The evolution of alienation : trauma, promise, and the millennium
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The evolution of alienation : trauma, promise, and the millennium
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2006
- : cloth
Available at / 1 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
The Evolution of Alienation: Trauma, Promise and the Millennium presents a collection of essays that examine the prevalence of alienation in the contemporary world. Although the authors share a critical approach to society, their views of alienation vary. While some feel that alienation is inescapable under the conditions of late modernity, others see that especially at this time there are opportunities to overcome alienation. Testing their approaches, the authors touch on highly diverse domains of life. The book is divided into four sections, each with a focus on how alienation is produced and, perhaps, overcome. Part I presents theoretical approaches to 'shifting views of alienation'. Here the authors discuss how alienation is disclosed in social science, in technology, and in biological constructions of the human being. Part II deals with political consequences of alienation. The three chapters focus on how alienation can lead to fascist beliefs, how it functions in the development of authoritarian personalities, and how alienation is disclosed in teen-age violence, but also in the justice meted out to desperate teens, without compassion. Part III includes examinations of 'alienation in identity, culture, and religion'. Here, researchers discuss how the alienating conditions of globalization create alienated identities that are carnivalized in shock music and in exploitative television shows. The last chapter of this section sees in these developments evidence of our inability or unwillingness as social scientists to deal with transcendental values. Part IV focuses on phenomena from everyday life, showing how alienation undermines the advantages of community, and the intimacies of dialogue. Although the very concern with alienation shows awareness of trauma, there are, throughout the book, hints of promise - in technology, in loving and creative domesticity, in activism and through grass-roots initiatives in education. Through an interest in the cosmos human being may yet discover the way out of alienating labyrinths.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Does Alienation Have a Future? Recapturing the Core of Critical Theory Chapter 3 New Technologies and Alienation: Some Critical Reflections Chapter 4 Embodiment and Communication: Alienation, Genetics, and Computing. What Does It Mean to Be Human? Chapter 5 Authority Fetishism and the Manichaean Vision: Stigma, Stereotyping, and Charisma as Keys to Pseudo-Orientation in an Estranged Society Chapter 6 When Alienation Turns Right: Populist Conspiracism, the Apocalyptic Style, and Neo-Fascist Movements Chapter 7 Lonely Privilege in Despair: Aiming for Unfeigned Hope Chapter 8 Globalization, Alienation, and Identity: A Critical Approach Chapter 9 Alienation Incorporated: "F-- the Mainstream Music" in the Mainstream Chapter 10 The Final Indignity: The Commodification of Alienation Chapter 11 Alienation and the Cosmos Chapter 12 Alienated Communities: Between Aloneness and Connectedness Chapter 13 Loving Alienation: The Contradictions of Domestic Work Chapter 14 "Plain Talk": Producing and Reproducing Alienation
by "Nielsen BookData"
