Unemployment and the economic crisis are the brutal facts of life in the everyday world around us. For many, the only retreat from this is to the privatized world of the suburbs, middle-class housing estates and high rise developments — a separate world in which the individual often feels entrapped and politically impotent.
In The Privatised World (first published in 1978), Arthur Brittan argues that the experience of privatisation in contemporary society is reflected in sociology by the proliferation of social theories which appear to be obsessed with the self and consciousness. Carefully avoiding the pitfalls of a merely autobiographical response, he analyses the phenomenon and concludes that it is precisely because the privatised world does dominate the consciousness of so many people in Western societies that it is difficult to dismiss the partial and pessimistic theories which so many social theorists have employed to explain their predicament.
This book will be of interest to students and researchers of sociology and social psychology.
1. Introduction: the negation of the self Part one 2. Everyday life and reality 3. Privatisation and fragmentation Part two 4. The biographical self 5. Identity and illusion 6. A concrete humanism? 7. Addendum: Private readings and the dictatorship of the script
Biography
Arthur Brittan, at the time of the first publication, was Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of York. He is the author of Meanings and Situations (1973).
Review of the first publication:
“Brittan has produced a conceptually stimulating, useful discussion of important strains in contemporary social theory. He is particularly careful in acknowledging the epistemological liabilities of microsociology, and he demonstrates an impressive command of the literature in both sociological theory and social philosophy.”
— C. Ronald Huff, Purdue University
