Ideology

A Multidisciplinary Approach

Teun A Van Dijk

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1998
• ISBN:
  9781473946125
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

The definition of ideology continues to occupy scholars across a wide range of disciplines. In this book, Teun A van Dijk sketches a challenging new multidisciplinary framework for theorizing ideology. He defines ideology as the basis of the social representations of a group, its functions in terms of social relations between groups, and its reproduction as enacted by discourse. Contemporary racist discourse is examined to illustrate these ideological relations between cognition, society and discourse.

1

Introduction

The fuzzy life of ‘ideology’

It’s almost a routine. Studies of ideology often begin with a remark about the vagueness of the notion and the resulting theoretical confusion of its analysis, as I did in the Preface. Indeed, of all essentially contested and controversial concepts in the social sciences and the humanities, that of ‘ideology’ may well come out near the top of the list. One historical and political – and, yes, ideological – reason for this special status may be that ‘ideology’ is one of these notions that have divided Marxists and non-Marxists, as well as ‘critical’ scholars and ‘uncritical’ ones – obviously divisions that are themselves ideological.

Still, as a general concept, ideology is hardly more vague than similar Big Terms in the social sciences and the humanities. In many respects, the same holds for such notions as ‘society’, ‘group’, ‘action’, ‘power’, ‘discourse’, ‘mind’ and ‘knowledge’, among many others. These notions defy precise definition and seem to happily live the fuzzy life inherent in such catch-all terms that denote complex sets of phenomena and that are the preferred toys of philosophers and scholars in the humanities and the social sciences. Where ‘ideology’ differs from these other general notions, however, is that its commonsense usage is generally pejorative.

Definitions generally are hardly adequate to capture all the complexities of such notions. Indeed, such fundamental notions are the objects of inquiry for theories and whole disciplines. Definitions cannot be expected to summarize all the insights accumulated in such bodies of knowledge – even if there were no controversies over the meaning of the central concepts of such disciplines. In sum, as with many similar notions, and apart from its uses in everyday discourse, the various versions of the concept of ideology are simply the scholarly constructs of competing theories. That is, at least with this word, it is as Alice was told in Wonderland: we define what the word means. Of course, presuming that ‘we’ have the power to do so.

Traditional approaches

Despite the controversies and the many different approaches to the concept of ideology, the historical terms of the debate remain remarkably similar. We are routinely brought back to the eighteenth century, when Destutt de Tracy in France proposed a ‘science of ideas’ to be called idéologie, a science which, incidentally, never made it, unless we take philosophy (or psychology?) as its current representative.¹ With equal predictability, we will then meet Marx, of course, usually in the company of Engels, and then their followers (neo- or not) in our century, among whom Lukács, Gramsci and Althusser play a prominent role. Similarly, on the non-Marxist side, we are bound to encounter a sequence of sociologists and philosophers, of whom Dürkheim and Mannheim are merely the most famous.²

As is customary in sociology and philosophy, these and other classics still appear so prominently in most current discussions of ideology that it is hard to find more analytical and sophisticated studies that integrate new concepts and insights of contemporary approaches in the humanities and the social sciences.

The remnants of the classical debates are also crystallized in the everyday, commonsense uses of the notion of ‘ideology’, namely, taken as a system of wrong, false, distorted or otherwise misguided beliefs, typically associated with our social or political opponents. For many in the West – laypersons, politicians and scholars alike – communism was (based on) such an ideology. It was often seen as the prototype of an ideology.³ The legacy of Marx and Engels, to whom this negative, critical concept of ideology is usually attributed, is thus posthumously discredited by the very notion they introduced themselves.

At the same time, this negative meaning and uses of the everyday concept of ideology shows what most earlier analysts also emphasized, namely, that ideologies express or conceal one’s social or political position, perspective or interests: few of ‘us’ (in the West or elsewhere) describe our own belief systems or convictions as ‘ideologies’. On the contrary, Ours is the Truth, Theirs is the Ideology. Capitalism, the Market, or Christianity, even when ‘we’ are no fans of them, are ours’ and therefore not usually described as ideologies in everyday discourse.

We see that as residues of scholarly debates, commonsense conceptions of the notion of ‘ideology’ capture in a nutshell many of the main tenets of the classical tradition: (a) ideologies are false beliefs; (b) ideologies conceal real social relations and serve to deceive others; (c) ideologies are beliefs others have; and (d) ideologies presuppose the socially or politically self-serving nature of the definition of truth and falsity.

