M.A. (Philosophy) / Please refer to full text to view abstract

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There are two major conceptions of ideology, a liberal and a Marxist notion. The liberal concept of ideology variously claims that ideology is a highly integrated value system, a confusion of value for fact, a result of intellectuals in politics, and/or a result of strain. However, when examined closely these arguments are either fallacious, ad hominem, or of such a general notion as to equate ideology with social philosophy. Thus the utility of liberal notions of ideology for social analysis is severely limited: it is primarily a means to discount the arguments of one's opponents. The Marxist notion of ideology views ideology as the ruling ideas or "false consciousness" a ruling class fosters to help perpetuate its dominance. As such this concept of ideology focuses on the materialistic origins, propagation and acceptance of ideas. Thus Marx's notion of ideology is more useful than the liberal notion because it calls for investigation of legitimation, mass media, education, religion as significant factors in building and perpetuating a political regime. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

Thesis (M.S.)--Missouri State University, 2008. / "May 2008." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-160). Also available online.

published_or_final_version / toc / Literary and Cultural Studies / Master / Master of Arts

Brief analysis of negative ideologies and concepts included in classification languages.

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Diss.--Hamburg. / Vita. Bibliography: p. 296-323.

Typescript. / Bibliography: leaves 90-93. / vii, 93 l tables

Racism, understood as the form of ideology and the set of social practices based on explicit and implicit notions of biologically determined human ‘races’, is a modern phenomenon. Other major forms of social cleavage together with the ideologies which contribute to and support them, such as those which relate to class and gender, have had a complex relationship with racism. Nevertheless racism needs to be distinguished analytically from each of these, and given its due as a relatively autonomous system. Viewed from the perspective of the systematic patterning of social life, it has institutional backing and support. In the modern West especially, it has organised, and it continues to help organise, significant areas of social domain. It has a history, which includes the history of ideas and of representations of the Other, and it is closely tied to economic production and relations. Though it may be that racism is generated primarily at the social and economic levels, it is experienced psychologically, and psychology plays a role in its reproduction. Racism, then, needs to be examined not only in terms of its social structural features, but at the same time in terms of the involvement of subjectivity in its processes.