The theory of cultural software has a twofold focus: First, it is concerned with how tools of understanding are produced through conceptual bricolage. Second, it is concerned with how these tools of understanding help create or sustain injustices in particular social contexts. The goal of this theory is not primarily functional explanation but causal or evolutionary explanation. Moreover, because the theory focuses on just and unjust effects, its analysis is overtly normative as opposed to merely descriptive.
Under this approach there is, strictly speaking, no longer a single thing called ideology. The theory of cultural software, while dissolving the study of ideology into the larger study of cultural understanding, also breaks the study of ideology down into the study of ideological mechanisms and ideological effects.
Ideological effects are effects of cultural software that help create or sustain unjust social conditions, unjust social relations, or the unjust use of social power.
Ideological thinking, in short, is employment of ideological mechanisms of cultural software that produce ideological effects. Note that symbolic forms produced through the use of cultural software can also have ideological effects through their effects on human understanding.
For example, perfume advertisements can have ideological effects if they help to create or sustain unjust relations between men and women. If a person used statistical formulas to calculate the numbers of individuals who could be transferred to a concentration camp, we would not say that the mere skill involved in applying the algorithm was an example of ideological thinking, even though it would literally be a use of cultural software a mathematical skill that helped maintain unjust social conditions.
Rather, cultural software has ideological effects when it creates ways of thinking about the social world or about others in the social world. Although the study of ideology is not concerned with the skills involved in statistical computation, it is concerned with the ways of looking at people that lead to the judgments that it is appropriate to apply these statistical methods to facilitate genocide.
These definitions of ideological effects and ideological mechanisms make what is ideological turn heavily on social context. This means that in other contexts cultural software may have no significant ideological effects.
We can make a similar point about symbolic forms: a perfume advertisement is not merely a symbolic form with ideological effects; it is also, among other things, an advertisement for perfume. In like fashion, ideological mechanisms are defined contextually. When mechanisms of social cognition produce ideological effects, one can speak of them—for this purpose and to this extent—as ideological mechanisms. But theyare ideological not because of their inherent nature but because of the context in which they are employed and the effects that they have.
What distinguishes ideological thinking from mere fantasy or mistake is the social context in which belief occurs and the use that people make of it. To understand what is ideological, we need a notion not only of what is true but also of what is just.
False beliefs about other people, no matter how mistaken or unflattering, are not ideological until we can demonstrate that they have ideological effects in the social world. For this reason, the study of ideology necessarily intersects with the study of how social power is created, sustained, and distributed, because one of the objects of this study, the ideological effect, is a highly contextual product of cognitive capability and social situation.
But this is the case only because we already understand the social context in which this way of thinking occurs, the forms of behavior it is likely to lead to, and its place in a larger social system of race relations. Perhaps the best example of this principle is the bizarre phenomenon of Japanese anti-Semitism. There are very few Jews in Japan today and thus very few opportunities for discrimination against them.
What is most amazing is that the very same libels that in the European context were part and parcel of a terrible social system of discrimination and extermination are combined in Japan with a peculiar form of philo-Semitism in which Jews are admired for their supposed shrewdness and business acumen.
All of this is not to claim that Japanese anti-Semitism has no ideological effects. Rather, my point is that we must not conflate this phenomenon with European anti-Semitism even though its beliefs and slogans appear to be similarin content and may even have their origins in European anti-Semitic literature. The ideological effects of Japanese attitudes toward Jews seem to have more to do with supporting and sustaining a larger system of beliefs about business and economic competition in Japan.
Moreover, Japanese anti-Semitism also serves as a way of expressing anti-American sentiments, which have surfaced as Japan and the United States have increasingly become economic adversaries. Because Jews are portrayed as the hidden masters of American business and government, anti-Semitic rhetoricbecomes another way of complaining about American culture and American trade policies.
This is yet another consequence of my basic point aboutthe uses and effects of conceptual tools. That is why the study of ideology cannot rest on content alone but must take into account the environment in which cultural software operates.
Indeed, the view that the power of ideas lies in their content and not in their content in a particular context is itself a way of thinking that causes us to misunderstand social situations. Suppose that the students in a particular elementary school classroom are falsely told that they are very bright and very able, indeed, much more bright and able than other students of their age.
As a result, their test scores, as a group, actually begin to improve. The source of their esprit de corps is fraudulent, yet it seems to benefit them. Hence it follows that some ideologies, while false, may actually benefit the people who hold them—for example, themembers of the bourgeoisie.
