Reflections on ideology: Lessons from Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that useful lessons can be learned from Bourdieu and Boltanski's critical investigation, as it provides crucial insights into the principal characteristics and functions of ideologies, including the ways in which they develop and operate in advanced capitalist societies.

Abstract: The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the enduring relevance of the concept of ideology to contemporary sociological analysis. To this end, the article draws upon central arguments put forward by Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski in ‘La production de l’ide´ologie dominante’ [‘The Production of the Dominant Ideology’]. Yet, the important theoretical contributions made in this enquiry have been largely ignored by contemporary sociologists, even by those who specialize in the critical study of ideology. This article intends to fill this gap in the literature by illustrating that useful lessons can be learned from Bourdieu and Boltanski’s critical investigation, as it provides crucial insights into the principal characteristics and functions of ideologies, including the ways in which they develop and operate in advanced capitalist societies. The article is divided into two main parts: the first part examines various universal features of ideology; the second part aims to shed light on several particular features of dominant ideology. The paper concludes by arguing that the ‘end of ideology’ thesis, despite the fact that it raises valuable sociological questions, is ultimately untenable.

Summary

Introduction

• Yet, the important theoretical contributions made in this enquiry have been largely ignored by contemporary sociologists, even by those who specialize in the critical study of ideology.
• The paper concludes by arguing that the ‘end of ideology’ thesis, despite the fact that it raises valuable sociological questions, is ultimately untenable.
• The following enquiry intends to fill this gap in the literature by illustrating that PID provides crucial insights into the principal characteristics and functions of ideologies, including the ways in which they develop and operate in advanced capitalist societies.
• The second part aims to shed light on several particular features of dominant ideology.

1. Ideology and practice

• The production of ideology cannot be dissociated from the production of social practices.
• In fact, the production of ideology is not only embedded in social practices but constitutes a social practice itself.
• Without its tangible relevance to the multiple ways in which human actors establish a symbolically mediated relation to the world, ideology would lack the socio-ontological centrality it has acquired in the normative regulation of civilizational life forms.
• Given its praxeological significance with regard to the development of social existence, an ideological discourse ‘is only secondarily supposed to express [the] conviction’ (Bourdieu and Boltanski, 2008 [1976]: 11) of those who support it, since ‘[i]ts primary function is to orient an action’ (p. 11; emphasis added) or a set of actions.
• The preponderance of the practical, rather than the theoretical, dimensions of ideology in real-life situations goes hand in hand with the socio-ontological predominance of intuitive and taken-for-granted, rather than reflexive and discursive, knowledge in the construction of everyday life.

2. Ideology and cohesion

• Ideologies, insofar as they are produced and reproduced by specific social groups, serve a major bonding and integrative function, which depends on their capacity to create a sense of collectively sustained cohesion.
• Shared ideological frameworks make it possible ‘to maintain the performers’ cohesion reinforcing, through ritual reaffirmation, the group’s belief in the necessity and the legitimacy of its action’ (p. 11; emphasis added).
• Ideological discourses provide symbolic reference points that assume the role of cultural markers of identity, which are both conducive to and contingent upon social processes of group formation.
• An effective ideological discourse comprises a set of values, principles, and assumptions whose adherents – whilst, in most cases, lacking a completely homogenous base, reducible to the will power of a monolithically defined collective actor – are capable of developing a sense of solidarity.

3. Ideology and diversity

• The relative heterogeneity of field-differentiated societies manifests itself in the diversity of the ideologies shaping their history.
• Far from reflecting ‘the perfect and entirely planned coherence of an ‘‘ideological state apparatus’’’ (p. 10), or of a pristine lifeworld characterized by social homogeneity and behavioural consistency, discursively mediated sets of values and principles are not only malleable and revisable but also tension-laden and, to some extent, contradictory.
• Indeed, ‘[t]he liberal point of honour depends on this diversity within unity’ (p. 10; emphasis added), without which there would be no variegated civilizational history.
• The fruitful interplay between spontaneity and improvisation, on the one hand, and rigidity and regulation, on the other, is essential to the possibility of cross-fertilizing rival ideologies, as well as com- peting intellectual currents within the discursive horizons out of which they emerge.
• The most homogeneous society cannot eliminate the influence, let alone the existence, of groupspecific diversity.

