Fine and Sandstrom (1993), “Ideology in Action.”
Citation: Fine, Gary A. and Sandstrom, Kent (1993) ‘Ideology in Action: A Pragmatic Approach to a Contested Concept,’ Sociological Theory, 11:1, pp. 21-38.
Abstract: Ideology often has been regarded by sociologists as an elusive and muddy concept. We believe that the understanding of this core concept can be improved by the use of constructs drawn from a pragmatic, interactionist perspective. We argue specifically that 1) ideologies are based on a set of relatively simple metaphors and images to which people respond on the basis of their shared experience and expectations; 2) ideologies are not purely cognitive, but depend principally on emotional responses; 3) ideologies are presented at such times and in such ways as to enhance the public impression (and justify the claims and resources) of presenters and/or adherents; ideological enactment is fundamentally dramaturgical and interactional; and 4) ideologies are linked to groups and to the relationships between groups, which in turn depend on a set of resources in order to enact ideologies effectively. Ideologies are symbolic, affective, behavioral, and relational. In focusing on these themes, we avoid some overabstract conceptions of ideology that are endemic in social scientific literature. Instead we emphasize how ideologies can be linked to lived experience and to social interaction - a microsociological grounding of ideology. To understand the dynamics of ideology we examine ideologies about the environment, drawing from an ethnographic investigation of amateur mushroom collectors.
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:22): Focus on components of ideology related to meaning and action.
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:22): “Ideology, as a concept, often is not defined. When it is defined, the definition rarely can be operationalized. We are supposed to know it when we hear it and to feel it in our gut, but in truth ideology is a nebulous and slippery concept.” Thus places ideology in the “contested concept” bracket, often entangled with myths, beliefs, visions, worldview, political theory etc.
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:22): Term ideology coined in 1797 by Destutt de Tracy, one of a group of French philosophers who used it to refer to a “science of ideas.”
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:23-24): Cites Kinloch (Kinloch, G.C. (1981) Ideology and Contemporary Sociological Theory. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall) view of ideologies as “rational” and “scientific” approaches that seek to solve social and political problems, and Gouldner (Gouldner, A. (1976) The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology. New York: Basic Books) as arguing they differ from religious belief systems because they are based on logic and evidence. Others emphasise their modern nature. However, Fine and Sandstrom challenge this emphasis on modernity and rationality, and instead view ideology as a set of beliefs and connected to attitudes – and therefore to judgements about what and how the world should be. Attitudes “provide a way of looking at objects or realities, a guide for evaluating them emotionally, and an incipient program for action.” It is linked to “an interpretation of the social or political order.” Thus defines ideology as “a set of interconnected beliefs and their associated attitudes, shared and used by members of a group or population, that relate to problematic aspects of social and political topics. These beliefs have an explicit evaluative and implicit behavioral component.”
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:24): Note that the problem still remains of specifying in practice what constitutes an ideology. “Developing an empirically grounded list of the attitudes constituting an ideology is no easier than listing the contents of culture.”
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:25): Sees an orthodox approach to ideology as prioritising the role of external factors (social structures, economic and state bodies, etc.) in shaping and determining ideology, with an emergent but incomplete challenge placing increasing emphasis on the role of ideology in shaping perceptions of reality.
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:25-26): “people share basic images about what is good, just, and proper, and from these master images they spin analyses, make decisions, and take action regarding policy issues.” Citing Dundes (Dundes, A. (1972) “Folk Ideas as Unites of World View,” Journal of American Folklore 84, 93-103) refers to these as “folk ideas.” “Ideologies are shared by groups or populations that have collectively and individually shared experiences. These experiences become typified into folk ideas, which in turn affect how experiences will be understood and judged.” [Again, this overlooks how images and “domain assumptions” are actually created.]
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:26): “Modem ideologies are uniquely reliant on printed discourse in their transmission to a larger public. Yet the subtlety and detailed content that characterize written texts are lost on most of those who share the ideologies.”
[Viewing ideology as a set of beliefs shared and used by members of a group does not necessarily mean that their actions are ideological: they may subscribe to a broad set of beliefs, explicitly or through association, but be motivated by other concerns or factors, such as revenge, greed, etc. This returns to the important distinction between group and individual motivation.]
