Anideology is a set ofbeliefs or values attributed to a person or group of persons, especially those held for reasons that are not purely about belief in certainknowledge,[1][2] in which "practical elements are as prominent as theoretical ones".[3] Formerly applied primarily toeconomic,political, orreligious theories and policies, in a tradition going back toKarl Marx andFriedrich Engels, more recent use treats the term as mainly condemnatory.[4]
The termideology originates fromFrenchidéologie, itself coined from combiningGreek:idéā (ἰδέα, 'notion, pattern'; close to theLockean sense ofidea) and-logíā (-λογῐ́ᾱ, 'the study of').
Hoping to form a secure foundation for themoral andpolitical sciences, Tracy devised the term for a "science of ideas", basing such upon two things: (1) thesensations that people experience as they interact with the material world; and (2) the ideas that form in their minds due to those sensations. Tracy conceived ofideology as aliberal philosophy that would defendindividual liberty,property,free markets, and constitutional limits on statepower. He argues that, among these aspects, ideology is the most generic term because the 'science of ideas' also contains the study of their expression and deduction.[6] Thecoup d'état that overthrewMaximilien Robespierre in July 1794 allowed Tracy to pursue his work.[6][need quotation to verify] Tracy reacted to the terroristic phase of the revolution (during the Napoleonic regime of 1799 to 1815 as part of theNapoleonic Wars)[clarification needed] by trying to work out arational system of ideas to oppose theirrational mob-impulses that had nearly destroyed him.
A subsequent early source for the near-original meaning ofideology isHippolyte Taine's work on theAncien Régime,Origins of Contemporary France (French:Les Origines de la France Contemporaine) volume I (1875). He describesideology as rather like teaching philosophy via theSocratic method, though without extending the vocabulary beyond what the general reader already possessed, and without the examples from observation that practical science would require. Taine identifies it not just with Tracy but also with hismilieu, and includes Condillac as one of its precursors.
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821) came to viewideology as a term of abuse, which he often hurled against his liberal foes in Tracy'sInstitut national.[citation needed] According toKarl Mannheim's historical reconstruction of the shifts in the meaning ofideology, the modern meaning of the word was born when Napoleon used it to describe his opponents as "the ideologues".[citation needed] Tracy's major book,The Elements of Ideology (French:Élémens d'idéologie, published 1804-1815), was soon translated into major European languages.
In the century following Tracy's formulations, the termideology moved back and forth between positive and negative connotations. When post-Napoleonic governments adopted areactionary stance, the concept influenced the Italian, Spanish and Russian thinkers who had begun to describe themselves asliberals and who attempted to reignite revolutionary activity in the early 1820s, including theCarbonari societies in France and Italy and theDecembrists in Russia.Karl Marx (1818-1883) adopted Napoleon's negative sense of the term, using it in his writings, in which he once described Tracy as afischblütige Bourgeoisdoktrinär (a "fish-blooded bourgeois doctrinaire").[7] The term has since dropped some of its pejorative sting (euphemism treadmill), and has become a neutral term in the analysis of differingpolitical opinions and views ofsocial groups.[8] While Marx situated the term withinclass struggle and domination,[9][10] others believed it was a necessary part ofinstitutional functioning andsocial integration.[11]
In parallel with post-Soviet Russian ideas about themono-ideologies of (for example)monotheism,Walter Brueggemann (1933- ) has examined "ideological extension" in historical religious/political contexts.[12]
There are many different kinds of ideologies, includingpolitical,social,epistemological, andethical. Recent analysis tends to posit thatideology is a 'coherent system of ideas' that rely on a few basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis. Through this system, ideas become coherent, repeated patterns through thesubjective ongoing choices that people make. These ideas serve as the seed around which furtherthought grows. The belief in an ideology can range from passive acceptance up to fervent advocacy. Definitions, such as byManfred Steger andPaul James, emphasize both the issue of patterning andcontingent claims to truth. They wrote: "Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth."[13]
Studies of the concept of ideology itself (rather than specific ideologies) have been carried out under the name ofsystematic ideology in the works of George Walford and Harold Walsby, who attempt to explore the relationships between ideology andsocial systems.[example needed] David W. Minar describes six different ways the wordideology has been used:[14]
As a collection of certain ideas with certain kinds ofcontent, usually normative;
As theform orinternal logical structure that ideas have within a set;
For Willard A. Mullins, anideology should be contrasted with the related (but different) issues ofutopia andhistorical myth. An ideology is composed of four basic characteristics:[15]
The indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to asocial structure
The process that converts social life to a natural reality
German philosopher Christian Duncker called for a "critical reflection of the ideology concept".[17] In his work, he strove to bring the concept of ideology into the foreground, as well as the closely connected concerns ofepistemology and history, definingideology in terms of a system of presentations that explicitly or implicitly lay claim to absolute truth.
