The Evolution of Alienation Trauma, Promise, and the Millennium

Building on the Marxian view of alienation as the inevitable consequence of wage labor that divests human beings of control over their life forces, The Evolution of Alienation provides new insights into contemporary conditions. Contributors explore how alienation is fostered not only by television freak shows and shock music, but also by programmed schooling and even by some scientific theories. Others show that the contradictory relationships possible in some domains, among them, new technologies and domestic work, disclose niches of fulfillment that belie alienation.

Lauren Langman is Professor of sociology at Loyola University of Chicago. Devorah Kalekin Fishman is senior researcher at the University of Haifa in Israel.