Alienation in mass societies: the lot of the social margin or the common condition of humanity?

The article contains an attempt to consider the problem whether alienation, determined on the basis of the features of the social status of groups and individuals as well as on the basis of the state of their consciousness, is a symptomatic feature of contemporary mass societies. The author distinguishes between three types of alienation: impendence, isolation and inability, and analyses the arguments pointing to the fact that the states of the above kind have also been known to societies which could not be called „mass societies". The final part of the article contains the presentation of typical relations existing between a given type of alientation and the type of social order and points out to the relation between the way the conceptions of alienation are formulated and the places the individuals and/or groups occupy in the social structure.Digitalizacja i deponowanie archiwalnych zeszytów RPEiS sfinansowane przez MNiSW w ramach realizacji umowy nr 541/P-DUN/201