen on TV--as real threats to them during the 1991 Iraq War, even though s ix
thousand miles removed. The required re-alignment of consciousness to appraise
the "real" world in its own terms, is regarded as a process alienating one from the
reality of Western Civilization.[48]
Perhaps the most relevant social modification of electrification was its enhancement
of social authority by restricting communication to one direction. Before camcorders,
personal computers with modems, call-in shows, and uplinks. response was limited
to writing the centralized transmitting or processing station to express an opinion.
Thus, for several decades, broadcasting and computers functioned in the same
fashion as propaganda tools with the consumer. This was likewise conceived by
many as an alienating force in human relations, especially when its symbols
indicated the intent of a "hard sell;" an IBM card for reply, or an intimidating message
about rings on shirt collars.
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(Education)
Education of an entire populace became policy by mid-century in Western
Civilization, and in the U.S., education for the majority through some college became
practice.[49] This was not local knowledge, for the most part, to be applied in a
regional or local context, but abstract knowledge. Knowledge, and its dialectical
relation to falsehood, was the Hegelian foundation of alienation as a concept to most
19th Century writers <viii>. To put the majority of a population through this
estranging process--making mental objects of the processes of experience--requires
that alienation become a majority phenomenon, at least in the broad Hegelian
sense.[50]
Independent thinking was bound to become a broad social issue in such a
population, affecting the self-Other relationship of both individual identity with
societal expectations, and subcultural groups with dominant cultural forces.[51]
Ethnic, regional, and racial subcultures were, at first, attenuated in the U.S. Through
mass universal education they were largely replaced in significance by occupational
sub-cultures. Mid-century, re-introduction of ethnic, regional, and racial sub-cultures
into mass education curriculums became part of reform efforts of civil rights groups,
to mitigate alienation of such populations <vii>. Daniel Bell (1980, p205) says the
decrease in work-related identifications and the increase in political salience
combined "an interest with an affective tie" resulting in (p184), "In the last decade,
there has been a resurgence of ethnic identification as the basis for effective political
action." The Spindlers state that increase in non -mainstream ethnicity is a
demographic fact, not just a political one (1990, p17), "lt is probable that by the year
2000 the so-called 'minorities' will
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constitute about one-third of the US population."
Redefining the Terms
Mid-century, these two terms, culture and subculture, were revised in several
directions to more accurately reflect social conditions. In large part, this revision
occurred during the decade before the baseline generation was surveyed, its period
of enculturation about society.
(1)
Of primary importance was the eventual separation of "Americanization" from
"modernization" as cultural phenomena, an awkward confusion in much mid-century
alienation literature. Success of the U.S. in both world wars, in leading production of
technical products for a world market [52], and in proliferating American movie
images to the world led to a cultural predisposition for Americans to view the U.S. as
a vanguard society leading Western Civilization in the realm of ideology, as well.[53]
Kenneth Keniston (1965, p250) discusses the U.S. as a "vanguard society" of
fragmented community resulting in transvaluation of technical means over
humanistic ends.[54]
Parson's pattern variable derivative of Weber's idea that modernization means
rationalization (See p37), became a model of modernization to many. At the same
time, many American professionals viewed this modernization as equivalent to
Americanization, even going so far as to identify its universals as cultural universals
to be achieved in the world (See p39 for opposing traits to modernism). Cold War
antagonisms intensified this tendency, and no doubt politicized alienation
research.[55]
A resultant impact on alienation researchers was to view
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modernization along non-American lines, as alienation per se, and to view clear
evidence of Americans being enculturated from abroad as spurious.[56]
(2)
Another important distinction which developed was between a culture of
adolescence and a counter-culture based upon occupational specialties.
The first was central to the development of adolescence as a new stage of life,
particularly in psychological literature which detailed adolescent psychology as a
new discipline. Psychologically-oriented alienation theorists who identified
adolescence with the counter-culture tended to explain that culture as a
manifestation of an unsuccessfully-resolved Oedipal Complex. Lewis Feuer, for
example, who left UofC at Berkeley because of youth activism, later explained the
history of such student movements in this fashion.[57]
However, it should be cautioned that Feuer was capable of ascribing positive
aspects of adolescence to youth movements <vii>, "Student movements are the
product of selfless, altruistic idealism combined with the resentment and aggression
of one generation against another. " And, he recognizes the historical significance of
separate adolescent institutions (p430), "Political action...it ended when some
measure of generational interdependence was achieved." Keniston, however,
traced youthful dissent to unfulfilled aspirations of their fathers, the near opposite of
an Oedipal causal scheme.[58]
Both, however, were overly-convinced by familial experience as an explanator of
ideology, and they failed to incorporate the full implications of institutionally-based
adolescent societies introduced by James Coleman in The Adolescent Society (p59), "The institutional
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changes that have set apart the youth of our society in high schools...produce
an...'adolescent culture' with values of its own." Keniston, however, grounds value
preferences of The Uncommitted in a psychological conception borrowed from
Talcott Parsons (Keniston, 1965, p218-232), setting the stage for later Oedipal
interpretations of youth movements.[59]
Despite the confusion of adolescent psychology with adolescent society, however,
Keniston and others eventually documented themes of occupational culture which
were central to the contrast between youth culture and the master culture.
The British novelist C.P. snow had observed the development of "two cultures" quite
early (1959), the humanities occupations and hard science ones. These cultures he
saw as increasingly oppositional. This opposition was central, not peripheral, in
American cultural revisions of the 1960's, in the universities, political movements,
and mass culture.
(3)
In a broader professional context, the terms culture and subculture were adjusted to
mass cultural application by specifying mass culture as that promulgated by mass
media regardless of date, typing older conceptions of literate culture as religious or
professional subcultures. George and Louise Spindler, for example, identify
"mainstream culture" in America (1990, p13-15) as derived from European
Protestant (54%), European Catholic (22%), and Jewish sources (2.5%). It is
composed of characteristic values, attitudes and behaviors which are "acquired" by
America's ethnic minorities through social transmission. The Spindlers do not directly
relate mainstream culture to mass culture but there has been major overlap
-107-
between them, lessening over the last forty years. Their "referent ethniclass" thesis,
that northern european culture is central to mainstream U.S. culture, has to be
modified when treating mass culture. In the 1960's, mass culture admitted Blacks,
hippies, gurus, and ethnics to its programming, making mass culture broader than
mainstream culture.
Subcultures of occupational groups, including criminal subcultures, and even classbased cultures, were major contributions of Deviance and Sociology of Work
professionals in America (technical subcultures tended to be residual categories of
social study).
This adjustment of focus away from time and space, and centering on means of
presentation, adapted cultural terminology to a situation on which any idea could
instantly become mass culture by transmitting it through some form of mass media,
the reality of cultural phenomena in a "world" dominated by incorporation,
electrification, and universal education. Transmission itself can be conceived as
providing a cultural alternative to the audience, partially legitimated for inclusion in
social action by the very fact it is allowed transmitted. [60]
(4)
The decline in space and time constraints on cultural and subcultural phenomena is
related to the application of these terms to alienation phenomena mid-century, and
the discussion of "counter-culture" which developed in the alienation literature.[61]
Yinger (1960) argued the term subculture did not adequately capture the conflict
theme of developing adolescent culture, while it gave it too much association with
professional subcultures, ethnic enclaves, and a base of underlying universals.
Instead, he recommended the use
-108-
of "contraculture," which he picked up from Parsons' usage of "counter-culture."[62]
His term and his conflict notion with "a surrounding dominant culture" was listed in
place of Parsons' term in sociological dictionaries, excluding Parsons' term "counterideology" which refers to value breaks with the wider society.[63]
Nonetheless, "counterculture" became the term broadly used, through Roszak 's use
of it in the popular book The Making of a CounterCulture.[64] Michael Brown even
used it in a reverse fashion to refer to the countering movements of the dominant
society to beat youth with nightsticks at Grand Central Station, attack youth in
Cambridge, Massachusetts, blitz Haight Ashbury with the Director of Health, and
assault demonstrators in People's Park in San Francisco.[65] This is an example of
the power of mass culture to shape even professional subcultures. Roszak used it
as a counter-ideology term, detached from both adolescent culture and deviance,
and he painted the counterculture in mainstream terms, saying, "What is new is that
a radical rejection of science and technological values should appear so close to the
center of society."[66]
"Counterculture" retained many of the deviance overtones of Yinger's contraculture
term, however, and unfortunately many alienation researchers associated
countercultural phenomena with delinquency and crime. Keniston refutes this
association (1971, p382), "The extensive evidence concerning the backgrounds of
young dissenters provides little support for the 'deviant socialization' interpretation of
the new opposition." However, after the adoption of
-109-
violent heroes by radicals (after 1969), Keniston is willing to entertain that "parental
discontinuity" radicals may be associated with delinquency. [67]
This was not surprising since deviance, as a sociological specialty in the 1960's,
was rife with definitional conflicts. Lewis Feuer (1974) notes that Einstein's radical
student group in Zurich and Berne was between a subculture and a counterculture,
limiting a subculture in structural-functional terms, (1974, p54), "A subculture does
not seek to disrupt the cultural equilibrium." Still, by this time he accepts (preface),
"Scientists...emotions of generational revolt have provided much of the motive
energy for their greatest achievements."[68] By decade's end, the labeling
perspective (a symbolic interactionist term for countercultural perspective) had
gained ground, and the Mertonian lumping of non-conformists with criminals under
"deviance" was in retreat.
Sociologists like Bredemeier and Toby were instrumental in differentiating these
ideas within a structural-functional paradigm using "disaffiliation," perhaps from
Roszak's countercultural definition (1969, p42), "A culture so radically disaffiliated
from the mainstream assumptions of our society that it scarcely looks to many as a
culture at all, but takes on the alarming appearance of a barbaric intrusion."
(7)
New principles of social organization occasionally arise as potential forces in
civilization. Institutional pluralists, especially sociologists after 1969-70, developed
new terminologies with implications for professional debate using "culture" and
"subculture," terminologies which challenge traditional sociological
-110-
assumptions about a universal cultural heritage.
Daniel Bell, for example, sundered the functionalist link between society and culture
in his 1973 book, The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. Instead of culture
representing a harmoniously balanced social structure, Bell envisioned a tri-partite
competitive institutional structure (society), radically disjoined from a mass culture
which is opposed to all institutions. This independence of mass culture he qualifies
with cultural values which are central to each institution. Since his analysis requires
the enculturation of participants in each institution to its core values, he is really
suggesting a new use of the term subculture. America, from this standpoint, has a
mass culture, and several institutional subcultures. Bell's analysis specifies technoeconomic, political, and cultural sectors. Other pluralists have centered on political
pluralisms like federal versus state, church versus State, and judicial versus
legislative. Pluralisms of institutional conflict, then, make of culture not a hybrid, as
is suggested by mass culture inputs and outputs, but a collage of subcultures.
Cautions in Using Cultural Terminology in Alienation Studies
In summary, alienation, to be apprehended meaningfully, must separate cultural and
subcultural phenomena according to professional insights for employing cultural
terms developed in the course of social differentiation during the 1960's.
Modernization and Americanization are different cultural processes. Adolescent
culture is an aspect of adolescent society, an institutional entity. It is distinct from
child psychologists' treatment of complexes of their psyches, or their resolution of
conflicts in their life cycles.[69] It is distinct from deviance sociologists' treatment of
delinquents
-111-
and criminals, and may contain within it a counter-ideology, the central meaning of
counterculture. Furthermore, post-modern or post-industrial society may be itself
composed of antagonistic subcultures, each linked with a separate institutional
base.[70]
Since terminology of culture has changed, as used by sociologists dealing with
alienation phenomenon, the changes need to be noted when dealing with American
alienation works where the shift in terminology is not yet complete, or may actually
be experimental usage of professional terms. Clearly, many notions of alienation in
Western Civilization <i through xv> will become meaningful in this study only as they
are culturally linked to historical conditions after the middle of the twentieth century,
in western America.
-112Methodological Notes
Even in non-American methodological works--which are far less dominated by quantitative
concerns--qualitative methods like interviews, personal documents, and participant-observation are
proposed for exploratory studies e.g. Stacy, Margaret Methods of Social Research, Sydney, 1969,
p46, 70, 76.
2 Colin Bell and Howard Newby (Doing Sociological Research, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1977)
discuss methodological pluralism in sociology, noting its recent release from "methodolatry." (p22)
"The epistemological anomie of sociology. The most familiar assaults on positivism are the
conventional criticisms that come from within the tradition itself, and they are frequently concerned
more with reliability than with what is usually called validity.
3 In The Discovery of Grounded Theory, (1967, pvii).
4 Denzin, in The Research Act (1970), details triangulation generally (p74-75). "The investigator
works with several different empirical definitions of his central concepts, (the idea is to)...capture the
relevant features of their concepts...Once the distinctive nature of concepts are uncovered, analysts
can rapid move to the use of triangulated strategies, The sensitizing triangulated perspective stays
close to empirical reality and demands a commitment to tightly-integrated theory."
At the methodological level, he says (p26), "Multiple methods of observation must be employed.
This is termed triangulation...multiple methods must be used in every investigation, since no
method is ever free of rival causal factors."
"Index construction is one strategy of triangulation, then...confined to the measurement level," he
says (pl17), commenting on triangulation as a measurement technique. He cites Lazarsfeld as
proposing three intercorrelated items as an irreducible index, in order to ensure fine distinctions and
reliable empirical results.
5 He compliments Seeman for assessing his research instrument (p101-102), "In terms of their
ability to be employed in natural settings...They are: hospital, work, and reformatory settings. But,
he encourages multiple methods in its study as well.
Denzin's guidelines, as adapted to the historical cultural universe being studied, are employed in
this study.
6 See "Maximizing Longitudinal Cultural Contexts in the Study" in this section for a review of these
methods, as well as "Comparable Social Categories" and "Contrast Categories" under the primary
research instrument.
7 Most longitudinal mid-century alienation studies, like those of Kenneth Keniston, research within a
stage of the life cycle of an aging sample e.g, youth. Since the longitudinal design of studies is
susceptible to maturation changes of the participants, historical
-113changes in alienating conditions are subordinated to the maturation and developing life chances of
the participants.
For example, Keniston's book, The Uncommitted" Alienated Youth in American Society, was based
in large part on (1968. Appendix C),"clinical and long range studies of extremely alienated students"
at Harvard from 1957 to 1962. Only a brief treatment of methodology is given in The Uncommitted
(1965, p14-17).
Two thousand Harvard youth were screened on an intellectual alienation inventory to produce three
dozen participants, broken down into three contrast groups, one dozen of which constituted the
highly alienated group. This dozen provided the grist for the psychohistory speculations of the
author. Such longitudinal case studies have much to say about adolescence as a stage of life for
youth with maximized life chances, but they are quite limited for understanding historical
generations. A bi-generational study such as this one, focuses instead on Keniston's third purpose
in his research design (lbid, p327), "Understanding...the social and historical factors which
cooperate with psychological factors to produce cultural alienation in some, but not most, young
Americans." By the time Keniston had finished writing this appendix he broadened this assessment
(p342), "In 1966 in America, I suspect that most reflective men and women are somewhat alienated
from our society and our culture--some of us more, most of us less, alienated than these college
students."
Keniston's "alienation syndrome" is mostly ideological pessimism: "Expect the worst of others and
you will avoid disappointment," "There is little chance of ever finding real happiness," "At times,
some people make you feel like killing them," "Emotional commitments to others are usually the
prelude to disappointment," "Teamwork is the last refuge of mediocrity," "The idea of trying to adjust
to society as it is now constituted fills me with horror," "Any man who really knows himself has good
cause to be horrified," I make few commitments without some reservation about the wisdom of
undertaking them," "First impressions cannot be relied upon; what lies beneath the surface is often
utterly different," "I feel strongly how different I am from most people," and "The notion that man and
nature are governed by regular laws is an illusion." Keniston found distrust to be a prime component
of each of these in his "high" alienation sample (mean correlation=.58).
8 See Norman Denzin, 1970 p102 on the cultural uniqueness of the self as study participant. Also,
see the neurologically-grounded and cyberneticly-elaborated argument of Charles Fair in The Dying
Self, that (p49) "Consciousness is not passive and epiphenomenal...It is the agency of innovation..."
He sees "The Self as the Origin of Cultures (Part III)...Self creates Other. While this contrasts
markedly with assertions of contemporary behaviorists, and is clearly related to his humanistic
erudition, his point is consistent with a Weberian social action analysis. Thus, it serves this research
as a sensitizing alternative to historical determinism of the self.
9 Cause-like phenomena are handled within non-positivist paradigms.
-114Human abstractions of social life are simply not devoid of overlap nor are they immune from
voluntarism by the actor. Human thought- - is clearly reflexive, defeating concise models of timelagged causation. It is also mediated through almost endless social interactions, real or imagined,
dramatized, enacted, or dreamed. One-to-one correspondence in the events of consciousness is
not productive to pursue with external "causes," and perhaps not even with "correlates" in some
additive fashion.
To approach alienation with a positivist pre-supposition of multivariate "causes" would lead to the
false impression that serenity in human living is achieved only by those with low factor - loadings on
varied dimensions of alienation. Human experience is full of negative cases which prove this false.
In fact, serenity may even be a quality mastered by the individual who has higher exposure to
alienating processes. This suggestion is in keeping with Keniston's assessment (1985, p269) that
those who pursued inner wholeness were, "almost inevitably led to repudiate the life led by most
Americans...an alienated condition. Furthermore, this alienation may be mentally healthy (p 312).
"Normal individuals are sometimes under as much or more external pressure than their more
neurotic fellows," and yet, for a number of reasons like subscribing to "positive myths" or
participating in reform movements, be quite healthy of mind.
10 Two-ended continuums were the hallmark of mid-century alienation researchers. Leo Srole
modifed Merton's and Durkheim's anomie concept <xii> and turned it into "anomia," degrees of
social mal-integration. He suggests his five item scale of fatalistic cultural attitudes relates to
"dysfunction of individuals in society. This researcher included Srole's scale in a study of high
school dropouts (Russell, 1972). Though these students displayed conflictual personalities, poor
self-concept, and strong alienation from local high schools, the Srole scale did not differentiate them
from those who stayed in school. For Western high school youth, apparently, the scale was not
salient.
Melvin Seeman is regarded more highly for operationalizing "anomie" in Merton's adaptation of it.
His degrees of normlessness scale is recommended by the deviance theorist Marshall B. Clinard
(1964, p37 38). His attitude is that a high degree of socially approved behaviors is required for goalattainment.
Seeman designed much of his research to test mass society theory. However, its relation to Ortega
y Gasset's concept of rootlessness <xv> is not clear, while his attempt to operationalize Rousseau
<vii>, Hegel <viii>, and Marx <ix> with a powerlessness scale are more clear. In the studies cited in
the methods bibliography he utilized his powerlessness scale to study worker alienation, learner
alienation, and alienated sovereignty. Seeman asserted the validity of degrees of powerlessness
scale, against criticism by James S. Coleman and Joseph, and Elizabeth C. Mouledous (1984, p8284) that it does not adequately operationalize Marx nor does it allow for socialization from
responsibility for daily affairs (e.g. Blacks).
-115In another reply. he defends his two-ended dimensions as less confining than the process
formulation of the Whitier Group that alienation results from predisposing factors, cultural
disaffection, then social isolation. Such a stage approach to alienation is also a central argument of
deviance researchers who claim anomie precedes alienation.
A correlative study by Rolf H.K. Schulze was perhaps more successful in clarifying alienation in
organizational contexts (1966). Schulze found ideological commitment consistent with low
meaninglessness, normlessness, and self-estrangement. Powerlessness. however, was related to
degree of participation. Likewise, Amitai Etzioni's comparative studies of organizations resulted in a
treatment of alienation and organizational power (1968, p8-10). He linked alienation
(powerlessness) to occupational identities: foreign workers, adventure capitalists, prostitutes,
slaves, inmates, and soldiers. In The Active Society he related alienation to unresponsiveness of
social and political structures. Both works contrast with the human relations assumptions of much
mid-century alienation study.
A.L. Rhodes did attempt to relate one feature of Ortega y Gasset's rootless man to two-dimensional
scales (1961, p193-202). His results suggested alienation may result in the acceptance of
authoritarianism. However, Alan Hughes (1967) suggested authoritarianism and alienation are
linked with ethnocentrism, yet are unrelated to each other. Dwight G. Dean's post-doctoral studies
to link two-dimensional alienation scales to political apathy (another tenet of mass society theory)
were less successful. In the1961 study, he noted the institutional referent problem in such
research: "Is it society, community, voluntary association, or primary group which alienates?
Rootlessness <xv> was more adequately studied by community researchers in transitional
societies. Erik Allardt found underdeveloped areas of agrarian Finland had high perception of
uprootedness with strong class consciousness (1965). Francisco Suarez et al found alienation
traits in the transitional contexts of Latin American professions (1966). Maurice Zeitlin was able to
relate Cuban worker alienation to support for the Cuban revolution and the nationalization of
industry in, "Alienation and Revolution." (1966).
11 Weber's success with such an approach to "The Protestant Ethic" is legend, in retaining salience
through time: self-indulgence as a sin, with duties of thrift and hard work.
12 Sociological concepts prone to reification will be intentionally kept to a minimum in this study,
particularly status and role. The nature of the aggregates studied lends itself to this minimalist
approach, through selection of participants in training, with limited societal roles.
13 The basic model of research to produce the typology of alien-
-116ation is Znaniecki's concept of "analytic induction." Like Weber's "ideal type" method, the method of
analytic induction results in generalizations which are historically contexted in space and time. The
objective at the outset is to provide terms which give historical relevance to alienating themes in the
lives
of young men born after WWII and after the RVN war, on into their likely experiences in the 21st
Century.
This approach is similar to the methodology of Florian Znaniecki in his study of Polish peasants in
Europe and America, except generations (time), not emmigration from Poland and immigration to
the U.S. (space), is the shift assumed in the research design. His use of personal documents is
intended as a pattern for the analysis of the "aIienation documents" of youth used in this study.
14 Many of the phrases which appear in the researcher's inventory were gleaned from youth culture
sources, including interviews conducted in the Haight Ashbury district of San Francisco in 1967.
Phrasing is intentionally put in terms of natural usages, and the inventory encourages hand-written
comments as well. Administration of items in 1990 allow for input from participants on youth culture
phrases. While it is appropriate to refer to the study participants as "respondents," in the technical
sense, their participation and the analysis attempted regards them as "informants."
15 Then, his role was taken as a participant. His experiences with youth as a teacher over the
intervening twenty years, and now, reflect primarily his role as observer. See appendix 2.
16 In "The American Soldier-An Expository Review."
17 The most fundamental division of mid-century youth into categories by Keniston (1971) is in
terms of belonging: the solidly in (activists and hippies), the tenuously in (white silent
vocationalists), and the excluded, like Blacks, who still seek admittance to an affluent society (the
first aggregate is much smaller than the other two). Keniston says of activists, for example, (1971
quoted in 1971, p145), "95% remain interested onlookers or opponents...a very small minority of
America's 7 million college students.
However, Keniston and others describe great diversity among youth at times of cultural conflict in
the century, and multiple "types" in times of consensus as well (Keniston, 1965). This is in contrast
with mass media which tended to simplify reporting in times of conflict, failing to distinguish
parentally-alienated hippies from parent-supported activists, and "tasters" from drug-abusing
"seekers" and "heads" (1971, Keniston's section, "The Two Revolutions").
This research is cognizant of these contrasts in types. Some items and scales have been included
in the inventory to identify
-117such types. For example, some participants were selected for avowed chronic drug abuse (both
psychedelic and narcotic) to ensure such types were included in the study for both 1969-l970 and
1989-90. But the quasi-norm survey participants are selected by methods inclined to maximize
vocationalists who are tenuously in. These participants represent the largest aggregate in the
American West, and this aggregate is an important concern of this study.
18 In The Polish Peasant in Europe and America.
19 Cultural ideas, ideals, and evaluations may be deeply reflexive in character, depending upon
common past experiences within a social aggregate. Social action, especially as represented to a
survey participant in a context of a larger time frame, calls forth from a participant not an S-R
"response," but rather a longitudinal reflection on preexisting culture. The chronological self
becomes engaged. Through participation in a near-universal mass culture, for example, an
informant's reflections on such a survey may generate a "personal document." Just such a multimethod, demographically indexed, case study, informed, and time depth approach to survey data is
utilized in this study, treating such data as personal documents of historical significance.
20 Seeman, Nettler, and Srole had all operationalized scales reflecting fewer than ten dimensions,
posed within the framework of mass social psychology, using survey methodology. Their scales
appeared to this researcher neither competent in face validity nor suited for social or historical
application. At best, they seemed useful in answering mundane questions like, "How thoroughly
does this individual express a psychic state of malaise," or, "Within the context of 'managing sociaI
tensions' how can we get individuals 'therapy'?"
21 1968, p121-122.
22 Merton, 1968. Since a norm aggregate and a sub-aggregate of drug users are available to
analysis at two points in time, empirical reflections on "retreatism" are possible. The relationship of
these aggregates to each other, and to one aggregate in the other time frame is the minimal
research frame for induction. Also, since the sub-aggregates in each generation have the similarity
of some common behavior, behaviorist and social structural considerations may be explored.
23 Keniston states, in the first instance, "Given any list of 'socially undesirable' characteristics, the
alienated affirm that they possess them. On page 198, he continues that the alienated, "accentuate
the negative" as a substituted defense for repression or denial. This leaves them vulnerable to
unfair categorization as mentally ill.
24 Thus, the Likert items list "Strongly Disagree" first,
-118with "Strongly Agree" last. For related reasons, the Likert practice of assigning "no opinion" a value
of 3 (on a 5 point scale) was rejected. To retain this would have implied there is meaning in a two
point interval (2 to 4), something the alienated youth, no doubt, would reject as relevant to his input.
25 Robert Blauner defines institutional alienation with these terms in Alienation and Freedom,
UofC, 1964.
26 This view was the most significant, regrettable exclusion of this research. A major scale was not
constructed for worker alienation <ix> on the supposition the youthful participants would have
insignificant work histories, and in view of Keniston's early assertion, (1960, P6), "The alienation of
the industrial worker is a relatively minor aspect of our modern alienation." However, 1989-1990
participants occasionally said they had significant work experience in new service sector jobs at
minimum wage rates. Related alienations would have been worthwhile to compare with earlier
workplace case studies.
Also, the argument was often made between the 1969-70 and, 1989-90 generations that alienation
of the young results from withholding meaningful work activity during their adolescence.
This is closely related to Marx' argument on the meaninglessness of work to employed workers. i.e.
1989-1990 surveying did include the middle-aged by chance occurrence. Rather than exclude the
high numbers of mature-aged students in the college classes, their inventories were taken as well,
though they were later separated from the youth cohort.
27 See David Lee Ellison's Alienation and the Will to Live, Lafayette, Ind., Purdue, 1966, and
Donald P. Kent's "Social and Cultural Factors Influencing the Mental Health of the Aged," AJ of
Orthopsychiatry, 36(4), 1966, p680-685, which expresses the opinion, "Social alienation of the
aged is the greatest problem of gerontology."
28 Keniston, for example, presents alienated college youth as engaged in a life cycle period
devoted to selection of "goals and standards" which necessarily have cultural, ideological, and
"commitment" overtones.
29 In the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences.
30 Richard Quinney, in particular, noted the parallel of fatalism and alienation with low
socioeconomic status, "Political Conservatism, Alienation, and Fatalism...", Sociometry 27(3),
1964, p372-381. This finding had come out of inadequacies of the Srole scale to differentiate class
traits from alienation as a social category, a finding documented by Marvin E. Olsen in 1965,
"Alienation and Political Opinions," Public Opinion Quarterly 29(2), p200-212. William Erbe found
the same association using the Dean Scale in 1964. "Social Involvement and Political
-119Activity: A Replication and Elaboration." ASR 29(2), pl98-215.
Weber's "elective affinity" concept is discussed in Gerth andMills' From Max Weber , London,
Kegan Paul, 1947, p62-64. Without the influence of elective affinity, election of ideas to match
cultural interests, an attitude is likely to be a mere fashion or maintained only through actual
practice. Note: Weber's term may be named after a novel by Goethe.
32 In The Discovery of Grounded Theory, (Chapter lII).
33 As young men with limited work histories, sharing mostly a general education in common (i.e.
not specialized), differentiation by status for this aggregate is at a minimum for an industrialized
society.
The 1970 aggregates were Army inductees. Since the alienation inventories were taken prior to
specialized training by the Army, not only status was kept to a minimum but so too was role. These
young men were cognizant of the commonality of their social condition. Later aggregates studied,
on small college campuses or at one large high school, have a sociology or mass media class in
common.
34 Initially, a U.S.-wide norm group was considered, based upon enlisted reserve and National
Guard soldiers being trained in medical specialties on a single military base, but this universallydrawn geographic sample was rejected for two reasons: medical specialties were not dictated but
chosen by such servicemen, and both NG's and ER's were providing alternative service to active
war roles. Both facts made these participants atypical and unsuited as a quasi-norm group on an
inventory containing items sensitive to political alienation.
35 Through the student daughter of an Army psychologist with whom this researcher worked in a
clinic.
36 Discussion in this procedure took the form of suggesting a comparison or contrast of the
individual with average African youth or specific groups and probing for rejection or clarification of
the suggestion. Often, the participant would respond with cultural phrases in keeping with items on
the scale concerned, as he voiced general agreement with the assessment.
The discussions of items in the I989-90 administrations were group discussions. In the private and
public college samples, short follow-up sessions were held in 1989 and January, 1990, in which
modal answers were reported and students were asked to attribute social meanings to them. In the
1990 high school administrations, a 20 minute post-session was held, for group discussion of
contemporary mass culture cliches.
-12037 These items were still on the MMPl R Form in the 1985 version.
38 This is not just a residual concern for the baseline generation, a regional concern left over after
mass cultural influences on the baseline generation have been examined. Interpersonal exposure
to both alienating processes and cultural means of interpreting them is an important aspect beyond
participation in mass culture.
39 Americas volume, N.Y., Harper and Row, 1965.
40 Controls for suburban, urban, and rural are included in the inventory, on a self-report basis, as
are controls for family income, degree of honesty, and extreme answering patterns. However, these
will be applied primarily to isolate negative cases for shaping generalizations. Census data on the
two counties where the inventory is given (Bexar and Yellowstone) are used to provide relevant
population parameters and residence parameters.
41 See Appendix lb for details on the population parameters of these two counties.
42 "Political Generations," in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Science, 1979.
43 Since this is an introductory heading to Section lII, the bibliographic notes under this heading will
be found in the Section III bibliography.
44 Simmel's social analysis, as promoted by Neo-Chicagoan sociologists and anthropologists,
remained meaningful by shortening the time span of communications to the social encounter,
(subculture becomes the outcome of tightly time-bounded symbolic interaction), or by focusing on
spatially-conceived social establishments, each diffusing distinctive sub-cultures.
45 C.W. Mills, who is sometimes categorized as a mass society theorist, was early to identify
incorporation as an alienating form of social organization because it undermined the self- employed
in favor of an employed middle class. White Collar: The American Middle Class, N.Y., Oxford
Press. 1951.
46 See note 39 above on WMEN, p269), "By 1960, 80% of U.S. farms had at least one automobile
65% had telephones, 75% had television sets, and few farms were without radios." The
international reception of this programming, via a score of communications satellites, is conditioned
by financial factors at present.
47 See David Bohm's Causality and Chance in Modern Physics, Roger Walsh and Frances
Vaughn's Beyond Ego: Transpersonal Dimensions in Psychology and Alfred Korzybski's Science
and Sanity...
-12148 Marshall McLuhan treats humans as restricted in the inputs from the world's global village which
they can allow. He says (1964, p 56) "We have to numb our central nervous system when it is
extended or exposed, or we will die. Thus. the age of anxiety and of electrlc media in also the age
of the unconscious and of apathy."
49 See note 39 above, (p278), "The latest survey in the U.S. shows that the rate has fallen to 2.2%
in 1959. Nearly all persons 14 years or older could read or write."
50 See discussion before note 13, Section I.
51 Hegel saw absolute freedom as a good, but assumed what many moderns do not (1965, p615,
See Section I Bibliography). .Self consclousness knows and accepts duty as the Absolute."
52 See note 39 above, WMEN, (p267). By mid-century, the U.S. was a leading consumer of nearly
every important industrial raw material. The industry of the U.S. produced about 46% of the world's
total output of goods, despite the fact that the country's population comprised about 6% of the total
world's pop- ulation, and its land area about 7% of the earth's surface....
53 Erlch Fromm, in his The Sane Society, N.Y., Holt, Reinhardt Winston, 1955 suggested the U.S.
as the site of decentralized participant democracy promulgating universalist values of the great
religious traditions (p339-352), "The creation of collective art and ritual on a nonclerical basin.. It
had (p358)...The possibility for peaceful progressive transformation, while in the Soviet world such
possibilities are almost non-existent. This is a positive though polarized vision.
54 A negative view.
55 Keniston mentions that "corporate liberalism" led to a counter- revolutionary, Luddite
interpretation of youth movements (1971, p377), "The logic of the counter-revolutionary argument
makes a recourse to psychologism almost mandatory."
56 Friedenberg pursued this thesis in The Anti-American Generation, and Keniston based his book
The Uncommitted on youth distancing themselves from so-called American values. McLuhan
asserts that diffusion through mass media is two directions (1964, p 274, 281), "Ten years of T.V.
have Europeanized even the United States" and "America is now Europeanizing as furiously as
Europe is Americanizing."
Daniel Bell does acknowledge non-U.S. influence on youth (1980, p191), but he identifies it late,
and solely in terrms of Third World socialist movements, "In the middle and late 1960's here was a
flare-up of ideological hope particularly because of the student outbursts. In large measure,
however, the content of
-122the student ideologies in the West was drawn from Third World ideas rather than from the
circumstances in the home country."
57 The Conflict of Generations, New York, Basic, 1969. On page 390. Feuer brought both the
Americanism and Oedipal mistakes together when he said, "Anti-Americanism was the ideology of
rejecting all that the fathers stood for."
58 1971, p201.
59 In Kenniston's formulation (1965, p305), "American boys are increasingly brought up by women,"
resulting in a too successful victory over their fathers in a battle for the mother's affections.
Henry Malcolm. in Generation of Narcissus, simply transvalued Freud's "primary narcissism,"
giving it a positive value, much as Keniston did with his later concept of "post-modern youth."
60 See note 59. Malcolm gives major attention to T.V. as altering the consciousness of the babyboom generation. In essence, it is the same argument Keniston made under the concept of
"mystical fusion." (1965).
61 Yinger, Milton "Subcultures and Contracultures: Socialization to Non-Conformity." ASR, XXV,
Oct 1960, p625-635.
62 The Social System, 1951, where it was applied to delinquent gangs.
63 Theodorson and Theodorson, Modern Dictionary of Sociology, N.Y., Thomas Crowell. 1969 and
Hoult, Thomas Dictionary of Modern Sociology, Totowa, N.J., Littlefield, Adams, 1969.
64 Garden City. N.Y., Doubleday, 1969.
65 "The Condemnation and Persecution of Hippies" in Trans-Action, vol 6, Sept. 1969.
66 The varying nature of subcultural relation to mainstream culture is aptly discussed by Fred Davis
(1971). He foretells a trifurcated society:" of middle-working class, hippie dropouts, and cultures
based on race and ethnicity but held separate from the rest.
Significantly, the subculture term can apply to such realities on both conscious and unconscious
levels. There are "pro" subcultures which support the middle-working class. There are
"subterranean" subcultures like Matza's bohemian, radical, and delinquent subcultures (the first two
waxing and waning). And there are the ethnic based ones, likely to be excluded or amalgamated.
"Subterranean" subcultures often express unconscious motives current in mainstream "pro" culture.
67 "Youthful Desocialization" in Youth and Dissent.
-12368 Einstein, the Generations of Science, N .Y., Basic Books.
69 Kenniston states (1971, p274-276) that permissiveness suggested as causal by Bettleheim and
Flacks was discredited by subsequent researchers. Mass culture is not the repository of integrated
nationalist culture in a democratic society, but is the agglomeration of subcultures, transmitted over
mass media in a context of "cultural alternatives." Counter-cultures are best identified in ideological
terms unless specifically constructed for legitimating predatory criminal behavior against a dominant
culture's prohibitions.
70 McLuhan challenges the intellectual strategy of institutional pluralists when he says (1964, p 59),
"Fragmented, literate, and visual individualism is not possible in an electrically patterned and
imploded society." Fragmenting the social structure into sectors, each with an independent
enculturation path, merely ignores mass culture's power to inform and motivate. Such an effort
appears as a political effort to retrench society into traditional forms through a strategy of divide and
conquor.
