To what extent do survival strategies help counter worker alienation.

Essay by sdg8481University, Bachelor'sB, February 2003

download word file, 13 pages 4.1

Downloaded 116 times

To what extent do the 'survival strategies' counter work alienation?

This title is self-explanatory and can lead into discussions about the many types of survival strategy and the theory of work alienation. Throughout the first part of this essay I will be defining and giving brief information on such issues, and will identify many of the studies and theorists that have been concerned with the notion of survival strategies and alienation. However, my main arguments will not be centred around these individual phoneme, but whether or not they interact and whether workers use survival strategies to help cope with and reduce alienation at work, and if so how and why they participate in such activities.

The theory of alienation is one that has been the subject of many debates over the past century, two of the most influential theorists in this field are Karl Marx and Robert Blauner. Although there have been many different arguments about if, how and why alienation exists, still no common definition has been agreed upon.

This is due to the fact that both Marx and Blauner view the origin of alienation differently, For example Marx argues that alienation is purely an objective experience that is suffered by all workers, as a direct consequence of the emergence of the capitalist society. Whilst Blauner believes that it can be subjective as well, and does not necessarily effect every worker the same way. However, one definition that has been given by Blauner is that alienation is "a general syndrome made up of a number of different objective conditions and subjective feeling-states which emerge from certain relationships between workers and the socio-technical settings of employment" (Blauner, 1964, pg 15). However as mentioned above Karl Marx would disagree with this statement as he believes that subjectivity is irrelevant as...