The concept of reification is used by Marx to describe a form of social consciousness in which human relations come to be identified with the physical properties of things, thereby acquiring an appearance of naturalness and inevitability. This essay presents a systematic reconstruction of Marx's theory of reification, with an emphasis on the social-structural dimensions of the concept. This rec...

Information retrieval diiers signiicantly from function approximation in that the goal is for the system to achieve the same ranking function of documents relative to queries as the user: the outputs of the system relative to one another must be in the proper order. We hypothesize that a particular rank-order statistic, Guttman's point alienation, is the proper objective function for such a sys...

Through two case studies, the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company, we demonstrate how successful participatory organisations can be seen as 'engines of alternative objectivity' rather than as the subjective other to objective, biomedical science. With the term 'alternative objectivity', we point to collectivisations of experience that are different to biomedical science but...

Studies are beginning to show the importance of appraisals to different types and severities of psychiatric disorders. Yet, little work in this area has assessed whether trauma-related appraisals can differentiate complex trauma-related disorders, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and dissociative identity disorder (DID). The current study evaluated whether any of 6 trauma-related ap...

The paper presents an introduction to and summary of the concept of alienation as found in the works of Karl Marx, from a developmental perspective. Five separate works, ranging from his early to later writings, are discussed. Tlie paper argues that Marx's concept of alienation is a continuous clarification and expansion of ideas first put forth in 1844. His development in economics supports an...

This article presents an examination of class-based inequalities in turnout at British elections. These inequalities have substantially grown, and the class divide in participation has become greater than the class divide in vote choice between the two main parties. To account for class inequalities in turnout three main hypotheses – to do with policy indifference, policy alienation and social ...

This paper discusses the problem of alienation from nature, considered through phenomena reification and de-objectification. I propose understanding as result a distorted relation between subjective objective suggest tentative solution via combination two ethico-political practices: releasement reappropriation. In doing so, put forward structural-ethical critique response to our current ecologi...

OBJECTIVE The study compared the qualitative aspects of the loneliness experience of the dying, their caregivers, and the general population. METHOD The patients were recruited in an oncological hospice in Israel, and, despite being on their deathbed, agreed to participate in the study. Thirty-seven cancer-stricken patients, 78 caregivers, and 128 participants from the general population volu...