The Homeless Mind

Penguin [Published Date: 1974]. Soft cover, 232 pp. Cover illustration by Michael Foreman [From back cover] What have modernization and its institutions done to modern consciousness? Technology, far from liberating man, has increased his feelings of helplessness, frustration and alienation. Hence the crowning irony of today. While the nations of the Third World are desperately trying to modernize, the industrialized nations of the West are being challenged by countercultures advocating a return to a simpler life. In The Homeless Mind three distinguished sociologists deal with both aspects of the irony. They analyse how modernization in the Third World is splintering traditional ways of life, ways of thought and kinship patterns; and they deal with the questioning of this process in the industrialized world, and with the real meaning of the counterculture. The authors have adopted a striking new approach to the dilemma of modern man, homeless in a world he has unwittingly created; and their conclusion points out the practical and political implications for the Third World and for the West.