4. Ideology and positionality

• Every ideology is impregnated with the structuring power of social positionality.
• The persistent efforts made by dominant individual or collective actors to direct attention away from their relationally defined situatedness only reinforce the existential significance of the asymmetrically organized positions that they occupy in the social space.
• Ostensibly ‘neutral places’ 2 are ‘ideological laboratories in which, on the basis of a collective work, the dominant social philosophy is generated’ (p. 17; emphasis added) by different fractions of the ruling class.
• Dominant ideologies are produced by and for those in dominant positions.
• Ideologies aimed at challenging hegemonic sets of values and principles, by contrast, tend to be produced by and for those in dominated positions, that is, by and for those whose practices are severely confined by relatively – or almost completely – disempowered and disempowering variables of interaction.

5. Ideology and intersubjectivity

• No matter how abstract or seemingly removed from the structural constraints of social reality, ideologies emerge out of their advocates’ experience of intersubjectivity.
• Far from being reducible to a monological mechanism, the production of ideological frameworks emanates from a dialogical process, in which the communicative engagement with divergent perspectives is vital to the opinion and will formation of the different members and fractions of a particular social group or class.

6. Ideology and differentiality

• For every ideology comprises a relatively systematic set of interconnected values, principles, and assumptions founded on value-laden categorizations.
• To be exact, ideologically mediated differentiations manifest themselves in the relatively arbitrary construction of classifications, oppositions, and hierarchies (see p. 57).
• (a) Through the construction of classifications, it is possible to draw distinctions that are central to dividing the world into groups and types characterized by traits, particularities, and idiosyncrasies.
• (c) Through the construction of hierar- chies, it is possible to map the world in terms of vertical orders based on position- taking, grading, and ranking.

8. Ideology and normativity

• Even if the advocates of a particular dominant ideology seek to defend a subject-specific – for instance, ‘economic’, ‘legal’, or ‘technocratic’ – discourse based on the forceless force of epistemically grounded objectivity, their claims to validity are impregnated with presuppositions and bias, which are indispensable to the social construction of reality.
• Ideology ‘is politics to the extent that, under the veil of objectivity, it prescribes what should be the case’ (p. 120; emphasis added) in society.
• An ideology, then, is not only a set of more or less logically interconnected principles, but also an ensemble of value-laden assumptions about the normative worth of relationally assembled realities.

9. Ideology and authenticity

• Ideologies, owing to the fact that they can be produced in seemingly neutral spaces, tend to give the misleading impression that discourses emerge ‘naturally’ 3 as truthful and reliable representations of reality and, hence, as vehicles for symbolically mediated experiences of authenticity.
• The critical analysis of their genealogy demonstrates, however, that ideologies – far from developing without ‘the confrontation of individuals belonging to different fractions and removed from the fraction of every fraction’ (p. 117; emphasis added) – develop within and through struggles between interest-driven actors, who occupy different positions in society.
• At the same time, ideology makes us socialize the natural to the extent that it obliges us to convert their experientially constituted immersion in reality into a discur- sively codified encounter with normativity.
• The naturalization of the social and the socialization of the natural are inconceivable without the habitualization of intersubjec- tively sustained conventions, which are, by definition, spatiotemporally variable because they are performatively reconstructable.
• Concealing the social conditions underpinning their own claims to validity, ideologies can be converted into indispensable reference points in the pursuit of authenticity.

10. Ideology and self-referentiality

• To put it bluntly, ideologies are self-fulfilling prophecies.
• For they are founded on values and principles whose validity they aim to confirm in terms of their own normative standards and codes of legitimacy.
• Ideologies, insofar as they are driven by ‘a will to power’, aspire to set the agenda by converting their own parameters into hegemonic criteria, that is, into benchmarks that can be applied to assessing the value of practices performed by all individual and collective actors in society.
• Within the comfort zones of discursively sustained self-referentiality, the defensibility of core assumptions is corroborated on the basis of autopoietic yardsticks of acceptability.
• The ‘prophetic chain’ (p. 120) permeating the functioning of ideology represents a subtle source of self-referential agency oriented towards the endorsement of its own legitimacy.

