Define Atomization

[Skyhilist]

I here this word used a lot, but to be honest, don't really know what it means. I looked it up but it just gave me stuff relating to physics and no usage of the word from a political perspective.

Could anyone please explain to me what is meant when people say "capitalism atomizes people" and what exactly the word 'atomization' means?

I always assumed based on context that it atomization meant dividing people based on arbitrary things, but I really have no idea so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

[Astarte]

It essentially is much the same concept as alienation, but specifically focuses on the economic 'unitization' and isolation capitalism reduces the individual to which in turn has a qualitative 'ripple effect' which effects all aspects of class life under capitalist hegemony.

[blake 3:17]

In socialist language (and others) it means people acting and thinking as individuals with little or no regard for others.

[MarxSchmarx]

The explanation that I prefer is one where actual living, breathing human beings come to, for the most part, act as if they are the "individual" particles posited by classical capitalist economic thinking.

The analogy to atoms in the physical sciences is more than superficial. Just as the physical world is posited by old-school physicists as being made up of indivisible "atoms", so too is the social world assumed to be made up of indivisible (atomized) "individuals". The analogy collapses on so many levels, but its ubiquity is apparent in comments such as Maggie's "There is no society" and so on. It is, of course, no mistake that both the resurgence in atomism and the foundations of capitalist eocnomics arose during a common stage of development in western europe.

[Rocky Rococo]

The liquidation of the social structures, both formal and informal, that give definition, identity, and a varying degree of social protection to the mass classes in society. By stripping away these bonds, individuals are left helpless, practically, politically and ideologically before the powers the hegemonic class. In this relation of concentrated power versus lonely helplessness, submission to the ideology and mores of the hegemonic class becomes normalized behavior, in the US dressed up as "rugged individualism".

[ckaihatsu]

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Alienation (Entfremdung) is the systemic result of living in a socially stratified society, because being a mechanistic part of a social class alienates a person from his and her humanity. The theoretic basis of alienation within the capitalist mode of production is that the worker invariably loses the ability to determine his or her life and destiny, when deprived of the right to think (conceive) of himself as the director of his actions; to determine the character of said actions; to define his relationship with other people; and to own the things and use the value of the goods and services, produced with his labour. Although the worker is an autonomous, self-realised human being, as an economic entity, he or she is directed to goals and diverted to activities that are dictated by the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production, in order to extract from the worker the maximal amount of surplus value, in the course of business competition among industrialists.




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation





Anomie describes a lack of social norms; "normlessness".[1] It describes the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and their community, if under unruly scenarios possibly resulting in fragmentation of social identity and rejection of self-regulatory values.[2] It was popularized by French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his influential book Suicide (1897). Durkheim borrowed the word from French philosopher Jean-Marie Guyau. Durkheim never uses the term normlessness; rather, he describes anomie as "a rule the lack of rule",[3] "derangement", and "an insatiable will".[4]
For Durkheim, anomie arises more generally from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is a nurtured condition




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomie