What is Ideology - Introduction to Sociology - Lecture Notes, Study notes of Introduction to Sociology

Download What is Ideology - Introduction to Sociology - Lecture Notes and more Study notes Introduction to Sociology in PDF only on Docsity! Sociology WHAT IS IDEOLOGY? I. INTRODUCTION 1. Multiple uses of the term “Ideology”: There is a deep problem in the use of the word “ideology”. Several common associations: ! ideology as false ideas: ideology as the other of science ! ideology as systematized gestalts of beliefs: ideological vs chaotic ways of thinking ! ideology as a multidimensional concept mapping all socially-relevant aspects of subjectivity I do not have a fully elaborated proposal for the linkage between the terminological conventions and the conceptual field we are exploring. This will create more ambiguities than in some of our other discussions. But I will try to use the following convention: An Ideology = the reference is to a system of beliefs Ideological practices = reference is to the process of producing beliefs incorporated within subjectivity 2. Ideology and Other Aspects of Social Relations/Practices (recapitulation) 2.1 Ideology as a practice, contrasted with political and economic practice. economic practice = process of producing use values through the transformation of nature as a raw material. political practice = process of producing social relations through the transformation of social action as a raw material. ideological practice = process of producing conscious dimensions of subjectivity through the transformation of individual lived experience (raw material) into beliefs. Ideology = cognitive: content of thinking. cultural practices = process of producing the nonconscious dimensions of subjectivity: personality, dispositions. Cultural practices produce habitus. theoretical practice = process of producing knowledge of social relations through the transformation of ideology as a raw material. Docsity.com 2 [Perhaps we can give specificity to religious practices in these terms: practices which produce existential meaningfulness, meaning-in-life: Marxism could constitute a religious practice in such terms. This might also underwrite a contrast between spiritual practice and religious practice -- religion as alienated spirituality] Example: Michael Burawoy’s analysis of the labor process. His argument = workers participate in their own exploitation actively -- that is, they consent to their own exploitation -- not by virtue of subjective orientation which they bring to the shop floor from outside (through socialization, etc.) but because of the forms of subjectivity that are produced through the forms of competition and conflict on the shop floor itself. The heart of his analysis is thus the actual social process through which given forms of subjective orientations are produced and reproduced through the daily practices within the labor process. 2.2 Once again: Type vs Dimension of practice: (1). Ideology in this sense should be seen as a dimension of practices rather than simply a type of practice. (2). When the ideological aspect of a practice is its central intentional goal, we can speak of an ideological practice: One can “do” ideology. Education is an ideological practice in this sense: the central task is transforming subjectivity, especially the cognitive aspects of subjectivity. (3). Ideology is a contradictory practice: the forms of subjectivity produced by ideological practices are never wholly integrative of capitalism, never purely functional. In Burawoy’s analysis while consent is produced, so is resistance/solidarity. The problem is to understand the material conditions for each and the balance between them. Ideological practice is thus a social process through which (conscious) subjectivity is formed through the real activities of people engaged in social relations in which what happens to them -- experiences -- are transformed into cognitive products Docsity.com 5 To embark on such an investigation, Therborn proposes a whole series of new concepts and conceptual distinctions. These concepts then form the basis for some general claims about how Marxists should study ideology, ideological struggle and ideological transformation. We will first examine these new concepts and then turn to the methodological prescriptions which follow from them. 2. Conceptual Distinctions on the Terrain of Ideology Therborn’s conceptual innovations can be clustered under two general headings: distinctions in the dimensions of ideology and its effects; and the relationship between the discursive and nondiscursive practices of ideology. 2.1. Modes of Interpellation 1. meaning of interpellation: Therborn specifies the Althusserian concept of interpellation in a new and much more precise way as a dual process of subjection and qualification: subjection implies forming the subjectivity of individuals under a general model of subjectivity, subjecting them to a given standard; qualification implies the suitability of such subjectivity for specific roles (positions within relations) in society. ! Subjection thus refers to the effects of ideology on individual subjectivity; ! Qualification refers to the effects of such subjectivity on the individual’s insertion into social relations. If the analysis was purely functionalist in character, then there would be a perfect coincidence between these two aspects of interpellation: it would be the requirements of qualification which would homeostatically dictate the forms of subjection. But Therborn insists that the correspondence between these two aspects of interpellation is not by any means guaranteed, that the correspondence itself is a result of struggle, and that a variety of forms of noncorrespondence/contradiction can occur. This is of great importance for understanding the role of ideology in social change rather than simply in social reproduction. 