11. Ideology and hegemony

• The production of ideologies cannot be divorced from social struggles for and against the power of hegemony.
• Central to the development of stratified societies, in other words, are not only the struggles between classes but also the struggles within classes.
• Critical sociologists need to study the ‘neutral place and point of equilibrium of the field of the dominant class, in which its interest is defined within and by the mediation of the conflicts between the fractions of the dominant class, rather than between the classes, as suggested by the official representation’ (pp. 117/120; emphasis in original).
• There are no stratified societies without ideologically mediated struggles for and against the power of hegemony.

12. Ideology and domination

• Ideologies can be mobilized either to stabilize, legitimize, and conceal or to undermine, subvert, and expose systems of domination.
• To the extent that ideologies – notably dominant ones – tend to reinforce, justify, or obscure ‘the social hierarchy’ (p. 3) in place, they contribute to confirming the normative validity of asymmetrical power relations.
• The ‘goes-without-saying’ (p. 3), which presents a ‘major obstacle to socio- logical analysis’ (p. 3), constitutes an essential ingredient of ‘the most subtle and the least obvious forms of domination’ (p. 3), including the hegemonic discourses by which they are sustained.
• In stratified interactional formations, ‘the social philosophy of the dominant class’ (p. 49) reflects the worldview of those groups who have an interest in defending their leading position on the basis of more or less logically interconnected ideas validating the status quo.
• After having considered 12 universal features of ideology, the question that arises when examining the power-laden constitution of discursively mediated sets of values, principles, and assumptions is the following:.

1. Dominant ideology and distortion

• In so doing, they conceal not only any kind of counterevidence undermining the cogency of their most fundamental claims to objective or normative validity but also, more significantly, the constitutive interests underlying their advocates’ quest for social legitimacy.
• If necessary, the rhetoric of ‘scientific evidence’ can be employed in order to bestow a dominant discourse with legitimacy that gives the impression of being founded on conceptually and methodologically sound claims to epistemic validity.
• The distortive function of dominant ideologies is reflected in their extensive use of euphemisms.

2. Dominant ideology and binaries

• Dominant ideologies are inconceivable without the construction of binary categories.
• Indeed, ‘[t]he dominant discourse about the social world owes its practical coherence to the fact that it is produced on the basis of a small number of generative schemes’ (p. 57; emphasis added), which are organized around the conceptual adherence to binaries.

3. Dominant ideology and science

• In the positivist tradition of social thought, ideology and science tend to be conceived of as opposites: the former is distortive, based on misperceptions, misconceptions, and misrepresentations; the latter is – at least potentially – informative, founded on logical descriptions, rational explanations, and methodical evaluations.
• The legitimizing function of science in processes of justification, taking place in the political arena, has gained a considerable amount of importance in ‘knowledge societies’: given the increasingly influential epistemic currency of evidence-based validity, opinion and will formation processes rely heavily on findings from studies conducted in the natural and social sciences.
• They differ, however, in the following sense: the former tends to be driven by instrumental concerns of power and authority; the latter tends to be motivated by epistemic concerns of analysis and enquiry.
• The need to cross-fertilize insights obtained from the scientific field with convictions governing the political and economic fields represents a major challenge for those in charge of designing and defending dominant ideologies.
• Certainly, in most hegemonic discursive frameworks constructed by dominant classes, there is little – if any – room for ‘concepts that are too obscure and arguments that are too complex, in short, anything that feels intellectual’ (p. 11).

4. Dominant ideology and the state

• Dominant ideologies cannot be dissociated from the power exercised by the modern state.
• To the extent that the state constitutes one of the most powerful institutions – if not, the most powerful institution – in large-scale stratified societies, it cannot be bypassed by hegemonic groups seeking to disseminate their values, principles, and convictions.
• Aiming to defend their privileged position in society, ‘the business leaders’ (p. 52) find themselves ‘in the situation of buyers in relation to the state’ (p. 52). (p. 49) Economic efficiency and political legitimacy are two interdependent preconditions for the short- and long-term stability of capitalist-democratic societies.
• The plea for a ‘capitalism with a human face’ (see pp. 44–6, 54), based on a ‘planned economy’ (p. 53), expresses a political vision that is shared by both ‘progressive reformism’ (p. 54) and ‘enlightened conservatism’ (p. 54), demonstrating a considerable degree of ideolo- gical elasticity, which spreads across a wide spectrum of pluralist diversity.

