STRUCTURE‐BLINDNESS: A NON‐IDEOLOGICAL COMPONENT OF FALSE CONSCIOUSNESS Available to Purchase

Mainstream sociology tends to consider mental processes and their underlying structures, including the perception of society, mainly to be a result of socialization, which is generally conceptualized in terms of the more or less intentional, interpersonal transmission of cultural elements. In contrast and rightly so, marxist theory has always insisted on praxis as an essential feature of consciousness formation. The concept of alienation, when it is not entirely subjectivized (as it is in the Seeman tradition), is usually derived directly from basic structural conditions of capitalism, especially from the coerced division of labor (Wallimann 1981). Conceived to be a constant of the entire system, it is of little use to explain within‐system variations of current images of society and of one's place within it.