Showing papers on "Ideology published in 2010"

The Uses of Neoliberalism

Abstract: The term “neoliberalism” has come to be used in a wide variety of partly overlapping and partly contradictory ways. This essay seeks to clarify some of the analytical and political work that the term does in its different usages. It then goes on to suggest that making an analytical distinction between neoliberal “arts of government” and the class-based ideological “project” of neoliberalism can allow us to identify some surprising (and perhaps hopeful) new forms of politics that illustrate how fundamentally polyvalent neoliberal mechanisms of government can be. A range of empirical examples are discussed, mostly coming from my recent work on social policy and anti-poverty politics in southern Africa.

Ideologically motivated activism: How activist groups influence corporate social change activities

Abstract: Using insights from the social movement literature and institutional change theory, we explore how activism influences corporate social change activities. As the responsibility for addressing a variety of social issues is transferred from the state to the private sector, activist groups increasingly challenge firms to take up such issues, seeking to influence the nature and level of corporate social change activities. Eventually, they aim to bring about field-level change. We argue that ideological differences among activist groups motivate them to choose different influence tactics to support their claims.

Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships across Issue Domains and Political Contexts

Abstract: Previous research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however, to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary substantially between white and black respondents.

Personality, ideology, prejudice, and politics: a dual-process motivational model

Abstract: Early theorists assumed that sociopolitical or ideological attitudes were organized along a single left-right dimension and directly expressed a basic personality dimension. Empirical findings, however, did not support this and suggested that there seem to be 2 distinct ideological attitude dimensions, best captured by the constructs of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation, which express 2 distinct sets of motivational goals or values. We outline a dual-process motivational (DPM) model of how these 2 dimensions originate from particular personality dispositions and socialized worldview beliefs and how and why their different underlying motivational goals or values generate their wide-ranging effects on social outcomes, such as prejudice and politics. We then review new research bearing on the model and conclude by noting promising directions for future research.

Living in the end times

Abstract: The underlying premise of the book is a simple one: the global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point. Its four riders of the apocalypse are the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, the imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property, the forthcoming struggle for raw materials, food and water), and the explosions of social divisions and exclusions. Society's first reaction is ideological denial, then explosions of anger at the injustices of the new world order, attempts at bargaining, and when this fails, depression and withdrawal set in. Finally, after passing through this zero-point we no longer perceive it as a threat, but as the chance for a new beginning. Or, as Mao Zedong might have put it, There is great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent.A" A iA ek traces out in detail these five stances, makes a plea for a return to the Marxian critique of political economy, and sniffs out the first signs of a budding communist culture in all its diverse forms-in utopias that range from Kafka's community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes.

The Empathic Civilization : The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis

Abstract: Contents Introduction 1. The Hidden Paradox of Human History I. Homo Empathicus 2. The New View of Human Nature 3. A Sentient Interpretation of Biological Evolution 4. Becoming Human 5. Rethinking the Meaning of the Human Journey II. Empathy and Civilization 6. The Ancient Theological Brain and Patriarchal Economy 7. Cosmopolitan Rome and the Rise of Urban Christianity 8. The Soft Industrial Revolution of the Late Medieval Era and the Birth of Humanism 9. Ideological Thinking in a Modern Market Economy 10. Psychological Consciousness in a Postmodern Existential World III. The Age of Empathy 11. The Climb to Global Peak Empathy 12. The Planetary Entropic Abyss 13. The Emerging Era of Distributed Capitalism 14. The Theatrical Self in an Improvisational Society 15. Biosphere Consciousness in a Climax Economy Notes Bibliography Index About the Author

Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood

Abstract: MacLeod, Jay. 2009 (3rd ed). Ain't No Makin' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder. CO: Westview Press In Ain't No Making' It: Aspirations and Attainment in a Low-Income Neighborhood (1987) Jay MacLeod expertly shows education's role in the process of social reproduction, or how class inequality passes from one generation to the next. On the jacket cover of the third edition, preeminent sociologists-like William J. Wilson-comment enthusiastically about the updates on subjects' socio-economic status 20+ years after the initial study. They underscore the "classic" status of ANMI in scholarship on structural inequality and social reproduction. For readers unfamiliar with the book, I briefly describe the author's initial study and the contributions from data collected for the second edition. Following this, I discuss the added longitudinal data obtained for the third edition, its important new insights, and the usefulness of this book for courses in several core areas of sociology. In 1982 Jay MacLeod conducted participant observation of two groups of male youth, the Hallway Hangers and the Brothers. Both lived in a housing project called Clarendon Heights, but the two groups differed in important respects. The Hallways Hangers are predominantly white youth who, at that point in their young lives, openly resisted the American achievement ideology advanced by schools. They were dropouts and underachievers, saw few opportunities for themselves in the economy and other structures of society, and subsequently had no aspirations for a better life. In contrast the Brothers, predominantly black youth, demonstrated their belief in America as a land of opportunity by adopting its cultural norms, institutional rules, and by applying themselves in school (albeit with mixed results). They had strong faith that education would give them the needed human capital to succeed in middle-class jobs. When asked about racism, most believed that collective discrimination was a thing of the past. Any future challenges they faced from prejudicial people could be overcome with focus, hard work, and commitment. By dismissing racism and classism, both groups failed to recognize any structural basis for inequality. MacLeod also shows how the process of social reproduction works in practice. Social structure, he explains, becomes embedded in the "habitus" (Bourdieu) of the lower classes and shapes the aspirations of the Hallway Hangers and Brothers. Habitus refers to "subjects' dispositions, which reflect a class-based experience and a corresponding social grammar of taste, knowledge, and behavior." Using habitus as a theoretical framework, MacLeod stresses, helps to transcend the dualism that characterizes scholarship on social reproduction. It is not solely one-structure-or the other-agency. Both are responsible for class inequality and its reproduction. (Although MacLeod does concede that structure is primary.) The second edition is based on data collected on the men's lives nine years later, and the comparative racial dimension of this study yields another important insight into the process of social reproduction. The majority of Hallway Hangers and Brothers have jobs in the secondary labor market, with low wages, skill requirements, and irregular work. …

Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy

Abstract: Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy Joseph E. Stiglitz W. W. Norton & Company, 2010 Joseph Stiglitz's Freefall is another excellent discussion of the global economic crisis, authored by a man who ranks high among the commentators. Stiglitz was the chief economist at the World Bank during the East Asian economic crisis in 1997-1998, and then chaired the United Nations commission that sought reforms for the global financial and monetary system. He was a member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisors. This is his fifth book. There seem to be a great many Nobel Prize winners in Economics (whose collective wisdom doesn't seem to have saved the world from its financial travails), but it would surely be amiss not to mention that Stiglitz is among them. This book testifies to his distinction in that select group. Because Freefall can hardly examine the crisis without covering much of the same ground as the other books we have reviewed, we will avoid repeating that analysis here. We prefer to focus on those aspects of Stiglitz's discussion that address unresolved issues or that most bring his own learning to bear: * His view of the plight in which today's "capitalism" finds itself. * What he says (and yet doesn't say) about the whirlpool of global finance. * His critique of the response that the U.S. Federal Reserve and government have made to the crisis, including what he thinks should have been done. * In connection with this critique, his reflections on the performance both of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations' actions through the end of 2009. * What reforms Stiglitz considers needed. His view of today's "capitalism." Although Stiglitz affirms "that markets lie at the heart of every successful economy" and is by no means anticapitalist, he shares the view that has come to be held by a great many thoughtful commentators that today's "capitalism" bears little resemblance to the competitive "private enterprise" that supporters of a market economy have long championed. He speaks of an "ersatz capitalism" that features a "corporate welfare state" driven by "blatant greed" and an ideology, sponsored by special interests, that has made a fetish of "self-regulating markets." "The current crisis has uncovered fundamental flaws in the capitalist system, or at least the peculiar version of capitalism that emerged in the latter part of the twentieth century in the United States." This realization is an intellectual earthquake. It should profoundly redirect the thinking of America's free-market enthusiasts, who will do their philosophy a great disservice if they insist on blind loyalty to the current system. We saw the same theme in our review of John Bogle's The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism,1 where we wrote that "in common with many others today, Bogle sees that the market system has become untracked - has 'lost its soul' - and needs much devoted attention (especially from capitalism's supporters...)." It is worth noting that Bogle saw the problem as societal, not just economic. "Our society is moving in the wrong direction," with "absurdities and inequities that we've come to accept" in a "wealth-oriented, things-fixated society" within which "the lure of money has overwhelmed the prestige of reputation." This suggests that even though national and international financial reforms are essential, they cannot appropriately be understood as a "quick fix" that will be sufficient to put things right. There needs to be deep concern for the systemic health of the society. What Stiglitz says (and doesn't say) about the multi-trillion dollar ocean of global finance. In our review of David Smick's The World is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy, 2 we found that "the risks Smick describes are so many and so palpable that any objective observer would be justified in considering them intolerable. …