5. Dominant ideology and biased realism

• Every dominant ideology comprises a societal project subject to a sense of biased realism.
• Even ideological doctrines that, when they are mobilized by a particular state or government, claim to follow ‘evidence-based standards of scientificity’ cannot escape the chains of their own normativity: ‘their science is political, and their politics is scientific’ (p. 88).
• Its supporters employ a ‘performative language’ (p. 88) to impose their own benchmarks on as many social spheres as possible.
• The dominant discourse on the social world serves not only to legitimize domination but also to orient the action perpetuating it and, thus, give a lesson [un moral] and a moral [une morale], a direction and directives, to those who direct and act upon it.

6. Dominant ideology and lessons from history

• In the long run, a dominant ideology can assert its authority only to the extent that its leading advocates are willing to learn ‘lessons from history’ (see pp. 32, 76, 82; emphasis added).
• The new leading fraction is educated, above all with regard to its history.
• Dominant classes need to go through individual and collective learning processes, especially when revising their ideological reference points in the face of self-initiated or circumstantially induced ‘reality checks’.
• In light of such a strategically motivated attitude, which is open to change and adjustment, the progressive fractions of the ruling class are willing to ‘abandon the past and the backward-looking dispositions that are normally linked to the occupation of a dominant position’ (p. 77).
• Its ‘intelligence’ consists in this combination of the capacity to adapt to new situations and the capacity to assimilate new situations to old situations, which equips it with reflexive knowledge of its past experiences.

7. Dominant ideology and reproduction

• Dominant ideologies cannot be divorced from processes of social reproduction.
• Because of its social constitution, ‘a discursive body’ is never simply ‘a body of producers’ but always also ‘a set of places of discursive production and of the production of discursive producers’ (p. 17).
• Dominant ideologies are shaped by ‘the only laws of reproduction and of institutional functioning responsible for reproducing’ (p. 13; emphasis added) vertically structured systems of classification.
• Fully-fledged members of the dominant class are equipped with the – socially naturalized and collectively shared – capacity to produce and reproduce their own modus operandi, permitting them to protect their privileged access to the material and symbolic resources guaranteeing their group existence.

8. Dominant ideology and ‘endology’

• Apocalyptic announcements concerning the alleged ‘end’ of various constitutive features of modernity have been à la mode at least since the late 1960s.
• The fatalism that confines the ideology of the end of ideologies and the corresponding exclusion of possible alternatives are the hidden condition for a scientistic usage of statistical prevision and economic analysis.
• Hence, ‘if all utopia is – by definition – excluded, what remains is only the choice of the necessary’ (p. 88; emphasis added), whose ineluctable omnipresence can be confirmed by means of contemporary sociohistorical studies.
• Tendencies towards ‘the depoliticization of the dominated’ (p. 92) – expressed in prevalent ‘political apathy’ (p. 90) and the lack of systematic engagement with the political ideologies that shaped the 19th and 20th centuries – appear to corroborate the validity of the contention that the authors have entered an era characterized by the absence of meta-narratives and utopian recipes.

9. Dominant ideology and hegemonic performativity

• Dominant ideologies cannot be divorced from the exercise of power, that is, from the secrets of hegemonic performativity.
• A genuinely effective dominant ideology, in other words, constitutes a hegemonic discourse bestowed with the power to recognize – and, if necessary, react to – key historical developments and shape them in accordance with the interests of the most influential social groups.
• Efficient political power requires the development of a resourceful strategic rationality.
• Yet, the relationship between ideology and reality is not only about pushing the boundaries of what is, and what is not, possible.
• The dominant representations continuously objectivize themselves within things, and the social world contains all parts – under the form of institutions, objects, and mechanisms (without mentioning agents’ habitus) – of the realized ideology.

