Ideology. What is ideology - Essay Example

Ideology The word ideology has drawn scholarly interest. According to scholars, a set of ideas contains one’s goals, expectations, and actions. The way one looks at things may also be termed as ideology. The word ideology is formed from the word idea (Hawkes, 2003:12). If a society comes up with ideas to-do something and an agreement is made, then that is what is termed as ideology. Ideology may either offer changes in the society or offer closeness where confrontations exist. Ideology can exist in many ways, one as an instrument of social reproduction. The beliefs and the interests of a nation or society is referred as ideology. Ideology may also mean abode of ideas that reflect needs and expectations of group, culture, or individual (Hawkes, 2003:12). The way or the manner of thinking is also, what is referred as ideology. There is the political ideology, which contain two dimensions known as goals and methods. All in all ideology means collection of ideas. However, each ideology contains specific ideas, which they consider them as their form of government (Freeden, 2003:32). Many ways explain how ideology came up. The word ideology was discovered first by Count Antoine Destutt de Tracy who is a French materialist in eighteenth century. This was originated from Kharl Marx who had defined it as a false consciousness. Although their ideas were neither universal nor objective, they came out of and served their interests. Today this word is used in a broad sense than how Kharl thought to be. Now means a set ideas used politically to distort social and political realities. In twentieth century, theorists such as Louis Althusser, Karl Mannheim, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Erich Fromm, and others tried to analyze this concept (Bailey and Gayle, 2003:65). Between 1754 and 1836, Destutt de Tracy, a French Enlightenment thinker tried to establish a “science of ideas “and called it “ideology.” Napoleon accused the thinkers who tried to promote freedom and human rights. Marx went on further and specified the concept of ideology through his theories. Ideology was established through a strong debate of politicians and philosophies and through fights of the French Revolution. The word was mentioned by Destutt de Tracy in1796. The reason of mentioning it was to refer one aspect of his “science of ideas.” Hippolyte Taine’s was the near accessible source of the original meaning of the word ideology (Rejai, 2009:43). According to Karl Mannheim’s reconstruction of the word ideology, the meaning used now was born when Napoleon Bonaparte used it in abusive way against “the ideologues” to show the pettiness of his political opponents. “Ideology” was coined before the Russian coined “intelligentsia“referring to sort of person (Rejai, 2009:43). However, this word ideology has dropped some of its strong sting thus becoming neutral. An historian Althusser also used the notion of the ideological Apparatus to give more details on his hypothesis of ideology. He used to explain his materialistic attitude by saying that “ideas are material.” Community developers and political parties base their plans and strategies on an ideology (Althusser, 2008:7). George Lichtheim has explained the word ideology in a very good and brief manner. Most of political parties base their programmes on ideology. This would help them to achieve their goals and their plans. The politicians use ideology mainly to power and how the power can be used. There some groups which follow a certain ideology very keen. The political ideologists include anarchism. The anarchism is a political philosophy. The western society believed that when a wrong doer interferes with an innocent person, the wrongdoers are severely punished so that it can be a lesson to others (Althusser, 2008:7). There are cultures that see this as a bad method. Language and ideology by Andrew Goatly, reminds us that ideologies always maintains language. James W. Underhill, in “Creating Worldviews: ideology metaphor and language” shows how ideologies get to have knowledge about different languages. For the oldest linguistic there is reconstruction of Blust (1980), who offers proto-Austronesian with four meaning. Pawley has developed the most specific claim That Proto-Oceanic had terms associated with hereditary chieftainship (Althusser, 2008:13). The people who came up with ideology were smart only that they missed the boat on political parties. In the republican ideology, politics was not supposed to be competitive but to be rational. The first American political parties were formed when George Washington was a president (Schwartz, 2009:79). The Americans believed that political parties would destroy the government and so they would not accept them. In