Abstract society

"Modern society has become abstract in the experience and consciousness of man"; this has happened because of a discrepancy between the objective autonomy of institutions and the subjective autonomy of the individual. The individual is subject to the social control of many institutions, but none of them control him totally.

"Because of segmentation, the social structure leaves voids...which the individual fills with private meanings, his dreams, phantasies, explanations and justifications. Since they lie between the institutional segments of pluralistic society, these private meanings escape control and rationality of the rest of social structure and are experienced as the subjective and unalienable [sic] foundation of human existence. The individual calls this his private autonomy or even "freedom", but is unaware that this freedom is merely residual: it is, so to speak, put together from the leftovers of a segmented social structure." 

-from Mennell's 1973 review of Abstract Society