124Methodology and Design Bibliography
Allardt, Erik "Working-Class Consciousness and Alienation: A Preliminary Ecological Analysis,"
Sociologiske Meddlelser, (Denmark) 10(1), 1965, p35-46.
Barnes, Harry and Becker, Howard Social Thought From Lore to Science N.Y., Dover, 1961.
Bell, Colin and Newby Doing Sociological Research, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1977: political nature
of sociological research.
Blauner, Robert Alienation and Freedom, UofC, 1964.
Brown, Michael "The Condemnation and Persecution of Hippies" in TransAction Vol 6, Sept 1969.
Clinard, Marshall B. "The Theoretical Implications of Anomie and Deviant Behavior" in Anomie and
Deviant Behavior: A Discussion and Critique, NY, Free Press, 1964, p37-38.
Coleman James S. The Adolescent Society, Free Press, 1961, and with Mouledous, Joseph C. and
Elizabeth C. "Implications of the Findings of Alienation," AJS, 70(1), 1964, p82-84.
Dean, Dwight G. "Alienation and Political Apathy," Social Forces, 38(3), 1960, p185-189, and
"Alienation: Its Meaning and Measurement," ASR, 26(5), 1961, p753-758.
Denzin, Norman The Research Act New York, McGraw Hill, 1970.
Ellison, David Lee Alienation and the Will To Live, Lafayette. Ind Purdue, 1966.
Erbe, William "Social Involvement and Political Activity: A Replication and Elaboration," ASR, 29(2),
1964, p198-215.
Etzioni, Amitai A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations, N.Y., Free Press, and The
Active Society, N.Y., Free Press, 1968
Fair, Charles The Dying Self, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday, 1970.
Glaser, Barney and Strauss, Anslem The Discovery of Grounded Theory, Strategies for Qualitative
Research, Chicago, Aldine, 1967.
Hirschi, Travis and Selvin, Hanan C. Principles of Survey Analysis. New York, Free Press, 1973.
Keniston, Kenneth The Uncommitted, Harcourt, Brace, N.Y., 1965, Young Radicals: Notes on
Committed Youth, N.Y., Harcourt Brace and World, 1968, and Youth and Dissent, N.Y., Harcourt,
Brace & Jovanovich, 1971.
Kent, Donald P. "Social Health of the Aged,"and Cultural Factors Influencing the Mental Health of
the Aged," AJ of Orthopsychiatry, 36(4), 1966,
-125p680-685.
Lazarsfeld, Paul "The American Soldier-An Expository Review," Public Opinion Quuarterly, 13,
No.3, Fall 1969, p378-380.
Merton, Robert Social Theory and Social Structure, New York, Free Press, 1968, and "Social
Structure and Anomie," ASR3, Oct 1938, p672-682.
Nettler, Gwynn "Antisocial Sentiment and Criminality," ASR24 (2), p202-208, 1959.
Olsen, Marvin E. "Alienation and Political Opinions," Public Opinion Quarterly 29(2), 1965, p200212.
Quuinney, Richard "Political Conservatism, Alienation, and Fatalism...", Sociometry, 27(3), 1964,
p372- 381.
Rhodes, A.L. "Authoritarianism and Alienation: The F-Scale and the Srole Scale as Predictors of
Prejudice," Soc Quart, 2(3),1961, p193-202.
Russell, Bruce A. American Alienation Scale, unpublished multi-variate inventory of selfadministered Likert items, 1968, and related database of SouthWestern adolescent males (norm
group and drug users), 1969-1970.
Russell, Bruce A. The Title I Program 1971-72 Project 100, of Missoula County High School,
Montana, 1972.
Schulze, Rolf H.K. An Analytical Comparison of Selected German Associations (Ph.D., E. Lansing,
Michigan State), 1966.
Seeman, Melvin "Alienation and Social Learning in a Reformatory," AJS69(3), 1963, p270-284;
"Organizations and Powerlessness: A test of the Mediation hypothesis," ASR, 29(2), 1964, p216228 (with Arthur G. Neal); "Antidote to Alienation--Learning to Belong," Transaction 3(4), 1966, p3539; "Alienation, Membership and Political Knowledge: A Comparative Study," POQ, 30(3), 1966,
p353-367; "Powerlessness and Knowledge: A Comparative Study of Alienation and Learning,"
Sociometry, 3(2), 1967, p105-123; and "On the Personal Consequences of Alienation in Work,"
ASR, 32(2), 1967, p273-285.
Smelser, Neil ed. Handbook of Sociology, London, Sage, 1988.
Sorokin, Pitirim A. Society,Culture and Personality:Their Structure and Dynamics, New York,
Cooper Square, 1969.
Spindler, George and Louise, et al The American Cultural Dialogue and its Transmission N.Y. ,
Falmer Press, 1990.
Stacy , Margaret Methods of Social Research, Sydney, Pergamon , 1969.
-126Srole, Leo "Social Integration and Certain Corollaries: an exploratory study," ASR , 21(6), 1956,
p709-716.
Suarez. Francisco "Professional Alienation in Transitional Contexts," Revista LatinoAmericano de
Sociologia , 2(3), 1966, p378-395.
USDC, Bureau of the Census 1960 Census of the Populat ion Vol 1, Characteristics of the
Population, Part 45, Texas, and Part A, Section 1& 2, 1970 Census of Population, and Part 28,
Montana, 1980 Census of the Population and PL94-171, Montana, 1990 Census.
Weber, Max From Max Weber:Essays in Sociology. ed. Gerth & Mills, Oxford
Press, 1946, Economy and Society, V1, ed. Roth & Wittich, N,Y., Bedminster, 1968, & The
Protestant Ethic & the SpirIt of Capitalism, N.Y., Scribners, 1952.
World Mark Encyclopedia of the Nations--Americas, N,Y., Harper and Row, 1965.
Zeitlin, Maurice "Alienation and Revolution," Social Forces 45(2), 1966, p224-236.
Znaniecki, Florian Cuultural Sciences (1952) Urbana, lllinois, U of Illinois Press, 1963; The Method
of Sociology, New York, Farrar, 1934; and Bierstedt's Florian Znaniecki on H umanistic Sociology,
Uof Chicago Press, 1969.
Institutional Support Bibliography:
AFEES, AMMEDS Company, Mental Hygiene Consultation Service, Sam Houston, Bexar County,
San Antonio, Texas, (also in cooperation with the Bexar County Induction Center): participants-drug abusers and norm group.
Eastern Montana College, (Soc-Poly Sci-NA Studies Dept), 1500 N. 30th St., Billings, Mt. 591010298: data processing facilities and student participants.
Rimrock Foundation, 1231 N. 29th, Billings, Mt, 59101: participants (drug abusers).
Rocky Mountain College, (Soc-Anthro Dept), 1511 Poly Dr., Billings, Mt., 59102-1796: data
processing facilities, and student participants.
Senior High School, (English Dept), 425 Grand Ave., Billings, Mt 59101: student participants
St Mary's University, (Sociology Dept), San Antonio, Tx. 78228: Keypuunching & census tract
surveying methods.
University of Montana, (Sociology Dept), Missoula, MT. 59812: Keypunching, PDP tape storage &
translations.
-127U.S. Bureau of the Census, HHES, IMALL, Walter Busse, Survey Statistician, Washington, D. C.
20233: 1990 census report scheduling.
-128-
Section III
Findings
-129Findings Introduction
European alienation concepts are reviewed first, up to mid-century, then conventional
meanings of American "self" and its relationship to "society" are explored to expose the
ideological foundations of American alienation views. The four American views are
presented as "traditions” much as Section I began with six traditional meanings for
alienation up through the 17th Century. These are examined in detail, like the 19th and
20th Century ideal types previously discussed, only this time through the works of
multiple alienation authors. The discussion then turns to a refinement of these traditions,
by using research reports and empirical data from my county-level surveys to challenge
and trim out non-essentials, producing post-conventional models of alienation viable for
future research. The findings section ends with an empirically-grounded discussion of a
bi-generational pattern of cultural alienation among my survey participants and how that
pattern is being shaped into the 21st Century.
Self and Other as Alien in Mid-Century America
Synopsis of Historical European Alienation
In Medieval through Reformation England, alienation was used for separations from
these Others: God <i>, property <iv>, loved ones <v>, and "correct" opinions <vi>.
When the experience of of alienage was perceived as within (alienation from self <ii> or
from mind <iii>, it was typically a departure from some normal social state, like getting
angry and forgetting one’s self during conversation, or being possessed from outside,
becoming psychotic.[1] In essence, self was the soul of Everyman at risk from profane
misfortunes or deprivations
-130-
of God's grace; medieval alienation had the character of an external and brutal truth.[2]
In the 1700's, alienation took on a meaning connected with the State and nationalism,
forceful separation from one's political rights or sovereignty <vii>.
Nineteenth Century authors used alienation to reflect perceptions both self and other
are engaged in historical processes related to another, each composed of differentiated
structures which diffuse across self-Other boundaries. This perception represented
alienation as average, even daily in character. Academics experienced it in learning
(counterposing different personas in consciousness to resolve a debate topic). Since it
was dialectical, it was alienating until a synthesis was achieved <viii>.
For Christian authors who found only despair in the quest <xi>, pursuing a grand
synthesis was a self-stymying process, directed at an indeterminate God. Atheists
described the end point of such effort as nothingness. For naturalists who opposed the
Church, it was an institutional parasite tampering with human will to separate wills from
their true nature (ix). During industrialization of the West, the factory system intruded
into the productivity of the self <ix> the name of efficiency and profit, two goals of a new
class of people.
Those experiencing these goals as the effect of commerce on local communities came
to see two wills at war within the self, one devoted to mutual understanding among
intimates, and one dictated by commercial priorities <x>.[3] In essence, self and Other
mirrored one another in structure; only the rude and rural—or uncolonized—were
believed to escape some co-optation by powerful Others.
Twentieth Century authors wrote of selves vying with societies so
-131-
massive, specialized and mobile that Other lost prominence as the existential and
external forces of the Middle Ages and the institutional forces of 19th Century
exploitation; it became all-engulfing society. In social action with society as Other, the
individual became dependent on its division of labor (social structure) and public
Morality (collective conscience) which if breached, left him a candidate for anomie <xii>,
open to all sorts of internal maladies.[4] Psychoanalytic concern over maladies of guilt
and repression from this interchange led many to a therapeutic stance against
separating the conscious self from unconscious needs <xiii>.
Bureaucratization of society and its enculturation of individuals to ascetic religious
ideologies was identified as demystifying--removing meaning--from the self <xiv>,
turning identity into a composite of societal roles. And lastly, totalitarian and totalist
mass cultures of the Western World traumatized and separated selves from their roots
in minorities and from their will to extend minorities social Just ice <xv>.[5]
Alienation became laden with a negative value and was largely restricted to a societal
Other. Self, with its multiplicity of attached personas, essentially stepped out of its
shoes and—like Alice in Wonderland—was absorbed into the hierarchical looking glass
of society (See pages 7, 25, and 45 for more detailed summaries).
-132American Alienation: A Matter of Identity
In twentieth century America, self and Others retained some cultural features central to
alienation concerns of european authors. These themes were evident within the broad
cultural traditions transplanted to American institutions. As european alienation
concerns were amalgamated in this "melting pot" of peoples, contra-concerns arose
reflecting efforts to preserve cherished American opinions <vi> and norms supporting
social structures <xii>. Concern over alienations from these opinions tended to obscure
older and more central meanings of the term.
Clearly, the Protestant Ethic of Calvin and Luther had a major cultural impact on
populations of New England and the Middle Atlantic States, as a societal image of
Other. This religious heritage was identified by many as fundamental to American
society, and even though Weber saw it waning when he did his book on it, its
preservation became so associated with alienation authors mid-century that the vast
bulk of alienation Iiterature mid-century was written and published in these states.[6]
By mid-century, revolutions in the U.S. economy (from ownership to managership and
from a production focus to one of consumption) had resulted in value substitutions for
aspects of asceticism. Of course, Weber was critical of the Protestant Ethic, as he
was of his mother for embodying it, and his view of alienation <xiv>, like many
German immigrant intellectuals who wrote on alienation mid-century, was that the
Protestant Ethic resulted in negative alienations for the self through its central values:
self-denial, thrift, and hard work. This was even more obvious in the case of Freud's
work as it related to alienation <xiii>.
The Spirit of Capitalism, as well, was a dominant force in American culture and
economic institutions, particularly in centers of finance and commerce such as the old
Dutch colony which became New York. [7] The commercial class interests which so
concerned Marx <ix> and Tonnies <x> as alienating, were also central commitments
in regions like The Empire State: self-interest, rationality (efficiency and technology).
competition, and a free market. Populations in the factory heartland of America
(Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin) were particularly prone to concerns
over worker alienation <ix>, and much Trade Union history in these states consisted
in reconciling worker interests with employer interests, to ameliorate such
-133alienation (through seniority, welfare benefits, health and safety regulations, and
income re-distribution, rather than control over the means of production).[8]
Cultural integration in the U.S., an immigrant nation on the move, was seldom high in
ethnic terms after the Louisiana Purchase <x>. Many ethnic groups accompanied
each land acquisition and migration, each with their own culture. George and Louise
Spindler describe the U.S. as (1990, p13), "Twenty-four groups named by national
origin, which are categorized into six major named ethnic categories and further
subdivided by five major religious categories. They likewise stress the mobility of this
population (1990, p8), "In small towns of under 30,000 people, in the Midwest, more
than half of the population is of very short tenure, under ten years, There has always
been change and impermanence in American Society." This resulted in extensive
marginality (<x> Stonequist), bi-culturalism, and other adaptations to cultural
pluralism. Mainstream homogeneity was led by the Yankee referent ethniclass, but
this integration was tenuous even after World War II, and has since diversified.
Robert Nisbet maintains that cultural integration developed as a "national culture" only
through (1988 p4), "The Seventy-Five Year War of the Twentieth Century."
An obvious culture complex at work in American society was that of institutional
pluralism within a democratic government, a political form which embodied the ideal of
popular sovereignty. This American ideal opposed forcefully depriving political rights
or sovereignty of the populace as Rousseau <viii>. But, as with Weber’s, Marx's, and
Tonnies' ideas relating to alienation, American culture added additional elements. The
political Other in America had strong libertarian checks and balances acting to shape
the common will which were modifications of the more monolithic French ideal.
Thus, alienation <viii>, as used in America, tended to include separations from
influence on balancing institutions as well.
When America was strongly influenced by Comte's positivist ideas at the turn of the
century, especially through Durxheim’s sociology, a conflict between this political
balance ideal and the mass assimilation ideal furthered by Durkheim's collective
conscience developed. Alienation from politics now meant potentially contrary things:
alienation from exercising political influence <vii>, and alienation from public
conscience, a secondary aspect of Durkheim’s anomie detailed by Robert Merton
<xii>. Advocates for veto groups and institutional pluralities continued in conflict with
this latter conception of alienation, and developed a special brand of mass alienation
theory mid-century <xv>, based upon retaining "democratic" checks through
institutions viewed as minorities.[9]
-134European alienation was thus an idea which contained an implicit challenge to cultural
ideals of American institutions, whether religious, economic, or political, as far back as
its colonial heritage. This resulted in numerous alterations of the concept
alienation referring to Others in mid-century mass culture.
Self also took on culturally unique ideals in twentieth century America, features distinct
from its meaning in european alienation literature. Protestant Christianity was common
in Europe as well. But the American concept of self took on overtones beyond the
individual soul and conscience.
The frontier mystique attributes self-reliance to the American brand of individualism.
This is not necessarily equivalent with autonomy or individuation as a self goal
discussed by Hegel, Ortega y Gasset, or even Riesman.[10] It translates as 'I'd rather
do it myself," rather than "I am adequate unto myself." Likewise, Social Darwinism
had an important influence upon American individualism, especially as joined with
goals of moral perfectibility from Comte's positive philosophy, and American
protestant moral philosophy. To compete in public life for power was self-legitimating,
just as the symbols of recognition (VebIen’s "conspicuous consumption" or Packard’s
"status seeking") were validators of self. These social legitimators of social action by
the self required two other ideals in American culture which dominated much of
American history; achievement and equality of opportunity. By mid-century, these
self goals were seen as central to "meritocracy" as a societal ideal.[11]
Americans without self goals of competitive achievement to exploit societallyequalized opportunities, were publicly regarded as "alienated" from American ideals.
This is additive to self-alienation <ii> and mind alienation <iii> concepts for American
usage of the term alienation. Presenting a self other than this character could result
in labels of "un-American" or "crazy" being applied. [12]
Daniel Bell discusses a host of cultural ideals contingent upon an American self in his
discussion of national character (1980, p181), "I would distinguish, therefore, five
different elements that are often lumped together and confused as national character
when writers use the term. These are: 1) national creed 2) national imagoes 3)
national style 4) national consciousness 5) national personalities. Of these, the first
four are not personality
-135attributes of individuals but compounds of history, traditions, legitimations, values,
customs, and manners...The fifth is 'national character' as Ingles and
Levinson had defined the subject.[13]
It is just such "compounds of history" which trammeled the self in mid-century alienation
literature.[14] In essence, the Sapir concept of world view discussed earlier (See page
22) was incorporated into what it meant to have an identity in America. The focus was
upon what the self should preserve of value from the cultural past, not what was
relevant to the cultural present or future which might be "beyond" nationality, [15]
As we will see in discussing Kenneth Keniston’s work, such cultural baggage made
alienation research very difficult in America mid-century. Self and Other were different
in the American context, in the sense they were overlain with cultural ideals—Bell’s first
four elements of national character—which obscured meaningful discussion of
alienation as treated by european writers, both in terms of self and society. American
ideology was involved.
This is precisely, of course, what Daniel Bell had denied about America in 1960. He
announced the end of ideology, expecting the U.S, at the end of the 1950's to become
quiescent in terms of ideological commitments.[l6] Bell believes (1980, p270), "The play
of ideological passions to their utmost extreme...shreds the society." This assessment
was true of the totalitarian "debate" panned by Ortega y Gasset, and the rancour of
America's McCarthyism, but Bell's longing for ideological unity did not good history
make.
In fact, the U.S., over the course of its history, is considered by many as among the
world's most ideological nations. George C. Lodge, in The New American Ideology
says (p110). "America has been
-136-
profoundly ideological." He traces its functional principle to Locke's rejection of labor as
a social function, resulting in a unique national style (p168), we are organized around
the assumptions and central institutions of possessive individualism.
Arieli's Individualism and Nationalism in American Ideology makes the point in historic
terms when he relates the self to society as Other in America (p11), "Man was part of a
nation because the nation confirmed his humanity," in contrast with England where,
"They derived their validity through tradition."
What he suggests, going back to the very origins of the republic, is that selves in
America develop legitimacy primarily through behavioral interaction with other citizens,
and this interaction operates under norms and values which are themselves a (p23),
"Frarmework for national identification." This is the essence of Parson's social system
behavioral interaction according to societal (nationalist) norms. In contrast with
German, English and Scandinavian conceptions of self's relation to society, mid-century
America conceived self as derivative from society (See pages 29 and 50).
Clearly, this is a unique cultural milieu within which to conceive and measure historical
alienation, and one with multiple "red-herrings" to confound the researcher.
American Alienation Traditions:
Not only were self and Other unique in America, but intellectual habits of Americans
transformed alienation as a concept. Pragmatism tended toward eclecticism with the
concept, and stressed either the self side or the Other side in developing "reform"
traditions. Positivism, as a scientific modality, collapsed its historical
-137-
dimensions and factored it. Finally, university organization carved it up.
American alienation authors in the late mid-century functioned in an elaborate division
of academic labor among social scientists. Thus, most were not just sociologists,
anthropologists, historians, political scientists, or psychologists, but specialists in
subfields touching aspects of alienation. To use the concept effectively, most crosstrained themselves in other social sciences they considered relevant. Consequently,
alienation became a series of specialized but composite terms.
The range of possible sub-fields, and composite cross-overs, is impossible to render
accurately for more than a few authors, let alone detail their theoretical perspectives
and diverse value judgements.
For example, Fromm's alienation, an early and sophisticated composite, was a
specialized psychoanalytic term within a Neo-Freudian paradigm <xiii>, designed for
articulating the social character implications of mass political economies.[17] The
social action agenda was to emancipate human will from unconscious impediments to
corporate socialism: from idolatry in American capitalist society, and from
sadomasochist totalitarianism in Eastern Europe.
By contrast, Daniel Bell, an economic sociologist with cross-training in national
character, regarded alienation as Marx’s specialized economic term, and castigated
Fromm's usage. (18) He later developed a composite of Marx's view with the French
concept of otherness, and promoted a post-industrial order based in technology to
avoid its implications (1976, p457), the "History of the conjunction of alterite'
(otherness) and alienation.
Both, as was the American practice, formed composites from earlier authors,
attaching them to their specialties as unique sub-types.
These three tendencies in American thought, pragmatism, positivism, and subspecialization in universities, produced a concept which, while meaningful to very
restricted audiences, was virtually
-138-
un-bounded for discourse in a mass cultural context, and that was where the public
debate occurred in the 1960's (See p60). Only within the theoretical traditions of subfields, the value orientations of reform movements, and the paradigms of positivist
research strategies did the concept cohere. Even there, its usage was usually more
multi-dimensioned than anyone cared to admit.
In view of this, the cultural patterns for self and Other in American mass culture—the
mainstream—strongly influenced the meanings of alienation, and redefined the
professional meanings given it by authors who published for the paperback press. Only
a very brief description of such alienation traditions in American literature will be
discussed here, relevant to mid-century alienation research. [19]
(Psychohistory)
Erich Fromm revised Freud's treatment of malaise among normal individuals in
Western Civilization interpreting it as separation from a vital unconscious <xiii> .
Uniquely among psychologists, he popularized the outcome of their repressions as
"alienation."[20] He compared his approach to Freud, Horney, and Sullivan (1969,
p24) but rejected their concepts (instinct, roles, and anxiety) as central for
Analyzing civilization's malaise; rather, a disturbance in the "relatedness of the
individual to the world is its root. It arises from (1955, p211), "Conflicts between
human nature and society."
Beginning as a theorist of mass society <xv>, he described alienation as a mass
condition which verged on insanity (The Sane Society) in both democratic and
totalitarian societies [21], and he analyzed it as tightly bound up with what he called
"social character."[22] He noted that authoritarian character fuses itself with Other in
order "To acquire the strength" to overcome insecurity. The democratic character
seeks security through meeting Other's expectations (1969, p229), "The pseudo self
is only an agent who actually represents the role a person is supposed to play...This
substitution of pseudo acts for original acts of thinking, feeling, and willing, leads
eventually to the replacement of the original self by the pseudo self."
Popularization of Fromm's psychohistorical alienation inevitably resulted in
Americanizations of the concept, in
-139terms of national character dimensions: self-help individualism, moral achievement
aims, and normative societal constraints. They were also shaped by reform traditions
within psychoanalysis. Soon after the late 1960’s, when he re-issued Escape from
Freedom as "still valid," and published both his book on Freud and his handbook for
social movements, he lost sufficient social control over his creations that his books
contained ideas at variance from cultural understandings of them in mass culture and
within psychology itself.[23]
Fromm's alienation of the unconscious <xiii> is not instinctual, but psychic. For
Fromm, the psychic need—is really his definition for faith (1969), "An inner
relatedness to mankind and affirmation of life."[24] He rejects the centrality of
neurology and sex as well as popular "misunderstandings" of Freud (1955, p164) that
free association re-joins one to his real self, and "the principle that every desire must
be satisfied immediately." Freud's paternalistic and sexually-repressive society is
gone. Instead, urban people today alienate themselves from their guilt, depression,
fraudulence, and potential freedom. His most timely appraisal of this is (1968, p86),
"In the industrial society the official conscious values are those of the religious and
humanistic tradition: individualism, love, compassion, hope...the unconscious
values...property, consumption, social position, fun, excitement, etc. " This alienation
of values from consciousness, he says, "creates havoc" for self and society.
Some clinical psychologists and social psychiatrists utilized his insights on the self to
establish training and therapy groups for promoting self-esteem or acquisitive selfgoals. According to Fromm, there is no valid link between self-esteem and the
American social ethic (1955, p154), "This craving for acceptance is indeed a very
characteristic feelings in the alienated person." He concludes, (p 14), "Consensual
validation as such has no bearing whatsoever on reason or mental health." Fromm's
a counsel was rather to endure aloneness (1955, p 196), "The psychic task.. to
tolerate insecurity, without panic and undue fear... Free man is by necessity insecure:
thinking man by necessity uncertain."[25]
It is difficult to find a popular phrase in American mass culture supporting selfaggrandizement which has not been traced to Fromm's works, most of them
inappropriately borrowed.[26] Fromm's major sub-thesis about alienation was related
to affection <v> and "brotherly love."[27] Fromm made the radical assertion that
those without self-love are the socially dangerous ones (1969, p137), "Selfishness is
not identical with self-love but with its very opposite." He says (1969, p117), "Attitudes
towards others and toward oneself, far from being contradictory, in principle run
parallel."[28]
-140Misperception of Fromm is particularly evident in later criticisms of the psychohistory
tradition by American sociologists. Nisbet is the most caustic. He says, (1988,
P86), "The loose individual is a familiar figure in our age,"...loose both in morals and
"loosed" from institutions, and Nisbet links him to "The Great Student Mania of the
1960's" and the works of inauthentic professors. He states (Ibid, p111-112), "The
authentic Freud is far outweighed by the bogus Freuds created by those such as
Erich Fromm, Herbert Marcuse, Norman 0. Brown, and their like...What emerges from
cosmetic surgery is something that might be called a Freudomarx or a Marxofreud.
Herbert Marcuse, a sociology of knowledge author mid-century, was clearly in this
psychohistory tradition and would qualify most—in Nisbet’s terms—as a Marxofreud.
Theodore Roszak put the range of psychohistory into context when he asked (1969;
p85), "Is the psyche, as Marx would have it, a reflection of 'the mode of production ' of
material life? Or is the social structure, as Freud argued, a reflection of our psychic
contents?" Marcuse takes the former position. But whichever position is dominant,
psyschohistorians agree that both the capitalists and the workers are affected, and
thus, as Roszak opines (Ibid, p97), "The revolution which will free us from alienation
must be primarily therapeutic in character and not merely institutional."[29]
The psychohistory tradition based in Fromm and Marcuse had impacts on American
psychology which slowly omitted their historical concerns, shifting the focus from the
self-Other relationship they discussed more toward self-maintenance. This was even
true of movements they directly influenced. Just one example of this was the
development of Eric Berne and Thomas Harris' Transactional Analysis. Drawing from
the work of Frieda Fromm-Reichman and role-oriented practitioners, they retained a
focus on imbalanced self-Other relations ("life positions") which resulted in crossedtransactions. They also indicted game-playing as inconsistent with autonomy. Yet,
they utilized the descriptive language of barter, tended to reify child, adult, and parent
roles, and directed their immense popularity mostly toward clinical or meso-level
objectives.
Psychological movements like H.S. Sullivan's role psychology, William Glasser's
reality therapy, humanistic psychology or various life-cycle approaches; these
succeeded the mass cultural appeal of psychohistory. Most, including humanistic
psychology—except for Rollo May’s anti-tech approach—focused on micro or mesolevel analysis. Glasser’s The Identity Society (1972), for example, was a sociological
work by a psychologist like Freud's little book. However, Glasser presented "identity"
as equivalent to role, in contrast with Fromm. He conceived of (Ibid.
-141p5) , "A new role-dominated society," which would replace goal-motivation with role
(identity) motivation, and he urged that children, "discover a role" so they might have
an identity. Nonetheless he noted that for both white and blue collar youth (p38)
"Never before have so many people struggled for personal fulfillment unsuccessfully."
He ends up asserting something very close to the American social ethic, and a
critique of disaffiliation (Ibid, p30). "In the new identity society, the most common
cause of pain is the failure to get involved, which we experience as loneliness."
(Societal)
Talcott Parsons synthesized value orientations of modernism (See page 32 and 38),
using Durkheim's Social system approach <xii>, This was concretized in American
terms by one of his students, Seymour M. Lipset, mid-century, in a study of Englishspeaking industrialized nations with frontiers, The First New Nation. Lipset concluded
that, "The United States more than any non-Communist industrial nation, emphasizes
achievement, equalitarianism, universalism, and specificity. These four tend to be
mutually supportive."[30] Since these core values are imbedded in the functioning of
U.S. institutions, individuals pursuing contrasting values are likely to be estranged
from American society, suffering varying degrees of anomie.
Similar ideas were formulated by another of Parson's students, Robert Merton, and
together their functionalist approach to alienation in America may be considered a
variation on Durkheim's concepts and concerns <xii>.
Mid-century, Harry C. Bredemeier and Jackson Toby modified this approach in light of
disaffection of college youth from active support of the U.S. social system, in their new
editions of Social Problems in America, a college text. By expanding Merton’s
approach to include disaffiliation from mainstream culture as a conscious choice of
individuals, they were able to functionally include in the social system those whose
social action pursued different goals or means, and still retain their institutional
approach.[31] Like Merton, they included materialism as an institutionalized American
value.
James Coleman was author of The Adolescent Society in 1961, which was about the
leading edge of the baby-boom generation in upper Illinois. He used much of the
perspective of American societal alienation. Coleman warned that peer values were
substituting for adult societal values due to emerging social structures of an
adolescent society (p11), "It is their peers whose approval, admiration, and respect
they attempt to win in their everyday activities, in school and out."
-142-
Coleman participated in a structural study of unions with S.M. Lipset in 1965, which
found that the Protestant Ethic is not required for a spirit of capitalism to flourish. [32]
Then, twenty years after his book on adolescent society, in 1980, Coleman
participated in the National Commission on Youth report, The Transition of Youth to
Adulthood: A Bridge Too Far, along with a childhood expert Urie Bronfenbrenner. This
report highlighted the same structural alienation of youth, this time about the
transitional generation to a baby bust. The entire report attempted to rejoin adults and
youth in "frequent , realistic contact" in "new environments for youth," meaning
institutional environments.
Its thesis was (p182), "'As American Society has become industrialized, specialized,
secularized, and urbanized during the 'great ascent,' youth have increasingly become
more isolated from society." Reviewing the Zurich International Conference on Youth,
it reported the problem as world-wide, "'At Zurich the conferees voiced concern about
the alienation of youth from adult society and points of weakness in the transition to
adulthood." The report clearly attributes increased suicide and unemployment rates
to this isolation from societal settings:
1) p79 "Most tragic of all is the suicide rate for Americans between the ages of
sixteen and twenty-four, a rate that has doubled in the past ten years to the present
rate of 17%--17,000 per 100,000 youth."'
2) p11 "About half of the unemployed in America are between the ages of sixteen
and twenty-four."
3) p165 "The youth unemployment rate for the twenty-four member countries of
OECD currently averages 10.7%."
Perhaps the most interesting feature of the report is its causal argument behind high
youth unemployment in the U.S. Its cause is structural. Adults of the 1970's had
(Ibid, p200), "A thinly veiled anti-youth attitude...(a)...product of the turbulent decade
of the 1960's" which views youth as unmotivated toward work. Structural barriers to
youth employment were erected (Ibid, p81). The report challenges this attitude.[33]
Summarizing the report, the authors indicted the U.S. for neglecting its youth (Ibid,
p196), "As a society, America has yet to follow the lead of other Western
Democracies in making a common national commitment to youth," and they presaged
greater alienation without one.[34]
Survey researchers of alienation continued a societal alienation analysis after the
disaffection of youth in the 1960's. Prominent among them was Daniel Yankelovich.
He conducted five representative U.S. surveys of over 1000 interviewed youth, ages
16 to 25. between 1969 and 1973, reported in his book The New Morality and
published in 1974. His conception of American societal values, however, was
-143less analytic than Parsons and Lipset. His examination of participation in the social
system was in terms of economic values, and values of patriotism, religion, and
sexual constraint.
He found (Ibid, p21), "Just a few years ago, the country was reduced to near panic by
what seemed to be the wholesale alienation of college youth. Now we find an almost
classic formula for accommodation and adaptation." Even as he charted an average
decline among college students in general values of religion, patriotism, money, and
constraints on marijuana; and average increases in values of sexual freedom, privacy,
and self-expression; he found substantial increases in values of economic security,
job prestige, and high incomes. In particular, he reported that (Ibid, p31), "Young
people are willing to work hard but they have lost their confidence in hard work paying
off (about half)." The disparity was particularly true of non-college youth. Yankelovich
measured one leg of the triad of the Protestant Ethic.
He interpreted these latter shifts in consensus as a bargain being made with a society
facing increased scarcity. He concluded (Ibid, p9), "Apart from the impact of the war,
the 1960's were not an aberration, but an inherent part of our cultural continuity." The
shifts he saw as related to the RVN war (Ibid, p v), "The period from 1967 to 1973,
though not long by historical standards stretches from the peak of the Vietnam War
protest movement to the disappearance of the war as an issue among young
people.[35]
His overall conclusion was a functionalist one, that the "privatization" of the 1950's,
with its "rigid compartmentalization"' of work and private life, had been rejected (Ibid,
p21), "Today this compartmentalization no longer operates...They do not accept the
need to submerge their 'real selves' in their work while adopting a completely different
set of values in their private lives."[36]
He also remarked on the three year lag in non-college youth's attitudes (Ibid, p23),
"Noncollege youth today is just about where the college population was in 1969,
suggesting new attitudes diffused to the non-college population. The result was, "The
New Values are now widely diffused throughout the total college population and are
no longer confined to a minority." This confirmed what Roszak has suggested about
the counter-cultural complex (1978, p xxi), "It has dissolved into its surrounding
medium,"[37] From Yankelovich’s initial work, then, peripheral values to the social
system were shown to undergo change on average, with continuity in some
mainstream American values. National institutions were briefly "'deauthorized," to use
his term, and local institutions were briefly eclipsed in
-144priority by individualist goals, but the long-term mandate he presented as largely
unchanged.
A similar result was concluded in the Caplow and Bahr replication of Lynd's
Middletown study in l979.[38] The Middletown replication provided a long time-scale,
the 53 years between 1924 and 1977, though it was located in a traditionalist region
of the U.S. Caplow and Bahr concluded (1979, p17), "It is hard to believe that the
young people of even one midwestern community are as strongly imbued with
religion, patriotism, and the Protestant Ethic as their grandparents were at the same
age, but that is what the data seem to be telling us."
Their data, based upon a near-exhaustive survey of Middletown high schoolers,
contains twenty items from the Lynd’s original survey from which to support their
conclusion. The data indicate over half of both youth samples agree religion's
purpose is to prepare people for the hereafter, with roughly three quarters seeing
Jesus as uniquely perfect. The same proportion see the U.S. as the best country in
the world, half agreeing "My country-right or wrong;" and exactly the same
percentage (47%) views lack of success as "Entirely the fault of a man himself." The
other items were less definitive for their conclusion. $. However, this is a surprising
degree of continuity over half a century, especially since blue collar versus white
collar and male versus female differences on these items fell within a 14% range.[39]
In heartland America, from values measured by simple proportions, history appears
merely to repeat itself. However, it is quite possible 1924 and 1977 were on similar
peaks or in similar troughs in a cycle of attitude change, and perhaps 1990 attitudes
are in a different place on such a cycle; an horizontal line is not necessarily a good
hypothesis for cultural history, though popular among American societal alienation
researchers. The Spindlers state 1990, p31), "'Cycles' seem to be the nature of
cultural change in a dynamic society like ours."
Societal alienation research has displayed a number of inadequacies, as evident in
the studies reported above. The theoretical problem of measuring cognitive values
while predicting behavior has been a general problem. Feelings of alienation and
behavioral isolation of individuals from social structures are really different dimensions
of alienation, as Hagedorn and Labovitz have pointed out.[40] Even if the definition is
restricted to perceived alienation, there have been operational and ethniclass
problems. Operationalization of achievement, equalitarianism, universalism, and
specificity values has been minimal in the quasi-historical studies of this alienation
type. Also, many of its researchers have taken WASP cultural definitions as
necessary to the social system,
-145particularly the Protestant Ethic, while providing superficial measures of it.
(Techno-lag <xvi>)
William Ogburn’s variable, "cultural lag" produces maladjustments in culture (See
page 21). This cultural disintegration <ix> was positively valued in line with American
values of assimilation and technological progress. This is evident in Ogburn’s
assessment of the exponential increase in patents (1957, p172), "As these
discoveries and inventions are adopted, we must adjust to them, we must adapt
ourselves to this changing environment, but we do it with a certain amount of
lag...lags accumulate."
