The Meaning of Ideology

This is the first collection to bring together leading scholars from diverse disciplines to offer a variety of perspectives on ideology and its analysis, emphasizing the input of different intellectual and scholarly traditions to the meaning of ideology. The articles explore commonalities in the use and understanding of ideology as well as delineating constructive differences in its interpretation, while illuminating the changes that the concept of ideology, as well as the practices it signifies, has undergone in recent years. Contributions are included from the fields of political theory, history, literature, political science, cultural studies, post-Marxism, discourse analysis, language studies, law, and sociology. The Meaning of Ideology advances our understanding of the intricacy and relevance of ideology, and offers the latest theories and insights that currently inform scholarship on the subject. Ideology emerges through the pages of this collection more strongly than ever as a major tool of understanding political language and as a durable and normal phenomenon that is inherent in the many ways we conceive the world around us. This book was previously published as a special issue of The Journal of Political Ideologies and will be of interest to students of political ideologies and political and social theory.

Michael Freeden is Professor of Politics and Director of the Centre for Political Ideologies at the University of Oxford; Professorial Fellow at Mansfield College, Oxford; and a UK Economic and Social Research Council Professorial Fellow for 2004-2007. He is the founder editor of the Journal of Political Ideologies.

Introduction. Ideology and Political Theory. Ideology and History. Ideology and Literature. Ideology and Government. Ideology and Culture. Ideology and Post-Marxism. Ideology and Discourse. Ideology and Language. Ideology and Law. Ideology and Sociology: Reflections on Karl Mannheim's Ideology and Utopia. The Debate