Karl Marx posits that a society's dominant ideology is integral to its superstructure.
Marx's analysis sees ideology as a system of false consciousness that arises from the economic relationships, reflecting and perpetuating the interests of the dominant class.[18]
In the Marxistbase and superstructure model of society,base denotes therelations of production andmodes of production, andsuperstructure denotes thedominant ideology (i.e. religious, legal, political systems). The economic base of production determines the political superstructure of a society. Rulingclass-interests determine the superstructure and the nature of the justifying ideology—actions feasible because theruling class control themeans of production. For example, in afeudalmode of production, religious ideology is the most prominent aspect of the superstructure, while in capitalist formations, ideologies such asliberalism andsocial democracy dominate. Hence the great importance of ideology justifies a society and politically confuses the alienated groups of society viafalse consciousness. Some explanations have been presented.Antonio Gramsci usescultural hegemony to explain why theworking-class have a false ideological conception of what their best interests are. Marx argued: "The class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production."[19]
The Marxist formulation of "ideology as an instrument of social reproduction" is conceptually important to thesociology of knowledge,[20] viz.Karl Mannheim,Daniel Bell, andJürgen Habermas et al. Moreover, Mannheim has developed and progressed from the "total" but "special" Marxist conception of ideology to a "general" and "total" ideological conception acknowledging that all ideology (includingMarxism) resulted from social life, an idea developed by the sociologistPierre Bourdieu.Slavoj Žižek and the earlierFrankfurt School added to the "general theory" of ideology a psychoanalytic insight that ideologies do not include only conscious but alsounconscious ideas.
The French Marxist theoristGuy Debord, founding member of theSituationist International, argued that when the commodity becomes the "essential category" of society, i.e. when the process ofcommodification has been consummated to its fullest extent, the image of society propagated by the commodity (as it describes all of life as constituted by notions and objects deriving their value only as commodities tradeable in terms ofexchange value), colonizes all of life and reduces society to a mere representation,The Society of the Spectacle.[21]
The American philosopherEric Hoffer identified several elements that unify followers of a particular ideology:[22]
Hatred: "Mass movements can rise and spread without aGod, but never without belief in adevil."[22] The "ideal devil" is a foreigner.[22]: 93
Imitation: "The less satisfaction we derive from being ourselves, the greater is our desire to be like others…the more we mistrust our judgment and luck, the more are we ready to follow the example of others."[22]: 101–2
Persuasion: The proselytizing zeal of propagandists derives from "a passionate search for something not yet found more than a desire to bestow something we already have."[22]: 110
Coercion: Hoffer asserts that violence andfanaticism are interdependent. People forcibly converted toIslamic orcommunist beliefs become as fanatical as those who did the forcing. He says: "It takes fanatical faith to rationalize our cowardice."[22]: 107–8
Leadership: Without the leader, there is no movement. Often the leader must wait long in the wings until the time is ripe. He calls for sacrifices in the present, to justify his vision of a breathtaking future. The skills required include: audacity, brazenness, iron will, fanatical conviction; passionate hatred, cunning, a delight in symbols; ability to inspire blind faith in the masses; and a group of ablelieutenants.[22]: 112–4 Charlatanism is indispensable, and the leader often imitates both friend and foe, "a single-minded fashioning after a model." He will not lead followers towards the "promised land", but only "away from their unwanted selves".[22]: 116–9
Action: Original thoughts are suppressed, and unity encouraged, if the masses are kept occupied through great projects, marches, exploration and industry.[22]: 120–1
Suspicion: "There is prying and spying, tense watching and a tense awareness of being watched." This pathological mistrust goes unchallenged and encouragesconformity, notdissent.[22]: 124
Ronald Inglehart of theUniversity of Michigan is author of theWorld Values Survey, which, since 1980, has mapped social attitudes in 100 countries representing 90% of global population. Results indicate that where people live is likely to closely correlate with their ideological beliefs. In much of Africa, South Asia and the Middle East, people prefer traditional beliefs and are less tolerant of liberal values.Protestant Europe, at the other extreme, adheres more to secular beliefs and liberal values. Alone among high-income countries, the United States is exceptional in its adherence to traditional beliefs, in this case Christianity.