First, these students may start to look down on students in other classes and other schools and to discriminate against them although the others have equal or greater abilities.
This may harm them in the long run. Thus, a so-called ideology of superior achievement is not ideological thinking in my sense of the word unless and until it has particular effects, and then only to this extent.
It is at that point that they become forms of ideological thought. Above all, this approach does not view ideology as something separate from cultural understanding. The mechanisms of what we call ideological thinking are no different in kind from the ordinary forms of thought. The mechanisms of ideology are the mechanisms of everyday thought, which in particular contexts produce effects that are both unfortunate and unjust.
The tools of our understanding can be alternatively advantageous and disadvantageous as they are applied in new situations and new contexts. Then their limitations become apparent in the same way that many other disadvantages of tools may suddenly surface.
The temptation to identify ideology with a sort of pathology may stem from the familiar notion that ideology is false or distorted belief. Given this assumption, it seems natural to think of falsity or distortion as a kind of illness or malady, especially if it has harmful effects.
For example, we often speak of racism or anti-Semitism as a sickness or a disease. In fact, the metaphor of disease is not completely unreasonable, as I shall discuss momentarily. From the standpoint of causal mechanisms, the question is whether the effects that people have traditionally assigned to the ideological are due to 1 a special mechanism different from the ordinary mechanisms of social cognition; 2 the extension or employment of cognitive mechanisms into contexts for which they are not well adapted; 3 a spontaneous malfunction in cognitive processes; or 4 the invasion of some external force into normally and properly functioning cognitive processes that causes them to malfunction.
I reject 1 and suggest that many ideological effects are produced by 2. This leaves cases 3 and 4 , both of which explain ideological effects in terms of malfunctions. Obviously, there is some overlap between the notion of overextension and the notion of malfunction. Nevertheless, the concepts arenot identical: we would not say of an airplane that it malfunctions because it is a poor vehicle for traveling on land.
Then to the extent that they failed to do so, we would say that they were malfunctioning. This seems to ask too much of our tools of understanding, though; after all, no tool exists that is equally well adapted to all tasks. Much of the distortion that we see in ideology involves the side effects of tools of understanding that become prominent and maladaptive in particular contexts.
Ideological effects are usually the unexpected and unpleasant side effects of conceptual bricolage. But this malfunction would have to appear in many individuals at once in order to qualify as an ideological phenomenon. A simultaneous malfunction by members of a culture is unlikely. This leaves the possibility that if some ideological phenomena are due to a malfunction in our cognitive processes, it is a malfunction brought on by some external force that affects many people at once.
One possibility is that when individuals are placed in situations with which their cognitive systems cannot cope, they break down or malfunction, just as we say that a car malfunctions when it is forced to drive through water, or a vacuum cleaner malfunctions when it is forced to deal with too great a quantity of dust.
If many individuals face the same type of experience, this malfunction would be similar for all of them. But it is hard to imagine that this explains most ideological effects. The idea of a long-term breakdown in cognitive processes seems implausible. A computer virus is just a special kind of computer software that is able to spread and reproduce itself in other computers. In fact, this model of ideological effects is the model of memetic evolution through cultural communication. Memes are reproduced in individuals through a social network of communication and transmission.
The spread of ideological viruses is merely a special case of the basic mechanism through which cultural software is written, transmitted, and modified. All cultural software can be thought of as a kind of informational virus, transmitted from person to person; or, put another way, what we might call an ideological virus is just another kind of cultural software. Our devices for understanding the social world are constituted in large part by idea-programs that were able successfully to be transmitted to us and absorbed into our cultural software.
As the example of European versus Japanese anti-Semitism demonstrates, an ideological virus can produce very different effects when it is introduced into different environments. If an informational virus produces no such harmful effects—just as there are many viruses in the human body that are relatively benign or harmless—then it does not produce an ideological effect.
Fantasies about people in far-off lands may be distorted and false, but they do not become ideological until there are conditions of justice between the two peoples-that is, until there is communication, trade, and the possibility of war, conflict, struggle, economic exploitation, or colonization.
Then these fairy tales which may already have had certain ideological effects within a culture take on a more serious and harmful tone. Fantasy becomes ideology when justice is at stake. The power of ideology over our imaginations is a special case of the power that all cultural software has over our imaginations.