Discourse analysis: a new methodology for understanding the ideologies of health and illness

Abstract: Discourse analysis is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry which has been little employed by public health practitioners. The methodology involves a focus upon the sociocultural and political context in which text and talk occur. Discourse analysis is, above all, concerned with a critical analysis of the use of language and the reproduction of dominant ideologies (belief systems) in discourse (defined here as a group of ideas or patterned way of thinking which can both be identified in textual and verbal communications and located in wider social structures). Discourse analysis adds a linguistic approach to an understanding of the relationship between language and ideology, exploring the way in which theories of reality and relations of power are encoded in such aspects as the syntax, style and rhetorical devices used in texts. This paper argues that discourse analysis is pertinent to the concerns of public health, for it has the potential to lay bare the ideological dimension of such phenomena as lay health beliefs, the doctor-patient relationship, and the dissemination of health information in the entertainment mass media. This dimension is often neglected by public health research. The method of discourse analysis is explained, and examples of its use in the area of public health given.

Ideas and politics in social science research

Abstract: ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS PREFACE INTRODUCTION: IDEAS AND POLITICS, DANIEL BELAND AND ROBERT HENRY COX PART I THEORY 1. The Varied Roles of Ideas in Politics: From "Whether" to "How", Jal Mehta 2. Reconciling Ideas and Institutions Through Discursive Institutionalism, Vivien A. Schmidt 3. Ideas and the Construction of Interests, Colin Hay 4. Ideas, Uncertainty and Evolution, Mark Blyth PART II ANALYSIS 5. Ideology, History and Politics, Sheri Berman 6. Ideas, Position, and Supranationality, Craig Parsons 7. Ideas, Policy Change and the Welfare State, Daniel Wincott 8. Knowledge Regimes and Comparative Political Economy, John Campbell and Ove K. Pedersen 9. Ideas, Expertise and Think Tanks, Andrew Rich 10. Ideas and Institutions in Race Politics, Robert C. Lieberman BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

Measuring Citizen and Government Ideology in the U.S. States: A Re-appraisal:

Abstract: Berry et al.'s (1998) measures of U.S. state citizen and government ideology rely on unadjusted interest-group ratings for a state's members of Congress to infer information about (1) the ideological orientation of the electorates that selected them or (2) state legislators and the governor from the same state. Potential weaknesses in unadjusted interest-group ratings prompt the question: Are the Berry et al. measures flawed, and if so, can they be fixed by substituting alternative measures of a member's ideology? We conclude that a version of the Berry et al. state government ideology indicator relying on NOMINATE common space scores is marginally superior to the extant version. In contrast, we reaffirm the validity of the original state citizen ideology indicator and find that versions based on NOMINATE common space scores and adjusted ADA and COPE scores introduced by Groseclose, Levitt, and Snyder (1999) are weaker.

Community Economic Identity: The Coal Industry and Ideology Construction in West Virginia

Abstract: Economic changes and the machinations of the treadmill of production have dramatically reduced the number of jobs provided by extrac- tive industries, such as mining and timber, in the United States and other affluent nations in the post-World War II era. As the importance of these industries to national, regional, and local economies wanes, community resis- tance to ecologically and socially destructive industry practices threatens the political power of corporations engaged in natural-resource extraction. Here we argue that to maintain their power (and profits) as their contribution to employment declines, extractive industries have increased their efforts to maintain and amplify the extent to which the "economic identity" of commu- nities is connected with the industry that was historically an important source of employment. We fit this argument within the neo-Marxian theoretical tradition, which emphasizes the roles ideology and legitimation play in main- taining elite rule. We illustrate this theorized process by analyzing the efforts of the West Virginia coal industry, which, through its (faux) "grassroots" front group "Friends of Coal," attempts to construct the image that West Virginia's economy and cultural identity are centered on coal production. Our analysis relies on content analysis of various sources and on experience gained from field research. We find that key strategies of the Friends of Coal include efforts to become pervasively visible in the social landscape and the appro- priation of cultural icons that exploit the hegemonic masculinity of the region. These findings have implications for how industries around the country, and the world, work to maintain their power through ideological manipulation.

