Clifford Geertz,

The Interpretations of Culture

“Ideology as a cultural system”

 

Basic concepts in understanding ideology     

ideology implies:

bias

oversimplification

emotive language to stir up sentiments

adaptation to public prejudice

Ideology is best thought of as an expression of political faith in the power of ideas to alter social arrangements, institutional power, organizational frameworks and governing elites.

  First

One approach derives from the last century:

extreme left	center left	center right	extreme right	terms
radicals	libertarians	authoritarianism	reactionaries	beliefs
socialism	liberalism	conservatism	monarchism	policies
				spectrum
from the this century:
communism	progressives	neoconservatives	fascism	new terms
collective ownership	Mixed economy; public	Mixed economy; privatize	traditional military control	meaning

Examples of ideology along a spectrum of political perspectives is shown above.

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American examples tied to European writers

The underlying beliefs:

Geertz' argues that:

Ideology has become a form of "radical intellectual depravity."

"Ideology is a patterned reaction to dislocation, displacement, disrupted class relations, or decay of traditional political authority.... for it provides a 'symbolic outlet' for emotional disturbances generated by social disequilibrium."

(204)

"provides an 'advocatory explanation'that tends to obscure as much as to clarify the true  nature of the problems involved."

(205)

Recall, however this action will "call attention to" issues  making their "continued neglect more difficult."

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Ideology is a particular conception born of the 18th century Enlightenment

a combination of the study of ideas and the idealism of reform

a paradox of idealism and opportunism

1796 Tracy called for the replacement of metaphysics by ideology

                  the philosophy of mind is ideology

         A paper read at the National Institute of France

         1797 the term was used by  de Tracy in discussing self-evident ideals

 

1.1 ideological refers to he study of ideas; the science of ideas

"occupied with an idea or ideas of a visionary kind" such that real is set up as opposed to ideal conditions that an ideoloy is used to interpret.

 

          So as opposed to material there is the ideological

dialectical division
opposite categories	real	ideal
attributes:	physical	insubstantial
temporal character	actual	envisioned
conditions	practical	speculative
meanings	literal	figurative
emotive appeal	grounded	visionary
	material	ideological

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Ideology involves meaning, the expression of ideas to convey that meaning and a cultural context in which that meaning is understood.

1.2 The study of the way ideas are expressed in language and the means of intellectual expression. The science of language, imagery, idiomatic expressions and linguistics.     

A branch of philosophy, philology, or psychology dealing with the origin & nature of ideas.

An application of rhetorical devices to express convictions about the state of society.

2. Ideal or abstract speculation of visionary but of no earthly use.

 

Context: 1763-1829

The American and French Revolutions are considered in part to have been ideological challenges to the once unassailable preeminence of regal authority. Called the “divine right of kings,” the rejection of monarchy in the 18th century left a void of authority or a vacuum of power, filled of necessity by political parties espousing political beliefs in the form of ideals. These ideals were summed up by the philosopher Tracy as ideology.

Modern conditions, 1848-2009
Ideology is a product of the prevailing zeitgeist and a political weapon:

“The notion that ideology may in some cases affect what figures in a society as a standard of truth has, however, produced the rather large body of theory known as the sociology of knowledge.”  (Sabine, A History of Political Theory, p. 785)

Karl Marx wrote :  “Upon the different forms of property, upon the social conditions of existence rises and entire superstructure of distinct and characteristically formed sentiments, illusions, modes of thought and views of life. The entire class creates and forms them out of its material foundations and out of corresponding social relations.”

[ The Eighteenth of Brumaire, p. 40.]

Karl Marx, like Georg W. F. Hegel, earlier, contrasted appearance with reality.

Bur where Marx sees ideas arising from the material conditions of existence, on the other hand, Hegel saw the nation as the material manifestation of the world spirit, or weltgeist.

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Conclusive statements:

Ideologies then take the place of traditional religious, monarchical and military authority because the power those institutions once exerted over political discourse, social organization and individual behavior has deteriorated.

Socially and culturally speaking, Anthropologist Clifford Geertz sees humans as plastic characters, amorphous personalities with a propensity to follow crowd instincts, to conform, survive and thrive in a world dominated by bureaucratic institutions & industrial organization.

"man, is also the incomplete --, or more accurately, self completing animal. The agent of his own realization, he creates out of his general capacity for the construction of symbolic models the specific capabilities that define him." (218)

"it is through the construction of ideologies, schematic images of social order, that man makes himself for better or for worse a political animal."

The meaning of symbols

"cultural symbol-systems are extrinsic sources of information,

templates for the organization of social and psychological processes, they come most crucially into play in situations where the particular. . .  institutional guides for behavior, thought and feeling are weak or absent."

So too with ideology....The function of ideology is to make an autonomous politics possible by providing authoritative concepts that render it meaningful, the suasive images by means of which it can be sensibly grasped."

(218)

"ideologies begin to become crucial as sources of sociopolitical meanings and attitudes."

(219)

"Whatever else ideologies may be --  projections of unacknowledged fears [NAZISM], disguises for ulterior motives [CAPITALISM], phatic expressions of group solidarity [SOCIALISM], -- they are most distinctively maps of problematic social reality and matrices for the creation of collective conscience."

(220)

“ideological ferment is, of course, widespread in modern society.” 

(220)

Concluding remarks:

Ideologies are figurative, symbolic and imaginative appeals to our desires to believe in larger than life possibilities and are at once an expression of hope and a reflection of our despair. Technology, because it is political, generates an ideologically persuasive slough of symbols, metaphors and revered rules.