Ideology - Teun van Dijk

Van Dijk begins his treatise on ideology by examining ideas and belief.  Ideas are products of mental activity that form in the mind as a result of thought.  The designation of idea is given to a formulated thought while the acceptance (on behalf of the individual mind is defined as a belief.  Beliefs take many forms including opinions, judgments, facts, propositions, systems, and networks.  Van Dijk contends that beliefs are not necessarily subjective while knowledge is objective, all thought begins as a belief, and knowledge is only a category of belief where the socially and culturally designated truth regime has declared a belief to be true.  Beliefs are mediations of the real world; they are about the objects, properties, events, actions or situations of this external world as long as we realize that such an experience presupposes a socio-culturally controlled projection of beliefs. 

Ideologies are clusters of beliefs in our minds.  They are expressed and enacted in symbols and discourse, but are primarily products of the social mind of the individual.  Van Dijk defines a path of analysis that denies the reductionist theories of social and cognitive construction.  Ideologies are not completely determined by socio-cultural factors, nor are they purely mental constructions (as all social interaction and discourse are constructs and products of the mind).  Van Dijk takes a cognitive approach combined with a social analysis.

Van Dijk moves on to social beliefs that form the basis of ideology.  Social beliefs are simply shared beliefs about the world where socio-cultural truth regimes have approved such a belief.  Social beliefs are stored in the social memories of individual minds to form social belief systems.  Ideologies are a form of social belief system, there is no such thing as an individual ideology; ideologies are social in nature.  It is possible for an individual to conceptualize an independent version of an ideology, but the foundational beliefs remain social.  I believe a cognitive model of ideological formation is to be found in this conceptualization process and I will explore this possibility further in later posts. 

Van Dijk separates cultural beliefs from group beliefs in order to demonstrate the difference between knowledge and ideology.  Cultural beliefs have met a specific cultural truth criterion: the world is round; France is a nation etc.  Such knowledge can be presupposed in discourse and social interaction.  Cultural knowledge is the basis of all evaluative beliefs such as opinion, attitudes and ideology.  Ideology forms when a specific group builds a common set of beliefs onto culturally held beliefs.  Van Dijk provides an example of immigration ideology where a group could believe Turks should not be allowed to immigrate to France for a number of economic reasons.  It is presupposed that the nations of Turkey and France exist and that Turks immigrate to France.  The point is that ideologies are based on culturally held beliefs.  In the example the addition of ideological beliefs is clearly visible, but often the layering of ideological beliefs is veiled in common values as Van Dijk describes in later chapters.

Van Dijk makes the case for the inclusion of attitudes in the discussion of ideology.  He finds the exclusion of attitudes from socially reductionist theory an error in analysis.  Even though they are unobservable, attitudes exist in their consequences and warrant postulation and theorizing. 

Van Dijk redefines social cognition for his analytical purposes.  He does not dismiss the current social psychological metaphor of information processing as it applies to individual social memories, but adds a dimension of social action and function between group members.  Ideologies are not metaphysical or otherwise vaguely localized systems ‘of’ or ‘in’ society or groups or classes, but a specific type of (basic) mental representations shared by the members of groups, and hence firmly located in the minds of people given that minds are to a degree, socially constituted.  Ideologies form the foundation of group beliefs.  They are contestable and rhetorical in nature.  Ideologies are a form of social belief where one group in a society proposes their belief as social action.

For Van Dijk, ideologies are structured as schemas that define group conflict.  Ideology defines the identity and goals of a group.  An ideology (in most cases) cannot exist with a foil; Us vs. Them; free market capitalism vs. socialism etc.  Van Dijk does not spend much time on the actual contents of ideology except to mention that ideologies cannot be cynical.  They will always imply a positive motive and presentation. 

Values are an important element of ideology.  A culture and society adopts value systems such as freedom, democracy, and equality as a whole.  Group ideologies appropriate vale systems as the foundation of their beliefs.  Neoliberalism commandeers the value of freedom to promote freedom of markets and disdain for government intervention and protectionism.