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:28): “three components are necessary if a preexisting ideological formulation is to direct a response in a particular context. First, the context must be dramatically labeled to link it to widely held moral concerns or ‘ought’ beliefs. Next, a set of images or instances must connect to these ‘ought’ beliefs; finally, the situation must be made personally relevant. Although ideology can be conceptualized as a set of moral concerns that can be activated when they are perceived as relevant, it must be enacted in order to have impact.”
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:29): Ideology and emotion are involved in a reciprocal relationship, each affecting the other. Therefore, it is erroneous to view ideology principally from the perspective of cognitive understandings. “Ideology expresses the transformations of feelings, known through images and metaphors, into beliefs about the social system. People understand ideology through emotional experiences that help them make sense of the world. Through ideology emotional reactions are generalized beyond their situated contexts.”
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:30): Ideologies are not merely held, but are displayed, and such displays may seek to conceal or manipulate the ideology for a given purpose.
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:31): Argue that labels are important, and that “a change in these labels reflects a change in self.”
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:31-32): Actors adjust their behaviours and beliefs in accordance with what they consider the circumstances to require and in order to maintain relationships. The strategies chosen depend on audience.
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:32-33): “Ideology is both personal and shared. Simultaneously it is a property of the social actor, is enacted in a relationship, and is a property of the group or community.” It is dependent both on identity and identification. Sees small groups as playing an important role as “a frequent venue of ideological enactment and a place in which general values take particular forms and are invested with communal meanings,” which are then transmitted through network structures.
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:33-34): Ideology provides a mechanism for interacting with outsiders, cementing group membership, and legitimising appeals, and are “linked to a resource base, which affects and constrains presentation, enactment, and recruitment of supporters.”
Fine and Sandstrom (1993:35): Social networks and ideology are also interactive.
[Fine and Sandstrom (1993) offer a rigorous definition of ideology as “a set of interconnected beliefs and their associated attitudes, shared and used by members of a group or population, that relate to problematic aspects of social and political topics. These beliefs have an explicit evaluative and implicit behavioral component.” In doing so, they prioritise the importance to ideology of judgements about what should be and reject approaches – traced to the term’s origins among French philosophers at the turn of the 18th-19th Century, who conceived of it as a “science of ideas” capable of providing the foundation for political order – that portray ideology as rational, scientific and secular. Arguably, the only thing absent from this definition is a stipulation that the set of beliefs must be complex, i.e. they transcend a single issue to permeate multiple aspects of how its holders believe they should live and act. Fine and Sandstrom themselves acknowledge this complexity in their discussion, but arguably this needs to be acknowledged more explicitly in the definition itself. However, their discussion of ideology, focusing as it does on its practical operation, arguably neglects the process of how ideologies are created and maintained and, more specifically, the importance of ideologues. While they are correct in their assertions that “the subtlety and detailed content that characterize written texts [through which ideologies are transmitted to a broader population] are lost on most of those who share the ideologies” and ideologies are not the sole property of intellectuals, the question of where ideologies come from and how they are maintained is not adequately recognised. There is a danger of ideologies being presumed to simply exist independent of any one actually creating them. New ideologies are a comparative rarity, arguably because they demand high levels of sophistication and originality to be considered a separate ideology rather than simply a subdivision of an existing one. They must also extend beyond their creator and gain a degree of acceptance among a broader group or population. However, if ideologies are sets of beliefs, then they still require someone to stitch them together into something coherent enough to be commonly recognised as constituting an ideology. It is not uncommon for the components of ideology to predate the ideology itself. Thus, for example, the concept of jihad traces back to the Qur’an, but what is understood as jihadism today is a much more modern phenomenon; whether one takes Ibn Taymiyya, Qutb, Azzam, or someone else as the starting point, it still required an individual to formulate the ideas into something coherent. Ideologies cannot come into existence without an ideologue, even if that ideologue is forgotten in the subsequent evolution of the ideology (e.g. environmentalism). And often they may struggle to remain relevant without ideologues to maintain them – although in this regard both religion – which this author would argue fulfills the definitional requirements of ideology – and environmentalism offer interesting challenges to this claim that suggest ideologues can be less important to the survival of an ideology than to its creation. Thus, where Fine and Sandstrom argue that ideologies are “based on a set of relatively simple metaphors to which people respond on the basis of their shared experience and expectations [emphasis added],” it may be more accurate to say that they can be reduced to and are mostly transmitted and understood as such a set, but almost certainly exist in a more complex form.]