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| The sense that one has lost control over social institutions that one has participated in creating; often characterized as estrangement from the self and from the society as a whole. |
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| Rule by a few within an organization or in the society as a whole. |
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| A generalization posited by Robert Michels (1915, 365): "Who says organization, says oligarchy." |
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| Power and authority concentrated into a few offices. |
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| An idea, invention, or discovery that is truly revolutionary in nature such that it stimulates many other innovations or changes the way of life of the sociocultural system. |
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| According to C. Wright Mills, men in the highest positions of government, corporations, and the military, who hold enormous power in modern industrial societies. |
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| A policy that emphasizes military preparedness, threats, and action in addressing problems of state. A glorification of military ideals and capabilities. |
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| A government system that provides a range of human services for its citizens. |
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| Government aid to the upper and middle classes. Often, this aid is disguised in the form of tax breaks (e.g., a deduction for interest on home mortgages) or subsidized services (e.g., higher education). |
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| A legally recognized organization set up for profit in which the powers and liabilities of the organization are legally separate from the owners or the employees. |
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| The paradox of supremely rational organizations—that is, bureaucracies—acting in ways that are very irrational in terms of the well-being of the total society. |
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| Weber’s term that refers to value-oriented rationality. |
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| The use of zweckrational—goal-oriented rational behaviour—to achieve a goal without thought to wider social values, traditions, or emotions. |
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| Weber’s term for rationality exercised within a context of human values, traditions, and emotions. |
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| Characterized by an emphasis on the whole system and on the interdependent nature of the parts of that system. |
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| Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation (CAFO) |
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| An industrial process that concentrates large numbers of animals in confined spaces for the purposes of the mass production of livestock. |
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