Discussing new work
and existing literature
on ideology

The Ideology Research Group, based at the University of Edinburgh but welcoming international members, aims at discussing ideology broadly construed, with informal meetings, both in-person and online, where members present work or discuss literature.

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Our research goals

We aim to work towards answering the following questions:

What is ideology?

As a starting point, we take an ideology to be

• a bundle of norms, beliefs, attitudes, mental representations, expectations and procedures,
• which are shared, socially transmitted and interpersonally dependent,
• and serve to justify particular behaviours and social relationships, like (capitalist) relationships of production and (sexist) personal relationships,

For example, patriarchy is an ideology that sets out rights and duties between men and women. It entails fixed gender norms, expectations and attitudes — women have the duty to give men sexual attention and emotional care; men owe women money or purported chivalry. These norms justify and maintain an unequal distribution of power. Patriarchy is socially transmitted (eg through how women and men are portrayed in the media), and can be reinforced by the practices of our social institutions (eg a tendency to hire men over women for high-powered job roles).

How is ideology reproduced?

Adherence to ideology can depend on (one’s perception of) others’ adherence to it — when others adhere to it, it might dispose me to adopt it as well, and my preference might cause others to adopt the ideology too, and so on, in a positive feedback loop.

Reasons include negative sanctions (a desire to avoid punishment); positive sanctions (a desire to please); epistemic deference (a presumption that the ideology is justified because others report that it is justified); self-image or roles (a perception of oneself as someone who would engage in actions and relationships the ideology prescribes). What else?

When is ideology harmful?

An ideology could be harmful on moral grounds, because it has negative social effects such as inequality and discrimination. It could be harmful on rational grounds, if it causes people to act against their own interests.

But some ideologies are harmful for epistemic reasons. For example, wage labour is ideological — but it’s also historically contingent. Social organisation based around wage labour becomes reified, rigidified and naturalised when we start to believe that production could not be organised in any other way. This is arguably harmful because it is epistemically limiting. In the words of David Graeber, “the ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something that we make, and could just as easily make differently”.

When else is ideology harmful, and how can one evaluate harm independently of any one ideology?

How can harmful ideology be changed?

Sally Haslanger says that, to achieve social justice, it is not enough to change laws or individual attitudes — we must also change culture, ie change ideologies. She suggests doing this through “social movements and contentious politics”. How can an ideology’s self-reproduction be halted or reversed? Also, how does ideology interact with laws? Cristina Bicchieri says that “when laws exist but are in conflict with social norms, social norms win”.

What role does language play in transmission?

For example, normative generics are claims that promote essentialist-normative-enforcing attitudes. “Boys don’t cry” is not a mere statistical observation; it implies a belief about the essence of being a boy (not crying), a normative expectation that this essence should be upheld, and enforcement methods that dictate what should be done about norm violations (“boys who cry should be laughed at”).

How can we best study ideology?

The literature on ideology is multifaceted, elusive, and carries a lot of baggage. Ideology means different things to different thinkers. Some evaluate ideology neutrally, negatively and some positively. What contributions to understanding ideology can be made by different traditions, such as social norms, game theory, analytic philosophy, Foucauldian discourse analysis, Sewellian schemas & resources, critical theory, post-structuralism, score-keeping in language games, Marxism and post-Marxism? Are positivism and scientific realism suitable lenses through which to study ideology?

…and other questions!

Do people support and help reproduce unjust social systems mainly because of ideology, or mainly because of material conditions? Can ideology be reduced to individual attitudes, or is it something above and beyond individuals? Does ideology cause alienation? When are we complicit in upholding ideology? How much power do we have to shape ideology and how much power does it have to shape us and our social environment? Are “ideology” and “culture” the same thing? Does ideology need to be internally coherent?

Organisers

Vlad-Stefan Harbuz PhD researcher, Philosophy, University of Edinburgh

Vlad works on philosophy and software that contributes to the public good. His main philosophical interest is investigating the epistemology of why we put up with exploitative work relationships. He likes cats and birds (particularly robins).

Miranda Heath PhD researcher, Psychology, University of Edinburgh

Miranda's work seeks to disentangle the influence of individualism and neoliberal ideology from altruism and moral expansiveness research. She also likes cats and birds (particularly spoonbills).