The power of ideology within this picture is quite different from the picture underlying a more traditional Marxist theory of ideology.
In the traditional account, ideas have power because they present a distorted picture of reality to the minds of the persons holding them, causing these persons to act against their objective interests.
From the standpoint of the theory of cultural software, the power of ideology is the power of the culturally produced capacities of our minds to shape social reality for us, and thus simultaneously to empower and to limit our imaginations.
This approach makes considerable use of concepts like usefulness, ade quacy, and suitability. But these concepts can hardly be considered inherent properties of the tools of understanding. Adaptability is a judgment made aboutthe operation of a tool in a particular context. It is also a judgment made by an observer who assesses the operations and effects of mechanisms of thought.
This means, among other things, that the study of ideology is necessarily an interpretive endeavor, although this fact makes it no less useful. This raises problems of self-reference, which are discussed more fully in the next chapter.
The study of ideology necessarily has a normative dimension. It cannot be value free but must presuppose a view about what is good and bad, advantageous and disadvantageous, just and unjust.
She must make interpretive judgments about what social conditions are like, and she must also make judgments about whether a way of thinking is adequate or inadequate to serve particular ends and whether social conditions are just or unjust.
It must ask how this falsity or distortion might create or sustain unjust social conditions or unjust relations of social power. Because I define ideological effects in terms of actual or potential injustices rather than the presence of hegemony or domination, it may be helpful to contrast my approach with that recently offered by John Thompson. Thus while Thompson argues that the essential feature of ideology is the creation or preservation of domination, I have argued that it is the creation or preservation of unjust power or unjust social conditions.
Consider, for example, the phenomenon of black anti-Semitism in the United States. Indeed, in contrast to blacks, Jews have been relatively successful in gaining access to social resources in the United States. For this and other reasons, Jews provide a convenient scapegoat for some members of the black underclass, just as blacks themselves have provided a convenient scapegoat for lower-class whites in the United States.
Black anti-Semitism, like resentment and hostility among some blacks toward Asian Americans, is in part the result of competition between various minority groups; it is not a means by which blacks oppress Jews or Asians and systematically deny them access to social resources. Thus a focus on systematic asymmetries in power defines ideology too narrowly; the study of ideology must be concerned with injustices produced by tools of understanding whether or not they stem from domination of a subordinated group by a dominant group.
To be sure, black anti-Semitism or anti-Asian sentiments may also contribute to the perpetuation of systematic asymmetries between blacks and whites, by diverting attention onto scapegoats and away from positive solutions to the challenges the black community faces. Systematic group domination by a dominated class over a subordinate class is the central concern; it follows that forms of social injustice or unjust social power that do not involve hegemony are not properly the concern of the theory of ideology.
Antiblack prejudice by Korean Americans and anti-Korean prejudice by American blacks cannot easily be subsumed within a hegemonic conception of ideology. One is perfectly free to limit the scope of the study of ideology in this way, of course, but the danger is that a large portion of what most people would consider ideological phenomena will be missed.
For the theory of cultural software, the equation of ideology and hegemony is problematic for seven additional reasons. The first stems from the basic point that ideological mechanisms are the mechanisms of everyday thought about the social world. It is likely that the mechanisms that produce prejudices between groups are fairly similar, although the results may differ because of the relative positions and histories of various groups in society. Second, the concept of a dominant ideology leads us to view ideology in terms that are too monolithic.
What people usually think of as ideology is really the confluence of many different types of cognitive mechanisms. Full Definition of ideology. Example Sentences Learn More About ideology. Synonyms for ideology Synonyms credo , creed , doctrine , dogma , gospel , philosophy , testament Visit the Thesaurus for More.
What Does ideology Mean? Examples of ideology in a Sentence the ideology of a totalitarian society He says that the election is not about ideology. Recent Examples on the Web These takes, along with his broader ideology , have turned the majority of the French Jewish establishment and prominent French Jewish figures against Zemmour. Army veteran Brian Mark Lemley Jr.
First Known Use of ideology , in the meaning defined at sense 2. Learn More About ideology. Time Traveler for ideology The first known use of ideology was in See more words from the same year. From the Editors at Merriam-Webster. Trending: 'I Don't Think He's Style: MLA. Medical Definition of ideology. Get Word of the Day daily email! Test Your Vocabulary. Can you spell these 10 commonly misspelled words? Love words? Need even more definitions?
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