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Mass Society deals with the total outlook of human including modern politics culture, social inequality, community life, and problems. The book reviews the history of democracy and discontent. The text analyzes the mob rule, the disenchantment of progress, and the history of democracy. Modern sociological theory explains the opposition of two extreme societal models to describe the historical dynamics of mankind. The book is an attempt to explain that a mass society outlook exists and has some inner coherence and distinctive quality. The author argues that such outlook or theory is a prominen

Intro -- Table of Contents -- FOREWORD -- PREFACE - THE UNIVERSAL AGAINST THE MASSES -- PART ONE -- CHAPTER I-WHAT IS A FREE MAN? -- CHAPTER II-LOST LIBERTIES -- CHAPTER III-TECHNIQUES OF DEGRADATION -- CHAPTER IV-TECHNICAL PROGRESS AND SIN -- PART TWO -- CHAPTER I-THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD -- CHAPTER II-THE FANATICIZED CONSCIOUSNESS -- CHAPTER III-THE SPIRIT OF ABSTRACTION, AS A FACTOR MAKING FOR WAR -- CHAPTER IV-THE CRISIS OF VALUES IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD -- CHAPTER V-THE DEGRADATION OF THE IDEA OF SERVICE, AND THE DEPERSONALIZATION OF HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS -- PART THREE -- CHAPTER I-PESSIMISM AND THE ESCHATOLOGICAL CONSCIOUSNESS -- CHAPTER II-MAN AGAINST HISTORY -- CHAPTER III-THE REINTEGRATION OF HONOUR -- CONCLUSION - THE UNIVERSAL AGAINST THE MASSES (II).

The 2 forms of the modern party system, totalitarianism & mass democracy, are interlinked manifestations of mass society. Their main diff lies in their patterns of party-gov relations. The totalitarian party absorbing all pol'al jobs, confines the gov to technical functions, whereas mass democracy respects the diff between the elaboration of the pol'al formula by the parties & the executive decision by the gov. All modern parties are threatened by dwindling of mass contacts, but the dangers inherent in the loss of spontaneity are greater & more unavoidable for the totalitarian than for the democratic parties, as rigid control & spontaneity are mutually exclusive. As long as there continues strife between societies, foreshadowing the need to master unforeseen situations, politics is bound to amount to something more than the rational ordering of calculable claims. AA-IPSA.

""The Politics of Mass Society"" explores the social conditions necessary for democracy and the vulnerabilities of large scale society to totalitarian systems. Mass movements mobilize people who are alienated from the social system, who do not believe in the legitimacy of the established order, and who are therefore ready to engage in efforts to destroy. Contrary to the psychological approach prevalent in European doctrines of mass movements, Kornhauser persuasively argues that social order is the critical factor. The greatest number of people available to mass movements are located in thos

The theory of the mass society is central to the thinking of the principal aristocratic, Cath, or Existentialist critics of contemporary Western society. Exerpts are presented representative of the views of Ortega y Gasset, E. Junger, K. Mannheim, Gabriel Marcel, E. Lederer & others. These views are criticized as (1) not reflecting the richly striated soc relations of the real world; (2) confusing judgments as to the quality of modern experience with statements concerning the disorganization of society created by industrialization & by the demand of the masses for equality, (3) overlooking the human capacity for adaptiveness & creativeness in shaping new soc forms; (4) completely riddling the distinction between Gemeinschaften & Gesellschaften with value judgments; & (5) caricaturing life in mass society to the point that an attack on sci itself results. In addition to contradictions in usage, ambiguities in terminology & a lack of historical sense, the theory of mass society harbors a defense of an aristocratic cultural tradition that carries with it a doubt that the large mass of mankind can ever become truly educated or acquire an appreciation of culture. Soc & cultural change is probably greater & more rapid today in the US than in any other country, but the assumption that soc disorder & anomie inevitably attend such change is not borne out in this case. The theory of the mass society no longer serves as a description of Western society, but as an ideology of romantic protest against contemporary society. J. A. Fishman.

Abstract The case study of a small New York town that dramatized the thesis that the secular expansion of macro forces—urbanization, industrialization, bureaucratization—has permanently reduced the autonomy of all small communities is an example of a special type of discovery/persuasion strategy in the social sciences: the "opposition case study." In contrast to the more rigorous "competitive test" or the atheoretical "negative case," opposition case studies confront the dominant perspective with a qualitative illustration of a new theory in the context of a zero‐sum game. When they are successful, opposition cases meet four criteria: the dominant view is immediately rendered obsolete; the origin of the new idea supports its plausibility; the new perspective is shown to be testable; and the new perspective quickly generates new lines of research. Small Town in Mass Society meets the first criterion, and may have been heuristic, but its probable origin in populist ideology undermines its testability.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction A Certain Rush of Energy -- Part I: The Social in the Subject -- Chapter 1: Modern Savagery Mana beyond the Empiricist Settlement -- Chapter 2: Ecstatic Life and Social Form Collective Effervescence and the Primitive Settlement -- Part II: The Subject in the Social -- Chapter 3: Anxious Autonomy The Agony of Perfect Addressability and the Aesthetic Settlement -- Chapter 4: Are You Talking to Me? Eros and Nomos in the Mimetic Archive -- Notes -- References -- Index