ALIENATIONDIMENSIONS OF ALIENATION AND
POLITICAL ALIENATIONTheorists and sociological researchers have devel-
oped different definitions of alienation (Seeman
1975). Scholars influenced by the philosophical
writings of Karl Marx have used the word aliena-
tion to mean self-estrangement and the lack of self-
realization at work (Blauner 1964; Hodson 1996).
Marx argued that although humans by their very
nature are capable of creative and intrinsically
rewarding work, the Industrial Revolution alienat-
ed workers from their creative selves and reduced
workers to the unskilled tenders of machines
(Braverman 1974). The worker produced machin-
ery and other commodities that formed the capi-
talist system of workplace hierarchies and global
markets, which the worker could not control. Rath-
er, the system dominated workers as an alienated,
‘‘reified’’ force, apart from the will and interests of
workers (Meszaros 1970). Whereas this oldest defi-
nition links alienation to the development of capi-
talism in modern society, some scholars see aliena-
tion as a characteristic reaction to the postmodern
condition of fragmented multiple images and loss
of individual identities and any shared meanings
(Geyer 1996).
Alienation can also refer to the isolation of
individuals from a community—a detachment from
the activities, identifications, and ties that a com-
munity can provide. In addition, the concept of
alienation has included the notion of cultural radi-
calism or estrangement from the established val-
ues of a society. Ingelhart (1981) has argued that
the highly educated generation that came of age in
the counterculture of the 1960s rejected their
elders’ traditional values of materialism, order,
and discipline. Easterlin (1980, pp. 108–111 ) sug-
gests that it is the relatively large cohort size of the
Baby Boom generation that led them to suffer
competition for jobs, psychological stress, discon-
tent, and hence, generalized political alienation.
On the contrary, Inglehart (1997) argues that baby
boomers and succeeding generations will only
express alienation against specific authoritative
institutions, such as the police, the military, and
churches. With succeeding generations increas-
ingly espousing ‘‘postmaterialist’’ values such as
the quality of life, self-realization, and participa-
tory democracy, Inglehart finds a worldwide in-
crease in some activities that reduce alienation
such as petition-signing and political conversation.
Much of the literature on alienation in the
1990s focused on alienation from political institu-
tions, and some writers have examined how aliena-
tion has changed in former authoritarian nations
such as Argentina and South Africa and in Eastern
Europe (Geyer 1996; Geyer and Heinz 1992). Soci-
ologists interested in the political well-being of the
United States have measured the extent to which
individuals feel powerless over government (i.e.,
unable to influence government) and perceive
politics as meaningless (i.e., incomprehensible;
Seeman 1975). Such attitudes may be connected
to a situation of normlessness, or anomie, which
occurs when individuals are no longer guided by
the political rules of the game (Lipset and Raab
1978). Social scientists have been concerned that
alienation might reduce political participation
through institutional channels such as voting, and
might lead to nonconventional activity like protest
movements and collective violence.MEASUREMENT AND CONSEQUENCES OF
POLITICAL ALIENATIONPolitical alienation consists of attitudes whereby
citizens develop (or fail to develop) meanings and
evaluations about government and about their
own power (or powerlessness) in politics. Specifi-
cally, political alienation is composed of the atti-
tudes of distrust and inefficacy. Distrust (also called
cynicism) is a generalized negative attitude about
governmental outputs: the policies, operations,
and conditions produced by government. Com-
pared to the simple dislike of a particular policy or
official, distrust is broader in scope. Whereas dis-
trust is an evaluation of governmental outputs,
inefficacy is an expectation about inputs, that is,
the processes of influence over government. Peo-
ple have a sense of inefficacy when they judge
themselves as powerless to influence government
policies or deliberations (Gamson 1971).
Researchers have sought to find opinion poll
questions that yield responses consistently corre-
lated to only one underlying attitude, of distrust
for example. Mason, House, and Martin (1985)
argue that the most ‘‘internally valid’’ measures of
distrust are two questions: ‘‘How much of the time
do you think you can trust the government in
Washington to do what is right—just about all of
the time, most of the time, or only some of the
time?’’ and ‘‘Would you say that the government is