10. Dominant ideology and compromise

• From a long-term perspective, dominant ideologies are hardly sustainable unless their advocates are willing to make compromises by adjusting and, if necessary, deradicalizing their key presuppositions and principles.
• In all of these regimes, with the exception of socialism, the ‘practical collaboration between classes, aimed at maintaining social peace’ (p. 45; emphasis added) and at creating a sense of class-transcending solidarity, is central to the promise of generating long-term prosperity, even if this venture is accompanied by intermediate periods of austerity.
• It may be far-fetched to assert that ‘the enhancement of life quality’ (p. 121) is tantamount to ‘the emancipation of the working class’ (p. 121).
• Once all alternatives are overcome, the only forced choice that remains is growth and liberal planning.

11. Dominant ideology and meritocracy

• According to the most radical – notably, evolutionist – versions of dominant ideologies, long-term social development is tantamount to a ‘Darwinian selection process’ (p. 68), driven by ‘eternal competition’ and the ‘survival of the fittest’ (see p. 68).
• Sceptics may characterize this vision as ‘an elitism of competence, combined with a pastoral populism’ (p. 14), both of which appear to be diametrically opposed to the ‘‘‘humanisms’’ associated with the ‘‘planning-ideology’’’ (p. 14).
• Performative contradictions are amongst the most remarkable features of dominant ideologies.

12. Dominant ideology and conservatism

• Dominant ideologies cannot be dissociated from intellectual currents associated with conservatism.
• The most important form of conservatism that has succeeded in continuing to play a pivotal role in setting political agendas in recent decades, however, is what is variably described as ‘progressive’, ‘enlightened’, ‘developed’, ‘modern’, or ‘liberal’ conservatism.
• The farreaching – that is, both trans-disciplinary and trans-epochal – significance of the concept of ideology is confirmed by the fact that it has been, and continues to be, widely discussed in the humanities and social sciences.
• On this point, see p. 4: ‘Ce texte qui prend le contre-pied du discours sur la fin des ide´ologies et des classes sociales ouvre de nouvelles perspectives pour comprendre la société française d’aujourd’hui.’.

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Citation: Susen, S. (2014). Reflections on Ideology: Lessons from Pierre Bourdieu and
Luc Boltanski. Thesis Eleven, 124(1), pp. 90-113. doi: 10.1177/0725513614552444
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Reflections on ideology:
Lessons from
Pierre Bourdieu
and Luc Boltanski
Simon Susen
City University London, UK
Abstract
The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the enduring relevance of the concept
of ideology to contemporary sociological analysis. To this end, the article draws upon
central arguments put forward by Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski in ‘La production de
l’ide
´
ologie
dominante’
[‘The
Production
of
the
Dominant
Ideology’].
Yet,
the
important
theoretical contributions made in this enquiry have been largely ignored by contem-
porary sociologists, even by those who specialize in the critical study of ideology. This
article intends to fill this gap in the literature by illustrating that useful lessons can be
learned from Bourdieu and Boltanski’s critical investigation, as it provides crucial insights
into the principal characteristics and functions of ideologies, including the ways in which
they develop and operate in advanced capitalist societies. The article is divided into two
main parts: the first part examines various universal features of ideology; the second part
aims to shed light on several particular features of dominant ideology. The paper concludes
by arguing that the ‘end of ideology’ thesis, despite the fact that it raises valuable sociological
questions, is ultimately untenable.
Keywords
Boltanski, Bourdieu, critique, dominant ideology, ideology, ideology critique, social theory
Introduction
The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the enduring relevance of the concept
of ideology to contemporary sociological analysis by drawing upon central arguments
Corresponding author:
Simon Susen, City University London, UK.
Email: Simon.Susen@city.ac.uk