2. modes of interpellation. The subjection-qualification of individuals involves three interconnected forms of interpellation. “Ideologies,” Therborn writes subject and qualify subjects by telling them, and relating them to and making them recognize: a. what exists b. what is good c. what is possible These are characterized as three successive lines of defense of a given social order. The investigation of an ideology, then, involves analyzing how the subjective recognition of each of these is formed/transformed, what their content, is, etc. Note on an ambiguity in the analysis: under the rubric “what is good” two sorts of subjectivities are included: the cognitive beleif in what is good, and the motivational Docsity.com 6 orientation of what is good. Thus, it is not entirely clear whether the bourgeois value in competitiveness is being treated mainly as a value/norm or as a personality/character structure, or both. As I indicated, I think it is useful to distinguish ideological and cultural practices precisely in these terms: subjection/qualification thus involves both the creation of a set of beliefs and dispositions (compare this to Bourdieu’s concept of habitus as a cultural embedded pattern of dispositions). This distinction is espceially important for understanding the kinds of contradictions which make pogressive change possible: the distinction between the character-structure and cognitive-structure aspect of values/norms reveals potential contradictions between the kind of people we are and the kind of people we’d like to be. This is important, for example, in struggles over sexism/made domination on the left, in which men genuinely believe that it is bad to be competitive/aggressive in discussions, but have difficulty in not acting that way. 2.2 Material Matrix of Ideology: discursive and nondiscursive practices, sanctions & affirmations These interpellations do not occur simply because of the pronouncement of the words reflecting these ideologies. Interpellation -- the formation and transformation of subjectivities -- is the result of a systematic process of affirmations and sanctions. Affirmations: In affirming practices, “if an interpellated subject acts in accordance with the dictates of the ideological discourse, then the outcomes predicted by the ideology occurs.” Sanctions: Sanctioning practices constitute the punishments invoked for contravention of the dictates of ideological discourse. This distinction between discursive and nondiscursive practices is not so obscure, even though every discursive act necessarily has a nondiscursive side to it. As Therborn says, “there is some difference between being pronounced ‘dead’ by a hostile critic and being assassinated.” The point at hand is that ideologies are affirmed and sanctioned not just by words, but by nondiscursive practices which back up/reinforce the discursive practices of ideology. (Note Therborn’s interesting discussions of excommunication as a form of sanction involving both discursive sanctions--being pronounced excommunicated--and nondiscursive sanctions--being denied various things or being burnt at the stake, etc.). One crucial consequence of this analysis = going beyond the simple force/consent dichotomy as the basis of ruling class domination: all force presupposes consent at least in the sense of forms of subjectivity which make the applicaton of force effective, and all forms of ideological interpellation presuppose a system of sanctions/affirmations which include elements of coercion. Docsity.com 7 2.3 The Analysis of Contradictions and Transformations of Ideology These diverse concepts which decode the complexity of ideology and establish the social processes which affirm/sanction ideology provides the basis for Therborn’s account of the transformation of ideologies, the contradictions of ideology and ideological class struggle. The starting point of this analysis is what could be termed an intergenerational perspective on ideology, which is then linked to a specific set of theses about contradictions and transformation. 1. Intergenerational perspective on ideology Transformations of ideologies always presuppose an existing ideology: people are transformed from one kind of subject to another, not from being non-subjects into subjects. To explain change, then, we must understand why a given form of subjectivity is not simply passed on from one generation to another: “A parental generation will always mould its children according to its own form of subjectivity; and if ecological, demographic, socio-economic and any intersocietal relationships remain the same, the younger generation will face exactly the same affirmations and sanctions of the existing ideologies as the parental one. It follows that the explanation of the generation of ideologies will have to start from processes of change in the structure of a given society.... It is these changes then which constitute the material determination of the rise of ideologies.” Contrast to idealist view which “assumes that just through the power of ideological imagination each new generation of humans can emancipate themselves from ideological formation by their parents, even though facing exactly the same situations as the latter” (=affirmations and sanctions). 2. Key idea = Changes in social structures change the forms of sanctions/affirmations. The emergence of capitalism means that capitalist-subjectivity begins to be affirmed/rewarded; stagnation means that certain subjectivities cease to be affirmed in ways that they once were; late capitalism undermines the relational/material affirmations of the “work ethic;” etc. 3. Contradictions & the temporality of change These arguments open the way for the systematic accounts of ideological contradictions. Several possibilities: a. structural change in modes of production change the matrix of mateial affirmations and sanctions. This means that old subjectivities no longer constitute the basis for qualification into roles/relations. b. class struggle over affirmations/sanctions can set up competing systems of interpellation, competing “material matrices.” Unions impose sanctions on certain kinds of competitiveness among workers, thus counteracting the affirmations of the market. Result = clashing subjectivities based on clashing affirmations/sanctions. (i.e., Docsity.com 10 An essential part of ideological class struggle, then, is whether workers are interpellated into bourgeois alter-ideology or into proletarian alter-ideology, that is, whether the subjective orientation of workers to capitalists is based on the logic/rationale for bourgeois rule or proletarian resistence. Both usually coexist in some uneasy balance. Using these distinctions, Therborn gives a very interesting account of the emergence of proletarian alter-ideology in early capitalism. He writes that “Proletarian alter-ideology could...draw upon previous peasant and artisan ideology