However, by mid-century, technological progress had taken on a negative value for a
number of authors. Mumford and Bettleheim noted that mechanisms had become
models for human aspiration due to technological adaptation, rather than human
beings.
Ellul, of France, extrapolated Weber’s ideas <xiv>, took technique itself as the source
of alienation, and connected it with tool-making and its cultural lags. This affected the
American value orientation toward techno-lag. He says (1973, p xxxiii), "In the
Modern World, the most dangerous forms of determinism is the technological
Phenomenon...(p4)...Technique has now become almost completely independent of
the machine, which has lagged far behind its offspring... (p146)...The tool alone has
the power and carries off the victory. "[41]
He lambasted technique as class-based (Ibid, p54),"Technical progress is a function
of bourgeois money;" stated that it, not the self, has become autonomous (p74),
"Technical progress today is no longer conditioned by anything other than its own
calculus of efficiency;" and he warned of its effect on the State (p233), "From the
political, social, and human points of view, this conjunction of state and technique is
by far the most important phenomenon of history." Finally, he cast psychologists as
the priests of technological society (p413), "here we have the essence of the
techniques of 'humanization:' to render unnoticeable the disadvantages that other
techniques have created.'[42]
Victor Ferkis, in 1969, provided a breakdown of mostly U.S. thinkers who were either
technological determinists or critics of technology. He grounded techno-lag in
Osburn's "technology as environment" and Leslie White's notion that "All the major
extant political ideologies fail to deal adequately with technology." Ferkis shared
these perceptions saying (1969, p27), "Technological change is the fundamental
factor in human evolution," and (p58), "We gain little valid insight into the social
meaning of technology from examining the major intellectual-political
-146movements of our day.
Noting that realms of culture have lagged behind material technology, Ferkis
suggested a change in selfhood, a new identity he called "technological man" (Ibid,
p242), "To replace the economic man of industrial society, or the liberal democratic
man of the bourgeois political order." This man would be (p246)," Man in control of his
own development within the context of a meaningful philosophy of the role of
technology in human evolution." Such a self could control machines and produce a
new culture, a "New Naturalism," without which humanity is unlikely to survive. [43]
Because techno-lag is a type of alienation with a fundamental referent, it historically
relates the micro level of sociological analysis to the macro level, and because it
developed such a powerful influence on Western Civilization mid-century, techno-lag
is here considered a unique alienation type <xvi>. Unlike the tradition of Chicago
Sociology which nurtured it, it has negative value overtones, yet it has American
associations with the dual consciousness ideas of Osburn, Stonequist, and Park.[44]
If Ellul contributed a transvaluation of technology to techno-lag, it was McLuhan and
Toffler who identified a neurological effect on self it engendered. Ellul had said (Ibid,
p399), "The concrete application of techniques dissociates man into
fragments...(402)...Modern man...represses his fear of the technical world and
intoxicates himself with action, or, better, with the illusion of action."
Marshall McLuhan took up a broad-scope review of tools, especially diffusion media
from the printing press through radio and TV, and his works elaborated psychic
overtones of different technologies. Mid-century technologies, he says, result in a
sense of neural overload from cultural lag (See Section II, note 48).
Alvin Toffler incorporated the estrangement quality of technological change <xvi> in
his book, Future Shock, in which he cited Ogburn as (p417), "One of the world's great
students of social change." There he extended this overload interpretation,
expressing future shock as an overload exceeding the "channel capacity" of the
human organism in terms of the turnover in people, places, and things. He tied not
only "the sick apathy of millions" to it, but virtually all routine social problems of the
population. He commented, "Today a vast sociological and psychological literature is
devoted to the alienation presumed to flow from this this fragmentation of
relationships." Man’s "adaptability" has limits before the "transience," "novelty," and
"'diversity" features of mid-century American technology.
-147-
Toffler, however, criticized the new Ellul view of technological lags as oppressing
man, and he substituted concern with "over choice."' Despite the acceleration in
technological change driving humans into future shock, he believes qualitative
selection among technologies and introduction of coping strategies can actually
increase freedom for mankind (Ibid, p291), even as it increases "The distress, both
physical and psychological, that arises from an overload."' Since he advocated both a
slowdown in the pace of change, and a speedup in technological impacts on the
organization of society, Toffler may be said to be on both sides of the techno-lag
value argument, a position he sums up in the twin goals (p2),"Transcend technology"
and (P439), "Build a humane future. " The term he used for the new social order was
"super-industrialism."[45]
Daniel Bell published his The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society only three years
later, 1973. In his 1976 Forward he made clear he was pursuing the techno-lag
approach, and not an "information society" thesis (p xii), "My focus has been on the
influence of technology...(p xxi)...In effect, what a post-industrial transformation
means is the enlargement of instrumental powers, powers over nature and powers,
even, over people." This was the vision Toffler had pursued and which Ellul had
condemned, even though Bell disavowed technology as "an autonomous factor" in his
analysis [46], treated it as broadly equivalent to "abstract knowledge," and opined
about Toffler's work (p3), "Futurology: it is essentially meaningless, [47]
Bell's approach turned out, however, to be a subtle shift of control functions from the
polity, mainstream culture, and social institutional structure, to the economy, with
which he fused the factor of technology. By squeezing technology out of a broad
definition of culture, he restricted culture to an expressive, not instrumental function
(1980, p31). This essentially ignored what Roszak called the (1969, p232), "terrible
pathos" of Snow's culture conflict between sciences and humanities.[48] Bell says of
technological society (1980, p269), "The business corporation remains... the heart of
the society." It is the social support system in which technology is embedded.[49]
This increases both the scale and pace of technological change (Ibid, p112) "The
centrality of theoretical knowledge as the axis around which new technology,
economic growth and the stratification of society will be organized."
Bell was cognizant of the challenge to business and technology current in the United
States, particularly in terms of a floundering meritocracy and a high suspicion of
corporate ends.[50] Bell's synthesis of the techno-corporate order he calls the "postindustrial
-148society" appealed directly to the new white collar class C.W. Mills had described [51],
it coined a "fair" meritocracy by incorporating the criticisms of Rawls, and it satisfied
the participation challenge to capitalism both he and Toffler were concerned with
(1980, p232), "The major problem for the post-industrial society will be adequate
numbers of trained persons of professional and technical caliber. [52] The new
professionals—which later became identified as "yuppies "—Bell divided horizontally
into situs, in concert with a pluralist paradigm, thereby avoiding the problem of
challenge to authority inherent in a class-based or 'line" approach. In addition, he
extended Toffler’s staff notion of authority, "adhocracy," hyphenating his new
professionals, or organizers, as 'entrepreneur-managers.'
The central Bell concept for youth's rejection of post-industrial societal careers
remained alienation. He referred to alienation in 1979, indicating Marx's concept <ix>
had been elaborated (See page 137), but he chose to address alienation primarily in
terms of mass alienation <xv> and political justice <vii>. Quoting Rawls, he redefined
meritocracy for the new society based on a fairness doctrine which is, "A generalized
social norm founded on a social contract."[53]
Techno-lag, the newest and most American form of historical alienation <xvi>,
encompasses a broad range of alienation concepts, contrary values, and conceptions
of society. The dissensus on alienation effects is the most serious, entertaining both
a positivist notion of overload which begs the question of stress-management, plus an
anti-bourgeois notion of "fragmentation" equally vague, Lag is almost completely left
out of Bell's version, becoming little more than a spur to technological adaptation and
control. In line with Ferkis' perception of techno-lag as detached from intellectual
movements, Bell's synthesis floats free of most sociological traditions, finding
common ground on little but the participation theme of American societal alienation
<xii>. Bell's synthesis may be viewed as an ideology grounded in a technological fix,
by which he sought to by-pass other alienation traditions and their attendant
ideologies (1980, p34), "Technical decision-making, in fact, can be viewed as the
diametric opposite of ideology."
(Mythic-Awareness)
Carl Jung found the unconscious, and the entry to it through dreams, to be filled with
mythic contents patterned into vital archetypes (See p33). Separation of such
archetypes from consciousness, or atrophy of such archetypes in a single "level" of
consciousness, is alienating <xiiib>. In a society where consciousness is dominated
by rationalist thinking, such alienation is likely to be both broad in the population and
deep in individual cases.[54]
-149Central to Jung's collective unconscious was the notion of levels. Mythic contents are
"deeper" than individualized contents. Deeper levels are less alienated than more
superficial ones. This is similar to Abraham Maslow's advocacy of levels of
consciousness, where the "heightened" levels are the least alienated.
Cross-cultural anthropologists like Ruth Benedict and religious historians like Mircea
Eliade had exposed the deep hormologous relation of selves and societies through
myth, within pre-industrial societies. Experimenters exploring ecstatic experiences,
like Aldous Huxley, Carlos Casteneda, and Timothy Leary had written of myth and
symbol as a bridge to the unconscious, often through mind-expanding chemicals.
Laboratory experimenters in sensory deprivation, sleep interruption, and sensory
"flooding" had contributed to an appreciation of levels of consciousness and their link
with human neurology. Finally, levels of religious experience through devotions,
meditation, and ritual had been expounded by universalist U.S. theologians as
important to re-discovery of the sacred nature of the self.
It is interesting that the mid-century mythic-awareness tradition stands in contrast with
two older alienation types. First, it is not equivalent with separation from God <i> in
the medieval sense, because it generally denies externality to deity and seeks the
sacred within the self. Harvey Cox's statements on this topic are specially relevant
(1966, p179), because he sought a "secular theology," which denies a "God-outthere," and promoted "a theology of terrestrial values," focused upon "anomic" urban
mankind. In fact, it is closer to Feuerbach’s naturalism <-i>. Second, it is in conflict
with the techno-lag notion of alienation <xvi> which generally views stimulus-flooding
as an alienating force, not ore of integration. Mythic-awareness authors favored the
very overload the techno-lag authors sought to escape through delayed or rapid
adaptation.
Mid-century, four authors deserve particular mention for charting this tradition: Harvey
Cox, the secular theologian; Theodore Roszak, the historian; Henry Malcolm, the
hippie cleric; and Orin E. Klapp, the ethnographer of seekers and collective
movements.
Harvey Cox (1966) saw rationalism increasing and described secularism as arising
from the Judeo-Christian tradition itself, with its separations from mythic
consciousness: the Hebrew separation of man from nature, desacralization of politics
in Exodus, and the deconsecration of the Sinai Covenant. These he referred to as
producing "An ideology, a new closed world view," which, mid-century, ignored the
"concrete issues" of the Church: kerygma (proclamatIon), diakonia (reconciliation),
and
-150koinonia (demonstration of sacred character). "Myth and metaphysics," he said, "I
now believe that they also have some real value for secular man," and he advocated
attention to dance, mime, and cinema within the Church, while urging a timeliness
where the Church (p214), "Shapes its message and mission not for its own comfort
but for the health and renewal of the world." Accordingly, he opposed traditional
separatism (p188), "Denominations have long since outlived their usefulness."
Peter Berger, sociologist of religion and work, reported on this secularization trend in
religion in The Sacred Canopy (1967), and later revised his impression that
secularism was the wave of the future in A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and
the Rediscovery of the Supernatural (1969). He said (1969, p31), "There is a need,
social rather than psychological, for theodicy," and he calls Cox's secularism
"inductive faith," a kind of "controlled accommodation." Cox vastly broadened his
cultural parameters by 1973, writing a myth-centered book which stated on its book
jacket, "This book is in part a defense of the extravagant variety of religious
expressions against those who would tailor the spirit to pre-cut patterns."
In The Seduction of the Spirit Cox celebrated the "Third Great Awakening" in the late
1960's because it (p222), "Could generate a powerful social vision," and he advocated
the theology of the sensitivity movement, Eastern mysticism, and even the "naked
revival" of a nude bath with friends: Bishop Pike, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder, in
an Esalen hot tub because (p208), "Being freed from the standard seduction scenario
soothed us like a salt breeze of grace." Perhaps, the most explanatory sentence for
the popularity of the U.S. mythic-awareness tradition, in this book, is his dismissal of
U.S. religion as mostly self-denial oriented (p204), "But most American religion...is
pietistic;" it is centered in "vivid personal experiences."[55]
Related to Cox's experience above—"The hands touching me became mine"—is the
counterculture described by Theodore Roszak. Roszak’s contemporary history of
"technocracy's children," those who are (1969, pl), "Profoundly, even fanatically
alienated from the parental generation," catalogued authors who assailed technocracy
through sex, mysticism, and drugs, and (p55), "assaults the reality of the ego as an
isolable, purely cerebral unit of identity."
Roszak criticized the technocratic self for its (Ibid, p32), "Tendency to consign
whatever is not fully and articulately available in the waking consciousness...to...the
cultural garbage can." In particular, he described (p64), "The apocalyptic body
mysticism of Norman Brown, the Zen-based psychotherapy of Alan Watts, and finally
Timothy Leary's impenetrably occult narcissism." Through paradox, experience, and
silence
-151(p81), "The counterculture delves into the non-intellective aspects of the personality."
N.O. Brown assailed contemporary culture as (Ibid, p115), "A diseased reification of
body metaphors born of repression at the deepest instinctual level," and thus love's
body must be flooded with the "polymorphous perverse" to regain unity. Watt's focus
on Zen—its antinomianism rather than Beat "pretext for license'—led to (Ibid. p136),
"A radical critique of the conventional scientific conception of man and nature," and
(p138), "Proliferated into a phantasmagoria of exotic religiosity."
Roszak approved (Ibid, p149): "No society.. .can ever dispense with mystery and
magical ritual," But even though Roszak believed in altered consciousness--(p168)
"Change the prevailing mode of consciousness and you change the world"—he was
leary of Dr. Leary. He said (p160), "'The psychedelics, dropped into amorphous and
alienated personalities...diminish consciousness by way of fixation."
A decade later, Roszak continued his history of "the creative disintegration of
industrial society, in Person/Planet (1978), this time referring to the assailants of
technology as either "neopagans," including such authors as Lovelock and Epton, or
"scientists beyond reductionism," including Pribam, Boehm, and Capra. He
associated these authors with gnosticism, and, as reacting to technocracy, and he
conveyed this through the ideas of Margo Adler, "They tend to view humanity's
'advancement' and separation from nature as the prime source of alienation."
Harry Malcolm, in his Generation of Narcissus, picked up where Cox and Roszak had
left off, and took both the psychological and religious meanings of the Narcissus and
Prometheus myths and generalized them as a reflection of establishment versus
counter culture.
The Establishment myth is Adam, as Prometheus, who fears Chaos, longing for
utopia and seeking an end to scarcity by seizing technology (fire) as his means to
victory over nature; while the counter myth is that of Jesus, the hippie, as Narcissus or
Orpheus, using his experience of freedom to express a different vision (Ibid, p44-45),
"A world where beauty, love, eroticism, and nature become the dominant forces over
repression, competition, and toil." For the hippie ego ideal (p200), "Drugs serve as
perfect instruments to heighten the narcissistic view of reality, ego boundaries are
entirely relative...he tends to interpret the word 'ego' as self-assertion."[56] Primary
narcissism," Malcolm says (p145), "It dominates the entire hippie world view." While
Malcolm's narcissism reference is to Freud's late works [57], and is in contrast with
"secondary narcissism," or selfishness, his analysis is really an exposition of Jung's
collective unconscious.
-152
Malcolm overgeneralized, if the previous studies discussed are considered, but his
positive evaluation of Narcirsus was powerful (Ibid). "Not as selfish withdrawal from
reality, but rather as affirmation of the self through the ego-oriented drive toward
pleasure and fulfillment." Malcolm says the new vision affected psychology (p136137), "Applied psychology today...becoming an almost revolutionary discipline. It
serves the needs of the individual... a radical kind of individualism is endorsed by the
psychological 'healing' profession which refuses to permit moral standards, religious
teachings, or conventional beliefs to dictate..."[58] This self-asserting egoist matches
Bell's expectations rather closely (See page 147).
Orin Klapp identified symbol deprivation as a central component of American mass
culture, and as directly related to situations causing alienation. He described the
cultural condition thusly (1969, p14), "A social system is inadequate in feedback and
symbolization...therefore, people easily feel outside " He defines alienation (p12),
"The wrong identity not only for the social structure but perhaps for all the roles
offered in one's society."
This linkage of identity difficulties with catastrophic changes in reference symbols is
apparent in (Ibid, p18), "Five very common situations:" cultural disorganization,
discrimination, mobile pluralism, unemployment, and feeling like a cog in a machine.
He equates diffuse identity with a paucity of symbols (p62), "The identity problem, an
inability to define oneself successfully in a milieu of inadequate symbolism."[59]
To restore symbolic balance, Klapp analyzes four "lacks of symbolic self-reference:"
impersonal information, pseudoplace, lack of ritual and rite, and promoting the ideal of
the undifferentiated man. Instead, Klapp promotes: knowledge which identifies, place
which nurtures it, rites of passage, and relating to persons not categories. Klapp's
concepts are those of sociological social psychology, grounded in Durkheim's
collective conscience and anomie concerns <xii>, as elaborated by the symbolic
interactionist school of sociology. But they describe an estranging culture for
individuals in a fundamentally mythic fashion <xvi>. The social consequence, he
argues, is a large population of individuals available to collective mass movements
which "unfreeze" identity, many of those groping or gravitating toward new meanings,
and many of those, in turn, becoming full-fledged "seekers" as a life plan.
His analysis did much to legitimate the mythic-awareness tradition of alienation based
in collective unconsciousness psychology, even as he critiqued it for religious and
political shopping, deficiency in ideology, aggravation of imitativeness in society, and
copying the vicarious
-153hero-worship of more superficial and commercially-controlled style rebellion.
Mythic-awareness was an extraordinarily diverse alienation tradition mid-century.
Alienation of some level of consciousness was a dominant theme, and its religious
and mythic ideas harkened back to Feuerbach’s naturalism <-i>. Sensory deprivation
and flooding, especially as they were experienced in Eastern religious traditions (Zen,
yoga, etc.) or enhanced by mind-expanding drugs, were conceived as rejoining the
self to its depth unconscious or heightened awareness. This tradition continued to
develop as a subculture, and within applied psychology, even as it served to
legitimate a new, more self-oriented personality structure through impacts on mass
culture. Freud's earlier view of narcissism however, haunted the tradition in the mass
media, playing havoc with concepts of "self' and "ego."[60]
Alienation Traditions Grapple with Identity
The primary alienation traditions fostered by Americans mid-century broke with
nineteenth-century european ideas in the main, being nurtured by a middle class
population legitimating itself through self-assertion and self-reliance. This was the very
object of criticism for most European alienation authors. But Americans borrowed
heavily from individual european authors, particularly regarding Durkheim's "social
system" <xii> and Freud's "unconscious" <xiii>, forming alienation traditions on their
central concepts. In addition, Rousseau's eighteenth-century idea of non-alienated
sovereignty was substantially revived in mid-century "rights" movements. The
Protestant Ethic critique by european alienation authors (e.g. Weber. <xiv>) was
generally over-shadowed in America by their bureaucracy critiques, Americans
transvaluing the Protestant Ethic into an essential culture complex. This avoided
denying one's selfhood through denial of an American mystique or ethniclass ideal.
Mid-century, Weber’s bureaucratic critique was strongly counter-posed to the one
uniquely American alienation tradition based
-154-
in technology <xvi> Authors of the mythic-awareness tradition took ideals of
technological man as a foil for creative dismemberment of "the establishment," to thus
reduce alienation as they defined it.
Since American alienation traditions hinge so centrally on individualism and societal
constraints, it is worthwhile to note the tendencies of these mid-century traditions to deal
with the ego as equivalent with individual identity. This equivalence focuses alienation
at the micro level and characterizes alienation as primarily alienation of the self <ii>. In
modern times, this has been the subject matter of psychology or social psychology
which have multiple conceptualizations of "ego."
Mid-century, mainstream meanings for "ego" ranged across this professional
psychological spectrum: as consciousness, identity or self, internal or external mediator,
or as control function for technological or social change. Alienation traditions mediated
between such professional uses and the popular glosses of mass culture.
The techno-lag tradition tends to equate ego and identity through a tight conception of
ego as executor. Conscious decision-making is the self-Other axis. The societal
tradition tends to equate ego and identity through a broad traditional conception of
identity. National or religious heritage tend to contribute a major component of identity.
The mythic-awareness tradition tends to equate ego with identity through a reverse
abstraction; ego is consciousness itself. Submersion in the flood of that commonly
experienced level of consciousness constitutes identity, and thus, as Malcolm suggests,
"ego"—if it is used at all—tends to become mere self-assertion.
-155-
From the outset, however, psychohistory stressed the separation of identity from ego.
Self-assertion and self-denial were dimensions of egoism but not selfhood. Thus,
consumer capitalism and the Protestant Ethic were on opposite ends of an egoism
dimension, not an identity dimension. Only creative social action sprang from identity
per se. To a limited degree, recent democratic treatment of the self is returning to this
view (See note 60).
Consciousness was analytically separable from personal identity, as were societal
reactions to role-performance. But when dealing with national personality structure,
one’s social character was determined by one's place and time—even though that
remained largely an issue of dynamics with the unconscious, not of personal identity.
Psychohistory later exchanged history per se for the history of individual identity,
through the works of Erik Erikson and others.
These trends in conceiving ego are most significant for understanding the absorption of
diverse conceptions of alienation by the broader cultural milieu of American
individualism. As discussed earlier, that milieu stressed competitive individual
consciousness (ego) as central to American selfhood. Few besides Keniston—and to
some degree Klapp who retained a critical stance toward "seekers"--advanced
alienation research to a new stage where identity took on autonomy implications—as
wholeness—in a post-modern society.
-156-
Disentangling American Alienation
Empirical research of the 1968’s served to winnow out mere "difference of opinion"
versions of alienation <vi>, though that continued in popular use by American journalists
and pollsters. American referents, like American culture generally, became less
oriented to maintaining tradition and more similar to european referents and culture
(See note 56, p121).
The American social ethic was challenged as critical to alienation as a research topic
(See p136), along with other personality traits uniquely American like optimism.
Disbelief in technological progress (See note 22, p66), lackluster pursuit of material
goods (See p31 &·p134), and pursuit of nontraditional statuses and deviant behaviors
were revised by alienation researchers as no longer crucial to alienation as a theme
(See pages 104-111). Also, public attitudes on protesting were re-defined by
researchers relation to alienation.
The four American alienation traditions continued with research after the 1960's and
such studies are presented in this section in support of the revisions just mentioned.
Much of the productive research was with social-psychological data. Relevant survey
data from my study is presented in this section as social-psychological data to support
these concept revisions. Also, my participants' replies are compared with statements
made by key researchers Keniston and Klapp to evaluate conceptual directions in their
work. Particular evaluations are done on whether "seeking" attitudes, boredom, and
cliche'-proneness have the relevance to alienation authors claim.
Some of America's four alienation traditions were so loose, a single author wrote in
several at once, and all were sufficiently
-157-
eclectic that associations of all european alienation concepts were attached by some
American practitioner of its central argument. Mid-century, the four American alienation
traditions were incorporated in this way by Kenneth Keniston and Orin Klapp.
Both began with a professional perspective pitched at identity of the self, the micro level
fostered by American individualism and collective "identity crises" reported by mass
media in the 1960's. Keniston, a clinical psychologist trained at Harvard, concentrated
more in the psychohistory [61] and societal traditions [62], the latter heavily influenced
by the universalist paradigms of the Harvard school of sociology. Klapp, a sociologist of
collective behavior, concentrated more in the mythic-awareness and techno-lag
traditions influenced more by the universalist paradigms of the Chicago school of
sociology. [63]
Together with a number of subsequent researchers like Inglehart, Jennings, and Dalton,
they emancipated writing on American alienation from peripheral incursions of American
culture, even though initially they asserted, respectively, one of Durkheim's key
influences on American sociology, social structure or collective consciousness (See
pages 28-32).
-158Detaching "Alienation" from Traditional
Social and Personality Structures
Keniston’s major studies, The Uncommitted, Young Radicals: Notes on
Cornmitted Youth, and Youth And Dissent, alI assumed the continuity of
American culture, as detailed in the researches of the previous section. Their
titles make clear his initial concept of alienation, though complicated, was
grounded in American ideology, consensus, and participation: to escape
alienation one must be an active participant in American society and culture.
He incorporated the American social ethic.
Keniston defined alienation (1966, p455), "I will reserve the term alienation...for
an explicit rejection, 'freely' chosen by the individual, of what he perceives as
the dominant values or norms of his society..." At the beginning of the decade
he created an ideal type of this modern day Ishmael as a suburbanite
humanities student with a seductive controlling mother, a defeated father, and
a view of the U.S. as superficial, materialistic, and commercial.
Initially, alienation for Keniston was disaffiliation from pursuit of societal values
<x>, and he called the alienated "rebels without a cause," or "the
uncommitted." A decade later, however, he labeled "young radicals" as
committed, those who pursue societal ends by new political routes (Merton 's
"innovators"). This was a major break with the societal alienation tradition
which tended to view innovators as alienated from Society. Key to Keniston’s
view was his argument that a functionalist view of society does not rule out
replacement of institutions with something better.
Keniston’s study of youth at VietNam Summer in 1967, led to his substitution of
a Rousseauistic alienation <vii> for that of societal alienation, and he stressed
the role of ideology in this commitment among youth, equating that ideology
with U.S. ideals of (171, pxii), justice, and the celebration of life."[64] At the
same time he rejected negative personality notions of the alienated which he
had maintained earlier (See above and note 59 on page 122). He described
protesting youth as well-educated, in contrast with some other alienation
commentators [65], and he promoted the "post-conventional" nature of such
moral individuation, viewing them as more whole and integrated men and
women, persons with "empathic identification."
In brief, Keniston identified those youth involved in forms of social organization
known as mass movements as not only unalienated, but as (p161), "unusually
healthy.'" This effectively removed pathology from his definition of
-159alienation, on all three levels: psychosis, neurosis, and personality disorder
<iii>. He substituted the looser sociaI structure of mass movements for
traditional social structures, transferring the American social ethic from
traditional to reform structures. Thus, activists in reform movements became
the socially "committed."
When the notion of post-conventional morality was later invented by Kohlberg,
Keniston largely abandoned traditional structures in favor of autonomy.
Keniston described youth in Youth and Dissent (1971, p17) as a
"psychological stage" which is optional, and as fully resolved in its conflicts
only for "postconventional youth," those for whom (p20), "The cake of custom
crumbled long ago." He largely delineates this stage as (p7), "Between
adolescence and adulthood,"' as distinct from Oedipal rebellion as described
by adolescent psychologists, and the conventionality assumed true of
adulthood.
However, Keniston made clear in his later book All Our Children (1977) that
ethical autonomy is not equal to American self-reliance, which he saw as a bar
to successful enculturation. He said (pxiii), "Traditional American views, we
conclude, severely hamper our national efforts to help children and parents."
First among them is the myth of the self-sufficient individual and family (p9),
"That families are free standing, independent, and autonomous." Combined
with it is the (p9), "Assumption that the problems of individuals can be solved
by changing the individuals." Instead, he says (p22) "They are extraordinarily
dependent on 'outside' forces and influences... We need to look instead to the
broader economic and social forces." Untrue myths abound there as well:
equal opportunity, and a consumer-controlled economy, education as upward
mobility, and technology as the engine of progress. Keniston
recommends (p76), "Change the context in which families live," toward a more
realistic, supportive environment.[66]
Keniston’s thesis on personality structure was no less a departure from the
societal model of alienation. He described post-conventional youth as
engaged in a psycho-historical transformation brought on in part by their
participation in the new social structures he described.
Particularly important to his analysis was the personality attribute of optimism,
a characteristic the Spindler's consider part of the American character.[67]
Keniston's initial screening device for the alienated at Harvard largely
measured ideological pessimism (See not 7b on page 113). By the end of the
1960's, however, Keniston's psychohistorical understanding of the period
described nihilists and idealists side by side in the Student Movement (1971,
Intro). He noted that Bell's "end of ideology" was conventionally understood as
avoiding destructive moral zealotry (p267)--the specter of mass society
alienation
-160<xv>. It was not prepared for understanding the positive and "rampant"
ideologies of 1970 idealists.
He largely dropped pessimism from his concept of alienation, at least that part
of the ideal type he termed "an alienated ideology" in The Uncommitted (p19).
Keniston's initial requirement for unalienated youth to be optimistic did not
mesh well with the prospects of the mass movements he studied, as
subsequent alienation research has shown.
Jennings and Niemi, using a random national sample of youth and their
parents over the years 1965 to 1973, concluded about youth (1981, p173), "In
1965 they (youth) were extraordinarily more positive than were their parents,
by 1973 they had become equally negative." Youthful optimism was degraded
by historical events more than any discernible generational effect. The authors
commented on the political manifestations and said (p155-6), "Images of a vast
generational gulf in the electoral arena simply dissolve in the face of these
figures."[68]
They say of pessimism in America, that there was a (Ibid, p172), "Declining
faith in America and its peoples," doubling among youth and their parents.
Youth mistrusted the traditional social system while more adults faulted
persons as well. But their data displayed convergence on confidence
measures for youth and adults toward local and federal establishments. Youth
dropped 30% in their approval of the federal system to near 50%, while adults
dropped 8%, to a 50% approval level. Youth increased only 3% in a low one
third approval of their local society, while adults quadrupled their local approval
in those years, to less than a one third approval level.
"Both generations were caught up in the general disillusionment that swept the
country during this time frame...(Ibid, p167)...something wrong with America
had become virtually ubiquitous as the second Nixon administration got
underway...The relative esteem in which the groups were held was
approximately the same for each generation at both time points...suggests a
kind of continuity."[69]
These authors expressed this continuity as "generational stability" in their
attitude persistence studies, and detailed it in terms of public issues like school
integration, school prayer, and civil liberties. Half or more of the cases showed
persistence of attitude for both youth and adults, with no more than 13%
difference between them. This finding challenged assumptions of adolescent
psychology, that youth are markedly less predictable than adults in their
attitude shifts (Ibid, p61), "Parents were no more predictable in their views than
their offspring." They concluded (p187), "In many respects the flow of the two
-161generations over time, if anything, brought them closer together than they had
been initially."
With respect to pessimism, there is strong evidence of its persistence far
beyond 1973. Yankelovich referred to the "skepticism of youth" among his
1969 high school participants when half as many displayed skepticism of
business and politics as they did in 1973. But in his follow-up studies he found
pessimism well into the late 1970's [70], and my survey data of contemporary
young men from Bexar and Yellowstone counties display remarkable
persistence of pessimism toward both local and national societies.
(A Pessimistic Theme in My Surveys)
The alienation survey used in this research is re-printed in Appendix 1a. My
1989-90 surveys displayed, as expected by historical change, more modal
difference from my 1969-70 survey items than were observed among various
aggregates of 1969-70 surveyed participants. Clear differences between
generations in patterns of optimism--pessimism were observed. Of the 18 items
devoted to social ideal, local society, and larger society, the general "failure"
items (36 and 45) were most marked in their contrasts.[71]
Baseline participants saw the larger society as not failing--or failing only with
minorities--more often than contemporary participants do (over half). Drug users
in 1969-70--mostly "soft drug abusers"--agreed with this pattern equivalent to
other baseline participants; they were not different on this dimension from
general participants. Contemporary participants, however, see society as failing
with the "majority" or "in general" in over half of the cases.
Contemporary college and high school participants both displayed bi-modal
distributions, centered on failures with minorities and in general. Only among
college surveys taken during the buildup of the Persian Gulf War did the
"minority" supersede "in general" as
-162-
the preferred answer. Overall, then, baseline participants displayed a pattern of
optimism towards the larger society, decreasing regularly as failure "in general"
was reached, but contemporary participants preferred failure "in general" as an
answer, in a bi-modal distribution similar to 1969-70 drug abusers. An optimistic
universal pattern was succeeded by a pessimistic, particularist one.[72]
The character of the differences illustrates how increased pessimism can move
independently, in the aggregate, from participation attitudes. Later participants
had a mode of "great importance" for voting compared with "important" earlier.
"Considerable involvement" in politics replaced the former mode of "partial." And
civil disobedience rated a "helpful" rather than the former mode, 'Don-believe in
it." Due to the age change for voting, one third of the later participants stated
they vote. Besides more positive participation attitudes, there is evidence of a
greater desire among contemporary participants to live among more people. On
items 48 and 49, the earlier participants had a mode of living in "small groups 1
mile apart" in a "small" population of "500," while the later participant modes
were for all living "communally" in a population of "several thousand."
The pattern of pessimism was evident regarding the failure of "local society" item
(45), though pessimistic patterning was most explicit among contemporary high
school participants.[73]
My bigenerational survey data supports the deletion of "optimist" personality
structure from alienation research models.
(Pessimism of 1973 Graduates)
The revision of national character along more realistic--even pessimistic-lines is by no means a unique idea, as l970's bigenerational research on the
pessimism theme shows.
-163while this broad pessimistic theme has both historical and bi-generational
character, it is worthwhile to note that a youthful sub-generational unit
experienced a drop in idealism all out of proportion to older and younger
members of the population. These youth appeared at the end of what was
popularly known as "the generation gap," and they were younger siblings of those
involved in the Student Movement.
Jennings and Niemi's panel study discovered that the high school graduating
class across the U.S. was (1981, p202), "Substantially less cosmopolitan in
outlook than the class of 1965," and (p228), "the declining interpersonal trust and
self-confidence made the 1973 seniors less Iike their parents than were the
seniors of 1965."
The 1973 graduates were (Ibid, p73), "more cynical" than the 1965 graduates on
two responses to a list of six qualities they were least proud of as Americans: 1)
Respondents went from 54% to 63% on politics as dirty. 2) Respondents went
from 38% to 50% on people being out for themselves alone. The biggest contrast
between 1965 and 1973 graduates was the item on "most faith and confidence in
the national level of government." Nineteen sixty-five graduates agreed with it
76%, while 1973 graduates agreed only 29%. Also, the 1973 graduates were
lowest of surveyed groups in their agreement with three items of self-confidence:
life working out as desired, personal good luck, and personal plans working out
as expected, Combined, these attitudes are consistent with the 1973 graduates
having less participation in public affairs, discussing politics less with friends and
family, and increasingly minding their own affairs to the exclusion of others.
The theme of pessimism was transvalued, as an alienation theme, by James S.
Coleman in 1974, signaling its deletion from alienative traits. Noting that youth
enculturated to naive idealism were particularly prone to alienation <xii>,
Coleman suggested optimism was not a personality trait consistent with Power
and the Structure of Society. Instead, he recommended an increase of (p99),
"Training in owner and agent roles" which he termed "Machiavellian." Pessimism
replaced optimism, in the eyes of many, as a non-alienative character trait.
The exclusion of pessimism from alienation research after Coleman's statement-as an indicator--makes good sense not only because it supports Keniston’s
transition away from the optimism measures with which he began alienation
research. Coleman validated what had already become fact for my study
participants, the devaluing of optimism as a personal characteristic.
On the self-evaluation item of my survey (162) "I am an optimist," 1969-70
general participants were asked to identify themselves on the optimism-pessimism dimension.
-164Over three quarters disagreed, just as the 1989-90 general participants did.
The drug abusing participants defined themselves more optimistically in both
study periods, with one third or more stating they were optimists. The largest
percentage of those who strongly disagreed they were optimists--almost half-were the 1969-70 general participants. The only mitigating item to pessimism
on the survey (Item 99, “Most of the time people use each other”). bias a onetenth reduction among 1599-96 general participants in the overwhelming
approval given it by 1969-76 participants. Over three-quarters of 1999-se
participants agreed with this item of interpersonal pessimism. Reporting of
social and political pessimism was greater, reports of interpersonal pessimism
were slightly less, but the word "optimism” became identified with seeking
unrealistic satisfactions.
Detaching Alienation from Progress and Some "Seeking"
Orin Klapp altered his perspective between his Collective Search for Identity
book in 1969 and his 1986 book Overload and Boredom. In the first, he
documented collective "seeking" behavior, particularly among U.S. youth
(1969, p49), "There were at least five widespread, socially significant forms of
rebellion in the United States in the late 1960's, which had the character of
mass movements:" contagious ghetto violence, New Left activism, radical right
extremism, style rebellion, and the dropout movement.
