Beliefs - ideology

• Ideology


  A worldview or a set of ideas and values – in other words, a belief system
• Negative aspects of ideology


  • Ideas that conceal the interests of a particular group
  • Ideas that prevent change by misleading people about the reality of the situation they are in
• Ideology


  • A one-sided or biased view of reality and a self-sustaining belief system that is irrational and closed to criticism
• Ruling class ideologies

  Ideologies that legitimate class inequality
• Marxist view of society

  • Divided into two opposing classes: a capitalist ruling class who own the means of production, and a working class who are forced to sell their labour to the capitalists
  • The ruling class exploit the workers' labour to produce profit
• Class consciousness


  Awareness of one's true position as an exploited worker
• Ideological state apparatuses

  Social institutions such as education, the mass media and religion that produce ruling-class ideologies to legitimate/justify the status quo
• Critics argue that economic factors such as the fear of unemployment, not ideology, maintain the status quo and keep workers from rebelling
• Patriarchal ideology

  Ideologies from science and religion that legitimate gender inequality
• Patriarchal ideology in science

  • 19th century male doctors and scientists claimed that women who achieved success in education would 'disqualify women from their vocation' – the nurturing of the next generation
• Patriarchal ideology in religion

  • Many religions offer the idea that women are ritually impure or unclean, particularly because of childbirth or menstruation
• Critics have argued that not all elements of religious belief systems subordinate women, as in Hinduism, goddesses have often been portrayed as mothers or creators of the universe, and before monotheistic patriarchal religions, matriarchal religions were widespread
• Ideological thought


  Reflects the position and interest of the privileged groups e.g. capitalist class, and favours hierarchy
• Utopian thought


  Reflects the position and interest of the underprivileged and offers a vision of how society could be organised
• Free-floating intelligentsia


  A group of intellectuals who are detached from the social groups they represent and stand above the conflict, in order to unite different ideologies/worldviews to arrive at a total worldview that represents the interests of society as a whole
• It would be very hard to achieve uniting Marxist ideas about the need to create a classless society with the conservative idea that hierarchy is essential and beneficial in society
• Nationalism

  An ideology that binds modern societies together through the claims that nations are real, distinctive communities, each with its own unique character and history, and that national loyalty and identity should come before all other communities such as class and religion
• Nation

  An 'imagined community' and not a real one, although we identify with it we will never know most of the other members
• Nationalism (pre-industrial societies)


  Held together by face to face relationships in small scale communities with a fixed hierarchy
• Marxist view of nationalism


  An ideology that maintains a false class consciousness by encouraging workers to believe they have more in common with the capitalists of their own country than the workers of other countries
• Functionalist view of nationalism


  An ideology that acts as a form of secular civil religion, ensuring individuals are socialised and integrated into the larger social and political units by making them feel part of something greater than themselves
• Postmodernism rejects all forms of meta-narratives as being ideological, and argues instead that we should recognise and tolerate competing explanations of the natural and social worlds