The critical element of the notion of ideology in this tradition is usually associated with various notions of power and dominance. Following Marx/Engels, ideologies were first of all defined as the prevailing ideas of an age.⁴ According to the political economy of these philosophers, these dominant ideas were associated with those of the ruling class. They are part of the ‘superstructure’ and hence determined by the economic or ‘material’ base of society. Because the ruling class, however defined, controls the means of production, including the means of the (re)production of ideas – most notably those of politics, the media, literature and education – they are also able to make their ideologies more or less accepted by the ruled as the undisputed knowledge of the ‘natural’ ways things are.

Later debates in this Marxist tradition, however, questioned the economic determinism of the classical definitions of ideology. Ideas, laws, philosophy, literature, and hence also ideologies, may in part develop autonomously with respect to the material base, and may even exercise their influence, top-down, on that economic infrastructure.⁵ With Gramsci, these relations between ideology and society were conceptualized in terms of ‘hegemony’. Thus, instead of the imposition of dominant ideologies by a ruling class, hegemony more subtly works through the management of the mind of the citizens, for example by persuasively constructing a consensus about the social order.

It is especially this neo-Marxist view and its variants that have inspired many debates on ideologies at least until the demise of Communism around 1990, when the terms of the debate changed again. Many of these approaches are now merging with a broader critical concept of ideology, for instance in the field of cultural studies.⁶ Yet, whether as dominant or hegemonic ideologies, contemporary versions of the Marxist idea of the combined socio-economic and symbolic power of elite groups remain alive in many current approaches to ideology. In my own account of the role of the elites in the reproduction of racism, we shall encounter a special version of that idea.

In ongoing dialogue with (and often in opposition to) the Marxist strand of the tradition, sociologists and philosophers have continued to debate, with increasing sophistication, the social and political dimensions of knowledge, truth and scholarship itself. For a long time, their insights into society were precisely self-defined as non-ideological, and hence as truthful and scientific. Both politically and in a scholarly context, Marxism was no exception. Above the fray of politics, and unbound by social or economic interests, thus, most scholars considered themselves a freischwebende Intelligenz, that is, beyond the pale of self-serving falsehood, and only interested in the disinterested search for the truth – only to be accused by more critical others of engaging in precisely what they wanted to avoid in the first place, namely, an ideology. This ideology of science, which tries to conceal its interests and wants its own beliefs to be accepted as truth by those who recognize its power and dominance, is thus hardly different from other ideologies that are developed to achieve hegemony, to legitimate power or to conceal inequality – if only in the domain of knowledge. It is at this crucial point where the philosophy and sociology of ideology and the philosophy and sociology of science overlap.

It is only in a later stage, in the second part of the twentieth century, that more inclusive and less pejorative notions of ideologies develop. Here, ideologies are usually defined as political or social systems of ideas, values or prescriptions of groups or other collectivities, and have the function of organizing or legitimating the actions of the group.⁷ Most later work on political belief systems is rooted in this more general concept of ideology.⁸ It is at this point where my own exploration will start. Yet, it will be emphasized that also the notion of a ‘belief system’ is still much too general, and in need of further analysis. This is one of the reasons why this study also intends to continue (the few) psychological approaches to ideology.⁹

In this informal summary of some main strands of the classic debate about ideology, most notions, including the more controversial ones, are as familiar as the names associated with them. Although many are not very precise, as may be expected for such fundamental terms, these are the notions that are being used, and that have influenced the foundations of virtually all social sciences. Most studies of ideology, instead of going beyond the classics, keep repeating, reformulating and reinterpreting this Master Narrative of the Story of Ideology. Therefore, I feel delightfully free to presuppose this history to be known and to explore new ways of addressing the old problems, and at the same time perhaps create some interesting new problems.

A framework for a multidisciplinary theory of ideology

The philosophy and sociology of science tell us that old theories and approaches are seldom discredited because they are explicitly proven false or inadequate. Rather, other ideas become accepted that seem to be more attractive for whatever reason, sometimes because they provide a better account of the ‘facts’, or because they focus on other, more interesting facts. Therefore, for the same strategic reason that I presuppose the history of the study of ideology to be generally known, it will not be my aim to discredit, attack or debate the multitude of such classical approaches. Such a dispute would precisely look back and remain entangled in the same frameworks of discussion and thought (see, however, some of the endnotes for comments on the relevant literature). Of course, this book cannot start from scratch, and will use and integrate those classical ideas about ideology that remain relevant in a new approach.