Among these, he concentrated on collective behavior themes focused on the
symbolism of self-reference. Almost necessarily, his treatment of alienation
followed writers in the mythic-awareness tradition. He used the phrase (Ibid,
p248), "the indignant generation" to typify youth who pursued new cultural
options. "Rebellion has switched to esthetics and religion for those who see
no place to go economically and politically," he said (p68), and he preferred the
language of cults rather than deviant behavior (p206-209), to describe such
cultural quests, detailing mystiques, and guru and devotee roles in a fellowship
which pursues a grail.
In essence, his treatment followed Blumer's collective behavior trend in
sociology, building upon Durkheim's collective consciousness idea, and he
identified standard cultural features of public imagoes he called "'ascendant
identity patterns"' (Ibid, p330). These included: the cosmopolitan, the rolling
stone, the humanist, the double identity, the drug cultist, the style poseur, the
mass-communication addict, and the mass nationalist. By referring oneself to
such imagoes of public opinion alienation of the unconscious presumably
abates.
However, in his later book, Klapp narrowed his focus to experiences of modern
life characterized by (1986, p35),
-165"Boredom in the midst of busyness, processing a lot of information that is
uninteresting. He says (p50), "By and large overload is more important as a
cause of boredom than is underload in an information society," and he uses
this insight to establish boredom as a modern close cousin of estrangement, or
alienation, a type of alienation resulting from techno-lag <xvi>.
Klapp says (Ibid, p4), "By noting the busy boredom of high information
load...the book does criticize our idea of progress. What can progress be if it
does not banish boredom?" The problem is deeper (p38), "In modern society
our problem is often that we have all four--boredom, satiation, habituation, and
desensitization--going at the same time, interacting in unknown ways."
What Klapp is describing is the very issue discussed earlier between the
techno-lag and mythic-awareness traditions, the role of flooding in alienation
phenomena. His former book took the thesis that flooding in referent
symbolism would abate alienation; the second takes the bi-polar view that
alienation phenomena reside at the extremes of under and overstimulation. In
1986, overstimulation is the real modern problem to him. He moved from the
mythic-awareness tradition which favored flooding, towards the techno-lag
tradition which did not.
But Klapp retains the rejection of progress typical of Ellul. Modern situations
are filled with information flooding, not only in volume, but in confusion of the
emotional processes going on in the same individual at the same time. And
even if one does not succumb to the boredom which results from situated
overload, he may succumb to (Ibid, p37), "Ennui, a deeper
sort...spiritual...independent of external circumstances... of will...estrangement."
Such ennui may be related to Freudian alienation <xiii>, "Neurotic boredom is
due to mechanisms of repression," and can be explained by Bernstein as
(1975, p42), "repression of Ionged for content and feared danger."[74]
Klapp offers a new theory to cover overload just as he offered one earlier to
cover a paucity of symbolism. He explicitly crafts it as a refinement of cultural
lag theory. "Battling with the in-basket" is the experience of modern life. It
results, for the individual, in "decision lag," a kind of meaning gap. First, the
overload may exceed the human channel capacity. Second, noise may
compose much of the overload. And third, human needs for ritual and
networks may be overcome by excessive mobility and diversity of authorities.
To picture his theory, Klapp sets up a two by two table of meaning and variety
with these opposing cells: good redundancy, boring variety, and good variety,
boring redundancy. He says (Ibid, pIl8), 'There are two states in which one
can escape boredom." One is a meaningful variety and the other is a
supportive redundancy.
-166For the culture, (p125), "The meaningfulness of institutions, then, can be
judged by how far they balance good variety by good redundancy."[75]
The corrective to alienation on the individual level, according to Klapp's version
of techno-lag, is to use self-reliance in avoiding noise (excessive coding,
clutter, amplification, and stylistic noise), as well as banal culture (repetition,
leveling, uniform diffusion, and over-filtering). Instead of the social model
based upon collective expressive behavior with which he began, Klapp ends up
with a technical self-control model in a cultural world composed of "social
placebos." This cultural world is increasingly peopled by "seekers" exercising
individual choice of placebos in a bi-polar search to avoid boring variety and
boring redundancy.[76]
The primary social feature of his new social psychological information theory is
his notion of information degrading (Ibid, p126), "Both culturally and
individually." This is similar to Sorokin's cyclic historical model for cultural
change. Klapp says (p121), "The normal movement of meaning-search is by
continual change of course." But Klapp does not take up the cultural
succession issue in terms of alienation phenomena, so his analysis remains
largely ahistorical and founded on the "how to" self-reliance value Keniston
was able to avoid in re-defining autonomy. "Seekers, in his revised analysis,
become mere participants in a game of self-consolation.
This report will take up where Klapp left off and examine two kinds of seekers,
those who abuse drugs and those who subscribe to cliches of public opinion, to
see if they report less alienation.
Klapp does get far enough along in the argument to see the implications of his
alienation theory for the idea of "progress." With information "degrading," a
unilinear progress notion is not viable (1986, p3), "The idea that information
itself degrades--is opposed to the idea of progress." Klapp's treatment of social
placebos even utilizes the analogy of a sinking ship. Society employs social
placebos to keep tensions from building up to the point society sinks.[77]
Rapid bailing does not, in Klapp's analysis, equal progress, but may even
signify larger holes in the hull; it may signify regress. This is his revision of
the American functionalist view of society, along cultural lines, and it
announces his separation of alienation as a concept from progress attitudes so
much a part of earlier techno-lag models.
Rejecting progress then, is not an essential component in American alienation
research, even if the second Durkheimian model <xii >--which Klapp is
elaborating--is chosen. Within the collective consciousness of American mass
culture,
-167individuals need not experience anomie as a consequence of rejecting its
implicit faith in technology. This is an important excision of peripheral
American attitudes from alienation research, even though progress attitudes
may not have declined among youth.
(Progress Little Changed in My Surveys)
Excluding progress from alienation research turns out to be of marginal
importance for items in my alienation research from Bexar and Yellowstone
counties. The primary item devoted to technology on my survey displayed
virtually no change in distribution over the twenty year period from 1969-70 to
1989-90. Asked how technically advanced they would like their ideal society to
be, about two thirds of the informants chose the same mode, "Automatic
machines, electricity, and atomic power would exist." Half of the baseline drugabuse participants also chose this answer. Technology preferences at the
mechanical level or below, received the same low loadings.
Items 96 and 133, which also tap technology attitudes, did display some
interesting shifts in attitude patterns about technological progress. On "Progress
is America's most important product," the baseline participants displayed a
normal distribution and a mild overall approval. Baseline drug abusers had a
reverse distribution, high on the strong disagree and strong agree ends, and low
in the middle, but with the same mild approval. Contemporary participants had a
distribution skewed towards approval (nearly three quarters of participants), but
the mode was still mildly agree.
Item 133, "Science has developed drugs which make life more meaningful,"
disrupted the pattern, however. Contemporary youth had a mode of "strongly
disagree" with a negatively skewed distribution, the exact opposite of item 96.
Science is approved, but not for the purpose of engineering drugs. This was the
opposite of the
-168-
drug-abusing baseline youth whose mode was "strongly agree" in a distribution
two to one on the agree side. This combination of items is consistent with the
cultural disappearance of the phrase, "Better living through chemistry," as
applied to mind-expanding drugs. Toffler 's early argument for selecting among
technologies which get developed (See p147) is evident in the opinion shift
regarding progress; selective progress is approved, not progress in general.
Participants are not merely expressing a negative opinion of drug abusers and
their attitudes, as the next sub-sections make clear.
(Drug Abuse and Boredom as Seeker Traits)
Orin Klapp described "seekers" in 1969 as including a large number of drug
abusers he labeled "drug cultists," many who were part of the "dropout
movement." Keniston detailed the drug movement as containing: "tasters,"
"seekers," and "heads" in 1971, saying that seekers used drugs for the
sensations they created. Fred Davis (1971, p14), further identified the "core
values"' of drug-abusing seekers as freedom to do as one wishes, ecstasy and
expressiveness, and immediacy. All of these treatments of seekers are relevant
to the drug abusing participants in my l99-70 study, and this drug subculture's
seeker attitudes still have relevance to the general U.S. population. Just how do
this drug movement and the study participants fit into the literature on alienation?
Klapp's earlier analysis did not rule out a mythic-awareness interpretation of
mind-expanding drug use, right along with other "seeker" behaviors, allowing
they may abate alienation. He retains them as mere "social placebos" in 1986,
however. A social placebo functions (p134): "In lieu of a better remedy," it
"relieves a receiver," it produces real results merely "by faith," and it
-169-
contributes to false consciousness.
Does Klapp's theoretical revision to a techno-lag alienation approach reflect an
historical change in drug abuse attitudes in mass publics of the West which now
defines mind-altering chemicals as an unfruitful path to one's collective
unconscious, and is the mythic-awareness tradition less viable regarding the
drugs Klapp lumps together as "chemical placebos:" alcohol, tranquilizers, and
pot? Is Klapp's more firm interpretation of drug abuse as alienated behavior in
1986 a better one?
Some input on these questions can be garnered from the drug-abusing
participants in my alienation survey. This is especiaIly true if cultural drug
knowIedge--an aspect of "seeker" culture--is used as an index to identify highlymotivated seekers of drug experience. My survey contains such items. Their
use will allow the separation of "tasters" and politically-motivated youth from
"seekers." Klapp indicates that boredom from overstimulation motivates seeking
behaviors, including chemical placebos. He even calls the pattern an "insatiable
striving," following Durkheim's rejection of satiation from collective behavior (See
p30).
It turns out that drug behavior alone does not indicate a pattern of alienated
social attitudes. Among my 1969-70 survey participants, being a drug abuser
showed little relation to participants' social attitudes within the baseline
generation. On only two items of social ideal and the local and larger society
items was there an overall disagreement, items 43 and 44. Drug abusers had
very similar social ideals to other baseline participants.
Drug-abusing baseline participants did agree that a revolution might be
necessary to bring about desired societal changes, but their
-170-
mode on personal involvement was "partial'' though "considerable" and
"lead" answers did occur. General baseline participants saw only a need for
political change in which they would become "partially" involved.
The drug abusers who participated in the 1969-70 study, were not "retreatists" as
Robert Merton would have labeled them--and Keniston would have been inclined
to--using a societal alienation model. Drugs of "mind-expansion, as part of a
pattern of cultural seeking, were simply a new historical phenomenon in contrast
to older narcotic drug cults. This political theme was increased among my
participants by three facts: 1) In 1969-70 the anti-war movement had not fully
split to form protestor and commune movements; 2) The participants actively
sought exclusion from military service because of their drug abuse; and 3) Soft
drug usage had become a mass cultural phenomenon by I969-70, not merely a
sub-cultural one.
Contemporary l989-90 participants displayed little contrast in societal attitudes
between general youth and drug abusers, few as the latter were. One item which
was at issue between drug-abusing and other contemporary youth was item 42.
Contemporary drug abusers desired a greater degree of change in their larger
society, but one disagreement out of eighteen is not a pattern of contrast. Even
this item indicated societal engagement by drug abusers, and suggests historical
cultural factors are at play in the survey data regard politics and drug cults.
Since behavior alone is insufficient to distinguish alienations of general and
drug-abusing youth, cultural contrasts may. The drug abuser pool was
concentrated, orienting it along "seeker" lines, by constructing a drug knowledge
scale. Al so, sensation-seeker items
-171-
were isolated such as Klapp suggests (1986), based on Zuckerman (1978). If
drug abuse per se is not a focus for social attitude contrasts, perhaps highlymotivated or highly-informed drug abuse is.
Ten of the 1969 drug knowledge items were sufficiently well-known in the
baseline and contemporary generations to constitute a scale: crystal (16).
matchbox (18), coke (20), tracks (23), roaches (24), hash (26), cold turkey (28),
Acapulco Gold (29), cutting (31), and a dime bag (34). Most of these items
distinguished baseline drug user participants from other baseline participants.[78]
Some items became relevant in contemporary times, like coke." It was seldom
identified as producing "powerful effects in 1970, but it was the modal answer for
1990 drug abusers. Modern terms like a "crack," "ice," and "blow" were not on
the inventory in 1990, so measurement of contemporary drug term knowledge fell
short of the actual level.
On this scale of 10, half the Bexar and Yellowstone drug abusers displayed a
knowledge of three or more terms, twice the percentage of other participants,
Thus, drug abusers were dichotomized based upon high and low drug
knowledge. High drug knowledge abusers should have a pattern of "seeking"
attitudes--as well as high initial boredom lowered by drug-induced effects--in
contrast with low drug knowledge drug abusers--if Klapp’s boredom explanation
of chemical abuse is correct.[79] Since Klapp’s analysis is systemic, not
dependent upon individual behavioraI histories, a related association should
appear in the general participant pools.[80]
Klapp says sensation seekers "aim at ecstasy," and can be identified by
impulsive items such as "I like to dive right in" versus "I enter water gradually."
Items on my survey which express similar
-172-
attitudes include the following: 76, 83(-), 105, 107(-), 114(-), 124(-), 127, 147,
152, 161, 170, and 185. A single boredom item is on the inventory: 175(-) I
seldom feel apathetic or bored.
High drug knowledge abusers among baseline participants contrasted with low
drug knowledge abusers as expected on these items: (arranged in decreasing
contrast): 124, 170, 147, 185, 161, 76, 105 and 107. The first four items had
1-3 or more participants answering in the expected direction, and the low
knowledge participants answered in the mild degree more often than the high
knowledge participants.[81] Little difference was found on items 127, 83, and
152. Item 114. "Look before you leap," is a traditional American cliche ' and high
drug knowledge abusers gave less overall approval this item than low drug
knowledge abusers did.
Converting these results to prose, it appears Klapp was correct in contributing
these sensation-seeking traits to 1969-70, knowledgeable drug abusers:
involvement over detachment, trying new things first, pursuing ecstasy and
expanded consciousness, seeking unbounded experiences, abandoning oneself
to dreams, gaining pleasure, enjoying life, and experiencing things personally.
The high knowledge baseline drug abusers in this study had learned to view drug
abuse as pleasurable sensation-seeking activity.[82] Just as these youth
expressed up to one third more sensation-seeking attitudes, they also reported
about one third less boredom than the low drug knowledge drug abusers (item
175). Klapp's boredom-reduction thesis, in a pattern of seeking attitudes,
appears valid in 1969-70. If this reduction is "unconscious," and not promotional,
then mythic-awareness may abate alienation.
When the same eight items are examined among high and low drug
-173-
knowledge youth among general baseline participants, drug knowledge displays
much less relation to sensation-seeking. That is, diffusion of such attitudes into
the general population appears to break up the pattern. Only items I70, 124,
161, and 76 displayed differences near 10% in the expected direction (arranged
in decreasing order). Items I07, 147, 185, and l05 displayed differences in the
unexpected direction ranging from 10% to 20% (arranged in ascending order).
Expressed in prose, the general baseline participants who were knowledgeable
of drug terminology displayed a slightly greater tendency than low drug
knowledge participants to try something new, to seek involvement, to abandon
themselves to dreams, and to gain pleasure versus pain) but they displayed
slightly less tendency to experience things personally, pursue ecstasy and
expanded consciousness, have boundless experiences, and define life as
enjoyment. They were, however, one fifth more likely to experience boredom
than participants without drug knowledge. In Klapp's terms, these "available"
seekers had un-relieved boredom but attitudes which impeded drug use to allay
it.
Klapp's early formulation that those who sought drug experiences in the 1969-70
era had sensation-seeking attitudes applies primarily to drug abusers with high
drug knowledge. They report less boredom than those with less drug
knowledge. High drug knowledge youth who are not currently abusing drugs,
however, did not display a consistent sensation-seeking pattern, and reported
more boredom than low knowledge non-abusing youth. The greater boredomIevel could be related to Klapp’s universalist assumptions, but clearly sub-group
bahaviors and cultural learning are relevant issues to these sensation-seeking
attitude patterns, and alienation phenomenon.
-174-
The 1989-90 participants were also examined on these dimensions to see if
history altered such patterns. The pattern altered slightly. Surveys from
contemporary drug abusers were solicited over a three month period. The few
drug abusers to participate did display a pattern of sensation-seeking but without
central tendencies displayed by the 1989-70 drug abusers: involvement, trying
new things, and abandonment to dreams. This was probably because these
were abusers in therapy at a residential treatment facility, and they abused
uppers and downers typical of U.S. culture rather than the fad hallucinogens
popular in the 1960's. High versus low drug knowledge measures were crude,
but a consistent pattern of differences between them emerged, more so than
within contemporary drug-free participants. Five of the nine who answered the
boredom question agreed they seldom experienced apathy or boredom so this
pool provides no negative evidence to Klapp's boredom-reduction thesis.
Greater differences were observed between high and low drug knowledge youth
on sensation-seeking items for 1989-90 general participants, higher than 196970 general participants. About one fifth of those more knowledgeable about
drugs also expressed more experience of boredom. This finding, too, supports
the systemic nature of boredom-reporting observed earlier: a "subterranean" subculture abusing drugs report! less boredom than drug-free general youth who
master the same sub-cultural knowledge. Klapp's later tendency to define this
boredom-reduction as a placebo effect, not real one, finds no support in these
findings.
Four top seeker items characterized youth knowledgeable about drugs (about
one-fourth more than unknowIedgeable youth): a willingness to try new things,
seeking unbounded experiences,
-175-
abandonment to dreams, and pursuing ecstasy and expanded consciousness.
These items were important for 1969-70 knowledgeable drug abusers. Through
time, these seeker attitudes diffused into the general population.
They are actually approved in greater numbers by 1989-90 non-abusing youth
compared with 1969-70 non-abusing youth, vindicating Klapp's non-deviance
approach to drug-related attitudes. Also, unbounded experiences and pursuing
ecstasy are part of the seeking pattern of contemporary drug-abusing
participants. It appears attitudes of sensation-seeking are not diminished in their
historical relevance to drug usage. Knowledge of drug terminology meshes with
a sensation-seeking pattern for the generational participants since 1969, even
though the cultural matrix in which such usage is embedded has altered
somewhat, notabIy, the refusal to credit science for engineering mind-altering
drugs (Item 133). There is considerable "generational stability" in seeking; this
much of Klapp's "seeker" approach to alienation as a universal boredom
phenomenon seems useful.
There is reason in the data, however, for suggesting a subcultural theme in
boredom's relation to drug abuse. Nearly all low-drug-knowledge abusing
participants in the 1969-70 study expressed problems with boredom, and two
thirds of high-drug-knowledge general participants in 1969-70--high not low-expressed problems with boredom. The boredom-Ievel reported inside and
outside of drug-abusing aggregates by drug knowledgeable youth are in contrast
with one another. Klapp's newer theory of drugs as placebos for high boredom
his complicating factors in it.[83]
Since Klapp included identity search in his 1969 title, the way
-176-
item 182 patterns with drug abuse is of interest, "I have not yet solved the
problem, Who am I?" Half the general participants in both 1969-70 and 1989-90
agreed with this statement. Between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drugabusing participants agreed. General participants with high drug-knowledge
approved of this item about one-tenth more than low drug-knowledge youth, in
both 1969-70 and 1989-90. Klapp's association of identity search with drug
abuse continues to be relevant. His imagoes of "drug cultist" and rolling stone,
however, may not abate alienation for drug abusers even of the 1969-70 period
since searchers for identity are more evident among drug-abusing participants
than general participants in this study, and Klapp's general view is "search for
identity is an exercise in locating placebos, for those without a stable identity.
In the total study, four drug-abusing participants with high drug-knowledge scores
did report strong identities. These surveys were examined more closely as
negative cases. All were in the 1969-70 sample, were age 19 or 20, and three
were surveyed together. Two were from small towns and two from cities or
suburbs. One of the small town youth had a very high score on the cliche' scale
discussed under the next heading, the lowest drug score of the four, and was
one the two who made extensive comments on the survey. The others had low
cliche' scores. These f6ur approved 2.5 more traditional cliche's than popular
cliche's. Their drug term scores were 5, 6, and 8, but they also scored an
average of 3 out of these 5 hard drug items: tracks scat. Cold turkey, cutting, and
caballo. Their general pattern does not fit Klapp’s "seekers." A likely explanation
is that they were slightly traditionalist opiate users, and three of them may have
consulted on one or more answers.
-177-
(Cliche' and Boredom Motivation in My Surveys)
Social action motivated by cliche's and social psychological behavior motivated
by boredom are lumped together in Klapp's 1988 alienation theory (See note 4).
He follows Zijderveld (1979) in characterizing seekers' lives as motivated by
ciiche's, and he indicates cliche' motivation is due to techno-lag. Whether these
are conscious or unconscious motivations for social actors is unclear, but in
Klapp's analysis seeking redundancy is the individual’s course, confronting a
flood of stimuli.
Are boredom and cliche motivation linked for the participants in my cultural
history surveys? If so, participants who agree with many cliche's should report
more boredom, compared with those who agree with few cliche's. The general
participant pools of my study are the best ones for checking this linkage.
But what cliche's should be used: traditional ones or those of the youth culture?
Both are available in my 1969-70 survey, so both may be included in the
analysis, Cliche's do embody political agendas, slogans, competing systems of
ethics, and generational challenges, and the twenty traditional cliche's and the
twenty popular cliche 's on my inventory contain many such meaning-loaded
items. Twelve cliche's from each scale are deleted for this analysis of cliche ' and
boredom motivation for just such reasons
The items with the most general phraseology, the broadest mass cultural appeal,
the least attachment to discrete political programs, the least loaded with rejection
of a younger or older generation, and the most hackneyed in expression were
retained.
The popular cliche' scale is revised as items: 55, 61, 65, 74, 80, 93, 97, and 102.
Participants with high approvals of these items
-178-
should qualify as Klapp's cliche'-motivated youth. The traditional scale is
composed of items: 68, 75, 77, 95, 103, 106, 119, and 121. Participants with
high approvals on these items should qualify as cliche '-motivated. Added
together, a potential of 16 cliche' approvals is possible on the two scales, and the
participants may be dichotomized at the mean for the analysis.
Participants with nine or fewer agreements with these 16 cliche's were identified
as low-cliche motivated, compared with those agreeing with ten or more. The
1969-70 general participants had a mean of 8.8 and the 1989-90 participants had
a mean of 9.4. Since the popular cliche's of 1969 were somewhat out-of-date in
1969 this may reflect a slight increase in cliche 'd thinking among youth. [84]
But comparing across time it is clear the popular cliche's have not gone out of
style. 1989-90 participants gave only .1 less approvals (out of 16 possible) than
the 1969-70 participants did. The participants with high cliche'-approval in 198990 reported more boredom than the low-cliche ' approval participants, as
expected by overstimulation theory. The degree was slightly more than onetenth participants who approved of cliche's were more bored; the "decision lag"
from overstimulation left them in the lurch, so to speak.
However, among 1969-76 general participants, the reverse was true, and to the
same degree. Those who approved less of cliche's reported slightly more than
one tenth more boredom. This is an interesting artifact in the data. If this
reversal is interpreted according to KIapp's overstimulation assumption--that
modern Iife increasingly overstimulates: I) that hypothesis falls victim 2)
unconscious processes may vary through history, or 3) cycles of stimulation
levels undulate through modern life:
-179-
If the reversal is due to a change in society, then he is wrong that 1989-90 was
more overstimulating than 1969-70 for these participants; his reverse progress
notion is wrong regarding overstimulation; its growth is not a uniformity.
If the reversal is due to historical personality dynamics, then less participants
may have repressed their actual level of boredom, even as they challenged
cliche's. [86]
There is a third historical possibility, and that is the 1969-70 boredom was due
to understimulation, and bored youth sought variety, not redundancy, over a
lengthy period of time to remedy it. This interpretation is most consistent with
Klapp's theoretical history regarding "seekers," and the historical increase in
stress-preoccupation of clinicians generally.
However, one item on boredom is not a scale--it violates my methodological
guideline of three items in any cultural complex--and my survey does not contain
a stimulation index, so these historical findings are very preliminary. Klapp’s
techno-lag theory contains similar homeostatic mechanisms to Durkheim's
systemic model of society, so an historical perspective must have exhaustive
sequential data to establish one interpretation above another. But seeker trends
covering two generations can at least be described.
To see how seeking attitudes pattern with cliche'-approval, both generations of
participants were examined on four seeker items which persisted across the two
decades 147, 185, 170, and 161. 1989-90 approvals of seeker items were
generally higher than in 1969-70 (about two thirds approval), the most marked
increase occurring on item 147, "I pursue ecstasy and expanded consciousness,"
the highest approved seeker item in 1989-90.[87] The most stable high-approval
item was 185, "I would like to go beyond space and time, roles, models, and
concepts."
Patterning of cliche '-approval with seeker attitudes was clear in the modal
choices of 1969-70 participants. Cliche'-approvers were
-180-
more approving of seeker attitudes on three of the four items. Dreamabandonment (161) was not part of the pattern. Among 1989-90 participants,
both high and low cliche'-approvers generally agreed that they pursued
expanded consciousness, were first to try something new, and sought
unbounded experiences. High clich'e-approvers had a higher margin of approval
overall, including a higher endorsement of item 182, "I have not yet solved the
question, "Who am I?" The clear majority sought dream abandonment, and
nearly all of them sought ecstasy. Only the low-cliche' approvers still
disapproved dream-abandonment.
KIapp's identification of cliche '-approval with seeker attitudes applies to both
generations of study participants--it is bi-generational--though it is unclear
whether cliche '-motivated behavior is involved, or just cliche'-thinking.
Retaining Klapp's cliche' thesis in techno-lag alienation research seems
advisable. Concluding that boredom from overstimulation motivates seeker
attitudes and behavior, is not inconsistent with some of the data from Bexar and
Yellowstone surveys--especially if overstimulation is revised as cyclic--but such a
conclusion for boredom-motivation is premature until its role in levels of
consciousness is further explicated.
Deleting Materialism?
In the early post-RVN period in the U.S., alienation researchers re-examined
the proposition that materialistic values were essential to meritocracy, and thus
an alienation from such values constituted a threat to social organization <xii>.
Keniston was one such researcher, and he revised his view, woven into The
Uncommitted, that acceptance of materialism leads away from alienation.
Public debate had popularized "post-scarcity" thinking to such a degree that
the Nixon administration introduced a guaranteed annual income proposal for
U.S. citizens. In the absence of striving to secure basic needs, it was avowed
that
-181materialism was not essential to the motivation-structure of the American
personality. Klapp retained aspects of this idea in his 1986 book linking
alienation with boredom.
The decline of materialist values argument became an important part of
international alienation research. Ronald Inglehart, who took a generational
approach to european political value shifts reviewed prior research in his "PostMaterialism in an Environment of Insecurity," saying (1981, p889). "Postmaterialism has not dwindled away in the face of diminished economic and
physical security. In most countries its numbers grew, and in some ways its
political influence seems greater now than a decade ago: but its character and
tactics have changed significantly." If Inglehart is correct that levels of
materialism have changed, then contemporary U.S. research into alienation
must take it into consideration.
Keniston's 1968 shift to a Rousseauistic definition of alienation <vii> could
ignore materialism in what was conceived as a post-scarcity society, but the
deficit-rich United States of the 1990's is economically preoccupied in a
contrasting direction.
Using time-series survey data on Germany and Japan, Inglehart notes that
growth of post-materialist values paralleled increasing financial security
through 1973. In Japan they reversed in the aggregate as economic security
declined, but strong generational contrasts remained. Subsequent surveys
documented that (1981, p885), "When we move across the World War II
watershed, the balance shifts dramatically," with Post-Materialists becoming
more numerous than Materialists. The Materialist and Post-Materialist types
have strikingly different opinions on a wide variety of issues...Our hypotheses
imply that as time went by, the Post-Materialists became older and more
evenly distributed across the population."
Noting that (Ibid, p887), "By 1980, the real income of the typical American
family was actually lower than in 1970." Inglehart details the major drop in
consumer confidence, but indicates "no change" over this period in U.S. and
Belgium post-materialist values despite lowered incomes. Shifts among teens
towards materialism were off-set by increased post-materialism of the aged.
The biggest contrast was between the "post-war generation" aged 34--44
which was post-materialist, and the cohort following it. Speaking of Europe he
concludes (p893), "By the late 1970's Post-Materialism had not only made
deep inroads among young technocrats: but it had also, to a surprising degree,
penetrated the West European political class." The rest of his analysis details
his survey of the 1979 European Parliament candidates, and his appraisal that
Post-Materialist reformers constitute a "new class" of reformers in the Western
countries. Their political impact
-182he defines as a clash of generational "world views," much as Ortega y Gasset
would express it.
Daniel Bell took up the "new class" in his essay, "The New class: A Muddled
Concept," and described it (1979, p162) "The 'new class' consists of
individuals who have carried the logic of modern culture to its end, and he
treated it as a culture complex in conflict with bourgeois social structure,
political power, corporate law, and traditional culture.
Yankelovich challenged the foundation of the "new class' itself. His New
Rules: Search for Self-Fulfillment in a World Turned Upside Down, took on
Klapp’s "seekers" and Inglehart's "post-Materialists" as flawed in their basic
premises. Asserting what his surveys had shown all along, that (1981, p20),
"In the interviews almost everyone concerned with self-fulfillment stressed how
directly their plans hinged on their economic prospects," he chides that
Americans believe (72%), "We are fast coming to a turning point in our history.
The land of plenty is becoming the land of want." His veiled reference to an
American Social Darwinist catch phrase is nonetheless clear.
He goes on to re-introduce the "scarcity hypothesis" which Inglehart had
revised along Maslow lines for his 1981 paper. Inglehart had emphasized the
"subjective" sense of security and the durability of enculturated personality
traits. These, he had identified as the foundation of generational contrasts he
found in Materialist and Post-Materialist values in Western european politics,
not objective scarcity. Yankelovich, however, returns to objective scarcity as
his touchstone, asserting (1981, p213), "Sooner or later the psychology of
affluence will be forced to yield." He argues for the democratic materialism he
finds in America; (p176); "Most Americans (62%) want more material goods
and more personal freedom." He argues against the U.S. inflation he sees
generated by Post-Materialism (p206), "If not for the psychology of affluence
our response might have been more adaptive... (because, p210)...the causes
of modern inflation lie outside the economic system." He also argues for
upward mobility values he finds in America (p 142), "But to the average
American...social mobility is won mainly through personal effort."
Personal economic effort, of course, is part of Yankelovich's societal view of
alienation, based upon Durkheim’s structural view of society <xii> and he
makes this clear in his description of the old "covenant" of success.
YankeIovich uses data from his "life history interviews" (1500 Americans) and
his Singleton analysis, to document the mutually supportive triangle of family,
money, and earning of external respect which typified the parents of the postWWII generation. Earning respect is personal
-183economic effort.
He re-introduces the social ethic with a reference to Coleman’s and
Rainwater's 1978 report on U.S. team spirit (p141), "Those who play the sane
according to the rules...are entitled to their success." Its centrality to societal
alienation is made very clear when he discusses non-participants in society,
"Dropping out permanently is an act of alienation, not fulfillment."
But through-out his book, Yankelovich is not willing to meet the basic
requirement of structural analysis and break down his data according to selfinterested occupations. That might lead to a serious discussion of a New
Class. Instead, he opts for Durkheim's second version of society based on
collective consciousness <xii>, and assails a "psychoculture" gone awry using
public opinion percentages. His longing for Durkheimian consensus is evident
when he says, "The decade of the nineteen-fifties demonstrated the awesome
moral power of social consensus," and he re-defines alienation in its terms
(1981 p239), "Even moderate forms of the assumption that selves are culturefree and wholly autonomous run the risk of alienation...(p241)...private
consciousness independent of culture is utterly misleading." This is a
continuation of his 1971 equation of alienation with one's personal values not
being shared by most Americans, as close as any alienation researcher got to
adopting difference of opinion <vi> as alienation. What follows is Yankelovich,
as sage, re-forming American consensus.[88]
After revising core Post-Materialists to 17% and re-naming them "Strong
Formers," Yankelovich attacks Post-Materialism ("psychoculture") as based
upon a (Ibid, p237), "Root fallacy of the search for self-fulfillment" promoted by
Maslow. He allows that (p91), "By the outset of the nineteen-eighties only 20
percent or so of adult Americans remained unaffected in their philosophy of life,
untouched by the great shifts in culture," and he identifies not aging babyboomers as those in need of his Materialist views, but the youth Inglehart had
described as showing (p888), "A net shift of 7 points in the Materialist direction
during the 1970's." Yankelovich seeks to re-integrate--or de-alienate--these
youth through participation (p92), "Our studies show a strong increase in recent
years in aimlessness, especially among young people."
Yankelovich contributes little new over his former works on alienation (See
pages 142-143) But his survey reports of American competitive behavioral
attitudes are likely valid, if not when published, then today. And they are highly
consistent with Tom Wolfe's prologue phrase to the 1980's1 "The Me Decade,"
and with the documented fraudulent behavior in banks, U.S. savings and loans,
stock markets,
-184and real estate and insurance scams during the Reagan administration.
Yankelovich and Inglehart come to contrary conclusions about Post
Materialism flourishing in Western Civilization, but Yankelovich takes the
broader view on U.S. materialist attitudes. Whether conscious, as Yankelovich
asserts, or unconscious as Fromm asserted, materialism is a core American
value and Inglehart 's studies of the pre-1980’s document the growth of a
political sub-culture of protest, not the ethic of social action infused across the
occupational spectrum in the U.S. His failure to document a broadening Post
Materialist movement in the U.S. after 1973, left materialism as a background
U.S. value to alienation researchers.
Russell Dalton later took up the debate over Post-Materialism using the term
"elites" to refer to the 1980's ideological politics Inglehart had documented in
europe on a generational basis. Dalton utilized a systematic sample to
interview 742 european candidates. In contrast with Inglehart, he charted the
(1987, p990), "substantial difference" in ideological polarization among young
elites today, stating (p995), "More significant than these aggregate
generational differences are the opinion differences occurring within age
groups rather than between them." This diminution of Inglehart’s generational
thesis was rephrased as (p996), "The differences in policy views between
generations are less significant than the growth of ideological polarization
among younger elites."
Dalton remarked that this is a revision of Bell's "end of ideology" views along
generational lines (Ibid, p996), '"The negative consequences of earlier periods
of polarization undoubtedly contributed to the convergence of policy views
among older elites." Noting that "The more ideological style of the successor
generation was a key variable, he says, "The end of ideology studies missed
the continuing process of change in the next generation of political elites." But
Dalton's generational continuity with Inglehart was overshadowed by his
polarization thesis.
From a generational discussion of materialism in the politics of Western
Civilization, the debate became one of contrast between consensus and
ideological politics, a conflict in which consensus politicians need say little or
nothing and disagreements among ideological politicians would bring policy
reforms to nought. This diminuation of Post-Materialism as a generational
phenomenon, was consistent with the view such values were part of a subculture of protest, not a broad-based theme in cultural change.
Protest "generation units" were the subject of Kent Jennings study of the postWWII generation. He uses
-185Mannheim's definition of them (1987, p368), "Groups within the same actual
generation which work up the materials of their common experiences in
different specific ways, constitute separate generation units." His findings from
a random three-wave panel study of 106 protesting youth compared with 259
non-protesters over 17 years identifies protesters as a generation unit with high
relative continuity in their attitudes (Ibid, p380), "As our analysis of the
partisanship and civil liberties data revealed, this minority proved spectacularly
steadfast and distinctive with respect to issues and objects accompanying their
political baptism. Numerically, protesters are a minority within a minority."
Also, (Ibid, p381) "They have remained extraordinarily politically active."
Jennings stresses similar experiential and enculturation factors Inglehart had
stressed in ldentifying Post-Materialists; which Keniston had stressed in
identifying participants in the social movement of Vietnam Summer; and which
Klapp stressed in identifying seekers engaged in experiences of collective
behavior. Participation in a sub-group and enculturation by a sub-culture may
result in very durable value re-orientations. Jennings adds (Ibid, p381), "Elites
and near-elites can continue to represent the orientations of a political
generation even when these orientations are not widely shared by mass
publics."
(Materialism Concerns and Protesting Among Youth in My Surveys)
Western youth in county-based pools of participants should provide grist for analytic
induction about Post-Materialism and protest, not just alienation factors, especially if
the years of survey are historically relevant. To many researchers, the youthful
populations of the American "frontier" pose a difficult challenge for locating PostMaterialism or protest.
1969-70, the Bexar County benchmark for my survey, was the watershed year for
Jennings first sample (1987, p369), "Those who went straight on to college became
the college graduates of 1969. A look backwards reveals that this cohort lies dead
center of the protest movement." The contemporary time placement of the 1989-90
Yellowstone county participants is likewise relevant.
