Ideology: Picking up the pieces?

Abstract

Ideology studies have undergone considerable transformation over the past thirty years. New methodologies and approaches have recast the insights and interpretations it can deliver and that have established it as a major type of political thinking. More recently, however, the production and dissemination of ideologies have adopted novel forms that present a challenge even to the latest manifestations of thinking politically among groups and societies. They demand a reassessment of effective ways of understanding ideologies, especially under conditions of broad but fragmented articulation and circulation. Ideologies are now in pieces, dismantled, fractured, sporadic, discontinuous, even scavenged. The article discusses six trends in the mutation of their contents and patterns: deintellectualization, the brevity of transmitted messages, the democracy-challenging super-atomization of voices in the public domain, the increasing speed of change, the easy transfer of ideas across conventional boundaries, and a subtle opacity, often unintentionally concealed from producers and consumers alike. Their study can benefit from combining the investigation of the durable features of conceptual morphology with a sharp eye for the fluid and shifting cultural currents within which that morphology is filtered.