My main purpose, then, is to look ahead, to find alternative theoretical frameworks, to explore and incorporate other disciplines, and especially to work towards a comprehensive theory of ideology. Among other things, such a theory would describe and explain the following:

• the general status of ideology as a cognitive and social system
• the differences between ideologies and other (systems of) ‘ideas’
• the components and internal organization of ideologies
• the relations between ideologies and other shared social representations
• the relations between ideologies and values
• the relations between ideologies and social structures
• the relations between ideologies and groups and their interests
• the institutional embedding of ideologies
• the relations between ideology and power and dominance
• how ideologies are acquired, used and changed
• how ideologies are reproduced
• how ideologies are expressed in social practices in general
• how ideologies are expressed and reproduced by discourse.

Obviously, this is a research agenda that could keep several hundreds of scholars busy well into the next millennium, so my aims have to be more modest, and I shall therefore focus on only some aspects of such a theory.

I need not do so merely within the confines of the disciplines that have up to now dominated the debate, namely, philosophy, sociology and (in part) political science. Since I continue to talk about ideology, some of the more familiar notions, also from these disciplines, will appear again in my own approach. However, where necessary, they will be framed and formulated in a novel way, and related to concepts and theoretical developments that hitherto have received scant attention from the leading ideologues of the study of ideology. That is, a theory of ideology first of all needs to be multidisciplinary.

Yet, we all have our limitations, interests and preferred ways of thinking, and my approach will therefore be located in the conceptual and disciplinary triangle that relates cognition, society and discourse. There are worse sites of inquiry when dealing with the notion of ideology. First, even among those who deny it, ideologies are at least implicitly taken as some kind of ‘system of ideas’, and hence belong to the symbolic field of thought and belief, that is, to what psychologists call ‘cognition’. Second, ideologies are undoubtedly social, and often (though not always) associated with group interests, conflicts or struggle. They may be used to legitimate or oppose power and dominance, or symbolize social problems and contradictions. They may involve social collectivities such as classes and other groups, as well as institutions, organization and other parts of social structure.¹⁰ Hence the pervasive interest of sociologists and political scientists in the notion of ideology. And third, many contemporary approaches to ideology associate (or even identify) the concept with language use or discourse, if only to account for the way ideologies are typically expressed and reproduced in society.¹¹ Concealment, legitimation, manipulation and related notions that are seen as the prime functions of ideologies in society are mostly discursive (or more broadly semiotic) social practices. Of course, as we shall see, this does not mean that ideologies are expressed only by discourse, but merely that discourse has a specific role, among other social practices, in the reproduction of ideologies.

Having staked out this very broad and multidisciplinary field of inquiry, it is my contention that precisely the complex relationships involved here – namely, those between cognition, society and discourse – are needed in an explicit theory of ideology. To say that ideologies are systems of ‘ideas’ and hence in need of a psychological approach will be an interesting suggestion only if we realize at the same time that these ‘ideas’ are also social (and political and cultural), and that we therefore need to account for them in terms of the study of social representations and their functions for social cognition.¹²

And conversely, if ideologies are part of social structure and somehow exhibit or even control the relationships of power and dominance between groups (classes, social formations, organizations, etc.), such a sociological approach will similarly be relevant only if we realize that ideologies characterize the ‘mental’ dimension of society, groups or institutions. Combined then, these mutual relationships locate my theory first of all in a joint psychological-sociological account of the social mind in its social (political, cultural) context.

However, this still leaves us at a level of mental or social abstractions that have no empirical grounds. We need to ‘see’ ideologies expressed or lived by social actors, and ‘at work’ in concrete social situations, that is, in everyday social practices. Many of these practices would do as a domain of empirical research. Thus, forms of everyday discrimination against women and minorities may be studied as manifestations of sexist and racist ideologies. However, although we may well assume that such discrimination is largely ideologically based, it does not as such ‘articulate’ these ideologies themselves – at least not as explicitly as the discourses that explain, defend, legitimate, motivate or otherwise ‘formulate’ fragments of the ‘underlying’ ideologies.

In other words, although discourses are not the only ideologically based social practices, they certainly are the most crucial ones in the formulation of ideologies in their social reproduction. Language use, text, talk and communication (together subsumed here under the overall term of ‘discourse’) are needed and used by group members to learn, acquire, change, confirm, articulate, as well as to persuasively convey ideologies to other ingroup members, to inculcate them in novices, defend them against (or conceal them from) outgroup members or to propagate them among those who are (as yet) the infidels. In sum, if we want to know what ideologies actually look like, how they work, and how they are created, changed and reproduced, we need to look closely at their discursive manifestations.

Note that such a discourse analysis itself is mu...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface
• 1 Introduction
• Part I: Cognition
• Part II: Society
• Part III: Discourse
• Notes
• References
• Index