Transcript Slides File - FBE Moodle

What is Ideology
PSIR401
• "An organization of opinions, attitudes, and
values-a way of thinking about man and
society. We may speak of an individual's total
ideology or of his ideology with respect to
different areas of social life; politics,
economics, religion, minority groups, and so
forth" (Adorno et al. 1950: 2).
Neighbouring terms
• "belief-system”
• Worldview, attitude, symbol, myth, value,
philosophy, rhetoric, culture, etc.
• But, ideology is a concept that is well-settled.
• In Social Science Citation Index, in 1992,
roughly 800 citations under the subjectheadings "ideological," "ideologies," and
"ideology were listed.
History of the term
• . Machiavelli, Bacon, Locke, Condillac, Comte,
Feuerbach, Hegel, Pareto, Sorel, Durkheim,
Lukacs, Gramsci, Weber, Mannheim, Kuhn,
Freud (and later psychoanalytically oriented
theorists like Ricoeur and Lacan), Marx, the
Frankfurt School, and a whole range of neo- or
post-marxists (e.g., Castoriadis, Lefort,
Habermas), structuralists (e.g., Levi Strauss,
Kristeva, Barthes), and poststructuralists (e.g.,
Bourdieu, and the Tel Quel crew)
Usage of the term
• Gramsci: ["philosophies," "conceptions of the
world," "systems of thought," "forms of
consciousness"]
• " Sorel: "political myth"
• Lukacs: "class consciousness“
• Castoriadis: "social imaginary"
A framework
• 1. Location: Where is ideology located-in the mind, in
behavior, and or in language?
– Thought
– Behaviour
– Language: . Ideology is "the medium in which men and women
fight out their social and political battles at the level of signs,
meanings and representations” (Eagleton 1991: 11)
– "a verbal image of the good society.“ (Downs 1957: 96)
– "the lan guage of everyday life is the very locus of ideology and
the very site of the meaning which sustains relations of
domination" (Thompson Thompson (1984: 89-90)
• 2. Subject Matter: What is ideology about?
– Politics
– Power
– The world-at-large (social relations of production)
• “…the material transformation of the economic conditions of
production ... and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or
philosophic-in short, ideological-forms in which men become
conscious of this conflict and fight it out” (Marx and Engels)
• "the total structure of the mind of an epoch or class” (Mannheim)
• "maps of problematic social reality and matrices for the creation
of collective conscience." (Geertz: (1964/1973: 218 19)
• 3. Subject: Who has ideologies? Who are the
"ideologists"?
– Social class: (Marxism)
– Any group: specific, socially sig nificant group or
class" (Eagleton 1991: 29).
– Any group or individual:
• Position: hallmark of a group in a particular
strategic position within society.
– which status is more ideological-an "in-group"
whose ideology legitimates a relationship of
domination, or an "out-group" whose ideology is a
protest against an exclusionary or discriminatory
social hierarchy.
• (Position continues):
– Dominant: "The ideas of the ruling class are in every
epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the
ruling material force in society, is at the same time its
ruling intellectual force “ (Marx and Engels 1970: 64)
– "structures of domination”: Ideology "bolsters stable
institutional arrangements by explaining, justifying,
and prompting support for a particular stratification
system whose failure or demise will lead to the
disintegration of a particular pattern of control"
(Wilson 1992: 19).
• (Position continues):
– Subordinate: movements of the extreme left or
right
– ie groups or individuals protesting the existing
sociopolitical order (e.g., Feuer 1975).
– Ideologists are commonly described as
"Alienated" and "Extremist."
– Shils (1967: 66), in the same vein, writes:
"Ideologies...entail an aggressive alienation from
the existing society.”
• 5. Function:
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Explaining
Repressing
Integrated
Motivating: "The significance of ideology," Mullins
(1972: 509) states succinctly, "is not that it causes one
to do but that it gives one cause for doing”
– Legitimating:
• the legitimation function of ideology is understood to be
illegitimate
• 6. Motivation: Motivation to be in some way
determinative of ideology
– Interest-based: "The class which has the means of
material production at its disposal, has control at
the same time over the means of mental
production, so that thereby, generally speaking,
the ideas of those who lack the means of mental
production are subject to it. The ruling ideas are
nothing more than the ideal expression of the
dominant material relationships."
• (Motivation continues):
– Non-interest based:
– Non-expedient:
• 7. Cognitive/Affective
Structure:
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Coherence (internal)
Contrast (external)
Abstraction:
Specificity:
Hierarchy:
Stability:
Knowledge
Sophistication
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Facticity
Simplicity
Distortion
Conviction
Insincerity
Dogmatism
Consciousness
Unconsciousness