-186-
What value change is visible across this twenty-year period regarding materialism,
and what degree of youthful protest behavior is in evidence? Most significantly from
a cultural standpoint, what is the pattern of participants' youthful attitudes at these
two points time, in terms of generational mass culture and the sub-cultures of
generation units--patterns which point the way for new traditions of alienation
literature?
Conveniently, the Bexar and Yellowstone county participants in my studies reported
the same level of affluence; two-thirds disagreed that (item 14), "My family while I
was growing up was poor."[89] Inglehart's subjective argument on economic
security could explain distribution of responses; more earlier participants made their
answer a "strong" rejection of their parents being poor. More materialistic standards
in the culture may have stimulated personal denials. Later participants gave more
"strong agree" answers, however. This may reflect subjective scarcity, as well--not
objective poverty--because two decades of T.V. exposure to higher lifestyles (e.g.
"Lifestyles the Rich and Famous') may have raised the subjective floor of "poverty."
Yankelovich made clear that the average objective affluence through the late 1970's
remained about the same (1981, p181). Thus, finding support in this data for
Klapp's Durkheimian assumption of "insatiable" wants, is not there, at least as it
relates to subjective definitions of poverty.
With the overall similarity of the two general aggregates, it possible to make
comparisons without resorting to cross-tabulations subjective want. Materialist
attitudes are sparse in the inventory, but some items apply. Like Yankelovich’s
early surveys, this one contains a general attitude on business (item 157), "I like
business
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or industry." It is more easily answered in the positive by factory workers. Among
general baseline participants, two-thirds approved this item. This may seem
surprising, but remember, these participants Included the non-college population,
and the 25% decline in emphasis on money reported for Yankelovich’s non-college
youth occurred between 1969 and 1973.
A second item, (140), more clearly taps the materialism theme, "The profit motive
should never get in the way of other values." A strongly negative answer should be
indicative of materialism such as Yankelovich measured with "Business is too
concerned with profits and not with public responsibility." Less than one-third of the
same participants answered for public acquisitiveness. However, on the level of
personal lifestyle, item 183, 'II would like to live in a resort," half approved of such a
lifestyle for themselves. An affluent lifestyle is not spurned, so long as it is not solely
based on the profit motive.
Item 168, "I prefer a society where there are no rich and no poor people," gets at
acquisitive attitudes by a different route. SIightly over half approved this item,
indicating many had adopted an ethic of moderate or average lifestyle.
Thus, overall, the 1969-70 general participants did not define themselves as poor
nor did they dislike business or industry in itself. When asked about the profit
motive, most did not want competing motives crowded out by it, though half wished
for a lifestyle such profits would bring, even though resigned to a middle income.
The 1989-90 general participants displayed the same overall characteristics on
these items. The only item to display a modal
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change was the resort item, and it had excessive "no answer" responses, biasing
the results.[90]
Materialism, like progress-attitudes, displays almost no change over the two
decades of the study. The ebb and then the flow of materialist values in youth
culture appears among my participants to have come full course, at the conscious
level. But participation in active protest against materialist society has not.
(The Protest Generation Unit Among My Participants)
Jennings' study on the protest generation unit (1987, p369), "Concentrated on
College graduates who had protested.. Nearly 3 in 10 (N=129) of all college
graduates had taken part in at least one demonstration..."[91] The item on my
inventory which measures protest participation is item 38, "I have participated in
political protest." This is more general than Jennings' reference to a
"demonstration," and a third of my 1969-70 participants agreed, while slightly less
than one quarter of the 1989-90 participants did. However, later protesters had
done a lot of protesting or "helped organize."
Since "protest" includes counter-protest in the 1970's and 1980's, the phrasing of
item 40 more closely estimates protest of the 1970 variety, "Degree I believe in civil
disobedience as a political tool." The 1989-90 participants had only half as many
who claimed civil disobedience was "necessary" or the "only effective means," less
than one in ten. The decrease on both items reflects 1989-90 as a time of lowervolume protest, with fewer than one-fifth demonstrating where civil disobedience
was involved. The picture which emerges of these participants is one of general
uninvolvement and non-sponsorship of protest activity. However, some 1969-70
and 1989-90 participants did protest, and would be considered "alienated" for it by
some
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societal alienation researchers. But Jennings makes clear (Ibid, p370), the
assumption that protesters don't participate in society is false, "Protesters...did not
abandon the electoral process. Indeed, they were more active in electoral politics
than were the non-protesters over the 17-year stretch covered by our study." This
corresponds with Keniston’s conclusions about protesters, and fits the traditional
political activity of Bexar County protesters.
Since most protesters in my study were in the Bexar County drug-abusing
aggregate, these two items, (38 and 40), were used to identify a protest generation
unit for 1969-70, recognizing that all these participants were AFEES-screened for
potential exclusion from induction to military service. To be included for this
analysis, some political protest and some belief in civil disobedience was required.
Non-protest participants were non-protesters with no belief in civil disobedience.
Among these Bexar County participants, the protest generation unit included only
one-third. They were less confident of the efficacy of the vote than non-protesters
(item 41), but protesters reported three to lour times as much influence on politics
and participation in political campaigns. With Jennings and Keniston, then, these
results disqualify protesting from "alienation" syndromes as a tenable component
(See note 9b on p114).
Prospective Summary of Post-Conventional Alienation
Deleting various Americanisms from alienation research (the creeds, imagoes,
styles, and consciousness discussed on pages 134-135 was perhaps the most
important step in professionalizing its investigation in the U.S. Mid-century, the
excessive American focus on social-psychological indicators and low-level analyses
had impeded
-190new prospects for significant research which trimmed-down alienation traditions are
able to provide, ones freed from conventional cultural assumptions which limit or
bias research.
The societal tradition had the strongest cultural tie with such ideological features.
Keniston’s psychohistorical work went beyond Bredemeier and Toby’s revision of the
structural values of Parsons, Lipset, and Merton to allow dissensus by "disaffiliates,"
from American society (See note 22 on p117). Keniston treated them as
unalienated innovators who pursue constructive structural change, and along with
Jennings, he documented their devotion to equalitarianism and the social system.
Civil protest, while relevant to a diminishing generation unit, in size, is indicative of
societal participation, and belies a societal alienation label. These authors--to
reform the societal tradition--had to challenge universalist assumptions of
Durkheim's followers about modern societies <xii>, that all must participate in a
single opportunity structure, normative mass culture, or occupational sub-culture, or
suffer anomie. Societal alienation may now concentrate more on alternative
structures in a clearly pluralist society, filled with sub-cultural generation units.
Significantly, Keniston not only removed protesters from a universalist label of
"deviance," but--with Coleman and Lipset (See p141)--he also addressed a difficulty
the societal tradition had with uniform American personality. Conformity to the
Protestant Ethic is not essential to avoid anomie or ensure an ego or identity, or
even to engage in the spirit of capitalism. "Pessimist "--the reverse of an American
creed of optimism--is not a variety of alienation, nor were non-conformists studied
necessarily at odds with themselves or psychologically unhealthy <ii or iii>. These
findings have given
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societal researchers like Yankelovich impetus to re-form their surveys around Lipset
and Merton’s core structural values, while investigating value complexes of
alternative structures, like Keniston’s equalitarians or Inglehart's post-materialists.
The widely-reported increase in American tolerance in the last two decades is
consistent with this trimming of the societal alienation model. Societal researchers
have been made more aware of how the rational asceticism of the Protestant Ethic
has restricted their concept of identity through externally-imposed social controls (a
calling, public opinion, and an internalized but rigid super-ego).
The psychohistory tradition Keniston advanced in the process of revising the
societal, adapting it to current domestic reform, not just the international conflicts of
democratic and authoritarian personalities. Though his “post-conventional
personality" was at first overdrawn, causing him to revise it in a later work, autonomy
without full self-reliance becomes a model for psychohistorical researches. This is
now a more salient international model since fragmentation of the Second World;
nations not just selves may find themselves under less direct domination and more
autonomous--for a time--in integrating post-authoritarian personalities, once
conventional ethnicity wanes as a key source of identity.
The American techno-lag tradition had the non-essential belief in "progress"
removed from alienation, by an unexpected source. Crossing over from the mythicawareness tradition, while still fascinated by Durkheim, Klapp presents seekers as
treading water in a potentially sinking ship. He goes beyond McLuhan and Toffler's
quantity of information effects--while ignoring Ellul’s anti-bourgeois arguments--and
stresses that information qualitatively degrades and
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thus, the overloaded self goes through cycles just as society does. History is not
unilinear.
Unfortunately, he gives the ego a mostly executive function over stimulation and
meaning lags, a problem of previous researchers; identity is an executor. But he
does allow for potentially unconscious motivations like boredom and cliche’s. Most
important, his analysis of institutional redundancy makes clear collective action may
alter alienation by promoting balance in societal structures. Also, meaning--though a
“slow horse”--does catch up in time. His seekers need not pursue symbols in
solitary self-reliance, lost in a sea of history. Avoiding techno-lag alienation
becomes less of a frantic calculus to both individual and researcher.
Mythic-awareness, while restricted in collective behavior themes in Klapp's later
analysis--because he sees more symbolism in post-modern society--continues with
seekers as its focus. It is unfortunate Klapp did not expand his four "lacks of
symbolic self-reference" and grapple with a model of identity beyond the mythic
focus on pure consciousness. Mythic-awareness continues to be extremely diverse
in its expressions of alternate value complexes of individual union with a collective
consciousness. Yankelovich’s surveys documented much of this synthesis in the
U.S. under the term "strong formers," just as Inglehart did--in part--on an
international level with "Post-Materialists." But both these terms are attached to
social action paradigms at variance from Roszak’s "neopagans," or even his
"scientists beyond reductionism." When such diverse expressions are collected,
however, even Yankelovich acknowledges a new value complex at work in America,
even if it does not statistically threaten materialism there.
-193-
Examination of the survey records of participants in my two-county survey of
Western youth displayed no quantitative mutability of consensus regarding progress
or materialism, but qualitative patterns about the selective use of progress (e .g. not
for engineering drugs) were present, and a less polarized view of progress was too.
Materialism replies tended away from objective scarcity as a motive source for
attitude change, and a stable pattern of material preferences and trade-offs
persisted over the decades.
Strong societal participation of the U.S. protest generation unit--described by
Keniston and Jennings--was evident among contemporary youthful Westerners,
though in an altered style reminiscent of Inglehart's "PostMaterial Values in an
Environment of Insecurity." Less broad but more personally intensive,
characterized the results, as did a decline in civil disobedience beliefs. This is
partially consistent with Dalton's polarization thesis among youthful elites. An early
protest to Operation Desert Storm in Montana displayed this polarized character:
protesters laid down on a basketball floor prior to a game and were swiftly drug away
so similar-aged players could replace them.
This scale-down of youthful political elites, however, is in contrast with broad new
value themes historically-connected with the mythic-awareness tradition. Youthful
participants engaged in drug abuse were found to have patterned seeker attitudes,
ones which include a lower level of boredom among drug knowledgeable youth.
While the pattern is more elaborate for drug-abusers; seeking new, unbounded
experiences--including ecstasy and expanded consciousness--is a widely diffused
attitude pattern among general study participants. Associated with this seeker
pattern in varying
-194-
degrees are cliche' proneness and un-relieved boredom, though not in the same way
Klapp suggests.
In general, however, the survey data supports the findings of national and
international alienation researchers for trimming out non-essentials from American
alienation traditions. Post-conventional youth Iive in post-conventional societies
which do not exercise the degree of externality and constraint typical of the U.S.
mid-century.
The survey data also support research models employing the terminology of
generational units with sub-cultural value complexes as supplements to mass
cultural modal preferences by generations. There is unexpected "generational
stability" on historical dimensions such as Jennings and Niemi suggest. Perhaps,
media participation of the novice generation accounts for some of this, a much more
open political arena than characterized Ortega y Gasset’s generational successions
to political power. Cultural pluralism nonetheless applies; attention to both mass
publics and sub-cultural phenomenon is fundamental for alienation research in the
future.
-195-
Mass Enculturation of Two Western Generations
Alienation researchers of the last quarter century recognized American youth are
enculturated in a cross-current of mass media and subcultural traditions; their sense
of self in relation to Others is multiform; and thus, alienations of post-conventional
youth are complexly patterned.
Concepts which mitigate and make possible an analysis of alienation in this
complexity are: "generation," which unifies the historical and media experiences of a
whole cohort of youth, "generation units," which represent subcultural approaches to
those events and "bigenerational" which sifts generational trends to identify features
and generation units held in common by two generations.
Research material discussed in previous sections has found considerable
generational stability, so this section begins with the sifting process, to identify
bigenerational trends by excluding transitory labels of two Western generations.
Demographic features which shaped their experiences are then discussed, noting
that frontier expansion drew those experiences together. Popularization of salient
alienation ideas is detailed.
Then the ethos of three decades of history, both in the U.S. and internationally, are
examined in terms of generational units and subcultural involvements in mass
movements and collective behavior. Four generational units are reviewed from my
Western surveys. This gets at generational trends by a different route, and provides
an historical perspective for evaluating the salience of various alienation referents to
the two western generations.
The pervasive psycho-social alienation of the surveyed youth of
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two Western generations is then examined. Its components are related to the
alienation typology developed in the first section, it is discussed as a cultural
complex involving a new ethic, and its character is termed "global," both because of
its extensiveness and its alienated relation to international organization.
The concluding discussion examines the potential of using "global alienation" in
wider and longer-term contexts beyond the late Twentieth-Century participants of
this study, the counties and region of North America they represent, and the Triad of
developed nations with which these youth are associated.
-197-
Avoiding Sub-Cultural Labels
The Western U.S. generations surveyed in this report in 1960-70 and 1989-90 were
largely enculturated to society during the decade of the 1960's or the 1980's, in a
common era of developed mass media which made historical or "period" events an
immediate part of their personal lives. The "world" these youth are enculturated into-Ortega Y Gasset’s term for the first 15 years of internalization--was experienced in
common with older generations, but excluded many experiences of older persons
they would replace. These generations have borne many specialized mass cultural
labels, keying off transitory themes, labels which have served youth in a selfidentifying fashion:
Wars they fought in like RVN or the Gulf War; contemporary national
triumphs like moon exploration or the fall of the Berlin Wall; economic
phenomena like affluence or huge deficits; chiliastic movements like hippiedom
or the New Wave; political movements like Civil Rights or Property Tax Revolt;
drugs of choice like LSD or crack; music like acid rock or rap and break
dancing; cartoon figures like Page or Doonsbury; religious movements like the
Death of God or Moral Majority; child-rearing models like that of Dr. Spock or
P.E.T.; off-center political candidates like Gene McCarthy or Jesse Jackson;
presidents like JFK or Reagan; singers like The Beatles or Madonna; satirists
like Mort Sahl or Dennis Miller; social action modalities like "protest" or
"conformist; '" and even presumed cliche' contrasts, "The Do Your Own Thing
Generation," or "'The Just Do it Generation."
For every aspect of mass culture there is a label for these two generations. Each
label serves as a time marker in the mass media experience of participants in its
subcultures, though often in a misleading way. An isolated historical benchmark is
not adequate to characterize even a small part of a generation. And such transitory
contrasts ignore the degree of cultural continuity represented by such enduring
features as: high tech war, high GNP, rock and roll,
-198-
pollution debate, alcohol and marijuana use, equalitarian and achievementorientation, church attendance, Charlie Brown. Johnny Carson, a small family, a
strong president, The Beach Boys, self-reliance, and participant democracy. U.S.
mass media has enduring themes, not just transitory ones. This is especially true in
a stable democracy like the U.S. where (Yankelovich, 1981, pxvii) "Almost every
survey measuring trends in American values and behavior exhibits extraordinary
stability. Any of the above could be applied to both generations, just as Jennings
and Niemi did with their "bigenerational " studies (1981). Potential distortion resides
in use of transitory specialized labels to "typify" single generations.
(Demography Alters the "World" of Generations)
The least distorting convention for naming a generation is demographic. But even
the terms "baby boom" and "baby bust" allow bias in a culture favoring a growth
economy. The 1970 study participants were baby boomers, sitting at the bottom of
an age-sex pyramid, while the 1990 participants had the base of a population
pyramid above them, tapering down to those about ten years old, a baby-bust
generation.
Perhaps more than any other naming convention these terms convey the experience
of being in one these generations. It affected relative access to all public institutions
and facilities: education, jobs, health care, homes, prisons, and retirement. Since
behavior is age-linked, the boom etched in the public mind: school unruliness,
burgeoning teen markets, and crime, age-relative unemployment, and workman's
compensation and welfare claims. By size alone--relative to institutional supports-the "character" of the baby boom generation was overdrawn in mass culture.
Correspondingly, the baby bust
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generation's character may be underdrawn on these same features. Demographics
impact what Yankelovich has called (1961, p14), "The webs of meanings Americans
hold in common."
Public ideologies to deal with these contrasting challenges to institutions, may be
understood in demographic terms as well. By such logic, stridency in public ideology
may well be expected to extend into the second decade of the next century, as baby
boomers leave the job market to retire, unbalancing the dependency ratio. Bouvier
sums up the boom (1980, p20) as, "Wherever they are, it's raining," while the bust,
"should have a much easier passage through life."
Bouvier (Ibid. p12) stresses the baby boom was almost uniform in the U.S., "Just
about every sub-group in American society contributed to the baby boom--rich and
poor, white and black, Christian and Jew." So, the baby boom generation is
"ethnically-neutral" at its outset. The baby bust is more ethnically-linked at the
outset, as the Spindlers suggest [92]. This is potential grist for mass culture too,
allowing for exaggerations of ethnically-skewed growth.
But the time-honored assumption the second world war produced the mass culture
of the baby boom generation is largely fallacy. The boom in babies was higher from
1955 to 1964 than in the post-war decade.[93] Cultural factors were involved.
Separation from urban populations (suburbanization--now the environment of half of
Americans), early marriage and narrow spacing of children, available federal
benefits for a small Depression generation, and high earning capacity; all these
contributed to an atypical bulge of young Americans.
A similar prospect is suggested for the baby bust generation by the Easterlin
hypothesis, only this time with a lower economic impetus
-200-
to child-rearing. The boom may repeat itself, with similar effects.[94] Bouvier says
the tripling of college enrollments from 1960 to 1975, added to conflicts over the Civil
Rights movement and the RVN War (1980, p21), they "Combined to give us the
turbulent 1960's."
From the wide demographic swings of the last half-century alone--one of the best
ways to "typify" generations--Daniel Bell's prediction of an end to ideology in 1960,
and his subsequent promotion of a post-industrial society in 1973--sans deficits?-were not highly feasible. The baby boom generation has been rife with domestic
conflict and ideological struggle, expected from its bursting of the seams of society's
domestic institutions, just as the baby bust generation has thus far experienced its
demographic challenges through foreign relations. Even Bell recognizes the (1980,
p211) "Challenges to authority" implicit in the end of "a twenty-five year boom in the
world economy," occurring in the middle of a (Ibid, p219) "demographic tidal wave"
in the U.S., followed by a demographic "flood" from the 'less-developed
countries."[95]
(Historical Salience of Alienation)
Alienation types current in mass culture relate to changing life situations of
generations (See note 4 on p112). Subcultural uses of "alienation" in the media
were not equally salient to Western youth. Baby boom and baby bust generational
alienation included experiences of these types: mass alienation <xv>, threatened
sovereignty <vii> and bureaucratic types <xii and xiv>. They were co-terminous
and consistent with the demographic bulge of the baby boom generation and its
effect on institutions.
The global Cold War animosities of the baby boomers reduced to
-20I -
mere "evil empire" rhetoric for those of the baby bust generation as the U.S.S.R.
fragmented, but some mass loneliness and minority-baiting persisted <xv>. Black,
Brown, and Red Power challenged race-based laws inhibiting their sovereignty, and
today de facto and economic discrimination remain <vii>. Staff functions replaced
many line functions in businesses as hierarchies flattened out for baby boom and
baby bust workers <xii>. Some attrition of these alienating conditions is evident in
youth survey, especially loneliness, rootlessness, and confusion.[96] But for
Western youth new to mass politics, a higher racial mix, and a regional influx of
bureaucracies during the last twenty years, the life experiences of each generation
was not dissimilar for these particular alienations.
Rapid institutional changes experienced by Western youth also called up older
alienation traditions of conflict with society. Freud's and Marx's views <xiii and ix>
served as patterns for the psycho-history tradition, particularly affecting the "sexual
revolution" and protest movements against wars which over-utilized workers and
appeared to have resource motivations. Jung <xiiib>, and other students of myth
and symbol developed the mythic-awareness tradition, ensuring continuity with a
common culture at varying levels of consciousness. This was salient for Western
youth, many of whom experienced cultural disorganization as they made a ruralurban transition, and created a secondary selfhood <x>. For some, this transition
also entailed a re-definition of religious belief <xi>.
The techno-lag tradition of alienation developed <xvi>, seeking re-integration of
culture as technology fitfully advanced on ranches, in petroleum refineries, and in
homes with nearby merchandising centers (See p96-97). While technological
changes for baby bust youth
-202-
have restored some individual control through cybernation, lost by baby boomers in
earlier stages of automation, "lags" in cultural integration have affected many
Western youth. The societal tradition <xii> elaborated and clarified new nationalist
models for role performance by individuals. As the Dictionary of Occupational Titles
grew fatter, Western youth faced choices among societal roles their parents had not
learned to perform, and levels of education they had not needed to acquire <viii>.
These historical or period features which fed alienation ideologies in Western
America are not all transitory or necessarily scaled-down for Western baby bust
youth, though mass alienation <xv> and the bureaucratic types <xii and xiv> show
some abatement (See note 10 on pages 114-115). Some are advancing features of
American life for Westerners, and additional alienations will typify the broader
political, economic, religious. and social world they will inhabit in the Twenty-First
Century.
(Two Generations of Mass Culture and Youth)
Experiences of alienation ideas for most of the youth in these two Western
generations were dominated for the first time by mass media. Since individuals are
selective, all the subcultural types alienation available were not equally instrumental,
but availability was greatly enhanced by mass media. Thus, cultural expressions of
such ideas in rock and rap, T.V. programs, pulp paperbacks, and movies often
expressed the ideas discussed in this report most poignantly for youth.
"And they're all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same," an early
1960's song line, expressed mass alienation <xv> for many suburban youth, in
personal terms. "Downtown," a song for
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avoiding boredom through a flood of stimuli, probably affected more youth than Erich
Fromm's The Sane Society or Klapp's Collective Search for Identity which
addressed similar themes in psychohistorical or mythic-awareness terms. Videogaming “at the mall,” became the downtown for many 1980's youth, with its surfeit of
technology and progress ideology, this time experienced as an escape from
overload like Klapp's thesis in Overload and Boredom.
Nisbet’s "real property" message in Community and Power <iv> made cultural sense
to youth who had listened to the song line, "They paved paradise and put up a
parking lot," realizing they could never go home again. The transitory nature of
property in a mobile economy was experienced first-hand. That nearly everybody
will be an employee, not a capitalist, was not lost on Western youth.
These same youth knew what lag Toffler was talking about years later <xvi> when
he spoke of the transience behind technology in Future Shock and a decade later in
The Third Wave. And the movie "Future Shock," painting transience and
unrestrained technology in lurid hues, touched more deeply than Toffler could at
some book-signing.
"Young girls are coming to the canyon," was a paean of the Freudian unconscious
for many youth <xiii>, just as the song lines, "Sex is natural," and "I wanna sex you
up" are today. Striesand’s "People who need people"' was a rejection of Weberian
rationalism <xiv> and the stringencies of Protestant character, a longing for affection
<v> left unexpressed. Love ballads continue to flood Western airwaves to console
the same longing.
The recording, "'War, what is it good for?" expressed the feelings of youth sent to
fight a war with no plebiscite of the people <viii>.
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Timothy Leary's be-in message to drop out, turn on to drugs, and turn into
spiritualism in 1967 was <more commonly experienced--along wit acid rock--than
was Leary as institute promoting mythic-awareness. [97]
Radio's reverie with six decades of American music in the 1970's and 1980's sought
for people's "roots" <xv>, and wore out its record libraries. Television returned
consciousness to a "little house on the prairie" and re-ran four decades of sit-coms
in the same quest, and was superseded in the effort by re-issue of six decades of
movies available at video stores on cassette.
Alienation may have declined some with the baby bust generation--as an outward
theme of mass culture--but its latency is implicit in the subcultures and in the minds
of current youth. Eve an apparent spoof, the 1990 movie "Edward Sissorhands,"
can gently engage youth with the unreconciled unconscious, present below the
surface of things <xiii & xiiib>, a bohemian and gothic inner world of looming
proportions--potential redemption and potential self-harm--which will not so away.
Ethos of Three Decades
Bell updated his discussion of political ethos from mid-century in 1977 (See page
45). It was surprisingly international in tone. Alienation for Western youth in the
post-modern world is likely to be shaped by extra-national focii in the future, but the
political ethos of the U.S. alone deserves initial attention, since its social action
alternatives impacted youth alienation in terms youth understood (See note 23 on
page 66).
(A Broad American Ethos)
The 1960's was a decade of status-disruption by mass movements, challenging
traditional social and political structures and party
-205-
authority on behalf of minorities. Three major movements dominated: Civil Rights,
Consumer Rights, and the Anti-War Movement. These social movements
contributed common understandings for many youth (See note 13 on p116).
The 1970’s was a decade of more cynical collective behavior resulting in younger,
single-issue congressional representatives of short incumbency, clustering their
efforts around "entitlements," women’s and environmental issues, gay rights,
marijuana legalization, and rights of the accused. Common understandings
clustered around "the right" to have diverse interests.[98]
The 1980's was a reformation decade of nationalist mass media symbols and small
scale military interventions--based in an economic ideology of managed scarcity-blunting cultural impacts of the 1960's and 1970's. Moral Majority--Planned
Parenthood polarization on abortion; Nationalist-Internationalist polarization on
Christian prayers in schools, flag-waving, and on interventions in Grenada, Panama,
Lebanon, and Iraq; and States Rights-Federal Rights polarization on "trickle-down"
and "affirmative action" budget effects; these formed significant bi-polar dimensions
of public opinions, but with an ethos of majority-dominated understandings.[99]
As Jennings, Inglehart and Keniston made clear, the broad and vital interests of
1960's mass movements produced broad youth involvement in politics and political
commitment among youth minorities. The more fragmentary and reference-grouporiented collective movements of the 1970’s--except among women--left minorities.
of male youth to "scenes" of collective behavior which Klapp described, leaving
"straights" aside to become "seekers.[100]
The polarization ethos of the 1980's was sufficiently abstract
-206-
and distant--until one's girlfriend became pregnant, one had to fly Saudi Arabia, or
one took up crack sales when a job-training program folded--that youth of the baby
bust generation retrenched as the politically "passed-by," a traditional style for
American late-adolescents. An ethos--or common understanding--of public events as
"out there" returned. [101]
(An International Ethos)
Daniel Bell (1980, p211), stressed the international spread of Social Democratic
governments, transportation and communication revolutions in real time, and worldwide economic demand. These trends continue. The ethos of each recent decade
is significant to alienation because international organization and events provided
the context of youth alienation, even in Western America.
The Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the 1960's were world-wide concerns of
college youth, and alienation authors from Marcuse to Feuer agree the Student
Movement was international in its scope and impact. Feuer, who views "alienation"
as the key term of the Student Movement, even predicted where student movements
would occur, they (1969, p508-509), "Tend to arise only in countries which have a
youth-weighted suicide rate." Internationally, he detailed an ethos of bureaucratic,
managerial middle age in conflict with anti-elitist youth who refused to accept
bureaucratic alienations <xii and xiv>. The international ethos of the 1960's was
anti-bureaucratic for youth.
In the 1970's, the growth of the world economy which Bell describes, occurred as a
re-structuring of multi-national companies based in First World nations, transforming
them into transnational enterprises. This proceeded in a future-oriented SocialDemocratic
-207-
movement which contrasted with cynicism in the United States towards corporations
(See note 55 on p121).
Toffler states (1980, p337), that even in 1971, transnationals (TNC's) controlled
$268 billion in liquid assets, and in 1977, he reports a Harvard consumer survey
showed half of all American consumers believed they were getting worse treatment
in the marketplace than they were a decade earlier. Robert Roy described the
corporate organizational revolution as a kind of "corporate patriotism" (1977, p17),
"The modern corporation has become the characteristic, if not the dominant, form of
organization in present-day society...a drastic change in the scope or character of
corporate activity is to suggest a drastic alteration in the structure of society." Even
Roszak’s publication of Person/Planet in 1978 gave tacit recognition of this change
in scope. Roy cautioned (lbid, p368), "If these talents (management) are dedicated
to power over, rather than power with, we shall become captives to control; only if
they are directed to the service of society can we remain free." "Service" was
interpreted by many 1970's managers as providing for (Drucker, 1980, p116), "The
new segmentation in the consumer market" based on population dynamics e.g. two
income households.
The international ethos of the 1970's was one of developing Toffler’s "transmarket
civilization," in which transnational executives came to see the executive suite as the
"pivot of the world," while politics, relegated to Second Wave thinking and
organization, fought obsolescence in a "political mausoleum."
For the 1980's, Bell forecast four structural problems of emerging conflicts between
transnationals and governments (1977, p214), ones which parallel the 1920's and
1930's and which he felt
-208-
could be addressed with the capitalist "price mechanism": 1) national economy
problems with entitlements, inflation, and legitimation; 2) protectionism versus free
trade; 3) population growth impacts; and an income redistribution among rich and
poor nations. Several, especially the last <ix>, entail alienation concerns. Bell saw
national governments as up to the tasks of dealing with the new world economy
(p226). Peter Drucker forecast loose "transnational confederations" because (1980,
p105), "Giants are too conspicuous politically."
Other economically-minded social thinkers saw the 1980’s as a massive "powershift"
to the international "Triad" of Europe, North America, and Japan, within an economic
organization of global corporations where--to quote Kenichi Ohmae (Toffler, 1990,
p460), "They fly the flag of their customers, not their country." Triad control of
violence, capital, and knowledge ensures this power position. "Mega-firms" operate
to crowd out slower-paced world economies, in an environment where growth in
efficiency is based upon manipulating information as the economy's central
resource, where capital and speculation are transnational, and where--as Peter
Drucker put it (1980, p109) --"There is no 'sovereignty' any more in an independent
world economy. The international ethos of the 1980's was one of powershift.
For Western youth, the international ethos of these decades had its impact indirectly,
except for the mass communications effects on youth culture detailed earlier (See
p100-102). Oil industry worker in the West were affected in the 1970's by
international oil price fluctuations, as they were by the new oil booms of the 1980's.
Youth living in their dependant households were impacted. Grain and mineral
-209-
producers, however, suffered the most serious impact during the enculturation
period of Yellowstone youth surveyed in 1989-90 (See Appendix pA9). Carter's
grain embargo and world devaluation of raw materials over two decades had
significant economic impacts on such youth. Peter Drucker used this devaluation of
raw materials as supporting documentation for his assertion (1986, p22), "The world
economy is in control rather than the macroeconomics of the national state," and he
blamed much of American deficit problems on this devaluation, combined with
politicians following the "macroeconomic axiom."
The meaning of internationalism for youth alienation, however, is less its unique
impacts on primary products, and more its ushering in new cognitive self-Other
relationships. Toffler explicates post-modern structures as involving multiple levels
of society. He says (1990, p246), "The 'politics of levels' can be expected to split
voters into four distinct groupings: 'globalists,' 'nationalists,' 'regionalists,' and
'localists.' Each will defend its perceived identity (and its economic interests) with
ferocity."
This analysis makes the U.S. ethos of the 1980's described above into an
international "identity crisis" yet to be played out by youth entering the Twenty-First
Century. Youth alienations of that century will surely involve such levels, beginning
with the self.
Generational Units Mediate Youth Alienations
Subcultural exposures, however, were significant for minorities of youth in the
decades from the 1960's through the 1980's, altering their perceptions of what
affinities they should "elect" from the reference groups available (See note 4 on
page 112). Keniston and Klapp detail many youth cultures which proliferated midcentury,
-210-
extending beyond the mid-western adolescent societies detailed by Coleman, as
cliques centered on: cars, football, rock and roll, and general popularity-ranking for
participation in these adolescent endeavors (See p141). Such cliques would be
considered procultures today (See note 66 on p122).
Keniston evaluated Coleman's cliques in Parsonian terms (1965, p393): in contrast
with adult interests, irresponsible in attitude, and preoccupied with sports
competition and physical attire. He did not comment on their parents. But he later
detailed a triad of college youth procultures (1971, p105-124): devoted to apprentice,
gentlemanly, or academic ideals, the latter being in ascendancy in the 1960's, with
three subsidiary types (activists, disaffiliates, and underachievers). The subsidiary
types were countercultures. Most of the above still exist, though their relative
populations have altered, and the apprentice or vocational proculture has been more
dominant Western colleges.
His cultural profile of dissenters takes two routes, the romantic and the activist. The
former he identified with a hippie ideology of "distrust and cynicism," while activists
pursue "universalism" as a value. Keniston associates Kohlberg's idealists with
activists and contrasts their traits with drug-users, saying they bridge their personal
psychologies and their histories through skills of: cultural confrontation, unearthing
corruption, and mastering "debunking" as a method.
Dropouts he characterized as engaging in a developmental search for self-definition
which their particular college did not mesh with. Radicals he typified culturally as
those who (1971, p223), "Experienced a more European adolescence" and therefore
were able to
-211-
integrate their identities with a political ideology (See note 56a on p121).
Western youth were shown, earlier in this report, to have a protest generation unit
(See p188-189). It included up to one third of youth surveyed in 1969-70 and one
fourth in 1989-90--similar to Jenning's U.S. wide study--and it has the bigenerational
character of being more active in traditional politics than other youth. Belief in civil
disobedience is lower among contemporary youth, however, and this constrains
protest politics.
A drug subculture, Keniston acknowledged to include one half of college youth in
1971, and he treated it as an experiential "complement" to academic life, but he
divided users into three subcultures by their drug-use pattern: "tasters" only,
"seekers" who take them for experiences, and "heads" who disengage "from
ordinary social expectations" and engage in drug use without defenses against
stimulus flooding. This subculture is a subterranean one.
A Western generation unit centered on drug use was also examined earlier in this
study (See p168-176). Social and political attitudes of this unit were not distinctive
until tasters were removed from the totals, using a drug knowledge scale. Then, a
bigenerational pattern of sensation-seeking attitudes emerged, as well as
"subterranean" relief from boredom. Key attitudes included a willingness to try new
things, seeking unbounded experiences, abandonment to dreams, and pursuing
ecstasy and expanded consciousness. These attitudes have come to typify 1989-90
youth in general, while other attitudes in the subcultural drug complex have not.
Clearly, Keniston's types are externally-imposed categories designed to relate
individual selves to society as Other, usually
-212-
through the medium of personality development. But this clinical tendency did not
prevent him from typifying a broad cultural movement of common cultural
understandings (1971, p289): youth refer to generational views not organizational
ones, they are non-ascetic, inclusive, opposed to violence, technology, and to
formalism (i.e. they are personal). Majority cultural features of Western youth will be
discussed later.
Klapp's categories are taken from the social establishments of everyday life and
detail youth subcultures of the 1970's which he links to finding identities through
groups, risking identity-diffusion due to a strong (1969, p284), "Faith in action and
involvement": playboys, swingers, climbers, surfers, bikers, hobbyists, discothequedancers, sky-jumpers, and health spa and yoga fanciers. He also detailed types
based on collective imagoes (See p164), and he included: ego-screamers, dandys,
style rebels, and celebrity cultists. Fad and foible details of successive decades
could be endlessly added to this list, but most of the above remain. Such collective
identifications fall into all three categories of proculture, counterculture, and
subterranean subculture.
A generational unit of Western "seekers," was investigated through youth surveys for
this report (See p177-180). General study-participants with low personal identity
and high cliche'd thought and/or boredom were examined, discovering cultural
attitudes they held in common. The same seeker attitudes found among drug
abusers in 1969-70 were found to typify these youth, in numbers greater than the
general population. Such seeking attitudes typify half or more of contemporary
participants, and are consistent with Davis "core values" of freedom, ecstasy, and
immediacy (See p168).
-213-
Later (1981, p54-63), Klapp expressed this somewhat jaundiced opinion about such
involvements, saying that "Popular culture" is "fabricated by technicians hired by
businessmen," producing "a sadly homogenized global village" in which information
is "filtered" to produce the largest audience. In other words, subcultures are
assimilated into mass culture, the very historical process evident in the survey data.
Nonetheless, Klapp adds collective subcultural involvements for youth to Keniston's
more structural ones. These involvements contribute to unique patterns of alienation
for individual youth, relative to the type of subculture involved.
