Guest Editors:
Mahmood Shahabi, Department of Sociology and social planning, Shiraz University, Shiraz, Iran. Piotr Chomczyński, Department of Sociology of Art, University of Łódź, Department of Forensic Sciences, University of Applied Sciences in Piła, Poland.
Roger Guy, Department of Criminal Justice, State University of New York at Oswego, USA.
The definition of the word alienation reads in the dictionary as follows: “the state or experience of being isolated from a group or an activity to which one should belong or in which one should be involved” (Carter, 2014:4). Moreover, definitions of alienation include ‘‘loss of self, anxiety states, anomie, despair, depersonalization, rootlessness, apathy, social disorganisation, loneliness, atomization, powerless, meaninglessness, isolation, pessimism, and the loss of beliefs or values’’ (Feuerlicht 1978:10). Alienation had also been associated with ‘‘apathy, authoritarianism, conformity, cynicism, hoboism, political apathy, political hyperactivity or personalization in politics, prejudice, privatization, psychosis, regression and suicide’’ (Dean 1961: 753).