Ideological cultures and media discourses on scientific knowledge: re-reading news on climate change

Abstract: Focusing on the representation of climate change in the British "quality press," this article argues that the discursive (re)construction of scientific claims in the media is strongly entangled with ideological standpoints. Understood here as a set of ideas and values that legitimate a program of action vis-a-vis a given social and political order, ideology works as a powerful selection device in deciding what is scientific news, i.e. what the relevant "facts" are, and who are the authorized ...

Religion in the Face of Uncertainty: An Uncertainty-Identity Theory Account of Religiousness

Abstract: The authors characterize religions as social groups and religiosity as the extent to which a person identifies with a religion, subscribes to its ideology or worldview, and conforms to its normative practices. They argue that religions have attributes that make them well suited to reduce feelings of self-uncertainty. According to uncertainty-identity theory, people are motivated to reduce feelings of uncertainty about or reflecting on self; and identification with groups, particularly highly entitative groups, is a very effective way to reduce uncertainty. All groups provide belief systems and normative prescriptions related to everyday life. However, religions also address the nature of existence, invoking sacred entities and associated rituals and ceremonies. They are entitative groups that provide a moral compass and rules for living that pervade a person’s life, making them particularly attractive in times of uncertainty. The authors document data supporting their analysis and discuss conditions that transform religiosity into religious zealotry and extremism.

Power, discourse, and policy: articulating a hegemony approach to critical policy studies

Abstract: In this article, I argue that power and hegemony are vital for critically explaining a range of policymaking practices. Developing the basic assumptions of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's poststructuralist discourse theory, in which discourse is understood as an articulatory practice, I first elaborate the concept of power in relation to the work of Michel Foucault, Steven Lukes, and others. Power in this picture consists of radical acts of decision and institution, which involve the drawing of political frontiers via the creation of multiple lines of inclusion and exclusion. The exercise of power thus constitutes and produces practices, policies, and regimes. But power is also evident in the sedimentation of social relations via various techniques of political management, and through the elaboration of ideologies and fantasies, where the function of the latter is to conceal the radical contingency of social relations and to naturalize relations of domination. In elaborating this conception of power, ...

Consumer Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand-Mediated Moral Conflict

Abstract: Consumer researchers have tended to equate consumer moralism with normative condemnations of mainstream consumer culture. Consequently, little research has investigated the multifaceted forms of identity work that consumers can undertake through more diverse ideological forms of consumer moralism. To redress this theoretical gap, we analyze the adversarial consumer narratives through which a brand-mediated moral conflict is enacted. We show that consumers’ moralistic identity work is culturally framed by the myth of the moral protagonist and further illuminate how consumers use this mythic structure to transform their ideological beliefs into dramatic narratives of identity. Our resulting theoretical framework ex- plicates identity-value–enhancing relationships among mythic structure, ideological meanings, and marketplace resources that have not been recognized by prior studies of consumer identity work.

The myths about e-learning in higher education

Abstract: Proponents have marketed e-learning by focusing on its adoption as the right thing to do while disregarding, among other things, the concerns of the potential users, the adverse effects on users and the existing research on the use of e-learning or related innovations. In this paper, the e-learning-adoption proponents are referred to as the technopositivists. It is argued that most of the technopositivists in the higher education context are driven by a personal agenda, with the aim of propagating a technopositivist ideology to stakeholders. The technopositivist ideology is defined as a ‘compulsive enthusiasm’ about e-learning in higher education that is being created, propagated and channelled repeatedly by the people who are set to gain without giving the educators the time and opportunity to explore the dangers and rewards of e-learning on teaching and learning. Ten myths on e-learning that the technopositivists have used are presented with the aim of initiating effective and constructive dialogue, rather than merely criticising the efforts being made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumer Identity Work as Moral Protagonism: How Myth and Ideology Animate a Brand-Mediated Moral Conflict