That is, a playboy surfer with a penchant for health spas, "stylish" clothes, and John
Wayne as a hero is bound to experience procultural alienations, in contrast with an
ex-ego-screamer cIimbing levels of yoga-consciousness within a Ram Dass
popularity cult, a person whose subcultural involvements are countercultural or
pitched at "subterranean" ends.
One Western generation unit not investigated in depth through surveys was the
Post-Materialist one discussed by Inglehart (See p185-188). This counter-culture
displayed almost no generational differences on the superficial items related to it in
the inventory, in subjective affluence, approvals of business, profits, or income
redistribution. Its size is likely less than one quarter of the participants, though
enculturation in such a subculture can be expected to alter youthful alienations.
The first three of the four generation units examined in this study (drug use, protest,
seeker, and post-materialist) display bigenerational trends among Western
participants, and none has
-214-
disappeared or lost a mediating impact on alienations of western youth.
When the additional ethnic and religious subcultures of U.S.society are added as
choice alternatives for youth--and the occupational, urban-ecological, regional, and
racial ones are included, Iike the American Indian, La Raza, and Black movements,
the subcultural plethora staggers the mind for alienation research. The only possible
response to the phrase "youth culture" today is, "Which?" Youth may "elect'
interests among nearly all structural or collective categories in an achieved-status
society, and define or resolve their individual alienations within several such
contexts.
Finally, as Keniston pointed out, the U.S. contains millions whose lives and identities
are integrated with a vision of society long since history. Contemporary youth may
"elect" interests and political ethos from the l960's, 197O's, 1980's, or further back in
history, or on into the future, adopting the alienation themes which accompany them
(See note 31 on p119). Thus, this discussion returns to broad themes of
generational scope, with historical continuity. My surveys of largely white
vocationalists, in societal flux situations, provides a basis for such a view.
Post-Conventional Western Alienation
Participants of two Western generations in my study are cognizant of alienation in
their lives, particularly versions of 20th century alienation from society. They have
experienced it in transitory labels attached to their unique generation, in expressions
of the media which infuses their consciousness, in the historical ethos of formative
decades of their Iives, and in their advanced educations as they read alienation
authors, authors who described them as
-215post-conventional because conventional beliefs no longer need apply if unessential
to perpetuating self or society <vi>.
One might expect the self-Other relationship of youth formed in the 1960's, the baby
boomers, to show substantially more effects of anti-bureaucratic status disruption,
and baby bust youth to show more effects of the reformation ethos accompanying
powershift in the world. Their demographic and enculturation experiences would
suggest that. However, Western youth surveyed in 1969-70 and 1989-90 show
substantial similarity in attitudes, with only minor declines in the salience of a few
alienation models for relating to society.
On average, Western participants in my surveys displayed the following
bigenerational attitudes towards institutions and social organizations in their lives
(items 36-53):
They describe a "larger society" which has problems meeting the needs of
minorities, especially social ones, and this is largely a problem of attitudes in
the population which require political redress. Voting is viewed as important,
and youth would involve themselves in this and other ways to accomplish such
changes (See p161-162).
Their social ideal is not greatly different from reality. Two thirds or more prefer
a technologically- advanced society, with half desiring all property to be private.
Only on population size is there a majority concern, with two thirds preferring a
society below continental level, though the trend is toward larger size (See
p162).
They describe a "local society" which fails to meet social needs of minorities,
and the trend is toward pessimism, with over half of contemporary participants
claiming failure with the majority too.
Household ideals are not at odds with convention, as two thirds prefer children
be raised by their biological parents. Two thirds of the earlier participants
indicated minor or no participation in their local society, but half claimed more
participation than that in 1989-90.
Their ideal spatial separation of households appears--at first--to lag behind
Western history. Half in 1969-70 desired more dispersion than small groups
Iiving "near" each other, while half in 1989-90 preferred less dispersion than
-216-
small groups living "near" each other, while half in 1989-90 preferred less
dispersion than that. The trend is to closer living units. [102]
This treatment of societal attitudes of two western generations makes clear great
continuity in the self-Other relationship. No generation revolt and realignment is
evident in the majority's institutional assessments or ideals. It also indicates more
criticism of local institutions than national ones despite higher contemporary
participation in local society. Finally, majority evaluations are characterized by
optimism.
Western youth of the 1960’s probably became more reformist as they aged in the
1970's, as Western youth of the 1970's became less so, just as time-series studies
showed previously on broader populations (See p181). The lag of the majority
behind movements of change takes several years (See p143). Nonetheless,
societal evaluations in the study years were similar.
Personality features show some continuity too. Participant observation with these
youth confirms the validity of broad traits Keniston described (See p212). Both
generations are peer-oriented, non-ascetic, inclusive, and opposed to formalism
(opposition to violence and technology may be minority views in these Western
generations). Many of the traits Klapp and Yankelovich ascribed typify both too, as
discussions of seeker traits has already established from surveys (See p183 &
p212).
The generations even have a pattern of alienation in common. Remember that
boredom was found to characterize over half of participants in both generations
(See p168-176). The recent alienation theory of techno-lag <xvi> concerns itself
with such a subjective state. Other alienation indicators are discussed under the
-217-
next heading, with high and low extremes. American researchers have largely
discussed generations in social psychological terms within a positivist structural
model of society, but such bi-polar measurements are not an adequate explanation
of historical alienation, though a cultural approach to subjective states may be a start
(See note 77 on pages 68-69). The elementary question is, "Relatively how much
and what kind of alienation do these Western participants express?"
What follows is a review of attitudes expressed in time--the currency of an idea in
mass cultures of related periods--not measurement of real gradations in altered
psychological states of those periods, a task which would require study of historical
personality shifts. The purpose is not to provide grist for ameliorating youth-at-risk in
the population through a clinical approach to positivist alienations like:
meaninglessness, powerlessness, normlessness, and self-estrangement (See p47),
Alienation explanations of many writers made use of one or more of these subjective
states: Rousseau <vii>, Marx <ix> and Weber <iv>; Durkheim <xii>, Freud <xiii>,
and Kierkegaard <xi>. Like them, this discussion is concerned with the more difficult
question, can contemporary bigenerational alienation be viewed as part of a cultural
complex which is declining or increasing in consciousness into the next century?
(A General Psycho-Social Alienation)
What then is the character of the alienation complex likely to continue for such
Western male youth into the next millenium, and what have been the adjustments of
self and Other which will likely shape the character of this alienation in the future?
All of the four types of alienation mentioned by positivist
-218-
researchers are majority concerns to both generations of Western youth, and they
constitute a complex of post-conventional alienation (See note 10 on page 114).
This is not surprising given the efforts of this study to geographically and historically
include youth exposed to significant alienation processes within their lifetimes (See
p96-97). A number of items from my survey were used to document this complex.
[103]
The resulting aliention trend, typifying the majority of two generations of study
participants, includes these traits: powerIessness, normlessness, meaninglessness,
self-estrangement, boredom, and frustration. This is a post-conventional alienation
complex which co-exists with somewhat conventional institutional attitudes already
detailed, thus requiring further investigations and explanations. Largely conventional
societal attitudes are not commonly associated with post-conventional alienation
attitudes.attitudes aire explanations. Can this much alienation, so global in
character, and located where the "frontier mistique" is most evident--and most highly
prized by Americans--can this possibly be explained by the four American traditions
of alienation research?
It seems unlikely. Techno-lag might explain some of the boredom, especially using
the approach of Orin Klapp which this report has documented as viable, but a higher
rejection of technological society would be expected. Its stress arguments are
generally considered relevant to much higher population densities. Societal
alienation might explain the high criticism directed at local society and psychohistory
or mythic-awareness traditions might explain the levels of unfulfilled need behind
those criticisms, but these too are usually applied to conditions in New York or New
England. Full
-219-
explanation of this significant psycho-social alienation pattern "typical" of youth
emerging from conventional mass culture in two Western counties requires the
explanations of a whole range of Western alienation models for the historical selfOther relationship (See p129). Being grounded largely in white vocationalist youth
(See p A8-9), this post-conventional alienation complex seems particularly powerful.
If there were as many baby bust youth as there were in the baby boom generation,
relative to other ages, such an alienation complex might reasonably expect to lead to
an intensive confrontation with levels of society through social action.
(Cultural Complexes and Triads)
Cultural complexes from before mid-century have been described as part of the
motivation structure of Americans. Rose described the centrality of economic
insecurity to Depression youth (See note 5), and noted their reliance on mediating
institutions like the family, associations, and trade unions to shore up that security.
Yangelovich detailed this complex as a value triad of family, money, and earning
respect (See p182) which became an ethic for success. Alter mid-century, these
complexes, pursued by the "average man" in an industrial economy, were
superseded by ones oriented around the middle-class employee, C.W. Mills' "white
collar" worker. Mass communications, mass movements, and occasions of
collective behavior supplanted mid-range institutions as mediators for many youth,
and new motivation triads came into being among various generation units, as a
post-modern economy advanced.
In a mini-Reformation in the 1980's, one mediating institution in particular, the
"family," was proposed by some sociologists as a
-220-
motivating focus for the 1990's, referring to American frontier kinship units based on
a parent-child bond. Oddly enough, this was in direct contradiction to the experience
of Western Civilization on two counts. Nowhere did the fragmentation of the weak
English famtly system proceed further than on the American frontier, especially by
divorce of half of recent generations. It's a fragmentary option.
Second, retreat to kinship organization has long been known to atrophy civilization.
Max Weber, for example, discussed this in "Thesocial Causes of the Decay of
Ancient Civilization" (1971, p254), "The Roman Empire was not destroyed from
without...the re-establishment of the family among the lower classes of society was
connected with the decay of ancient civilisation." This happened on large
agricultural estates, as its small tenants called "coloni" were increasingly joined in
serfdom by slaves (the "familia," humorously enough) who left the slave barracks
("oikos") and became tied by kinship to a feudal cottage system of diminished
production. Kinship, though mythicallly powerful to Westerners [106], is not a viable
Triad component.
New motivational clusters have focused on the individual, and data from my surveys
indicates their character. Western youth were shown in this report to incorporate
attitudes of generation units involved in "seeking" behaviors. KIapp treated seekers
in religious terms, initially, and youth may have learned associated cultic attitudes to
reduce the meaninglessness part of the post-conventional alienation complex for
Western youth. [107]
Are Western youth devaluing work and religious cultural complexes as they
experience high levels of meaninglessness, turning instead to new sources of
meaning? Could the rally on item 120, for example, reflect an increased belief in
work as a source of meaning? This
-221would not be predicted from Yankelovich ‘s earlier figures on decreased faith among
youth in hard work paying off.[108]
There is no support for historical change in the aggregate approvals of items 70, 91,
and 110, however. They are virtually equivalent in both decades. Participants gave
over three quarters approval to work as giving most meaning to life, and nearly nine
out of ten approval to having a soul and God as vital. Religion and work meanings
appear quantitatively stable among participants--in spite of mass movements to
increase it (See p150).
Harvey Cox documents the global emanation of a new theology (1984, p21), "From
the bottom and from the edge" of ecclesias, and he details its diverse forms: the
liberation theology of Latin America, the evangelical broadcasting and social action
movements of the U.S. and the Catholic sponsorships of Solidarity and nuclear
freeze movements in europe. He says (p107), "The past three decades have seen
an explosion of face to face groups in churches of all denominations around the
world." Cox concludes (p205), "Our emerging post-modern period will be a religious
one.”
The evangelical cycle in the U.S. West influenced some 1989-90 survey participants,
as personal discussions with them indicated, and in the survey results part of
Weber's Protestant Ethic appears to be making a comeback. Hard work in a calling,
self-indulgence as a sin, and thrift; these beliefs stimulated capital-accumulation
during the great Reformation transition to an industrial society.[109] But Cox
cautioned long ago, the U.S. culture complex of Protestantism is experiencecentered and the character of capitalism has changed, so a post-modern model of
the ethic is in order, not Weber’s.
Work as the source of life's meaning remains vital for the vast
-222-
majority of participants. But Item 129, "Self-sacrifice is an honorable virtue" drew
strong agreement from a. third of 1989-90 study participants, and over three
quarters generally agreed. Nearly a quarter had strongly disagreed in 1969-70, with
four out of ten generally disagreeing. Self-sacrifice is a positive way of putting selfindulgence as a sin. Thus, an up-dated ethic would include these two legs of a triad.
Most of a man's sense of meaning in life is created by his work, and self-sacrifice is
an honorable virtue. What of the third?
Thrift has long been a target of consumer culture. In the 1950’s, social critics Iike
Riesman, Fromm, and Whyte considered this leg of the Protestant Ethic weak or
collapsed. U.S. rate of savings has been below that of capital-accumulating cultures
like the Japanese during the post-war period. Contemporary Americans are not
thrifty. Consumption, with planned obsolescence and high style turn-over, is
incompatible with thrift, and those have continued as marketing credos. Lasch even
suggests (1984, p33, 52, & 195), a "culture of consumption" erases distinctions
between the object and the consumer, making the consumer "weak and dependent"
and thus incapable of the act iv self-control Weber presumed. "The commodity
world...Instead of bridging the gap between the self and its surroundings, it
obliterates the difference between them."
Nonetheless, the market of contemporary study participants, Yellowstone County,
boasts extensive summer garage-sale marketing, and budget warehouse shopping
to adults, and youth are sometimes involved, particularly in sales. Such
consumption options offer the Western protestant at least the accumulation of
property to stave off guilt if no money is left after shopping e.g. "Look how much I got
for it."
-223-
In place of thrift as a third leg, the complex of seeking attitudes already documented
is appropriate: pursuit of ecstasy and expanded consciousness, desiring unbounded
experiences, and willingness to try new things. At first this does not appear to be the
economic equivalent of thrift in the industrial age. Thrift generated capital, the
instrument of increased efficiency and further profit. Does pursuit of experiences,
newness, and ecstasy generate profits? Clearly. In fact, experiences are such a
central part of the post-modern economy, the incomes of popular entertainers and
sportspeople are geometrically above other skilled occupations.
The new ethic is composed of three legs which the post-modern Western youth may
apply in social action: work is meaning, self-sacrifice is honorable, ecstasy is
pursued. Weber’s ideal construction led to merit in a specialty, but like Weber’s, this
one has its negative side. All ethics have their downside. Weber 's Western
alienation <xiv> involved being pigeon-holed by God in a way guilt would accrue
because of self-indulgence, rather than duty to the calling. Freud pointed out this led
to a repressed unconscious and a consciousness of malaise <xiii>.
The post-modern ethic is more compatible with revised work roles. The worker is
expected to seek and find satisfactions through work activity. His "real" self is
presumed to be involved, not a false self put on at the factory to be removed when
he goes home (See p143). He is also expected to seek satisfactions through his
consumption behaviors, again discovering his real self in the process. Both these
things are expectations of public opinion--perhaps even God.
But if the individual cannot get satisfactions for some reason, or if his control in
either work or leisure falters, there is
-224-
self-recrimination in not meeting the standard of self-sacrifice in the ethic. Also,
arbitration conflicts between self-sacrifice and pursuing self experiences rationalizes
the ego. Stress, and other impediments to control, then, are critical. Inability to find
and keep work which renders satisfactions is critical. And insecurity over control
becomes the unconscious fear. Western self-reliance values further exaggerate the
downside of this ethic.
Self-sacrifice as honorable has been replaced in this ethic by some versions of the
mythic-awareness tradition, attempting to diminish the role of ego as arbiter. Duty to
self-development is one version. [110] While this appears to be an inverted value to
self-sacrifice it is likely to become another duty to be fulfilled. Ego, tightly identified
with self, as it is for most American alienation traditions (See p154-155), resorts to
self-evaluation. Counting "levels-of-consciousness-achieved" becomes an
admission of lost control when higher levels become infrequent for some reason.
The common element is self-appraisal, colored by achievement-motivation. [111]
Consider prominent alienation traits associated with the Western version of the postmodern ethic: frustration, de-personalization in action, and powerlessness. They are
relevant to the critical issues behind the new ethic. The self-development version
adds boredom as a critical concern. Post-conventional alienation is consistent with
the post-modern ethical triad.
Certainly, the post-modern ethic is one explanation behind the complex of postconventional alienation, one among many. In particular, it exposes the significance
of newer psycho-social additions to the complex. Such ethics explore the
voluntarism side of
-225-
the self-Other relationship, the role personal beliefs play in motivating social action.
But the Other side of the relationship has been going through extensive social
change, presenting new contexts and constraints for Western youth. These global
processes lead to new traits of post-conventional alienation which serve as a
challenge to the post-modern ethic as found among Western youth.
Youth of the 21st century--whether another baby boom or not--will continue to
experience processes deemed alienating in the last half-century: universal
education, electrification, and incorporation (See pages 99-103), as well as social
processes which dominated the previous century (See pages 25-27). Western youth
of this study experienced most of these processes in a single Iifetime (See pages
96-97). But the structural context, the political and economic organization of those
processes, will be more international in the future, and call for adjustments of the
post-modern ethic (See p206).
Universal education progressed further in the U.S. than most democracies midcentury before retreating, but entering the 21st Century the U.S. public educational
system is behind other post-WWII industrial nations. Roughly five times the 1959
illiteracy rate characterizes the U.S. today (See note 49 on page 121). The catchup, when it comes, is likely to be especially alienating for American youth <viii>,
even though my 1989-90 study participants from Montana were trained in one of the
top public systems in the U.S. Approvals of education were very high in both 196970 and 1989-90 on the general surveys, ninety-five percent agreeing with item 188,
"Education is very important." This is a tacit acknowledgement of the culture
complex, "the knowledge society," which constrains youth of the 21st
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Century.
Cross-cultural contrasts will certainly be part of youth's training. Japanese revisions
of U.S. educational practices are now rebounding to America, and international
schools are not unlikely for U.S. youth in specialized disciplines. Renewed ethnic
diversity will swell in domestic schools. Corporations of different sectors will add a
competitive vision. Peter Drucker says (1986, p138), "American business is already
the country's largest educator."
Cross-cultural challenges to Christian religious beliefs will alienate many youth,
particularly in Mid-West and Southern fundamentalist states, broaching alienation
issues of existentialist belief <xi>.
Such cultural contrasts will entail new alienations from cultural disorganization <x>
and consequently involve persona-switching for the socially adroit. It will also call
up the issue of differential language-referencing for the self-Other relationship. This
report has described ways language carried implicit assumptions on how to
negotiate the self-Other relationship, assumptions exposed in studying "alienation."
Alienation concepts based upon English, Danish, German. and French linguistic
models will have to struggle with self-Other relations implicit in Oriental languages.
Electrification has now passed beyond miniaturization and cybernation at the
international level. Microcomputers, fax, and cable technology--while class-linked-has been democratized through mass consumption, and the resulting capacity for
instant information storage, retrieval, and control by the individual has resolved
much of the "flooding" concern of techno-lag researchers <xvi>, diminishing
associated alienations. But international access and adaptation to
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such technologies will be a lag problem for both Third World youth and Westerners
who compete to give the foreign aid for completing this transition. Cultural
complexes associated with the mass communications revolution will continue to
affect youth.
Incorporation, the forgotten process in Western alienation Iiterature over the last
thirty years. entered a new, international phase which now seeks control of global
organization. In the 1960's, with its split of humanities and scientific cultures, Peter
Drucker, an American economist, conceived of himself and the discipline of
management as the natural fusion of the two. Styled as "the founding father of the
science of management," he and his works promoted and documented the growth of
"production sharing" as (1986, p96-98), "The dominant mode of economic
integration through-out the non-Communist world." This strategy involved (Ibid),
"The resources of the developing countries--their abundant labor for traditional jobs-are brought together with the resources of the developed countries--their
management, their technology, their educated people, their markets and purchasing
power... It renders secondary...capital investment which is the traditional means of
control and integration."
Production sharing provided cheap foreign labor to American-based multi-nationals
over three decades, eroded the industrial base and workforce of the nation, and
pushed aside the continental-division organization of such businesses, to establish a
global control in which (1986, pix), "The future is being made by totally anonymous
people."
Drucker’s prime contribution to the study of alienation phenomenon, however, is not
inventing a mechanism for producing the global economy. Japanese export of entire
integrated plants was
-228-
a similar mechanism, with rivaling success. His prime contribution, with Daniel Bell
and others, is an ideology for the global society which dominates business,
challenges the sovereignty of national governments, and Iinks up with the postmodern motivation triad of American youth. A sub-cultural complex of business
challenges 21st Century youth.
Daniel Bell, for his part, invented the "post-industrial society," a concept which
ignores basic human needs as the focus of world economies--products one can eat,
drink, use for shelter, ride, or use for contraception (See p147)--and focuses instead
on contributions of knowledge workers to generating efficiency and profits, as well as
a First World specializing in world management. Furthermore, he invented a model
of sociological analysis which equates society with the economy, Western values
with its business sub-culture, and which is hostile to mass culture and politics (See
p110).
Drucker went to the heart of this analysis. Noting that (1980, p162-169), "The
emergence of transnational money may signify a major turning point in political
history and political theory," he attacked the nation state form of organization; "the
modern national state was born with the assertion that money and credit have to be
controlled by the sovereign and that the economy has to be integrated into the
political system...But the more bankrupt the claim to national sovereignty over the
national economy, the more tenaciously have governments clung to it." He
continues (p181), "Society in the developed countries has become an employee
society. This offers management the opportunity to establish its legitimacy on a
new, strong, and permanent basis."
Drucker is proposing a new sovereignty principle for the world.
-229-
I'll refer to alienation from it as type <viib>. Instead of national sovereignty, with its
representative democratic forms, its protections from violence and social insecurity,
and its guarantees of basic rights, Drucker proposes citizenship based on stock
ownership, fund participation, and company pension plans or priority claims on
employment. These result in management's legitimacy and avoid the citizen
alienation he sees current in the post-conventional world (p190), "He is held
responsible neither for his ownership power, or for his knowledge power. And that,
at bottom, explains his unease, his discontent, his psychological "hollowness." His
explanation of the post-conventional-alienation complex is a failure to legitimate
transnational corporate sovereignty.
This is a startling claim, no less so for being bandied about in the rhetoric of small
business promoters in the U.S. like John Naisbitt (1985, p1), "Customers, unlike
other constituents, vote every day. He adds routes to participant sovereignty:
partnerships; fellowships; QC circles: lattice, lateral, network, and team structures;
and expansion of business controls not only over education, but aspects of health
and wellness too. Confidently, he intones (p71), "In a matter of a mere decade or
so, the values of small business have become America's values," while Drucker is
singing his version of "We are the World"...We are the transnational corporations.
In 1980, Drucker asserted that because U.S. employees receive "transfer payments"
(p182), "The only 'capitalists' are the country's employees."
Drucker’s later works are even more startling, this time for their sub-cultural
xenophobia and denial of ideology (199, p111), "None of the new political tasks is
ideological." In The New
-230 -
Realities, he elaborates on Bell's hostility to mass culture (1989, p100), "The mass
movement has become the dominant political phenomenon of the century...most
visible and powerful in the United States. But Europe has become infected...No one
yet knows an antidote." Industrial workers he identifies as "the other half" of
America, those left behind by the post-industrial economy he promoted in the U.S.
These he refers to as "a counterculture" of status and lifestyle (See p108).
Apparently, Drucker sees blue collar workers as ideologically -opposed to the
fundamental cultural features of contemporary America. No less does he separate
the values of health care workers as outside Western culture. He says, (1989,
p195), "It is the counterculture of the non-business, non-government, 'human
change agencies,' the non-profit organizations of the so-called third sector...actually
the country's largest employers."
Clearly, Drucker, Bell, and Naisbitt's influence has been to internationalize an
antagonistic corporation ethic criticized forty years ago in American by William H.
Whyte Jr. (See p43). Only now, that culture seeks not only to claim dominance over
the U.S., but over the globe. The Eastern counter-balance of worker societies to
these claims has recently fragmented, and youth of the 21st Century will find
themselves accused of "alienation" from the anonymous culture of transnationals
just as youth of the 1960's were accused of alienation from "corporate America."
Undoubtedly, "legitimate" sovereignty will be the instrument of such resistance once
again, and management's claims to power will be constrained by representative
politics, and newly institutionalized with sanctions in international law.
Recent discussions by U.N. delegate Stanislav Menshikov and America's John
Kenneth Galbraith mentioned this contest (1988,
-231-
p103-107), "A large part of the total business of the capitalist world is being done by
these large global enterprises, whose interests are transnational rather than
national...Nations in Europe and all over the world are trying to set up a code of
conduct for the transnationals." In the same work, Menshikov spoke of the U.S.S.R.
joining in this transnational business dominated by marketing concerns, saying
(p206), "We would want to learn from them the tricky art of salesmanship."
Their discussion went on at length over the insensitivity of bureaucracies to
transform themselves, producing a peaceful and productive world, then ended on a
joint concern over what economic needs are truly basic (Ibid, p224), "We talk about
the necessity of expanding consumer-oriented economies in other countries,
including the socialist economies and presumably the Third World, but then we talk
about the necessity of somehow getting away from the kind of consumer society that
exists today because it can't be supported indefinitely in its present form by the
resources now on the planet." What Menshikov did not say, is that alienation of First
World industrial workers and Third World populations will certainly arise in the
process <ix>, as well as alienation of Second World populations by corporate
experts <viib>.
On the global level, there will be not only transnational unions, nation-states,
professional associations and spokesmen, the U.N., and the G-7 group of industrial
nations--which are able to influence levels of transnational economies through
monetary policy; all of them able to constrain transnational corporations.
Transnational interest groups will also provide expertise and alternative
organizational policies to transnational corporations which will restrain them to
-232-
stay within their economic mandate.
Drucker is willing to accept, in the name of ecology (1989, p117), "Common
transnational policies, transnationally enforced." Toffler, who worries about "surplus
order" in hierarchies of regional economies like the European Community, and refers
to drug cartels and proselytizing religions as "global gladiators" as well as
transnational corporations, pooh-poohs global corporate hegemony (1990, p232),
"The notion that a tiny handful of giant corporations will dominate tomorrow's
economy is a comic book caricature of reality..."Nonetheless, Toffler does suggest
transnational representation in the U.N., and proclaims (1990, p244). "We are at the
end of the age of mass democracy." To him, world ethnicity also threatens political
fragmentatIon (p382), "When fears of cultural deracination are intensified by largescale immigration, identity becomes an explosive issue." Global consciousness will
be a necessary youth characteristic in the 21st Century to protect his/her individual
sovereignty on vital issues.
Global Alienation
The revolution in mass communications--the global village--followed rapidly by a
revolution in the world trade and finance markets--the global economy--have made
the self-Other relationship for the 21st Century one of successive levels not easily
adapted to by self or society. The third revolution, forging a new philosophy of
global governance out of the political forms of East and West, rich nations and poor,
will further accentuate levels of local, national, regional, and global organization,
complicating the relationship further.
Essential to all is a coalescence on universal standards. Is the
-233-
bi-generational trend toward generating and accepting universals? Western youth in
my alienation surveys do show stability on universalism, with a mild trend to stronger
support. On item 128, "There are principles of universal validity which underlie
social laws of all societies," the 1969-70 youth agreed five to one. This is crucial to
American society, where social structure remains tied to universalism as a value.
Among 1989-90 youth, the same proportion agreed, with more choosing strong
agreements--more polarization generally. If other Western nations with efficient
balloting systems can retain large proportions of youth in favor of universal
standards like this, global political controls on ecological disasters may soon develop
based on transnational voter sovereignty. A related universalism concerns the
world's people. Four-fifths of all participants in both time periods agreed with item
163, "I have a sense of belonging to my fellow man and the human race."
But fragmentation and successive waves of internecine strife are made likely by
failures of world persons to fundamentally identify themselves with the world, or
recognize their global interests in common. A political retrenchment at lower "levels"
in the U.S. has joined with a philosophy of stressbound malaise in recent decades.
Christopher Lasch's recommendations for "a minimal self" are illustrative of such a
philosophy. Lasch (1991) would throw up his hands at "the emptiness of recent
political debate" by Left and Right, where all idealogy means acquisitiveness, and
pursue his retreat from welfare Iiberalism and laissez-faire capitalism back to a small
town world of local neighborhoods.
But the 1989-1990 Western youth in this study are from those small town
neighborhoods, and they reject viability of their local
-234-
societies, display global psycho-social alienation at high levels, experience the
composite alienation processes of centuries in their single lifetimes, and yet retain
high endorsement of universalist, not particularist values. They need no advocacy of
such disoriented historians to reduce the focus of their social action and identity to
the local level.
They are already personally disoriented and see much of life as illogical. By an
average age of twenty, about half of the youthful participants in my studies had not
yet solved the question of "Who am I?"; the classic American phrase of search for
identity (Item 182). As youth resolve this question, it is important to ask, is the base
of personal identification broadening as world populations become more immediate
to youthful consciousness?
Expanded enculturation via mass media would suggest it would broaden. This oneway process has substituted for much enculturation by relatives [112], and television
watching time has gone up over recent decades. Given the lower confidence of
youth in humanity among 1989-90 participants (See p164), it is not surprising they
gave less approval on item 143, "Human interaction is more important than most
things in life." 1969-70 participants overwhelmingly approved of this item, but nearly
one-third of participants disagreed in 1989-90. Face to face interaction, apparently,
is not meaningful to the same degree. Nonetheless, generational antipathy was a
minority phenomenon for these participants even for the baby-boom generation of
the late 1960's. But lack of generational antipathy does not equate to satisfactory
familism as Lasch might conclude.
At the other extreme of the Self-Other dimension, instead of an increase in extranational identity, study participants reported a
-235-
lower level in 1989-90 on item 146, "I think of myself as a citizen of the world rather
than an American." Over half the general participants agreed in the 1969-70 study
but almost two-thirds disagreed in 1989-90.
Non-cosmopolitan features discovered by Jennings and Niemi from the early 1970's
(See p163) are apparently still extant among contemporary Western youth. At a
time when the U.S. and G-7 nations are meeting to re-structure global agreements
with strong cross-overs to U.N. military cooperation, this retrenchment of identity at
lower levels appears at variance with global political-economic movements of the
last twenty years. Instead of ideologically-contrasted halves of the world (the First
and Second world), the globe of today is moving toward dominance of a Single
political-economic ideology, with a presumed drop in the risk of global nuclear war.
Retrenchment of participants' identification may be related to the U.S. movement
from the world's most creditor nation to the world's most debtor nation during that
period.[113] It may be related to local insecurities as Yellowstone County agribusiness takes on direct negotiations for world markets, and packing plants and
warehouses are bought by Japanese and Korean companies. It may be related to
the high Montana enlistment rate in military services in a time of drought. Or it may
be related to none of these, and be merely a part of a transitory psychoculture of
reformation politics within the U.S.[114]
It is conceivable that as the one-half of youth without an established identity
develops one, it will include extra-national features. But for youth to display only
one-third identification beyond nationality at the age of majority is startling, given the
-236-
increasing degree of societal integration among world nations in the last two
decades. Combined with the global psycho-social alienation of Western youth, this
retrenchment of identity may be considered a "global alienation."
-237-
Generalizing to Western, Regional, and Triad Youth
The ideal types generated in this study, are grounded in several different cultural
bases. The pre-l8th Century types of alienation are basically grounded in language
per se, typical usage from late Middle English into Modern English usage in the
American West. The 19th Century forms are grounded in the works of specific
european authors, while the 20th Century types are grounded in the discourse of
mid-century American "traditions" of alienation. These alienation types are a collage
of meanings for applying in concrete places and events.
As suggested in the text, many of these alienation types have primary relevance to
peak periods of specific historical processes Iike nationalization, secularization,
urbanization, or specialization. Application of such concepts is thus specially salient
to countries undergoing those processes (See p25 & p45). Some concepts of
alienation have a timeless quality to them, especially early usages in English (See
p7). Finally, some processes cycle through history, as with incorporation during the
last thirty years, providing pressures to evolve global institutions of political control
(See p206). What occurred at a lower level (e.g. the nation-state), may occur at a
higher level (e.g. region or globally) later on. This renews the salience of alienation
concepts at the new level, though modifications of the alienation concept are likely
required. Fitting of ideal types <i to xvi> to concrete historical situations has been
continuous through the text to illustrate this "affinity" of ideas to events.
The ideal types of post-conventional alienation, post-modern ethic, and global
alienation are grounded in the attitude patterns of male youth from two Western U.S.
counties (See pA8). This shapes
-238-
their heuristic usefulness to historical sociology. Since the participants were male,
the cultural dialogue of the feminine revolution during the last thirty years has been
removed, with its confounding factors. While this limits the use of these concepts to
males, it makes the concepts more firmly "grounded"--it includes no averages of
male-female differences--and it provides for a more ready application to institutional
contexts--Iike politics--where males dominate, and a broader use in less developed
countries around the world where power and decision-making in most institutions
excludes significant participation of women.[115]
"Post-conventional alienation" has a broader grounding than the survey participants.
Thematically, it is grounded in the works of American alienation researchers after
mid-century who emancipated the concept from non-essential American beliefs in
optimism, progress, materialism, self-reliance, rational asceticism, a rejection of drug
experimentation as deviant, a social ethic based in familism or corporatism, and a
success ethic of earning respect.
The psycho-social attitude complex associated with it is grounded in study
participants after 1968, youth who retain progress, materialism, and self-reliance in
their dominant culture almost unchanged, but whose long-term attitude trends reflect
other features of post-conventional alienation. That is, Western youth may not be as
post-conventional as youth in other parts of the U.S. who reject progress,
materialism, and self-reliance, in addition.
Since the two counties selected are not centers of new age cults--though one is only
a three hour drive--retreats for renouncing the material world are not major local
features--though church retreats and Ted Turner's ranch retreat is nearby--and
communes of
-239-
self-reliance are quite near (e.g. Hutterites), the complex of psycho-social alienation
documented here is best deemed "partial." A fully developed post-conventional
complex could be expected to metamorphose beyond the form detailed here (See
note 40 on p120).
As the purpose of this ideal type is forward looking, while applicable to large
populations of youth in the contemporary United States, this underdeveloped
complex is fortuitous for planning purposes.
Post-conventional alienation presumes at least a moderate degree of autonomy from
tradition or convention, so it is not easily applied to broad populations outside of
Triad nations. This limits its usefulness for global applications, and so "global
alienation" should be used in such contexts because it does not make this postconventional presumption. Of course, routine enculturation of large populations via
mass media could qualify its usage, particularly in small nations rich in natural
resources where the local religion emphasizes reformed beliefs. Within the Triad
region of North America, most central American countries would be unlikely, though
the concept may apply within regions or classes.
The "post-modern ethic" triad is more firmly grounded in Bexar and Yellowstone
youth surveyed. The attitude complex seeking ecstasy and experiences impulsively
is not fully-developed for these youth, nor was the self-sacrifice leg fully transformed
towards self-fulfillment as it was in some regions of the U.S., particularly the West
Coast.
This is also fortuitous for planning purposes, because the ethic model has mid-range
character in the 1980's. The concept may prove to be useful in other Triad nations
with advertising-based economies
-240-
around the world. To be sure, the two lags described have long been stimulated by
Madison Avenue. It would be interesting, in terms of Inglehart's work on
materialism, to see how American this ethic is compared with europe, and as the
U.S.S.R. enters the global market, the development of a post-modern ethic could be
studied. The third leg, work is meaning, is retained from Weber’s treatment of the
growth of capitalism with protestantism, and that dual association is best kept in
mind in applying the concept generally.
"Global alienation" derives from my study participants the central characteristic of
restricted identity, joined with their psycho-social alienation traits discussed earlier.
This ideal type may have particular usefulness in the early 21st Century as various
modern nations--having perceived the challenges of transnational organization-resort to mass media enhancement of lower-level identifications for their people, as
a retreat rather than garnering grass roots support for creative intrusions into the
arena of transnational sovereignty.
-241Findings Notes
1 Experiences of separation may produce feelings of loneliness, something Moustakas discusses
as inescapable (1961, p ix), "Efforts to overcome or escape the existential experience of loneliness
can result only in self-alienation..." (p47), "Loneliness, rather than separating the individual or
causing a break or division of self, expands the individual’s wholeness..."
Rokach (1988) contests with Moustakas that loneliness is from a modern experience of "an
unloving world." Instead, she presents it as broadly existential and generates 10 factors which
compose it (from 526 male and female subjects, ages 16-84, at the Ontario Correctional Institute).
Her instruction was, "Please describe your loneliest experience."
