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10 - Alienation as ritual and ideology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

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Summary

The theory of alienation is often put forward as the Marxist contribution to micro-sociology. The Marxist tradition is, of course, largely macro, especially in its classical concerns with economy, the state, imperialism, revolution, and long-term social change. Where it touches base with the micro/phenomenological world of everyday life is at the concept of alienation. My argument, however, will be that this is not true. By the standards of current micro-sociology, the concept of alienation is not a micro one. It rests, rather, on a confusion of levels, a failure to understand the relationship between micro and macro levels of analysis. Behind the concept of alienation, I will suggest, is a long-standing tradition of intellectuals' elitism about working-class culture. It also has become involved in a distinctively modern romanticization of traditional societies, and with a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of capitalism. The concept of alienation, I will conclude, is not necessary or desirable as the basis for a radical theory of conflict and domination, although it remains important as a phenomenon of political symbolism that can be central to the dynamics of political mobilization and political ritual.

The Hegelian background

The Marxist concept of alienation, as is well known, derives from Hegel's philosophy. Marx transformed Hegel's idealistic analysis into the materialism of economics, while retaining some of Hegel's specific formulations about consciousness an sich and für sich, consciousness in itself and for itself.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1986

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