put
forward
by
Pierre
Bourdieu
and
Luc
Boltanski
in ‘La
production
de
l’ide
´
ologie
dominante’ [‘The Production of the Dominant Ideology’], which was originally pub-
lished in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1976. Symptomatic of its con-
tinuing significance and far-reaching explanatory scope, this seminal text reappeared,
more than three decades later, in book format as La production de l’ide´ologie dominante
(2008 [1976]) [henceforth PID].
1
The important theoretical contributions made in PID,
however, have been largely ignored by contemporary sociologists, even by those who
specialize in the critical study of ideology. The following enquiry intends to fill this gap
in the literature by illustrating that PID provides crucial insights into the principal char-
acteristics and functions of ideologies, including the ways in which they develop and
operate in advanced capitalist societies. The article is divided into two main parts. The
first part examines various universal features of ideology. The second part aims to shed
light on several particular features of dominant ideology. The paper draws to a close by
arguing that the ‘end of ideology’ thesis, although it raises valuable sociological ques-
tions, is ultimately untenable.
Ideology
1.
Ideology and practice
The production of ideology cannot be dissociated from the production of social prac-
tices. In fact, the production of ideology is not only embedded in social practices but
constitutes a social practice itself. Without its tangible relevance to the multiple ways in
which human actors establish a symbolically mediated relation to the world, ideology
would lack the socio-ontological centrality it has acquired in the normative regulation of
civilizational life forms. Given its praxeological significance with regard to the develop-
ment of social existence, an ideological discourse ‘is only secondarily supposed to
express [the] conviction’ (Bourdieu and Boltanski, 2008 [1976]: 11) of those who sup-
port it, since ‘[i]ts primary function is to orient an action’ (p. 11; emphasis added) or a
set of actions. The preponderance of the practical, rather than the theoretical, dimensions
of ideology in real-life situations goes hand in hand with the socio-ontological predomi-
nance of intuitive and taken-for-granted, rather than reflexive and discursive, knowledge
in the construction of everyday life. Insofar as an ideology permeates people’s quotidian
practices, it succeeds in converting itself into a material force capable of structuring
embodied actions and interactions.
2.
Ideology and cohesion
Ideologies, insofar as they are produced and reproduced by specific social groups, serve
a major bonding and integrative function, which depends on their capacity to create a
sense of collectively sustained cohesion. Shared ideological frameworks make it pos-
sible ‘to maintain the performers’ cohesion reinforcing, through ritual reaffirmation, the
group’s belief in the necessity and the legitimacy of its action’ (p. 11; emphasis added).
Ideological discourses provide symbolic reference points that assume the role of cultural
markers of identity, which are both conducive to and contingent upon social processes of
group formation. In the case of hegemonic discourses, their ‘primary function is to

express and produce the logical and moral integration of the dominant class’ (p. 9); in the
case of counterhegemonic discourses, their principal role is to convey and guarantee the
social and normative integration of dominated groups, which, in the long run, have an
interest in overcoming their position, since it is supported by – exogenously imposed and
endogenously reproduced – mechanisms of inferiorization. An effective ideological
discourse comprises a set of values, principles, and assumptions whose adherents –
whilst, in most cases, lacking a completely homogenous base, reducible to the will power
of a monolithically defined collective actor – are capable of developing a sense of
solidarity. The presence of ideologically mediated schemes of perception, appreciation,
and action is a precondition for the emergence of viable processes of social integration
founded on collectively shared experiences of real or imagined cohesion.
3.
Ideology and diversity
The relative heterogeneity of field-differentiated societies manifests itself in the diversity
of the ideologies shaping their history. Far from reflecting ‘the perfect and entirely
planned coherence of an ‘‘ideological state apparatus’’’ (p. 10), or of a pristine lifeworld
characterized by social homogeneity and behavioural consistency, discursively mediated
sets of values and principles are not only malleable and revisable but also tension-laden
and, to some extent, contradictory. In fact, the long-term viability of a given ideology is
inconceivable without a significant degree of elasticity and adaptability, since it ‘owes
its truly symbolic efficiency (of misrecognition) to the fact that it excludes neither diver-
gences nor discordances’ (p. 10; emphasis added) from its attempts to assert its epistemic
validity and social legitimacy.
The combined effects of spontaneous orchestration and methodical composition imply that
political opinions can vary infinitely from one fraction to another, and even from one
individual to the next .. . . (p. 10)
For the symbolically mediated development of society, the competition between
different ideologies is just as important as the discursive struggles taking place within the
intersubjective construction zones of these ideologies. Indeed, ‘[t]he liberal point of
honour depends on this diversity within unity’ (p. 10; emphasis added), without which
there would be no variegated civilizational history. The fruitful interplay between
spontaneity and improvisation, on the one hand, and rigidity and regulation, on the other,
is essential to the possibility of cross-fertilizing rival ideologies, as well as com- peting
intellectual currents within the discursive horizons out of which they emerge. The most
homogeneous society cannot eliminate the influence, let alone the existence, of group-
specific diversity.
4.
Ideology and positionality
Every ideology is impregnated with the structuring power of social positionality. The
persistent efforts made by dominant individual or collective actors to direct attention
away from their relationally defined situatedness only reinforce the existential sig-
nificance of the asymmetrically organized positions that they occupy in the social space.
Ostensibly ‘neutral places’
2
are ‘ideological laboratories in which, on the basis of a