Abstract: Consumer researchers have tended to equate consumer moralism with normative condemnations of mainstream consumer culture. Consequently, little research has investigated the multifaceted forms of identity work that consumers can undertake through more diverse ideological forms of consumer moralism. To redress this theoretical gap, we analyze the adversarial consumer narratives through which a brand‐mediated moral conflict is enacted. We show that consumers’ moralistic identity work is culturally framed by the myth of the moral protagonist and further illuminate how consumers use this mythic structure to transform their ideological beliefs into dramatic narratives of identity. Our resulting theoretical framework explicates identity‐value–enhancing relationships among mythic structure, ideological meanings, and marketplace resources that have not been recognized by prior studies of consumer identity work.

Creative Industries after the First Decade of Debate

Abstract: It has now been over a decade since the concept of creative industries was first put into the public domain by the Blair Labour government's Creative Industries Mapping Documents in Britain. The concept has gained traction globally, but it has also been understood and developed in different ways in Europe, Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and North America, as well as through international bodies such as UNCTAD and UNESCO. A review of the policy literature reveals that although questions and issues remain around definitional coherence, there is some degree of consensus emerging about the size, scope, and significance of the sectors in question in both advanced and developing economies. At the same time, debate about the concept remains highly animated in media, communication, and cultural studies, with its critics dismissing the concept outright as a harbinger of neoliberal ideology in the cultural sphere. This article couches such critiques in light of recent debates surrounding the intellectual coherence of the concept of neoliberalism, arguing that this term itself possesses problems when taken outside of the Anglo-American context in which it originated. It is argued that issues surrounding the nature of participatory media culture, the relationship between cultural production and economic innovation, and the future role of public cultural institutions can be developed from within a creative industries framework and that writing off such arguments as a priori ideological and flawed does little to advance debates about twentieth-century information and media culture.

White institutional presence: The impact of Whiteness on campus climate.

Abstract: In this conceptual paper, Diane Gusa highlights the salience of race by scrutinizing the culture of Whiteness within predominately White institutions of higher education. Using existing research in higher education retention literature, Gusa examines embedded White cultural ideology in the cultural practices, traditions, and perceptions of knowledge that are taken for granted as the norm at institutions of higher education. Drawing on marginalization and discrimination experiences of African American undergraduates to illustrate the performance of White mainstream ideology, Gusa names this embedded ideology White institutional presence (WIP) and assigns it four attributes: White ascendancy, monoculturalism, White estrangement, and White blindness.

More than Ideology: Conservative–Liberal Identity and Receptivity to Political Cues

Abstract: To many commentators and social scientists, Americans' stances on political issues are to an important extent driven by an underlying conservative- liberal ideological dimension. Self-identification as conservative vs. liberal is regarded as a marker of this dimension. However, past research has not thoroughly distinguished between ideological identity (a self-categorization) and ideology (an integrated value system). This research evaluates the thesis that conservative-liberal identity functions as a readiness to adopt beliefs and attitudes about newly politi- cized issues that one is told are consistent with the socially prescribed meaning of conservatism-liberalism. In Study 1, conservative-liberal identity, measured in 2000, had an independent prospective effect on support for invading Iraq in 2002 and support for the Iraq war in 2004, controlling for substantive ideology, party identity, and demographics. In Study 2, conservative- and liberal-identifiers adopted stances on farm subsidy policy based on randomly varied cues indicating which ideological group supports which stance. This cue-based influence was mediated by adoption of attitude-supportive beliefs. Discussion addresses the joint impact of political discourse and identity-based social influence on the organization of political attitudes.

Doing Justice to the Political: The International Criminal Court in Uganda and Sudan

Abstract: International criminal justice has become a weapon in political struggles in Uganda and Sudan. In this light, this article discusses the political meaning of the International Criminal Court's judicial interventions. It argues that the ICC, presented by its advocates as a legal bastion immune from politics, is inherently political by making a distinction between the friends and enemies of the international community which it purports to represent. Using original empirical data, the article demonstrates how in both Uganda and Sudan warring parties have used the ICC's intervention to brand opponents as hostis humani generis, or enemies of mankind, and to present themselves as friends of the ICC, and thus friends of the international community. The ICC Prosecutor has at times encouraged this friend�enemy dichotomy. These observations do not result in a denunciation of the Court as a �political institution�. On the contrary: they underline that a sound normative evaluation of the Court's activities can be made only when its political dimensions are acknowledged and understood. To show that justice has its practical and ideological limits is not to slight it. � The entire aim is rather to account for the difficulties which the morality of justice faces in a morally pluralistic world and to help it recognize its real place in it � not above the political world but in its very midst. J. Shklar, Legalism: Law, Morals and Political Trials (1986), at 122�123.

