Blauner suggested an alternative way of looking at alienation that starts from two assumptions which is different from Marx’s suggested alienation.
Assumption 1: alienation is not unavoidable under capitalism.
Assumption 2: work has different meaning for different people.
Both of these assumptions suggest that it is insufficient to view alienation as an objective condition (the same for all employees under capitalism) however, alienation should be considered as a subjective experience (differing from situation to situation, and person to person). Blauner (1964) has undertaken in this manner to explore the concept. Blauner (1964) begins from the proposition that ‘alienation is a general syndrome made up of a number of different objective conditions and subjective feelings-states which emerge from certain relationships between workers and sociotechnical settings of employment’. He also stresses that alienation should be divided into four dimensions, each of which can be investigated for different workers to enable a profile of alienation to be drawn up which are summarised as following table. (Click on diagram to enlarge.)
Assumption 1: alienation is not unavoidable under capitalism.
Assumption 2: work has different meaning for different people.
Both of these assumptions suggest that it is insufficient to view alienation as an objective condition (the same for all employees under capitalism) however, alienation should be considered as a subjective experience (differing from situation to situation, and person to person). Blauner (1964) has undertaken in this manner to explore the concept. Blauner (1964) begins from the proposition that ‘alienation is a general syndrome made up of a number of different objective conditions and subjective feelings-states which emerge from certain relationships between workers and sociotechnical settings of employment’. He also stresses that alienation should be divided into four dimensions, each of which can be investigated for different workers to enable a profile of alienation to be drawn up which are summarised as following table. (Click on diagram to enlarge.)
There is … no simple answer to the question: Is the factory worker of today an alienated worker? Inherent in the techniques of modern manufacturing and the principles of bureaucratic industrial organisation are general alienation tendencies. But in some cases the distinctive technology, division of labour, economic structure, and social organisation-in other words, the factor that differentiate individual industries-intensify these general tendencies, producing a high degree of alienation; in other cases they minimize and counteract them, resulting instead in control, meaning, and integration. (Blauner, 1964: 166-7)
Eventually, this leads Blauner to a position of technological determinism: he suggests that greater automation will free workers from drudgery of assembly-lines and machine-minding and will result in decreasing alienation for employees (Blauner, 1964: 182-2). This is an optimistic projection that suggests the problem of alienation will be resolved within the capitalist framework- a position which was passionately challenged by Braveman (1974) and subsequent labour process theorists.
Eventually, this leads Blauner to a position of technological determinism: he suggests that greater automation will free workers from drudgery of assembly-lines and machine-minding and will result in decreasing alienation for employees (Blauner, 1964: 182-2). This is an optimistic projection that suggests the problem of alienation will be resolved within the capitalist framework- a position which was passionately challenged by Braveman (1974) and subsequent labour process theorists.
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