in resisting the march of capitalist commodity relations. But the sanction of defeat compelled the working class-information to abandon peasant and artisan solutions to its proletarianization.” The emergence of a distinctively proletarian alter-ideology of resistence to capitalism was the result of concrete struggles of workers on the basis of specific subjective orientations. This is crucial: just as ideologies interpellate individuals as specific kinds of subjects with specific subjectivities, the practices of individuals and classes transforms those deologies/interpellations through the experience of victories and defeats. Docsity.com 11 APPENDIX: ALTHUSSER’S TREATMENTS OF IDEOLOGY Althusser’s core work on ideology is concerned with three interconnected issues: 1. the functions of ideology; 2. the process of ideology; 3. the mechanisms of ideology in general. Functions: The analysis of functions begins with the perfectly intuitive observation that for society to continue to exist, it must produce, and for it to produce the conditions of production must be reproduced. Those conditions consist of forces of production and relations of production. The forces of production themselves consist of means of production and labor power. The former are reproduced directly within the economic sphere. The latter, however, are reproduced in families, and thus involve a much more complex process. This analysis of Althusser’s was very important, if sketchy, because it opened the way for a more systematic analysis of the role of women in the reproduction of labor power in the family and provided a basis for an account of the specificity of the sexual division of labor in the family. The heart of the analysis, however, centers on the reproduction of the relations of production. “How is the reproduction of the relations of production secured?”, Althusser asks. The answer = by and through ideology. The essential function of ideology from a social point of view is thus specified as the reproduction of the relations of production. Process of Ideology: This function is performed through apparatuses. It is a material process. Ideology is not primarily understood as ideas in people’s heads, but as a social/material practice institutionalized in apparatuses: or as Althusser puts it: “The existence of the ideas of his belief (i.e. the cognitive form of the beliefs) is material in that his ideas are his material actions inserted into material practices governed by material rituals which are themselves defined by the material ideological apparatus from which derive the ideas of that subject” (p. 158). Althusser then goes to great pains to identify this material apparatus as a state apparatus--the I.S.A.s. The reason for this is, I think, primarily to establish ideological apparatuses as locations of domination and class power, and to reject all empiricist definitions of the state (in which the state is defined by its formal, manifest “public” status). Althusser wants to develop theoretical concepts in which the unity of the concept is a consequence of the unity of real effects in the world, and in such terms the juridical boundaries for the state are clearly inadequate. This is what pushes him towards a functional definition of concepts, such that the state becomes all apparatuses of social reproduction, regardless of their form. I would argue that since the character of the unity of ideological apparatuses and the way in which they produce their effects Docsity.com 12 are so different from the state in the normal sense ofthe word, that more is obscured than clarified by calling both “state” apparatuses. Mechanism of Ideology This is undoubtedly the most famous of Althusser’s formulations on ideology, and I think the aspect of his analysis which constitutes the most important breakthrough, opening up an extremely interesting terrain of new work. The essential mechanism by which ideology functions to reproduce social relations through the material process of the ideological apparatuses is by “transforming individuals into subjects.” The basic logic is as follows: In order for a social system to function in a stable way, to be reproduced, it is essential that the individuals who occupy places in that structure be able to perform their duties/practices “by themselves,” “on their own,” that is, that they be formed in such a way that they are able to act as appropriate subjects within the structure. “Subject” in this context has a double meaning, both of which are intended: subject as author of one’s acts; and subject as subjected to an external rule authority (as in “a subject of the King”). Ideology is the process by which subjects in this double sense are formed. They are “interpellated”--hailed as specific subjects--in the sense that they are given an identity that inserts them into a structure of social relations, and that in one way or another they “recognize” this identity. When Althusser adds that “ideology is eternal” or that “ideology has no history” what he means is that this mechanism is constitutive of all human society, that the process of transforming human individuals into subjects is a panhistorical process. He does not men (emphatically) that the specific content of this transformation is eternal: ideologies do have a history, and thus different kinds of subjects are formed in different kinds of societies. Althusser then proposes a specific way of conceptualizing this mechanism in his discussion of interpellation and imaginary relations. He contrasts two images of the cognitive effects of ideology on individuals: a. ideology is an imaginary representation of reality b. ideology is an imaginary representation of the relationship of the individual to reality In the first instance, ideology is simply distorted perception ofthe real; in the second, ideology represents the relation of the subject to the real. This latter kind of imaginary (=in the imagination) representation constitutes the process of interpellation since it makes possible the subjective insertion of the individual into social relations: ideology tells you your place in relations. Althusser adopts an extremely complicated metaphor in his discussion of Christian theology when he refers to the Subject with a capital S and the subjection of subjects to the Subject as being the universal form of interpellation. This just an elliptical way--I think--of saying that Docsity.com