Does government ideology influence deregulation of product markets? Empirical evidence from OECD countries

Abstract: This paper examines how government ideology has influenced deregulation of product markets in OECD countries. I analyze a dataset of non-manufacturing regulation indicators covering energy, transport and communication industries in 21 OECD countries over the 1980–2003 period and employ two different indices of government ideology. The results suggest that government ideology has had a strong influence on the deregulation process: market-oriented governments promoted the deregulation of the energy, transport and communication industries. This finding identifies remarkable differences between leftist and rightwing governments concerning the role of government in the economy and basic elements of political order.

Contemporary states of emergency : the politics of military and humanitarian interventions

Abstract: From natural disaster areas to zones of political conflict around the world, a new logic of intervention combines military action and humanitarian aid, conflates moral imperatives and political arguments, and confuses the concepts of legitimacy and legality. The mandate to protect human lives -- however and wherever endangered -- has given rise to a new form of humanitarian government that moves from one crisis to the next, applying the same battery of technical expertise (from military logistics to epidemiological risk management to the latest social scientific tools for "good governance") and reducing people with particular histories and hopes to mere lives to be rescued. This book explores these contemporary states of emergency. Drawing on the critical insights of anthropologists, legal scholars, political scientists, and practitioners from the field, Contemporary States of Emergency examines historical antecedents as well as the moral, juridical, ideological, and economic conditions that have made military and humanitarian interventions common today. It addresses the practical process of intervention in global situations on five continents, describing both differences and similarities, and examines the moral and political consequences of these generalized states of emergency and the new form of government associated with them.

Equilibrium Fictions: A Cognitive Approach to Societal Rigidity

Abstract: This paper assesses the role of ideas in economic change, combining economic and historical analysis with insights from psychology, sociology and anthropology. Belief systems shape the system of categories ("pre-confirmatory bias") and perceptions (confirmatory bias), and are themselves constrained by fundamental values. We illustrate the model using the historical construction of racial categories. Given the post-Reformation fundamental belief that all men had rights, colonial powers after the 15th century constructed ideologies that the colonized groups they exploited were naturally inferior, and gave these beliefs precedence over other aspects of belief systems. Historical work finds that doctrines of race came into their own in the colonies that became the US after, not before, slavery; that out of the "scandal of empire" in India emerged a "race theory that cast Britons and Indians in a relationship of absolute difference"; and that arguments used by the settlers in Australia to justify their policies towards the Aborigines entailed in effect the expulsion of the Aborigines from the human race. Racial ideology shaped categories and perceptions in ways that we show can give rise to equilibrium fictions. In our framework, technology, contacts with the outside world, and changes in power and wealth matter not just directly but because they can lead to changes in ideology.

Planning as the ideology of (neoliberal) space

Abstract: This article briefly reviews the history and concept of ideology, largely as articulated by exponents of the Frankfurt School, and considers the impact that this has had on historical planning theo...

Evaluating the effects of ideology on public understanding of climate change science: How to improve communication across ideological divides?

Abstract: While ideology can have a strong effect on citizen understanding of science, it is unclear how ideology interacts with other complicating factors, such as college education, which influence citizens' comprehension of information. We focus on public understanding of climate change science and test the hypotheses: [H1] as citizens' ideology shifts from liberal to conservative, concern for global warming decreases; [H2] citizens with college education and higher general science literacy tend to have higher concern for global warming; and [H3] college education does not increase global warming concern for conservative ideologues. We implemented a survey instrument in California's San Francisco Bay Area, and employed regression models to test the effects of ideology and other socio-demographic variables on citizen concern about global warming, terrorism, the economy, health care and poverty. We are able to confirm H1 and H3, but reject H2. Various strategies are discussed to improve the communication of climate change science across ideological divides.