The three most frequent factors in her content analysis are perhaps relevant to types of alienation
before the 19th Century: Emotional upheaval (a type of agony) 22%. Perceived social alienation (a
type of interpersonal isolation) 21.2%, and inner turmoil (a searching inside, also a type of agony)
21.1%. Together, these compose 64.3% of her normal subject's experiences of loneliness. They
are not the dominant features she attributes to Moustakas' analysis: self-alienation, hollowness, and
sense of unreality. For Rokach, internal agony accounts for half the psychic features of existential
loneliness, while another quarter is social rejection plus a sense of disconnection.
Medieval alienation types presented here are not inconsistent with Moustakas' alienation as a
negative course chosen to avoid loneliness, but resulting in (p26), "group adjustment rather than
group solidarity." But such fateful alienations seem closer to Rokach’s psychic characteristics.
Moustakas (p29) is more concerned with modern conditions and with demonstrating what Whyte
and Riesman suggested, that loneliness, "It can never reverse, psychically, the process of
individuation."
2 Medieval alienation, as discussed here, is partially inconsistent with Erich Fromm's treatment of
medieval security of the self in Escape from Freedom, yet it is consistent with his historical
treatment of Other (1969, p279), "The authority of the Church has been replaced by that of the
State, that of the State by that of conscience, and in our era, the latter has been replaced by the
anonymous authority of common sense and public opinion as instruments of conformity."
3 Some American authors applied this latter idea of double consciousness to majority experiences
that blend cultures in conflict: rural plus urban life, community plus societal enculturation, and
immigrant plus national identities.
4 Natanson (1966, p376) introduced an alienation type he calls "structural deformation of sociality “
which was an early attempt to discuss referents of alienation, "being alienated, but in
-242-
a grounding condition of social order."
Natanson also recognizes four of the types of alienation detailed above. His "fissure in religious
consciousness" is roughly type <xi>; his "historical dislocation" is mostly type <x> his "loss of the
object created" is Marx's <ix>; and his "loss of identity" is a modern variant of type <ii>.
Natanson's phenomenology aims at (p377), "the possibility of the happening of social action."
Unless his "five intentional a prioris" are structurally possible in routine human interaction (power,
recourse, uniformity, recognition, and release), alienated persons may be unable to engage in
social action, despite compensative mechanisms of bit-playing and role-distance. This literature
may be of significance for researching boredom and automaton phenomenon (concerns of Orin
Klapp and Erich Fromm, respectively) because this alienation causes "a breakdown of role-action."
5 Rose (1962) detailed the feelings of this type of alienation in America as: 1) loneliness
2) ignorance 3) helplessness and loss of self-control, and 4) economic insecurity. On the last, he
suggested (p330), "To the extent that the average man believes he will not be cut off from the
goods and services made available by the economy and, in fact, finds himself claiming an
expanding amount of these, he is less likely to feel economically alienated from society." The self,
according to Rose, turns to: family, education, public opinion, voluntary associations and hobbies,
rural lifestyles, and security-producing institutions like corporations and trade unions to limit
potential failures.
6 This observation is consistent with the Spindler's suggestion of a referent ethniclass dominating
U.S. culture mid-century.
7 Adam Smith, Scottish Moralist, published his major treatise in support of capitalism in the same
year the country was established.
8 Daniel Bell goes further than this regional analysis, and states (1980, p269), "America was
exceptional in being, perhaps, the only fully bourgeois-Iiberal polity.'
9 Robert Nisbet's The Present Age is a case in point, a short history of mass society since World
War I which reads like a decline of the West, just as it is an indictment of Rousseauistic absolutism
in a militarist and bureaucratic State.
10 The Spindlers detail two American conceptions of autonomy at variance from mainstream
individualism. The first is that of Algonkian tribes like the Menominee (p73), "The person was the
ideal," not role-performance. I have observed the same cultural phenomenon among the
Cheyenne.
The second (Ibid, p102-l04) is the Spindler's hinterland conception" of independence, all-around
competence, and non-interference.
-243-
11 Daniel Bell (1980, p157) discusses meritocracy as a casualty of the 1960's.
12 See Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life for an Interactionist perspective on this
cultural mandate.
13 See their Handbook of Social Psychology, 2nd ed., p20-21.
14 See p104.
15 This is not surprising in an "American Century," Henry Luce's concept which Daniel Bell says
(1980, p255), "lasted scarcely thirty years."
16 Bell later stated (1980) that the caesura he foretold was a pause for the society to re-group.
However, this is inconsistent both with the use of "caesura" in Anglo-Saxon poetry (where it is a
brief mid-line breath in a common alliterative line), and with the historical fact of ideological
acceleration and conflict which characterized the 1960's.
17 He critiqued the Protestant Ethic (1969, p13), "Luther and Calvin psychologically prepared man
for the role he had to assume in modern society: of feeling his own self to be insignificant and of
being ready to subordinate his life exclusively for purposes which were not his own." He calls this
"moral masochism" (169, p173-77), "If I succeed in reducing my individual self to nothing...security
against the torture of doubt." His ideal, however, was not the self in reflection but a civic goal (l955,
p326), "The basic aim of Socialism, an unalienated society in which every working person
participates actively and responsibly in industry and politics."
18 He was anxious to get beyond alienation as a social issue, since labor was relatively high paid
and its social needs were addressed by human relations experts. Also, totalitarian scares abroad
had diminished, heralding a decline in fascist or communist parties and a rise in social democratic
parties.
19 In addition to the rootless mass alienation authors already presented as sub-types.
20 Erich Fromm is generally considered the major "alienation" author in America until late midcentury.
21 A radical book which likewise characterizes adjustment as near insanity is The Adjusted
American: Normal Neuroses in the Individual and Society (1964) by Snell and Gail J. Putney. Their
thesis is that "indirect self-acceptance" through belonging--the equivalent of Riesman's otherdirection--results in a false self.
22 Social character he defined as a personality structure (1955), "Shared by most members of the
sane culture." As such,
-244it is close to the "'national character" discussed by Inkles and Levinson (See note II). Fromm
critiqued Freud (1980, p61) for not seeing that, "The structure of society... creates the kind of
character that it needs."
Some political traditionalists--particularly within universities promoting Spindler's referent ethnic
class--interpreted his concept of social character not as an ideal type to avoid, but as an American
ideal to be achieved.
23 Greatness and Limitation of Freud's Thought and The Revolution of Hope.
24 This same inner integrity underlies Erik Erikson's positive identity resolutions in his life-cycle
model, as Bell makes clear in his national character essay (1980), when he says trust, autonomy,
and role integration tie the psychoanalytic self together.
25 Elsewhere, he simply advised hope (1968, p9-14). "It is neither passive waiting nor is it
unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur... the mood that accompanies faith...the vision
of the present in a state of pregnancy... conditioned by the experience of Bell, by our capacity to
say "I" legitimately, by the sense of our identity."
26 Fromm saw consumerism as a clear source of alienation in mid-century America, substituting
"'synthetic needs" for "humane" needs. He was anxious about cybernation and automation causing
more boredom, and he even attributed changes in sexual behavior to it (1980, p137), "Sexual
liberation was largely part of the ever-increasing consumerism."
No doubt, he would have been as appalled by current commercial investment in "self-realization"
equipment, foods, and consumables as he was with sellout psychologists doing psychological
testing in industry (1969), "The rationalization that what is best for the corporation is best for man."
27 He criticized Freud's property concept of love ("To love others is a virtue, to love oneself is a
sin'" as bourgeois. He said (1980, p9), "This is a classic definition of bourgeois love: owning and
controlling makes for happiness.
28 He reconciled the greed of self and Other in this way (1955, p233)-"Man is the end, and must
never be used as a means." This view is inconsistent with much in the human potential, T-group
sensitivity session, self-assertion, and other training movements generally traced to Fromm, which
employ coercive techniques of collective conscience. And few "pop" psychologists retained either
Fromm’s civic goals or his conception of autonomous "freedom."
29 This View was given support by Marcuse when he rejected capitalist and Freudian beliefs that
scarcity is an invariable
-245-
reality principle to which individuals must adapt.
Fromm contested this principle from the self side (1968, pl34), saying that humanity is motivated
primarily by ideologies like Comte's positivism or Marx's socialism, not by scarcity. This is true even
though, "Man needs first to satisfy his material wants."
30 He also tied achievement to other-direction, "'Other-direction' and the 'social ethic' appear to be
pre-eminently American traits...the two orientations of other-directness and achievement motivation,
therefore, may be viewed as mutually supportive, rather than, as Risen and White suggest, mutually
exclusive.
31 Chapters 16-19.
32 Union Democracy (p403), "The specific protestant religious ethos has disappeared, however, in
many countries in which the 'spirit of capitalism' still exists, the religious system is no longer
necessary in the United States, for example, to support the economic ethos of a going industrial
society... in a capitalist social system the dominant roles through which social status is secured are
best achieved or maintained by men acting in accordance with the 'spirit of capitalism.'" In addition,
they rejected a compatibility between the social conditions fostering bureaucracy and democracy.
33 A June 8, 1977 Gallup Youth Survey which reported (p88), "When youth were asked if they had
a job lined up for the summer months, nine out of every ten teenagers indicated they either had a
job or would like to have one." 2-The labor force participation of 18-19 year old males approached
three quarters in both 1965 and 1975. The report authors find it important to say, "Youth are not
lazy. All evidence points to the contrary."
34 Page 201, "If large numbers of young people remain apathetic, cynical and alienated to a
political system that treats them so shabbily, it is not likely that as adults they will be strong
supporters of the system."
35 Significantly, Yankelovich found reform attitudes toward U.S. institutions (business, politics, and
the military) to increase from 1969 to 1970 and then drop off slightly.
Using this trend analysis, then, the high point of perceived need for institutional reform among U.S.
college youth occurred during the years, 1969-1970, when baseline measurements were taken for
this study.
36 From the societal perspective of functionalists, this meant less alienation since "privatism" was a
withdrawal from society. Yankelovich suggested an historical sequence: attrition of self-fulfillment
alternatives such as Rose
-246(1962) had posited. Work/leisure self-fulfillment is succeeded by self-fulfillment "in place of" a
conventional career, followed by self-fulfillment "within" a conventional career.
37 The most telling result on institutional reform was the extraordinarily high and consistent
percentage of college youth desiring business reform. Over 98% agreed that business is too
concerned with profits, not public responsibility, in every year from 1969 to 1973.
38 This community study allowed for a greater appreciation of historical continuity than
Yankelovich’s trend survey. Only as Yankelovich replicated his study in the late 1970's did his work
approach generational scope, and six years of minor historical discontinuity due to war did not add
too much to alienation research on centuries-long processes.
39 The increase in U.S. cultural diversity in small cities is evident in several of the items measuring
chauvinism:
a) Christianity as the one true religion dropped from 94% to 39%;
b) Declines occurred from 92% to 78% and 61% to 49% on the U.S. as best country and the U.S.
deserving support whether right or not, as well as a drop from 83% to 36% on the rightness of the
most recent U.S. war;
c) There was a combined increase from 20% to 47% and decrease from 55% to 33% on freedom of
speech and prosecuting pascifists, respectively;
d) Females showed more overall reductions in chauvinism and orthodoxy than did men, especially
regarding prosecuting pascifists, an item on which the majority changed positions.
Items reflecting an increase in male political chauvinism were: the 2% increase in "My country-right
or wrong", and the 20% increase on the U.S. being wholly right in the war for independence.
40 "Participation in community associations by occupation: a test of three theories," ASR 33(2),
p272-283, 1968.
41 Ellul’s placement of this cultural condition is after the impact of technique on both production and
distribution (p160), "A 'technical state of mind' appeared which developed mightily toward midcentury."
42 Thomas Cottle, who his mentor David Riesman called an advocate for "activist or alienated
students," in Cottle’s book Time's Children (1971), referred to this same concern to Harvard
students as (p329), "The battle ground for autonomy and freedom and the quest for an end to
expanding social-psychological oppression." Cottle reported on Voices in the Harvard Yard (1969)
and the National Campus Strike of 1970.
-247-
43 Kevin 0. Kelly, in Youth, Humanism And Technology, attributed the entire youth movement of the
1960's to technological factors (1972, p113)..."I am contending that the present youthful dissent is
related to an ongoing process of changes in technology and social reality that is leading to the
breakdown of the values and authority of industrial capitalism." He presented contemporary youth
as an "Obsolete Generation." Kelly also detailed youth's self--role dilemma in terms of alienation.
Accept role as selfhood and you become alienated from your self as Fromm suggested. Reject this
equivalence and you remain alienated from your activity.
44 Techno-lag generally diverges from attitudes of Neo-Chicagoans, ethnomethodologists, and
sociolinguists (e.g. Erving Goffman’s presentation of self as creative process). These are closer to
Simmel and Hegel <viii>.
45 Kevin Kelly presented Toffler's "superindustrial society" as an exploitation of youth by business.
46 Roszak's view puts both Bell and Ellul on non-Marxist ground (1969, p110), "A distinctly nonMarxist conclusion, namely that technology exerts an influence upon society in its own right."
47 Bell called Ellul’s evaluation of technique as slavemaster "the modern heresy," in "Technology,
Nature, and Society" (1980).
48 Bell overgeneralized, typifying culture as overcome by hippie world view, a standpoint he
maintained through the 1970's (1976, p478), "Contemporary culture, with the victory of modernism,
has become anti-institutional and antinomian." "Antinomian" is commented on by Nathan Alder in
"The Antinomian Personality: the hippie character type" in Psychiatry 31(4), p325-338, 1968.
49 His book stressed the value of systematic modeling research with vast amounts of data--the sort
of thing on which Megatrends and related works were predicated.
50 He says "This change in social temper--the distrust of meritocracy--occurred principally in the
last decade."
See Yankelovich, this section.
See note 11 this section.
51 (1973, p137), "The central occupational category in the society today is the professional and
technical."
52 Toffler said of youth (p431-432), "Young people forced into prolonged adolescence and deprived
of the right to participate in social decision-making will grow more and more unstable until they
threaten the overall system. ..Wiring them into the system. . is the most critical task of the coming
generation."
-248-
53 Margaret Mead saw alienation in technological terms, as well, primarily brought on through
explorations and inventions like atomic energy. She answered her students' question (1978, p102),
"When young people asked, 'Will we be as alienated from our children as we are from our parents?
I answered, I don't think so. There will be no such world-wide gap which will include everyone at
once."
54 Freud’s view of the alienated unconscious <xiii> was expressed in mythic terms too, especially
the Oedipus and Electra myths of Greece. Western man could overcome some alienation by
viewing the tragedies of these mythic figures, regaining their cultural significance for the self.
Anthropologists like Bronislaw Malinowski, working in matrilineal societies, quickly pointed out
Freud's cultural bias regarding Oedipus, and mid-century psychologists assailed his interpretation of
Electra in a non-paternalistic culture, so his mythic thesis was blunted. Malinowski says (1927,
p80), "We might say that in the Oedipus Conplex there is the repressed desire to kill the father and
marry the mother, while in the matrilineal society of the Trobriands the wish is to marry the sister
and to kill the maternal uncle."
55 Henry Malcolm (1971, p12), attributed deferred gratification within "the establishment," to
generational factors like WWII and the Depression.
56 Fromm addressed the contemporary confusion between self, the agent of free expression, and
ego, the mediator between society and the unconscious, in Escape from Freedom. Fearing real
choices in life, the ego negotiates an emprisoned position (p283), "The escape does not restore his
lost security but only helps him to forget himself as a separate entity" (i.e. the real self or identity is
lost).
In The Sane Society, Fromm continued concern with (p205), "Locking in a sense of self" which
"creates deep anxiety." This is largely because of a sort of doublespeak (p182), "One speaks of
'human relations' and one means the most inhuman meaninglessness, and boredom of work."
Identity must experience a leap of faith to break free of insane society's hold on the ego.
In his critique of one way technology (1969, p163), Fromm stressed the "passivation" of cybernated
"system man," and urged interpersonal conflict of identities. This he said was normal expression of
identity, in contrast with Marcuse’s argument that conflicts do not exist in cybernated and nonrepressive society, where the ego is at rest.
Finally, in his critique of Freud (1980, p48-49), Fromm addressed the danger of American
narcissistic identity for alienation. Taking schizophrenics as the extreme case, he described the
reality of narcissistic persons, "The only sector that seems fully real is their own person.. even their
bad
-249qualities are beautiful because they are theirs." This confusion of consciousness with identity, "is in
contrast to love... forgetting oneself." And forgetting oneself is essentIal to a free self, abandoning
the vise of alienation. He cautioned followers of Freud's bourgeois concept of narcissism (p50),
"Narcissism is often confused with egoism..." the first is a distorted view of the world and the second
is self-interest. Both are culturally dangerous to the self.
57 Page 142-143: The "Infant adopts external reality as a kind of extension of his narcissistic ego
and thus seeks to make reality into a pleasure-gratifying phenomenon.."
58 Malcolm's assertion (p257), "Narcissism...probably the dominant future nature of man,"
contained within it the strong potential of secondary narcissism as the generation aged. He
attributed this view to adults (p117), "The internal Puritan ethic...has been replaced with belief in the
right to obtain more money," because it produces a "newfound autonomy."
59 Toffler had argued the opposite character of mid-century mass culture. "Overchoice."
60 Christopher Lasch contributed to the confusion over narcissism as egoism with his discussion of
"a culture of narcissism," but he attempted to set it right in The Minimal Self. There he says (1984,
p57). "The culture of narcissism might better be characterized.. as a culture of survivalism," in which
(p15), "the self contracts to a defensive core, armed against adtsersity. Emotional survival
demands a minimal self, not the imperial self of yesteryear."
His conclusion, from his enquiry into Freudian narcissism, is that (p183), "Its scorn for the body's
demands and for the ego...distinguishes narcissism from ordinary egoism or from the survival
instinct.." This, for him, is an opening to intrude his suggestion that Judeo-Christian conscience,
with its grounding in individualism and its "urge to make amends," will serve the ends of a cultural
revolution better than fear of the super-ego. It will substitute (p59) "self-affirmation" for the "search
for psychic survival," re-instate character-formation as a purpose of public life, and provide "a
potential source of democratic renewal."
He critiques both the Promethean and Narcissistic selves, counterposing: the mistake of liberal
rationalism to the mistake of radical naturalism, the mistake of imperial control of Other to fusion of
self and Other, and the mistake of focus on work to focus on non-instrumental play. In particular,
he seeks to discourage social movements away from fusing ego-ideal with the world as mother
which he finds (p248), "Permeates not only the women’s movement but the environmental
movement and the peace movement as well."
While marginally successful in this effort-because he resurrects
-250-
mass society literature <xv> with its (p150) "mood of retrenchment"--he does de-emphasize
"malaise" and "self-reliance," and point up popular psychology's handmaiden role in paralyzing
social action (p32), "The psycho-social meaning of identity, which has itself passed into common
usage, weakens or eliminates altogether the association between identity and 'continuity of the
personality...'"
61 Keniston is perhaps closest to what I have referred to as the psycho-history tradition. He cites
Fromm on self-estrangement, as well as Erik Erikson, one of his professors. He published through
a psycho-history association (1971), and there is currently a psychohistory journal which
accepts such research. Like Fromm he sees socialism as a non-alienative condition (1965, p328),
"The failure of Marxism in Russia to achieve its high moral and spiritual aims...a tragedy for the
entire West." Keniston's alienation is "autoplastic," that is, the individual changes himself rather
than society, and chooses alienation from society.
62 His elaborate diagrams of alienation types all picture alienation as half culture and half behavior,
much as Parsons would diagram it, and he initially viewed alienation as the opposite of conformity.
63 Keniston wrote in these other traditions as well. Keniston saw his Harvard subjects (See Section
II note 7) as alienated by technology <xvi>, and he called for (1960, p430), "A new vision of a
society whose values transcend technology," because of "the inherent hostility of technology to
Utopian and visionary thinking." He said devotion to the "unfinished business" of technological
society (production, poverty, education, and inequality) is not sufficient, and he suggested (1960,
p440), "A whole society might commit itself to the attainment of the greatest possible fulfillment of
its members," following Fromm's psychohistorical tradition.
Keniston also promoted the mythic-awareness tradition, saying (1960, p320), "Ours is a time whose
most visible public myths are negative." He wrote extensively about conflicts with rationalism
resulting in (1960, p325), "Through this intellectualization of positive myth and the continual
debunking of the scientific and irrational ideologies which followed, little remains of our former
faiths." He specially mentioned: Orwell, Skinner, Young, and Huxley.
64 (1971, pxi) "I continue to see youthful dissent as an effort to fulfill the old promises of American
Society."
65 Margaret Mead (1978, p124) says 1960's youth were "poorly schooled" and they hoped Orwell's
prophesies "could be banished and technology shaped to human needs."
66 It is interesting that Keniston joins many alienation researchers in debunking American family
myths. His original
-251-
work, The Uncommitted, took on familism as leading to an alienation syndrome. Fromm said of the
U.S. family... Roszak calls the U.S. family ""...
67 See their chapter "American Mainstream Culture1' (l990, p28) where they note a 40% drop in
youth optimism since the 1960's.
68 First part of this quote: "Both generations manifest signs of the Goldwater debacle in 1964,
Nixon's hairline victory in 1988, the traditional 'decline' of the presidential party in the off-year
election, the spectacular 'surge' represented by Nixon's landslide in 1977, and the general GOP
weakness shown by the accompanying congressional vote..."
69 This supports the position of Morton Keller (in Graubard7 1979, p134), "The current American
political generation.. a politics in media imagry," characterized by intergenerational coherence yet
intergenerational distinctions, something evident from U.S. beginnings.
70 He says (1981, pxvi), "Younger Americans are fretful, anxious, off balance, and goaless," (p182183). "By the late seventies a mood of pessimism and foreboding had replaced the traditional
American optimism...By 1979...to the majority the past now looked better than the present and the
present better than the future."
71 As expected, there were twice as many agreement differences--modal differences too--between
participants of the two generations as there were between drug-abusing and general participants of
the same time period.
72 This is all the more striking because 1970 was considered the year the media declared the
Student Movement dead. check
73 These youth were lower-track, in-city youth whose choice of failure "in general" was nearly twice
that of the second-preferred choice, in contrast with the near-quartile distribution of other
informants.
It appears "local society" failures are more salient for high school disadvantaged youth. This
suggestion in my data is consistent with Yankelovich’s 1973 data showing non-college and
disadvantaged youth express pessimism in greater numbers (reported over a six year time span
from his representative aggregate polls). This pessimism--or fatalism--may account for their near
two thirds agreement that college students get too much attention, along with welfare burns.
74 Ennui may be the modern theme described by Richard Kuhn and Reinhard Clifford (1976,
p331), "Not one theme among others: it is the dominant theme."
75 This balance Klapp typifies as "flow"' rather than flooding, and he rationalizes it as a matching of
skills to opportunities,
-252citing Maslow, "Flow gives a fulfillment not unlike what Maslow (1962) called peak experience."
76 (1986, p32) "I think there is reason at least to suspect that boredom is associated with
modernity--an afflictionof advanced societies and affluent classes.
77 KIapp's placebo anal vs Is mimics but broadens and makes latent the "safety-valve institutions"
idea of Parsons and Coser (p134), "It is an institution, practice, or product that consoles us for
something wrong or lacking." Including all emotional sops, active and vicarious, Klapp's social
placebo concept addresses "the proIiferation of pleasure institutions" in contemporary society
(p149), "All these types of placebos--material consolations, chemical placebos, active outlets, and
vicarious catharsis--work together in a battery to help ease tensions, so high in modern
society...consolation and compensation do not have to imply tension reduction.
78 Many low response items, fad items, highly technical terms, and non-discriminating items were
dropped from the analysis.
79 There was no control for intelligence in this analysis, so high drug knowledge participants
probably contained most highly intelIigent drug abusers as well.
80 Of course, high drug knowledge among participants in these populations may indicate drug
therapy knowledge and not high motivation towards drug abuse for themselves.
81 This was even true on the boredom question where the high drug knowledge participants had
strongly disagree as their mode, uniquely of all surveyed groups.
82 These participants, then, are the very sort Becker described in his article "Becoming a
Marihuanna User:" they have tried the drug, learned its effects, and found them pleasurable.
83 Another complication is the altered pattern of drug abuse away from mind-expanding drugs,
toward traditional uppers and downers. Does this fit a "seeker" pattern oriented around boredomreduction? Many would say no. A third is the role the unconscious plays in boredom-motivation
towards drug-abuse. Abusing participants in my study seem at least to have the motivation in their
pre-conscious. The motivation of boredom-reduction, which KIapp sees as central to his techno-lag
theory of alienation, is more complicated than this analysis is designed to unravel.
84 When traditional and popular cliche's were summed separately, and their means taken, the
1969-70 participants had .6 fewer approvals of traditional cliche's than popular, while 1989-90
participants had .2 fewer approvals of popular than traditional ones. The trend is toward
traditionalism.
-253-
This is particularly clear for high school youth who had only 3.7 approvals of popular cliche's.
85 This is especially the case for 1989-90 college participants, involving a mean of 5 approvals for
popular cliche's, more than 1969-70 participants. This is consistent with observations by
Yankelovich and Roszak mentioned previously.
86 Both seem likely given the nature of public events in 1969-7 and 1989-90. The earlier period
was one of great civic strife compared with the latter, and holding in rather than verbalizing personal
irritants was still psycho-social policy in 1969-70.
87 Fred Davis (1971, p14) identified this as one of the three core values of hippie culture in 1971:
freedom to do whatever one wants, immediacy, and expressiveness (quest for ecstasy).
88 Ultimately,Yankelovich returns to bashing recent revisions of the Protestant Ethic in order to
make his argument, as he did in the early 1970's (p99), "As recently as 1967...most parents of
college age youths (85%) condemned all premarital sex as morally wrong. Now, a majority (63%)
condone it...Nearly the same majority (57 percent) reject the norm that a bride should be a virgin
when she gets married." It is with pathos that he later expresses, "We can hardly go back to the
safety of the family-success triangle." His particular brand of moral integration is his ultimate
argument about living an unalienated life.
89 Both drug-abusing aggregates reported more poverty in their backgrounds, especially the
institutionalized Yellowstone participants (forty percent of the latter strongly agreed with the item
while about one tenth of the former did).
90 The inventory was very long, especially for sub-cultural participants. "No answer" was common
on the last ten items of the inventory.
To compensate for this bias generally, "no answers" were removed from summations, before
percentages were run. However, item 183 results fell near the 55% agree-disagree mark (53.5%
disagree versus 48% disagree), too close to call with "no answers" of 13 and 15 respectively.
91 Among 1989-90 college participants in my survey, two-thirds claimed "None," and among
college participants surveyed during The Gulf War buildup, over three-quarters claimed "None."
92 1990, p16.
93 (Bouvier, 1980, p6-7), "A dramatic increase to a peak of 3.7 births per woman in 1957. A
gradual but steady decline then began... After 1945, the number of annual births jumped
remarkably...A million more births took place in 1947 than in 1945 and for the
-254-
next 17 years the annual average was 4,035,000...the peak year was 1957."
94 Bouvier states (p3), "The baby boom seems "explosive" only because the preceding and
following cohorts were relatively small."
95 His trend toward 'an international division of labor' (p239) where there is a (p214),
"synchronization of worldwide demand, and a large "external proletariat" promises no bleed-off of
baby-boomer labor. Unless he believes England's "brain drain" of the last generation is some sort
of solution, depending on capital to take up the slack! He admits (p151). "By 1970, more than 65
percent of the labor force was in services in the U.S., and he appears to approve the (p212).
"Transfer of a large part of the routinized manufacturing activities of the world to the less-developed
countries."
96 Loneliness displays retrenchment, not historical currency. Item 64 is not stated in personal
terms, "The modern world is a lonely place," but the mode for 1969-70 participants was mildly
agree, and those of 1989-90 was mildly disagree. Modern Iiving is not considered lonely by over
half of contemporary participants. Alienation researchers stressing broad isolation or limited
behavioral interaction find only minority support in the data.
Relegated to minority concern, then, are loneliness explanations like Rose's economically deprived
(See note 5), Ortega y Gasset's totalitarian-oppressed <xv>, Glaser’s hold-outs from an "identity
society" (See after note 29), and Moustakas group adjustment rather than solidarity (See notes 1a
and 1d). Even explanations of loneliness as tied to agony and perceived social exclusion (Rokach,
See note 1), are likely "a problem" to a minority, or a minor part of the time.
The rootlessness item (184), "I identify myself with my heritage," was designed for negative scoring.
Between two-thirds and three-quarters of participants agreed with this statement, giving only
minority support to American researchers of broad mass alienation like Nisbet’s youth deprived of
geographic place and hard property (See p43). 1989-90 participants did give more mild
disagreements, but still two-thirds agreed.
The confusion item, (154), "I am seldom confused about choices I make," was also designed for
negative scoring. It revealed only a minority of participants agreeing to confusion (perhaps
because posing it in a negative way was confusing to some participants). Over three quarters in
both generations agreed. Twice as many strongly disagreed in 1969-70, but the 1989-90 mode
was "strongly agree," in contrast with mildly agree in 1969-70. This gives only minority support to a
Durkheimian interpretation by American researchers (See p31), that a plurality of standards leads to
anomic confusion, but it supports the post-conventional nature of many contemporary youth.
-25597 This phrase was included in my surveys and received ore-quarter approval by general
participants in 1969-70 and one-third approval by 1989-90 participants (123), "Tune in, drop out,
turn on."
98 The 1969-70 surveying occurred during years of the following historical events: landing on the
moon, RVN peak in U.S. troops, Moratorium and Weatherman riots, The Great Society program,
Lebanese-Palestinian conflict, the Stonewall homosexual riot in N.Y., and The Green Revolution.
99 The 1989-90 surveying occurred during years of the following historical events: completing the
English Channel tunnel and England fusing with the Common Market, U.S. intervening in Panama
and Iraq, E. Germany dismantling the Berlin wall, Chinese democratic insurrections, the regional
dismemberment of the USSR, and the "New World Order."
100 Klapp identified three degrees of seekers: in the extreme, "gravitating" in the mid-range of
involvement, or merely one of the "available" for expressive collective behavior. The majority of
youth were "available," to such understandings, or as Keniston put it, they were "tenuously in" such
understandings (See note 17 on page 116).
101 The item, (87), "Life is a kind of game and the rules are made up by all the wrong people"
reflects such distance. Nearly two-thirds of 1989-90 participants agreed, more than among 1969-70
participants.
102 Several times as many participants in 1989-90 were raised in small towns as 1969-70
participants, so this apparent lag may result from a combination of contemporary rural-urban
migration and 1960's urban-rural romanticizing, rather than an example of continued salience of
mass alienation models <xv>.
103 Item166 was used for powerlessness, "I feel powerless much of the time." Slightly more than
one half agreed in both tine periods. Strong agreements were more common in 1989-90 and
among drug abusing participants.
Normlessness was measured with Item 92, "Right and wrong are irrelevant terms of the past." Less
than a third agreed with this item in 1969-70 steadily decreasing from "strongly disagree." But
nearly half agreed in 1989-90. Most interesting is the contemporary bi-modal distribution: one third
mildly disagreed, and one third strongly agreed. Because behavioral norms are important to
Durkheim's followers among American alienation researchers, a second item was examined to
detail normlessness as entering into a cultural trend.
Item 156, "'I have thought about ending my life" was used for Durkheim's indicator of suicide
ideation due to paucity of norms. Over half of the 1989-90 participants agreed, half of those strong
agreements. This was twice as many agreeing
-256as among 1969-70 participants, and most earlier agreements were mild ones. More suicide
ideation was reported by drug-abusing participants.
Item 149 touches only de-personalization as an aspect of self-estrangement, "I sometimes feel I am
nearly an observer of my own actions."' Since this item is qualified with "sometimes," it is not
surprising many agreed.
Nearly three quarters agreed in both time periods. Again, more strong agreements were reported in
1989-90.
The existential phrase (72), "Life is absurd" was used for meaninglessness. In contrast with the
self-estrangement item, this item is overstated. Nearly one third in 1969-70 and nearly one half in
1989-90 agreed with this item. Frequencies of those who strongly agreed were more than double in
1989-90.
Because this item expresses an attitude with a broad slogan, another item (120) was tallied to get
at the participant's cultural response to lack of meaning in life, "What is demanded of man is to
endure the meaninglessness of life."
Nearly one half in 1969-70, but only third in 1989-90 agreed with this item, most of them mild
agreements. "Enduring"--a stoic attitude--is less commonly approved among 1989-90 participants.
It was also less common among drug-abusing participants in both decades. A near majority of contemporary youth fined life illogical, and the trend is toward meaninglessness, but youth appear less
content to endure it. [104]
This is further substantiated by the results on the goal-directed item of frustration. Frustration was
reported by nearly three-quarters of participants on item 187, "I seldom feel frustrated." [105]
"Strong" disagreements 'were nearly double in 1989-90, and "strong" agreements were half,
resulting in about a one-tenth higher frequency of frustration for 1989-90 participants. Western
youth, on this instrument, display increasing concern--not decreasing concern--with impeded goalattainments.
104 Individuals reporting strong agreement with item 120 in 1989-90 had their survey records
examined. All four agreed life is absurd, three strongly. Two of the four strongly disagreed man
has a soul, one of them strongly rejecting work as meaningful and strongly agreeing God is dead.
The other two were less explainable in these terms. One strongly agreed with Items 70, 91, and
110, but also felt strongly (item 122) that "The only meaning of an action is its meaning to the one
who does it." The final youth gave unremarkable answers on these items
105 Significantly--given its late appearance on the inventory--those who took the survey avoided
giving a "no answer" reply
-257to this item; it was salient to them.
106 About half the 1989-90 youth were probably not raised by both natural parents, yet approval
on this survey item is high and shows little generational contrast. (142) "Relatives are the most
important people in a person's life." Nearly half agreed with this item in both study periods, with a
normal distribution in both decades.
107 Lower agreement with item 126 by 1989-96 participants, for example, could reflect an
historical increase of new and traditional religious forces discussed by Peter Berger C 1SS9), not
Just reduced endurance of meaninglessness. Likewise, Klapp treated mostly leisure behavior
themes for seekers.
108 If correct, items like 76, "God is not dead;" item 91, "Man has a soul;" and item 110, "Most of a
man's sense of meaning in life is created by his work," would be expected to have lower
agreements among 1989-90 participants, and among those who say meaninglessness
characterizes their Iives.
109 This a simplification of Weber’s factors, pursued for discursive reasons: works to signify
predestination, asceticism to repudiate the flesh, and saving the signs of God's blessing as return
on talents.
110 Christopher Lasch proposed "self-affirmation" instead, grounded in a firm conception of
selfhood (See note 60).
111 Abraham Maslow was aware of the complication of this ethic by background cultural traits in
America, Iike achievement and self-reliance.
112 Montana, along with Alaska and Nevada have some of the highest divorce rates in the world
(See note 106).
But there was no difference on the parental respect item (165). "My parents have the kind of
character I respect and honor." Nine of ten participants agreed in both survey periods.
113 CBS (See bibliography).
114 This last seems likely since U.S. life styles did not dramatically decline during the period,
adults not youth are involved in world market negotiations, and three or four-year hitches in the
military would have prevented most service-connected youth from inclusion in the
1989-90 surveys.
115 The sensitivity of many survey items to male-female debate, especially power and authority
dimensions, is clear from comments written-in by females surveyed in 1989-90. Females made
several times more comments than males, often giving a twist to a question e.g. Kennedy's
statement to ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for
-258it drew this addition. "Give and receive equal amounts."
Some creatively altered "man's" or "his" on items, such as "Most of a woman's sense of meaning in
life is created by her work. All too often true;" or responding to the item on age implying wisdom.
"The more set in (her) ways." The most telling comments were three by a single young woman. On
human nature being inherently good, she said, "Maybe babies,' on life having the rules made up by
all the wrong people she said, "Usually their name is KEN and control," and on free love she said,
'Unfortunately, love is often tied to a tree with chains" (See note 14 on page 16).
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N.Y. Times Magazine, Oct 3, 1971.
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Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
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Sept. 1966.
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p880-900, 1981.
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their parents, Princeton Univ. Press, 1981 and "Residues of a movement: the aging of the
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-A1-
APPENDICIES
Appendix 1a
(No use without contacting the author)
ATTITUDE INVENTORY
There are three different ways to respond to items on this attitude inventory. The first
questions require you to write in numbers on a blank e.g. Age ____. On most items you
simply darken a circle to indicate your degree of agreement, or on some, the answer you
consider most accurate. You may also write additional comments on the inventory, but try
not to leave any answer blank, or leave a circle without a response. Do not put your name
on this inventory.
