ABSTRACT
Introduction Seeman (1972:473) defi nes cultural or value estrangement, one of his fi ve varieties of alienation, as “an individual’s [i] rejection of or [ii] sense of removal from dominant social values.” Gone unnoticed is that this defi nition delineates two very different experiences of cultural estrangement. In the fi rst kind (CE 1 ), individuals willfully separate from and largely reject the dominant, or core, values of their own culture or society. They can do so with an air of superiority if, for example, they feel and show disdain, or even contempt, for materialistic, consumerist society (Stauth and Turner 1988). In the second case (CE 2 ), individuals accept the core beliefs and values of the dominant cultural worldview, but opine that their views, performance, and/or behavior do not align with, or ‘measure up to’, the culture’s value expectations; they can consequently experience lowered self-esteem, anxiety, or existential dread or terror.
