Landscapes of Abandonment

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Landscapes of Abandonment
Capitalism, Modernity, and Estrangement

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Roger A. Salerno - Author

SUNY series in the Sociology of Culture

Price: $65.50
Hardcover - 280 pages

Release Date: October 2003

ISBN10: 0-7914-5845-8
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-5845-7

Price: $24.95
Paperback - 280 pages

Release Date: October 2003

ISBN10: 0-7914-5846-6
ISBN13: 978-0-7914-5846-4

Summary

Examines the relationship of modern life, including modern capitalism, to feelings and phenomena of abandonment.

Using social theory and cultural analysis, Roger A. Salerno explores the relationship of abandonment to the construction of contemporary capitalistic cultures. Beginning with an array of narratives on the emergence of capitalism in the West and its undermining of traditional social institutions and structures, he provides an overview of both the definition of and reactions to abandonment, analyzing its historical, social, and psychological dimensions. The author contends that abandonment anxiety and feelings of estrangement not only have deep psychological roots, but also important social causes and cultural manifestations such as a quest for security or a hunger for commodities. Salerno surveys important contributions of writers, artists, philosophers, and social scientists and how their work expresses this sense of modern abandonment. He also examines how and why this phenomenon has become a central motif in renderings of community, the environment, and the process of globalization and presents a richer understanding of our modern social condition.

"Roger Salerno explores the metaphor of abandonment in an amazing variety of texts, genres, cultures, and human experiences. He shows how the sense of abandonment may turn out to be a source of unity in today's world. This book is a new Anatomy of Melancholy, but it suggests there may be ways, tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, to transcend our shared melancholy." — Marshall Berman, CUNY, author of All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity

"Landscapes of Abandonment is an original treatment of an important cultural force." — Robert P. Weiss, State University of New York at Plattsburgh

Roger A. Salerno is Associate Professor of Sociology at Pace University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Landscape of Abandonment

1. Capitalism, Abandonment, and Modernity

2. Abandonment and Social Theory

3. Psychology of Separation and Loss

4. Fragmentation and Abandonment of Conscience

5. Abandonment of Community

6. Abandonment of Nature

7. Dark Utopia: Globilization and Abandonment

Notes

Index

Related Subjects

Cultural Critique
Cultural Studies
Sociology
Social Thought

41786/41787(NE/DG/AV)