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Introduction
It seems likely that most people have felt like outsiders at least once in their lives, but some people feel that way nearly all of the time. Some people, no matter where they go or how long they live, feel alienated from the individuals and institutions around them. These are the chronic strangers that give this site its name and if you are one, then I hope you will share your knowledge and experience here.
The purpose of this site is to build communities of inquiry dedicated to the understanding of chronic social alienation. This site is not for self-help or self-diagnosis, nor is its purpose to disseminate that vague, ubiquitous web-commodity that we call “resources”. This site exists not to give help but to ask for it. My name is Joshua Clegg, a social psychologist at John Jay College, City University of New York, and I created this site in the hope that some of those whose lives are chronically alienated will find their way here; and that they will then find a desire to help in the search for understanding.
The simplest form of participation in this community would be to read what others have written here but you can also participate actively in the production and transformation of all of the information on this site. There are three primary sources of information: the forum includes general discussions of chronic social alienation as well as a special thread where individuals can post their own narratives of this experience; the wiki is based on my outline of this experience as I understand it, both from the subjective perspective and from the scientific one; the public version of this wiki can be modified by anyone; finally, under the projects link there are descriptions of collaborative attempts at investigating chronic social alienation.
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