Ideology. Marius S. Ostrowski

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1 Introduction

Among the concepts that colour social life and permeate social research, few carry as many and as diverse connotations as ‘ideology’. In essence, ‘ideology’ signifies a worldview or overarching philosophy, constituted by an integrated body of individual or collective characteristic claims, aims, principles, beliefs, and manners of thinking. Yet, in our vernacular usage, we also inflect the term with a series of highly specific and loaded overtones. We call ‘ideological’ ideas and arguments that we consider wrong and misleading, that we find lacking in evidence, limited and ‘broad-brush’ as opposed to nuanced and comprehensive. We use the word to dismiss implausible, abstract theorising when it crowds out sensible pragmatism, idealism versus a solid grip on reality, and fanciful ‘visionary’ speculation when we want ‘cold hard facts’. ‘Ideology’ means something dangerous and risky, weird and abnormal rather than mainstream, radical as opposed to moderate, synonymous with ‘taking things too far’. The term sometimes takes on religious associations: the doctrinal formality of a credo, dogma, or gospel; the zealotry and fanaticism of the ‘true believer’. Similarly, we think of ideology as ossifying or freezing discussion and debate, trapping us in a state of opinionated, unreflective mindlessness. This often overlaps with advocacy and propaganda (especially from official or pre-eminent sources), grandstanding, ‘playing to the gallery’, bias, and blind partisanship rather than impartiality. ‘Ideology’ becomes tied up in the material and cultural self-interest of (especially powerful) social groups, who pursue a hidden, nefarious agenda for society with crusading militancy. Meanwhile, we use the most iconic signifier of ideology, the ‘ism’, to casually and indiscriminately refer to almost any ‘way of thinking’ (or ‘being’) or collection of ideas: transnationalism, postmodernism, neoliberalism, Peronism, secularism, of course, but also truism, witticism, neologism, alcoholism, ageism, and so on.

At the same time, in its original historical form, ‘ideology’ denotes the ‘study of ideas’, in the same sense as the (often scientific) acquisition of knowledge associated with constructs such as ‘biology’, ‘criminology’, or ‘sociology’. Paring the concept down to its semantic roots reveals the rich penumbra of allusive meaning that surrounds it. The ‘ideo-’ morpheme stems from the ancient Greek word ἰδέα: a form or shape, a kind or class of ‘element’ with a certain inherent nature or quality, a particular outward semblance or appearance, expressing a clear archetypical style, mode, or fashion, all encapsulated in terms such as ‘principle’, ‘notion’, and ultimately ‘idea’. In turn, ἰδέα connotes εἶδος, which shares the meanings of ‘form’, ‘kind’, ‘quality’, and ‘appearance’ but expands on them to incorporate physical figural ‘looks’, a typical habit, exemplifying or constitutive pattern, state or situation, policy or plan of action, even designated province or department of referential meaning, thus covering the gamut from ‘core essence’ to ‘visible likeness’. Meanwhile, the ‘logy’ suffix derives from the notoriously multifarious word λόγος: fundamentally, it refers to a word or utterance and the process of thought or reflection; yet these meanings are both stretched to cover wider language and spoken expression, phrases and even full sentences, argumentative reasoning, deliberation, and explanation, which together shape debate, discussion, and dialogue. In turn, these inform a vast range of further meanings, from computational reckoning and measurement to reputation, value, and esteem; relations of correspondence to regulative laws; statements of case and cause to formulated hypotheses; mentions of rumour and hearsay to narrative histories or legendary tales; proverbial maxims, proposed resolutions, assertive commands, eloquent literature, and all other senses of purposive discourse. Perhaps the most accurate way to distil these all into a single definition is to describe ‘ideology’ as literally an ‘account’ or ‘telling’ (i.e., both enumeration and narration) of ideas. Through metonymy, ‘ideology’ has shifted from referring to a field of study to naming the object of study itself, as with ‘geology’, ‘pathology’, or ‘technology’; but the sense of a deliberate, meaningful arrangement of ideas has remained.

These two alternative ways of parsing the concept of ‘ideology’ speak to rival understandings of the role that ideas and their patterned groupings play in society (Boudon 1989, 23; Geuss 1981, 4–25; Thompson 1990, 5–7). The first casts ideology in a pejorative or negative light: as a source or instrument of dissimulation and manipulation, which fosters equally fictitious unity and disunity among us where neither need exist. The second understanding adopts a non-pejorative if not strictly positive view of ideology: as a way to understand and describe the nature and meaning of the world around us. While there is scope for overlap and compatibility between their claims about ‘what ideology is and does’, these two understandings have engaged in a long-running struggle for epistemic primacy. Over the two centuries that have elapsed since the term ‘ideology’ entered the lexicon of social research, their relative balance has continually oscillated, propelled by many crucial developments and ‘watershed’ events that punctuated society’s historical trajectory. Mass enfranchisement, economic collapse, total war and genocide, colonialism and decolonisation, religious revival, and the proliferation of countercultures all left their mark on our conceptions of ideology, tying it to an ever-expanding range of views covering everything from personal identity and behaviour to models of social order. Meanwhile, the analytical study of ideology and ideologies (‘ideologology’!) has at various times fostered, resisted, aligned with, and cross-cut these trends. Some approaches have understood their essential task as being to expose and undo the damage ideology causes, from the first Marxists and later the first critical theorists to ‘end of ideology’ and ‘end of history’ approaches. Others favour the more equivocal role of seeking to accurately determine ideology’s ‘laws of motion’, from the original idéologues and subsequently the first political scientists to the social theorists, intellectual historians, and social psychologists working on ideology today.

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