Methods: the most appropriate ways to achieve the ideal arrangement.
A political ideology largely concerns itself with how to allocatepower and to what ends power should be used. Some parties follow a certain ideology very closely, while others may take broad inspiration from a group of related ideologies without specifically embracing any one of them. Each political ideology contains certain ideas on what it considers the bestform of government (e.g.,democracy,demagogy,theocracy,caliphate etc.), scope of government (e.g.authoritarianism,libertarianism,federalism, etc.) and the besteconomic system (e.g.capitalism,socialism, etc.). Sometimes the same word is used to identify both an ideology and one of its main ideas. For instance,socialism may refer to an economic system, or it may refer to an ideology that supports that economic system. Post 1991, many commentators claim that we are living in a post-ideological age,[23] in which redemptive, all-encompassing ideologies have failed. This view is often associated withFrancis Fukuyama's writings on theend of history.[24] Contrastly, Nienhueser (2011) sees research (in the field ofhuman resource management) as ongoingly "generating ideology".[25]
PhilosopherMichael Oakeshott defines single-issue ideologies as "the formalized abridgment of the supposed sub-stratum of the rational truth contained in the tradition". Moreover, Charles Blattberg offers an account that distinguishes politicalideologies frompoliticalphilosophies.[27]
Slavoj Žižek argues how the very notion of post-ideology can enable the deepest, blindest form of ideology. A sort of false consciousness or false cynicism, engaged in for the purpose of lending one's point of view the respect of being objective, pretending neutral cynicism, without truly being so. Rather than help avoiding ideology, this lapse only deepens the commitment to an existing one. Zizek calls this "apost-modernist trap".[28]Peter Sloterdijk advanced the same idea already in 1988.[29]
When a political ideology becomes a dominantly pervasive component within a government, one can speak of anideocracy.[37] Different forms of government use ideology in various ways, not always restricted to politics and society. Certain ideas and schools of thought become favored, or rejected, over others, depending on their compatibility with or use for the reigning social order.
Even when the challenging of existing beliefs is encouraged, as in scientific theories, the dominantparadigm ormindset can prevent certain challenges, theories, or experiments from being advanced. A special case of science that has inspired ideology is ecology, which studies the relationships among living things on Earth. Perceptual psychologistJames J. Gibson believed that human perception of ecological relationships was the basis ofself-awareness andcognition itself.[43] LinguistGeorge Lakoff has proposed acognitive science of mathematics wherein even the most fundamental ideas of arithmetic would be seen as consequences or products of human perception—which is itself necessarily evolved within an ecology.[44]
A large amount of research inpsychology is concerned with the causes, consequences and content of ideology,[46][47][48] with humans being dubbed the "ideological animal" by Althusser.[49]: 269 Many theories have tried to explain the existence of ideology in human societies.[49]: 269
Jost, Ledgerwood, and Hardin (2008) propose that ideologies may function as prepackaged units ofinterpretation that spread because of basic human motives to understand the world, avoidexistential threat, and maintain valuedinterpersonal relationships.[50] The authors conclude that such motives may lead disproportionately to the adoption of system-justifyingworldviews.[51] Psychologists generally agree thatpersonality traits, individual difference variables, needs, and ideological beliefs seem to have something in common.[51]
Just-world theory posits that people want to believe in a fair world for a sense of control and security and generate ideologies in order to maintain this belief, for example by justifiying inequality or unfortunate events. A critique of just world theory as a sole explanation of ideology is that it does not explain the differences between ideologies.[49]: 270–271
Terror management theory posits that ideology is used as adefence mechanism against threats to their worldview which in turn protect and individuals sense ofself-esteem and reduce their awareness of mortality. Evidence shows that priming individuals with an awareness of mortality does not cause individuals to respond in ways underpinned by any particular ideology, but rather the ideology that they are currently aware of.[49]: 271
System justification theory posits that people tend to defend existing society, even at times against their interest, which in turn causes people to create ideological explanations to justify the status quo. Jost, Fitzimmons and Kay argue that the motivation to protect a preexisting system is due to a desire for cognitive consistency (being able to think in similar ways over time), reducinguncertainty and reducing effort, illusion of control and fear of equality.[49]: 272 According to system justification theory,[50] ideologies reflect (unconscious)motivational processes, as opposed to the view that political convictions always reflect independent and unbiased thinking.[50]
[Ideology] identifies a unitary object that incorporates complex sets of meanings with the social agents and processes that produced them. No other term captures this object as well as 'ideology'.Foucault's 'episteme' is too narrow and abstract, not social enough. His 'discourse', popular because it covers some of ideology's terrain with less baggage, is too confined to verbal systems. 'Worldview' is toometaphysical, 'propaganda' too loaded. Despite or because of its contradictions, 'ideology' still plays a key role in semiotics oriented to social, political life.