America, they believed that politics is all about identifying the common good. They did not also know that it was about competition and disagreement. Politics was a process in which voters would identify and sort the one to serve them. In case a political community break into small groups, it would be very difficult to search for the common good. Politicians would engage in battle of vision, elections would cause division instead of consensus. Finally, the political parties emerged. Most of the founding fathers took part in establishing them (Donham, 1999:51). To their dismay, the founders found that consensus was not as simple as they thought. They found that politics was about conflict and division and elections produced the winner. Litchtenberk has recently examined the reconstruction of Pawley and takes cautions on the question of hereditary rank. These chronological terms this Proto-oceanic reconstruction refers to the period around 1500 BC. This was the time when Lapita culture was rapidly growing from Bismarch Archipelago into Island Melanesia and finally to western Polynesia (Barr,2005:19). Despite of the unimportance of the ranks in Austronesian societies in Island Southeast Asia and Melanesia some features of ideology started to come in. despite all those differences of rank there was a sign of common set of principles known as “founder-focused ideology”. According to founder, the kid of ranking seemed to be common in the societies of Nusa Tenggara.This rank was also introduced in Rind, Eastern Sumba in (1981). The best description for this was from Lewis (1988:51-60) for the Tana Ai domain of Tana Wai Brama in eastern Flores (Sawatsky, 2005:91) .The founding of the domain was discovered by two brothers with their male and female followers. This source of domain was to be passed from (mother’s brother to sister’s son) from the elder of the two brothers. The family of the younger brother held position of political and secular authority thus forming a similar hierarchy to that in Austronesia. The founders who arrived to the ancestors were given land. The clans that came from these founders were ranked in descending status (Sawatsky, 2005:94). The rank depended on the time the founder emerged. The more recent the founder the lower the rank. The Austronesia continued to expand covering almost half way of the world and mainly around the tropics, from Madagascar to Eastern Island. There are many sources where to get information archaeological and linguistic information. Early Austronesian expansion came up very fast when placed in perspective against overall human ethnolinguistic prehistory. Pan-Turkism was another founder of the ideology. He was a political philosophy who appeared among European political leaders, writers, and scholars. Much of it was the European introduction of a pan-Turkic state. The German general Count Helmuth Von Moltke (1800-1891) first brought it up. Count Helmuth Von Moltke was the first to suggest to the Turks to go back to Iran and Russia. He wanted to encourage the Turks to conquer the Iran and the Turkic regions of Russia. Arminius (Hermann) Vambery (1832-1913), a Hungarian Professor, philologist and traveler proposed the idea of forming a Pan-Turk empire (Adams, 2001:56). The first writer was Poland’s Konstanty Borzecki who had moved from Poland to Turkey. Lastly, Britain borrowed the idea of Pan-Turk ideology and produced some texts. It was now clear both Russians and Britain started to use the Pan-Turkism ideology. Ideology is really a great and broad issue and has various origins. This issue about ideology should be taken with great keenness because it covers a large volume of information. The idea of gaining information about ideology is a simple one and it needs somebody to sacrifice himself or her and be determined. Bibliography Adams, I., 2001, Political Ideology Today. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Althusser, L., 2008, On ideology. Campeche: Verso. Bailey, G. and Gayle, N., 2003, Ideology: Structuring Identities in Contemporary Life. Natural: University of Toronto Press. Barr, J.,2005, History And Ideology In The Old Testament: Biblical Studies At The End Of A Millennium, New York: Oxford University Press. Donham, D., 1999, History, Power, Ideology: Central Issues in Marxism and Anthropology. California: University of California Press. Freeden, M. 2003, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press. Hawkes, D., 2003, Ideology. New York: Routledge. Rejai, M., 2009, Ideology: Comparative and Cultural Status. New York: Transaction Publishers. Sawatsky, P., 2005, History and ideology: American Mennonite identity definition through history. New York: Pandora Press. Schwartz, D., 2009, Religious-Zionism: History and Ideology. New York: Academic Studies Press. Read More