Forms of Alienation from the Perspective of City Sociologists

In all areas of life, including city life, human beings want to find meanings and if they do not find their desired original meaning, they become alienated in different forms. Results of a systematic review among city sociologists on their ideas about alienation show that urban alienation has five major forms including: blasé that indicates the incapability of the human nervous system in response to the urban incentives and considering these incentives as similar, anomi which represents the loosing ties, chaos, passivity of individuals, and their soaking in a mass society. Flander which indicates someone who lives in a city and observes people’s wandering and has nothing to do except wandering in urban areas and appraising retail shops without the intention or the financial ability to buy anything. Special alienation which suggests the domination of new urban spaces over people so that they do not know how to deal with the new spaces created, and finally collective alienation which results in the formation of history, culture, products, and relatives. In addition, urban alienation and its different forms are essentially under the influence of cultural, social, and economical features of capitalist cities.