Authors such asMichael Freeden have also recently incorporated asemantic analysis to the study of ideologies.
Sociologists defineideology as "cultural beliefs that justify particular social arrangements, including patterns of inequality".[53] Dominant groups use these sets of cultural beliefs and practices to justify the systems of inequality that maintain their group's social power over non-dominant groups. Ideologies use a society's symbol system to organize social relations in ahierarchy, with some social identities being superior to other social identities, which are considered inferior. The dominant ideology in a society is passed along through the society's major social institutions, such as the media, the family, education, and religion.[54] As societies changed throughout history, so did the ideologies that justified systems of inequality.[53]
"We do not need…to believe in an ideology. All that is necessary is for each of us to develop our good human qualities. The need for a sense of universal responsibility affects every aspect of modern life." —Dalai Lama[55]
"The function of ideology is to stabilize and perpetuate dominance through masking or illusion." —Sally Haslanger[56]
"[A]n ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the 'riddles of the universe,' or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws, which are supposed to rule nature and man." —Hannah Arendt[57]
^abKennedy, Emmet (Jul–Sep 1979). ""Ideology" from Destutt De Tracy to Marx".Journal of the History of Ideas.40 (3):353–368.doi:10.2307/2709242.JSTOR2709242.
^de Tracy, Antoine Destutt. [1801] 1817.Les Éléments d'idéologie, (3rd ed.). p. 4, as cited inMannheim, Karl. 1929. "The problem of 'false consciousness.'" InIdeologie und Utopie. 2nd footnote.
^Brueggemann, Walter (1 January 1998). "'Exodus' in the Plural (Amos 9:7)". InBrueggemann, Walter;Stroup, George W. (eds.).Many Voices, One God: Being Faithful in a Pluralistic World : in Honor of Shirley Guthrie. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 16, 28.ISBN9780664257576. Retrieved6 January 2025.[...] ideological extension of the 'onlyness' of Yahweh to include the 'onlyness' of Israel, which I shall termmono-ideology. [...] As Deuteronomy is a main force for mono-ideology in ancient Judaism, so it is possible to conclude that Calvinism has been a primary force for mono-ideology in modern Christian history because of its insistence upon God's sovereignty, which is very often allied with socioeconomic-political hegemony.
^Marx, Karl; Engels, Friedrich (1974). "I. Feuerbach: Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks".The German Ideology. [Students Edition]. Lawrence & Wishart. pp. 64–68.ISBN9780853152170.
^Marx, Karl (1978a)."The German Ideology: Part I", The Marx-Engels Reader 2nd ed. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
^Schlenker, Barry R.; Chambers, John R.; Le, Bonnie M. (April 2012). "Conservatives are happier than liberals, but why? Political ideology, personality, and life satisfaction".Journal of Research in Personality.46 (2):127–146.doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2011.12.009.
^abcdeGreenberg, Jeff; Koole, Sander Leon; Pyszczynski, Thomas A. (2004).Handbook of experimental existential psychology. New York: Guilford Press.ISBN978-1-59385-040-1.
^abcJost, John T., Alison Ledgerwood, and Curtis D. Hardin. 2008. "Shared reality, system justification, and the relational basis of ideological beliefs." pp. 171–186 inSocial and Personality Psychology Compass 2.
^abLee S. Dimin (2011).Corporatocracy: A Revolution in Progress. p. 140.
Gries, Peter Hays. 2014.The Politics of American Foreign Policy: How Ideology Divides Liberals and Conservatives over Foreign Affairs. Stanford:Stanford University Press.
Sorce Keller, Marcello [de;fr;it]. 2007. "Why is Music so Ideological, Why Do Totalitarian States Take It So Seriously: A Personal View from History, and the Social Sciences."Journal of Musicological Research 26(2–3):91–122.
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