Background Information
____ ____ My age in years is. ( Col 1 & 2)
____ ____ Month taken 01-12 (Col 3 & 4)
____ ____ Leave blank for now. (Col 5 & 6)
____
When done fill in. I believe I have been able to be this honest: 1-Honest
2-Few Wrong 3-Falsified a Section 4-No Way (Col 7)
____
1-No 2-Yes 4-Not Old Enough I vote in national elections.
____ 1-Female 4-Male My sex is. (Col 9)
____ 1-Disagree 4-Agree Most of my life I have lived in a small town. (Col 10)
____ 1-Disagree 4-Agree Most of my life I have lived in suburbs or around large
cities. (Col 11)
____ 1-Disagree 4-Agree Most of my life I have lived in large cities. (Col 12)
____ 1-NO 4-YES I have married during my lifetime
____ 1-Strong disagree 2-Disagree 3-No Opinion 4-Agree 5-Strong Agree
My family while I was growing up was poor. (Col 14)
____ 1-Strong disagree 2-Disagree 3-No Opinion 4-Agree 5-Strong Agree
____ I am a young person. (Col 15)
COLUMNS16-35 ARE ON THE NEXT PAGE
Questions about my larger society.
____ The degree American Society fails to meet people's needs is: 1-It doesn't 2-With
Minority groups 3-With Majority 4-In General (Col 36)
____ American Society meets which level of needs 1-It doesn't 2-Biological 3-Social
4-Spiritual
____ I have participated in political protest 1-None 2-Some 3-A Lot 4-Helped Organize
____ I have engaged in this level of traditional politics 1-None 2-I Vote 3-Influenced
Politics 4-Assisted in Campaigns
____ Degree I believe in civil disobedience as a political tool 1-Don't believe in it
2-Helpful 3-Necessary 4-Only affective means (Col 40)
____ Degree I consider voting important 1-Irrelevant 2-Some Importance 3-Important
4-Great Importance (Col 41)
____ Degree of change desired in the larger society l-None 2-Attitudes 3-Type of
system 4-Entire society changed
____ Necessary power to accomplish such change I-Political 2-Civil Disobedience
3-Revolution 4-Non-political power
____ I would become involved in such change 1-No 2-Partial 3-Considerable 4-Lead or
Organize (Col 44)
Questions about my local society.
____ The degree my local society fails to meet people's needs is: 1-It doesn't 2-With
Minority groups 3-With Majority 4-In General (Col 45)
____ My local society meets which level of needs 1-It doesn't 2-Biological 3-Social
4-Spiritual
____ Degree I participated in my local society 1-None 2-Minor 3-Played Social Role
4-Active and Recognized (Col 47)
Ideal Society: If I could have my society any way l wanted, how I would prefer it to be:
____ How close l'd prefer people to live 1-Separately 2-Small groups 1 mile apart
3-Small groups near 4-All communally
____ How large I'd prefer society to be 1-Small 500 2-Several Thousand 3-Several
Million 4-Very Large (a continent)
____ How technically advanced? 1-Simple Tools 2-Mechanical Devices 3-Selfpropelled machines 4-Automatic machines, Electricity, & Atomic power would exist
____ How children would reside. 1-Separate from Adults 2-With Adults of choice 3-With
Biological Parents 4-With Adults Communally (Col 51)
____ How property would be owned. I-AlI Private 2-Some large held by all 3-All large
held together 4-Even luxuries held together
____ How sex would be limited. 1-Dnly Personal Preference 2-Not among close
relatives 3-Not with another's spouse 4-Between life mates only (Col 53)
DO LAST--ITEMS l6-35
____If you were thinking of "crystal," you'd be thinking of 1-Shape 2-Distance 3-Speed
4-Size
____Snow occurs mainly 1-As dust or flake 2-In cold climates 3-In banks 4-On trees
____A match box costs 1-About $.10 2-$1 to 5 3-$.25 to .30 4-$10 to 15
____A brick is enough to 1-Kill an ant 2-Take a trip 3-Build a house 4-Stop an
avalanche
____Coke would make you feel 1-Powerful 2-Refreshed 3-Like Dying 4-Doing Math
____Gum comes from a 1-Cactus 2-Tree 3-Poppy 4-Root
____If a man were in straw he would probably be 1-Sleeping 2-Uncomfortable 3-A
Farmer 4-Smoking
____You would find tracks 1-On a tongue 2-Outside 3-In the Salvation Army 4-On an
arm
____Roaches are usually 1-Stepped on 2-Saved 3-Investigated 4-Fumigated
____Scat is something you might say to 1-An Elephant 2-To a Policeman 3-To a
Hardliner 4-To a Cat
____A can of hash would be enough 1-For one 2-A Noon Meal 3-A Family Supper
4-A Big Party
____You would find dynamite in 1-A Hole 2-A Munitions Factory 3-A Cap 4-A Ping
Pong Ball
____Cold Turkey would be 1-A Bindle 2-Painful 3-Taste Good 4-Be Boring
(Continued on bk page No. 29-35)
____ Gold would come from 1-Detroit 2-Colorado 3-Japan 4-Acapulco
____ P.G. is an abbreviation for 1-Pajamas 2-Pater Generis 3-Pass Go 4-Paregoric
____ Cutting would involve 1-A Knife & Fork 2-Milksugar 3-A Sharp knife
4-Cornstarch (Col 31)
____ A deck includes 1-A swimming pool 2-52 kinds,4 suits 3-Only 1 4-13 kinds,4 suits
____ Caballo is a type of 1-Wine 2-Hemp 3-Secret Meeting 4-Horse (Col 33)
____ You would get a dime bag 1-At a sale 2-For 10 pesos 3-$10 4-$.10 (Col 34)
____ A trey would 1-Have 4 legs 2-Be in a bag 3-Be part of a cooker 4-Inhaled
On the following phrases, please indicate your general agreement or agreement by
blacking out the circle that corresponds with your attitude most. The center circle is no
opinion e.g. OO*00. To the right are agree, then strong agree e.g. OOO**. To the left are
disagree, then strong disagree e.g. **OOO.
54 OOOOO Man is a sophisticated robot.
55 OOOOO Freedom now .
56 OOOOO All things are relative.
57 OOOOO As the twig is bent so grows the tree.
58 OOOOO Ban the bomb.
59 OOOOO Most of the time people use each other.
60 OOOOO Save the American way of life.
61 OOOOO Do your own thing.
62 OOOOO The longer a man has lived the more wise he is likely to be.
63 OOOOO Transcendentalism in groovy.
64 OOOOO The modern world is a lonely place.
65 OOOOO Make love not war.
66 OOOOO Many children are spoiled by lack of discipline.
67 OOOOO My country right or wrong.
68 OOOOO Beggars cannot be choosers.
69 OOOOO Black Power.
70 OOOOO God is not dead.
71 OOOOO Workers of the world unite.
72 OOOOO Life is absurd.
73 OOOOO Virtue is its own reward.
74 OOOOO We are all one.
75 OOOOO Where there is smoke there is fire.
76 OOOOO Man's main concern in life is to gain pleasure and avoid pain.
77 OOOOO Half a loaf is better than none.
78 OOOOO Black is beautiful.
79 OOOOO Life is bittersweet.
80 OOOOO What the world needs most is love.
81 OOOOO God is dead.
82 OOOOO Honesty is the best policy.
83 OOOOO It is foolish to live only for the moment.
84 OOOOO Mentally healthy people are people without conflicts.
85 OOOOO Flower power.
86 OOOOO Cleanliness is next to godliness.
87 OOOOO Life is a kind of game and the rules are made up by all the wrong people.
88 OOOOO The modern world is in a moral crisis.
89 OOOOO Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for it.
90 OOOOO The answer to many of society's problems lies in self-discipline.
91 OOOOO Man has a soul.
92 OOOOO Right and wrong are irrelevant terms of the past.
93 OOOOO We shall overcome.
94 OOOOO Free love.
95 OOOOO A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.
96 OOOOO Progress is America 's most important product.
97 OOOOO I am a rock, I am an island.
98 OOOOO The only way to tell if an action is right is to try it.
99 OOOOO Make war on poverty.
100 OOOOO There are many people one can believe in.
101 OOOOO Morality is essentially social in nature.
102 OOOOO Draft beer, not students.
103 OOOOO A penny saved is a penny earned.
104 OOOOO Sexual freedom should be permitted to the fullest extent.
105 OOOOO The purpose of life is to enjoy.
106 OOOOO Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
107 OOOOO Many things in life can be learned best by observing rather than by
experiencing them yourself.
108 OOOOO Some people have extra-sensory perception.
109 OOOOO Moral principles are a personal and private matter.
110 OOOOO Most of a man's sense of meaning in Iife is created by his work.
111 OOOOO We will bury you.
112 OOOOO There are no heroes.
113 OOOOO Man has a free will, he makes some decisions free of outside forces.
114 OOOOO Look before you leap.
115 OOOOO Every day in every way things are getting better and better.
116 OOOOO There is something more to magic than just skill.
117 OOOOO College is not all it's cracked up to be.
118 OOOOO Growth itself is the only moral end.
119 OOOOO Haste makes waste.
120 OOOOO What is demanded of man is to endure the meaninglessness of life.
121 OOOOO Don't change horses in the middle of the stream.
122 OOOOO The only meaning of an action is its meaning to the one who does it.
123 OOOOO Tune in, drop out, turn on.
124 OOOOO Detachment is more important than involvement.
125 OOOOO Chastity is important.
I26 OOOOO A person's conscience is only a product of learning.
127 OOOOO Commitment is more important than understanding.
128 OOOOO There are principles of universal validity which underlie social laws of all
societies.
129 OOOOO Self-sacrifice is an honorable virtue.
130 OOOOO Astrology can reveal truths for man.
131 OOOOO A person who involves himself without analyzing what he's involved in is
not acting morally.
132 OOOOO Be it ever so humble there's no place like home.
133 OOOOO Science has developed drugs which make life more meaningful.
134 OOOOO We have never had it so good.
135 OOOOO Life is a struggle with one's self.
136 OOOOO lmportant things in life cannot be communicated in words.
137 OOOOO The happiest time in life is when you are young.
138 OOOOO Society needs a greater sense of community.
139 OOOOO The answer to a question is, in itself, another question.
140 OOOOO The profit motive should never get in the way of other values.
141 OOOOO Relatives are the most important people in a person's life.
142 OOOOO Happy days are here again.
143 OOOOO Human interaction is more important than most things in life.
144 OOOOO People who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
145 OOOOO One man's meat is another man's poison.
146 OOOOO I think of myself as a citizen of the world rather than an American.
147 OOOOO I pursue ecstasy and expanded consciousness.
148 OOOOO I look forward to when all Americans live in suburbs or clean cities.
149 OOOOO I sometimes feel I am merely an observer of my own actions.
150 OOOOO I am close to a great many people.
151 OOOOO I prefer warm climates.
152 OOOOO When I am discouraged I like to escape my thoughts.
153 OOOOO I believe in myself.
154 OOOOO America is a melting pot.
155 OOOOO I do not often think about my past experiences.
156 OOOOO I have thought about ending my life.
157 OOOOO I like business or industry.
158 OOOOO I do not mind being alone.
159 OOOOO I am seldom confused about choices I make.
160 OOOOO I think democracy is the best form of government.
161 OOOOO I like to abandon myself to dreams.
162 OOOOO I am an optimist.
163 OOOOO I have a sense of belonging to my fellow man and the human race.
164 OOOOO I get angry sometimes.
165 OOOOO Human nature is inherently good.
166 OOOOO I feel powerless much of the time.
167 OOOOO I would like to be an executive.
168 OOOOO I prefer a society where there are no rich people and no poor people.
169 OOOOO My parents have the kind of character which I respect and honor.
170 OOOOO I am often one of the first to try something new.
171 OOOOO I am all alone.
172 OOOOO I like sporty cars.
173 OOOOO I am not afraid to handle money.
174 OOOOO I like strong-minded people.
175 OOOOO I seldom feel apathetic or bored.
176 OOOOO I like new styles.
177 OOOOO I have a friend I would give my life for.
178 OOOOO I have nightmares every few nights.
179 OOOOO I feel life is remote sometimes.
180 OOOOO I am troubled by attacks of nausea and vomiting.
181 OOOOO If married, I would prefer to have no more than two children.
182 OOOOO I have not yet solved the question, "Who am I?"
183 OOOOO I would like to live in a resort.
184 OOOOO I identify myself with my heritage.
185 OOOOO I would like to go beyond space and time, roles, models, and concepts.
186 OOOOO It would be a good thing if Americans had more leisure time.
187 OOOOO I seldom feel frustrated.
188 OOOOO Education is very important.
189 OOOOO I feel I need to get back to nature.
190 OOOOO I never feel tired.
191 OOOOO I have a cough most of the time.
192 OOOOO True freedom is the maximum opportunity for self-discipline.
193 OOOOO I am attracted to members of my own sex.
194 OOOOO I like the thought of marriage.
195 OOOOO There are not many marriageable men in the U.S., compared to women.
196 OOOOO I do not want to be compared with other people; I am unique
Appendix 1b
Census Parameters on Bexar County, Texas
Enculturation Period--Participants
In 1960, compared with the U.S. population as a whole, Texas was a faster growing state,
had a higher proportion of non-whites, had a larger proportion of people under 20 years of
age, and had recently made a more rapid shift to central cities than the rest of the U.S. This
is evident from the 1968 Census of Population Vol 1 Characteristics of Population, Part 45
of Texas, USDC, Bureau of the Census.
With a crude application of alienation theories, then, the social processes Bexar County
youth were exposed to in their adolescence were more pronounced than for the U.S. babyboom generation in general: acceleration of change, massification, cultural disorganization,
and urbanization.
Survey Period--Participants
By 1970, when the participants were surveyed, Volume 1 of Characteristics of Population,
Part A, Section 1&2, 1970 Census of Population for Bexar County,Texas makes clear over
10% of the male population was between 18 and 21 years of age (10,324 +12,158 + 9,617
+ 7,941=40,040 out of 408,326 males=10.2%). Forty-seven point three percent of the
population had a high school degree, and 46.8% of the 18 and
19-year-olds were in school, and 21.45 of the 20 and 21 year-olds were in school.
Sixty-five percent of households in Bexar County were occupied by husband-wife families,
and averaged 3.4 persons per household. Only 3.6% of the population over age 14
reported a divorce (26,470/592,167). Sixty-two percent of males 14 or older were married
(176,851/284,263), and 16% of families were below the poverty line. Median family income
was $8,045, with the mean closer to $10,000 (9,593), with wages and salaries accounting
for 88% of earnings (170,526/194,103). The modal house size
was 5 rooms (71,939), with a modal value between $10,000 and $14,999 (40,741
households).
Seventy-nine percent of the population was of native parentage (655,821/830,460), with
significant mixed parentage and foreign born ethnicity from these nations (in decreasing
order): Mexico, other and unstated, Germany, U.K., Canada, and Italy. Less than 7% of the
population was Black.
Census Parameters on Yellowstone County, Montana
Enculturation Period--Participants
In 1980, Montana was a growing state making a shift towards central cities. The alienating
social processes Yellowstone County youth were exposed to in their late childhood
included acceleration of change, massification, cultural disorganization, and urbanization.
A contraction of the over-all Montana population occurred in the late 1980's, but
Yellowstone County increased population between 1980 and 1990 by 7%
(105,993 to 113,419).
The General Social and Economic Characteristics bulletin of the 1982 census on Montana
(Part 28) reveals that between 7.8% and 8.5% of the male population was in each five year
age category between 5 and 9 (8,649 - 4,133= 4,516) and 10 and 14 (8,253 - 4,120=
4,133), out of a male population of 52,930 (108,035 - 55,105). This 1980 figure is a good
reflection of the participant pool actually raised in Yellowstone County because high outmigration of youth from Montana occurs during late
adolescence. This youthful proportion is smaller than the baby-boom generation. In 1990,
only 27% of the population was below 18 years of age.
Survey Period--Participants
1990 statistics on some parameters of this study will not be available in print for years, so
parameters from the 1980 Billings census are reported where some statistic is unavailable.
Publications which will carry these statistics are as follows: CP-l (1991), STFI and STF3
(1991-1992), CP-2 and STF4 (1993).
Nearly eighty percent of the population had a high school degree in 1980. With the 1990
census, this may be twice the proportion in the 1970 Bexar population. In the Billings
SMSA, 54.2% of the 18 and 19-year-olds were in school, and 30.3 of the 20 and 21 yearolds were in school.
Households in Yellowstone County (1990), doubled in number from 1970, and averaged
2.3 persons per household, 1.1 less than the Bexar sample above. Married couple families
(1980) accounted for sixty-three percent of households (24,907/39,838), but 14%
(11,541/82,181) of those age 15 and above reported a divorce, three times the Bexar
sample in 1970. Median family income was $20,744, with the mean at $23,548, with wages
and salaries accounting for 82% of household earnings (32,662/39,838).
However, women accounted for 42% of those employed (20,992/49,407).
Ninety-eight percent of the population was of native parentage (105,993/108,035) in 1980.
In 1990, both Native American and Hispanic composed 3% of the population, while 1/2%
each were Asian or Black. Most mixed parentage and foreign born ethnics (1989) were
from these nations (in decreasing order): Canada, USSR, Germany, U.K., and Mexico,
nearly the reverse of the Bexar sample. However, Yellowstone County had the largest
Hispanic population in the state in 1990, and 6,000 mostly Hispanic migrant workers reside
there April through July.
Appendix 2
Participant-Observer
The researcher was born on the leading edge of the baby-boom generation, just west of the
Bible Belt. Raised in a fundamentalist home, he was nonetheless inspired early by his
studies in natural science. Resolving to become a chemist soon after the ascent of
Sputnik, he did original research on the superconducting metal niobium in high school, and
was part of the social circle referred to as "nerds" two decades later. He left the American
West on scholarship to get a private education in an upstate New York liberal arts college
which "had an accelerator."
Robert Kennedy, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Marshall McLuhan spoke at his university while
he was there, drawing him toward humanistic studies, though he considered himself
ideologically linked with none of them. Soon after President Kennedy's assassination, this
westerner--son of an open-shop agitator--renounced natural science as a vocation,
believing its handmaiden role to corporate consumerism was unlikely to lead to solutions
for significant world problems. Instead, he entered social science and humanities
coursework. Detached culturally from most of his peers through a fundamentalist
"separation from the world," the researcher pursued the Western value of self-reliance
through his undergraduate years, yet was active in college affairs. One year he acted in a
Shakespearean play with N.O. Brown, which made him curious enough to attend one of
Brown's lectures. He was impressed by his classical scholarship and his ability to link it
with psychoanalytic insights, but he remained skeptical of his sex and mysticism theses.
His only involvements in the Civil Rights Movement were apolitical and at the service level,
acting as a counselor to slum youth in a settlement house and choosing to student teach in
a black slum where he lived. Meanwhile, his roommate participated in freedom rides in
Mississippi and engaged in sit-ins.
As a graduate student, he decided to specialize in adolescent psychology within mass
education, partly through his interest in alienated youth. His graduation speaker was
Richard Nixon, not yet president, but some professors were a nearly hostile audience. Like
many graduates of private Eastern colleges in 1966, the researcher chose not to pursue his
academic career under threat of the RVN draft. Instead, he worked as a geological aide for
the USGS until he enlisted for a medical MOS. This was his choice to do national service
while retaining his pacifist commitments.
In 1967, he was curious enough about Timothy Leary's renunciation of a professional
Harvard psychologist's role, to visit the Haight-Ashbury district by car during the "Summer
of Love." With a friend, he interviewed youth in coffeehouses on the Haight and in Golden
Gate Park, accumulated underground newspapers, and taped and wrote journal notes,
before reporting for duty.
The researcher served as a psychological technician and counselor to the Conscientious
Objector Battalion at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, before going on to graduate study in
sociology. Always attentive to political and social changes, the researcher nonetheless
considered his "self" as irrelevant to most contemporary events. He conceived himself as
hundreds of years out of date, and as a sojourner. Even the hippie movement, which led to
establishment of agricultural communes, held little relevance for him personally. Acid rock
and laboratory-engineered mind expanders seemed as anachronistic to him as his own
background did to corporate America. This was not a rootless alienation. To the contrary,
the researcher felt rooted in a" ancient past, and content with his irrelevance, regarding
cultural factions as a little "crazy" and his selfhood as "probably more sane." Only Paul
Goodman's phrase "neolithic conservative" seemed vaguely related to his own identity.
In the mid-1970's, the researcher migrated to Australia, remaining there three years, deep
into the Carter Administration. He found the culture there, except for its vocal feminist
movement, much outside modernity as he had experienced it in the U.S., particularly in
terms of primary group supports to youthful peer cultures. Professionally, he had become a
multiple paradigmist, with an historical bent, and he found much in the differing alienative
conditions of Australian society to contrast with U.S. culture and dominant social theory.
He was more of an adult participant in that society, as teacher, neighbor, and friend, than
he had been in the society of his birth.
In the 1980's, the researcher was back in the Northwestern U.S., where he participated
several years in pacifist social action by an urban religious commune. Justice for minorities
was an important feature of this involvement, and in the mid-1980's the researcher began
six years of teaching service to Montana Indian youth, working with teenagers from most of
Montana's tribes in the Upward Bound Program, at two bi-cultural reservation schools, and
in four colleges. The role of sojourner continued to seem appropriate, now devoted to
teaching youth how to negotiate major cultural disjunctions within their society. As the
1989-1990 re-survey for this study approached, the researcher recognized his two year
citizen participation in Yellowstone County was less than his three year acquaintance with
Bexar County had been at baseline. Since follow-up census takers interact directly with
citizens, he chose to do follow-up interviewing for the Census Bureau. Roughly three
hundred and fifty interviews were conducted by the researcher in rural, suburban, and
urban parts of Yellowstone County, taking both long and short forms. Much sensitization to
social features of the County were afforded the researcher, and this study, by these
interviews.
Index
absurd 16,256
Addison 6,47
adolescent society 141-2,
210
affectuell 36
alienation syndrome 113,
189,251
alienation traditions 129,
136-157
alienist 4,32,49,129
American alienation 132-257
American ideology 95,104-5,108,
110,121-2,129,134-6,l58,
183,189,229
analytic induction 53,56,
78-9,116,185
anomie 1,29-30,32,43,45,
47,56,59,69,114,131,141,
149,152,167, l90
antinomian 151,247
appendices A1-A24
archetypes 148
Arendt ,H. 42,61,68
Arieli,Y, 136
ascetic 39,46,131-2,150,
191,212,216,238
autonomy 134,140,145,155,
159,165,191,239,242,
244,246,249
baby-boom i, 64, 96, l83, 198-9, 2012,215,234,254
Barnes & Becker 36
baseline 80,82,90,96,99100,104,120,161,167-73,187,245
Bell, D. 16,41,44-5,54,103,
110,121,134-5,137,147,
182, 184,200,264,206,228,
230,242,244,252
Bellah.R. 30
belongingness 43
Berger,P. 59,150,257
Bettleheim,B. 60,123,145
bibliographies 71-5,124-7,
259-62
Bismark,O. 10,35,65
Blauner,R. i,118
boredom 1,156,165-6, 168-9,
172-8, 192,194,211-2,216,
218,224,242,244,252
Bouvier .L. 199,253-4
Bredemier and Toby 109,141,
190
Brown. N.O. 140,150-1,A10
bureaucracy i,2,27,30,37-8,
40,45-49,50,56,95,131,
200-2,206,215,231,245
Burgess, E. i
Burke, E. 6,43
Camus, A. 16
Caplow, & Bahr 144
Cassirer, E. 65
ChicagoSchool 12-3,18-22,34,
54,61,65,67,8l,120,146,157
civil disobedience l62,186-9,
193,211
civil religion 30
cliches 84-5,119,156,165,
172,176-8,192,194,212
Coleman,J. 105,114,141-2,
163,183,252
commitment 158-9,205
confusion 201,254
consciousness 2,12,14,17,32,
50,102,115,122,130-1,139,
148, 150-1 ,153-5,173,175,
179-80, 183,189,192-3,201,
204,210-214,234,249
Cooley,C.H. 53
corporate patriotism 207
Coser .L. 15,20,65,252
counterculture 84-5,95,99, 105,
107-8,111,143,150,210,213,230
Cox ,H. 149-151,221
cultural disorganization i,
18-22,25,47,56,145,152,201
cultural lag 21-2,145-6,165,
178,192,203
cultural sociology 52-3,82
Dalton ,R. 157,184,193
Danish 10,23,51,226
Davis,F. 168,212,253
Davis,K. 20-1,65
data A12-A24
Dean ,D. 68,115,118
Dedication ii
democratic character 138
Denzin,N. 79,112-3
depersonalize 224,256
deracination 41,44-6,232
deviance 29,107-8,110,164,190
Dewey,J. 12-3
depayse 42,56
dialectics 13,21,24-5,32,34,
47,130
Digby,K. 5
disaffiliate 109,141,190,210
Dowdy,E. 43
drug abuse 91-2,116-7,161-2,
164,166-75,193,210,251-3,256
Durkheim, E. i ,27-32,34,39-9,
49,47,49,59,65-6,69,85, 114,
133,141,153,164,179,182-3,
186, 190-1 ,217,254-5
Drucker P. 207-9,226-32
Easterlin hypothesis 199
ecstasy 168,171-3,175, 180,
193,211-2
education 99,103,107,225
ego i ,39, 150,155,190,192,224
electrification 99- 101,
107,121, 123,225-6
Eliot,T.S. 28,65
elites 184-5,193
encyclopedists 14
Engles ,F. 17,44,47,51,65
enlightenment 6,14-16
ennui 165,251
ensimismarse 42
entausserung 11,25,56
entfremdung 15,17,25,56
Ellul ,J. 145-7,165,191,246-7
Erikson ,E. 34,69,78,155,244,
250
ethic 1,37,46,48,115, 132-3, 142-
5,153,155, 190-1,196,
221,223,237-40,243,249
Etzioni A. 5,65,115
european alienation i ,1-131,
134,157,181,184
estrangement 3,13,15,18,19,22,
25,141,152,165
Evesham, monk of 3,47
existentialism 3,16,24-5,45,
48-9,54,84-6,96,131
exteriority & constraint 31-2,
149,194,225,231
Ferkis,V. 14,148
Feuer,La 105,206
Feuerbach ,L. 14-6,25,33,45,47,
49,54,59,86,149,153
Feuerlicht,I. 10,14,19,65
flooding (overstimulation) 121,
149,153,165, 177-80,192,203
folk society i,20
findings 128-262
French 3,9,226
Freud,S. 27,32-4,45,47,49,
54,86,132,138-9,153,
165,201,203,217,244,
248-9
Fromm,E. 42,60,78,121,137-40,
184,203,222,241-5,247-9,250
frustration 224,256
Galbraith ,J.K. 230
geist 11
generation 61,63,80,96,100,
116,120,142,160-2,164,
175,177,179,181-2, 184-90, 1945,197,204,209,211-13,
215,233-4,251
German 9-11,50-1,226
gerontology 118
Gerth & Mills 36-7
Glaser & Strauss 77,81,90
Glasser,W. 140,254
global i,2,196,209,213,218,
225,227,231-2,235-40
gnosticism 151
Goffman,E. 243,247
haabloshed 23,26,56
Hagedorn & Labovitz 144
Harrls,G. 52
Harris.T. 74
Hegel .0. 11-4,16,23,44,47,49,
51,65,103,114,121, 134,247
Heidegger,M. 15
Heiss,R. 11,13,14
hermetism 41,46
historical sociology i, 523,61,83,90,93,238
Hobbes,T. 4,19
Hoijer,H. 9
holism 11,158
Homans,G. 4-5
Horney,K. 78,138
human nature 29,258
hypostatize 38
Ibsen,H. 24
ideal type 35,116,129,158,
223,237-240
interpersonal trust 163
ideographic 53
lonesco,E. 51
inalienable 7
incorporation 99,107,225,
227,237
industrialize 2,59-1,95-6,
130,221
Inglehart ,R. 181-6,191,
193,205
Inkles & Levinson 244
innovators 158
inventory A2-A7
isolative 9,10
Jaspers,K. 60
Jefferson,T. 7
Jennings & Niemi 160,163,185, 189,
193-4,198,205,211,235
Johnson,S. 5
Josephson, E.&M. 51
Jung, C. 34,58-9,148-9,151, 201
Kellner,H. 59
Kellner,M. 251
Kelly,K, 247
Keniston ,K. 77-9,80,87,88, 104-9,
112-4,116-8,121-3, 135,155-60,163,
168,170, 180-I, 185, 18990,193,205,209-11,250,255
Kierkegaard,Soren 14,23-5,47,
49,51,54,65,217
Klapp ,O. 60,149,152,155-7,
164-6,168-9,171-82, 185-6,
191-2,194 ,205,209,212-3,
216,218,251-2,255,257
kurwille18-9,25,31,36-7
Lazarsfeld ,P. 32,81-2,112
Lasch,C. 222,233,249,257
Leary, T. 150,204,A10
Lichtheim,G. 15,65
Lipset ,S.M. 141,143,190-1
literature review 1-75
Locke,J. 6
Lodge,0.C. 135
loneliness 42-3,46,139,141,
201,241,254
Longman,P. 5
Loomis & Mckinney 39,65-7
Lukacs .G. 38,47,51
Lydgate 3,47
mainstream culture 106-8,122,
139,141,143,147,154
malaise 2,14,33,43,45,55,117,
223 ,233,250
Malcolm,H. 122,149,151-2,
248-9
Malinowski,B. 53,248
Mannheim,K. 185
Marcuse ,H. 140,206,244,248
marginal man 20,133
Maris Van Blaaderen,A, ii
Marx ,Karl,14,16,17,25,37,40,
45,47,49,50,85,95,114,118,
132-3,137,201,217
Maslow ,A. 149,182-3,252,257
mass 2,27,40-2,44-7,50,60-2,
84-5,96,100,107-8,110,114-7,11920, 123,131,133,138,148,
152,154, 157-60,164,166,177,
186,195, 197,200-2,204,214,
217,219,226-7,232,239,243,
250,255
Mayo,E. i
McLuhan,M. 100,121-3,146,
191 ,A10
Mead ,G.H. 12,13,25,47,61
Mead,M. 248,250
Menshikov, S. 230
meritocracy 147-8,180,243,
247
Merton ,R. 30-1 ,41 ,47,56,65,
85,109,114,117,133,141,
170,190-1
methodology 76-127
MilI,J.S. 28
Mills.C.W. 42,47,58,60,65, 120,148
Milton,J. 3,50
MMPI 92,120
modernization 104-5,110
Moustakas ,C. 60,254
mythic-awareness 1, 48-54,157,
164,172, 191,193,201,203-4,
219,250
Naisbitt,J. 229-30
narcissus 151,153,248-9
Natanson,M 241-2
nationalism 2,9,18,50,209,
237
negative case 92,114,176,
256-7
Nettler,G. 68,117
new class 181-3
Niebuhrs 23-5,47
Nietzsche,F. 15,25,35,54
nihilism 15-6,35,44-5,54,159
Nisbet,R. 30,43-4,66,133,203,
242,254
nominalism (typology) 35,50,
56-58
normlessness i, 114,255
Oedipal Complex 105-6,248
Ogburn, W. 2l,145-6
optimism/pessimism 156,
159-64,190,215-6,238,251
Ortega y Gasset,J.27,39-43,
46-7,49,61-4,85,115,134,182,
194,197,254
Orynski,W. 25
other-directed 42
otherness 44,63,137
Park,R. 13,20,21,25,49,65,146
Parsons ,T. 32,39-9,47,49,57,
66,104,106,136,141,143,190,
252
participant observer A10-A11
pattern variables 38-9,104
pluralism 7,18,44-5,109-10,
123,133,148,152,190,252
population parameters 94,103,
120
positivism 45, 113,136-8,148
post-conventional i,129,158,
191,194-5,214-5,218,225,
237-40
post- industrial 110-11,147-8
post-modern i,155,221,223-5,
237-40
powerlessness 7,37,114-5,224, 255
powershift 208,215
praxis 17
proculture 210,212-3,235
production sharing 227
Priestley,J. 5
processes 2,27,50,96-7,99,
104,107,225-7,237
profit motive 187,228
progress 21-2,28,165-7,
179,188,191-3,203,238
Prometheus 151
prospect i
psychoculture 183
psychohistory i ,138-141,155,157
psychosocial 195,217-9,224,
234,236,238-9,250,253
radial world 24
rationality 36-7,40,104,
132,191,203,224,250
Redfield ,R. i,20,66
realism (taxonomy) 50
referencing iii
reflexivity 114,117
reify 35,38-9,115,140
Reinert,O. 24
Riesman ,D. 42-3,47,49,60,68-9,
100,134,222,241,245-6
Rintala,M. 98
ritualism i,165
Ritzer,G. 57
Rogers,C. 60
Rokach,A. 241,254
Rolland,R. 33
rootlessness 41,43-7,85,1145,131,201,243,254,A1 1
Rose ,A. 219,242,245,254
Roszak,T. 108-9,140,147,
149-51
Rousseau,J. 7,41,45,47-9,
85,114,133,153,158,181,
217,242
Roy,R. 207
salvation 24
Sartre,J. 16
scarcity hypothesis 182,186,
205,244
Schutz,A. 62
secularize 2,15,25,50,96,
149-50,237
seekers 152,155-6,165,
173-5,179,182,191,193,
211-2,216,220,252
Seeman,M. 68,112,114,117
selbstentfremdung 15,51,56
self-assertion 151-2,154-5
self-other 2,8,42,46-7,51,
61,69,78-9,103,129-36,
138,140,209,211,215-6,
219,225-6,232,234,244 ,249
selvstaendighed 23
Simmel .G. 20,45,54,65,247
situs 148
Smelser,N. 57
Smith,A. 4,28,242
Snow.C.P. 106,147
social ideal 85,134,215
social psychology 2,51,54,
154,156,189,217,246
social system i,29,39,45,47,67,
69,85,122, 136,141,143-4,153
societal alienation i,
141-5,157-8,170, 189-91,218
Sorokin,P. 27,38-9,52-4,65-7
sovereignty 7,8,44,47,56,
130,133,200-1,208,228,
232-3,240
Spencer,H. 28
specialize 2,27,29,37,45,
50,96,237
Spindler ,G.&L. 103,144,
159,199,242,244
Srole ,L. 68,114,117-8
Stonequist.E. 20,22,146
stress 32
Strindberg,A. 24
subculture 99,103-4,106-10,
120,122,175,184-6,190,
194, 197,200,202,212-4,228
subterranean culture 122,174,
211-3
suicide i,31,142,256
Sullivan ,H.S. 78,138,140,A10
superorganic 52
Swift.J. 6
symbolism 152,164-5,192,201,
205
Szasz,T. 49
taken for granted world
62-3,80,99,101-2,107, 135,197
technicism 40
technique 145-6,148
techno-lag i,22,145-9,
154,157,165-6,168,
179-80,191,201,216,218,
226
technological man 146,167
Teggert,F. 43
theoretical sampling 78,82,90
Thome,J. ii
Tocqueville ,A. 39,43
Toffler ,A. 168,191,203,
207-8,232,247,249
Tonnies ,F. i ,18-19,21-3,
25,28-9,35-7,39,47,49,
58,62,67-9,80,84-5,89,
95,104,114,116,119,132-3
traditional 36
transnational 99,206-8,228,
230-2,240
triad 196,208,219-232,
237-40
triangulation 79
Turgenev,I. 15,65
unconscious i,,34,46-7,56,
59,121,131,137,139,149,
152-3,155,169,172,184,
192,203-4,223-4,248
urbanization 20,50,96,151,
237
Veblen,T. 55,134
verdinglichung 38
verstandnis 19,39,56
verstehende 35,53,83
Wartofsky,N. 14
Weber ,M. i ,27,30,35-40,48,
52,54 ,56,58,62,67-9,80,
84-5,89,95,104,114,116,
119,132-3,145,153,203,
217,220-1,223,240,257
wertrational 36,38-9
wesenwille 18-9,21,25,37,47
western alienation i,35,223-4
Whorf,B.L. 51,65
White,L. 145
Whyte,W.H. 42-3,60,68,100,
222,230,241,245
Wolff,K. 13
worker alienation 16-7
Wrong,D. 21,65
Wyclif 3,11,47,49
Yankelovich ,D. 142-3,161,18292,198-9,216,221, 245-7,251,253
Yinger,M. 107-8,122
Znaniecki,F. i ,9,27,35,50,
58,65-7,80,82,116
zweckrational 36,46,52-54,56,
58-59