collective work, the dominant social philosophy is generated’ (p. 17; emphasis added) by
different fractions of the ruling class. Dominant ideologies are produced by and for those
in dominant positions. Ideologies aimed at challenging hegemonic sets of values and
principles, by contrast, tend to be produced by and for those in dominated positions, that
is, by and for those whose practices are severely confined by relatively – or almost
completely – disempowered and disempowering variables of interaction.
5.
Ideology and intersubjectivity
No matter how abstract or seemingly removed from the structural constraints of social
reality, ideologies emerge out of their advocates’ experience of intersubjectivity. Far
from being reducible to a monological mechanism, the production of ideological fra-
meworks emanates from a dialogical process, in which the communicative engagement
with divergent perspectives is vital to the opinion and will formation of the different
members and fractions of a particular social group or class. Indeed, ‘[o]ne of the
functions of neutral places is to favour what is commonly called ‘‘exchanges of points of
view’’, that is, the reciprocal information on the vision that agents develop in relation to
the future’ (p. 98; emphasis added) by engaging in the construction of meaningful
relations based on the quotidian experience of discursively mediated intersubjectivity.
6.
Ideology and differentiality
There is no ideology without the fabrication of conceptual differentiality (see p. 10). For
every ideology comprises a relatively systematic set of interconnected values, principles,
and assumptions founded on value-laden categorizations. To be exact, ideologically
mediated differentiations manifest themselves in the relatively arbitrary construction of
classifications, oppositions, and hierarchies (see p. 57). (a) Through the construction of
classifications, it is possible to draw distinctions that are central to dividing the world into
groups and types characterized by traits, particularities, and idiosyncrasies. (b) Through
the construction of oppositions, it is possible to segregate the world in terms of conflicts,
contradictions, and antagonisms. (c) Through the construction of hierar- chies, it is
possible to map the world in terms of vertical orders based on position- taking, grading,
and ranking.
7.
Ideology and partiality
The emergence of ideology is unthinkable without the perspectival force of partiality,
which – paradoxically – is often concealed by the illusion of impartiality:
The effect of objectivity produced by the neutral place results, fundamentally, from the
eclectic structure of the group to which it corresponds: as a place of encounter – in which
people come together, removed from different fractions, as they themselves constitute places
of encounter, through the multiplicity of positions that they occupy within the dominant class –
the neutral place imposes – through its own logic – the respect of formal rules that are
commonly identified with ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’ .. . . (p. 116; emphasis added)
The belief in neutrality – sustained not only by pretentious claims to objectivity and
universalizability but also by reference to seemingly generalizable imperatives of

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

The main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the enduring relevance of the concept of ideology to contemporary sociological analysis. To this end, the article draws upon central arguments put forward by Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski in ‘ La production de l ’ idéologie dominante ’ [ ‘ The Production of the Dominant Ideology ’ ]. Yet, the important theoretical contributions made in this enquiry have been largely ignored by contemporary sociologists, even by those who specialize in the critical study of ideology. This article intends to fill this gap in the literature by illustrating that useful lessons can be learned from Bourdieu and Boltanski ’ s critical investigation, as it provides crucial insights into the principal characteristics and functions of ideologies, including the ways in which they develop and operate in advanced capitalist societies. The article is divided into two main parts: the first part examines various universal features of ideology ; the second part aims to shed light on several particular features of dominant ideology. The paper concludes by arguing that the ‘ end of ideology ’ thesis, despite the fact that it raises valuable sociological questions, is ultimately untenable.