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For at least two centuries, ideology has been vitally important to shaping society in many complex ways. Yet over the last three or four decades, ideology has achieved hitherto unmatched prominence in social research and social life: it has recaptured scholarly attention, and it has risen to the forefront of popular consciousness. In doing so, it has brought the central questions about the concept back into focus, prompting new developments in the study of ideology on both sides of the pejorative/non-pejorative divide. This book is intended as a waymarker along the path of consolidation of ideology studies: an opportunity to take stock of how ideological (and ‘ideologological’) understandings have evolved since the 1970s to 1990s, which centres the discussion on ideology rather than using it to preface elucidations of (political) ideologies. It draws on historical and contemporary approaches to ideology analysis, emphasising areas of overlap and disjunction and illustrating how to profitably combine them to illuminate ideology’s personal and social impact. A book of this size cannot hope to provide an exhaustive account of every aspect of ideology and its study. But it can act as a point of orientation for those searching for a way into ideology’s complex societal role.

The remainder of this book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 2 traces how the theory of ideology has evolved over the last two centuries. It begins by analysing the problems of ideology theory historiography and argues that ideology theory’s evolutionary trajectory has been marked by a mixture of shifts and accumulations in concerns and approaches. The chapter traces the connection between ideology and illusion, science, class, and capitalism during the ‘classical’ period of ideology analysis (1800–90), followed by new concerns about the role of intellectuals and mass opinion, party politics, and ideological diversity (1890–1945). It overviews the subsequent shift to associating ideology with extremism and totalitarianism, along with the rise of alternative objects of analysis such as culture and discourse (1945–80), and ends by examining new focuses on identity and ‘ordinary’ thinking and expression that have accompanied the rise of ideology studies (1980–now).

The next three chapters form the book’s theoretical core, offering a syncretic, compatibilist statement of what ideology is and how it works that integrates and builds on the trajectory of ideology theory presented in chapter 2. Chapter 3 defines the concept of ideology, summarised as a specific combination and arrangement of ideas. These ideas are abstract or generalised representations of a set of perspectives, dispositions, norms, practices, structures, and systems: tools to help us ‘make sense’ of fundamentally chaotic and confusing (social) reality. How an ideology combines and arranges this set of elements constitutes its ‘morphology’, which can vary in thickness and robustness depending on the overall number, relative distribution, individual specificity, and mutual coherence of these elements. Of course, not every group of ideas is automatically an ideology, and the chapter closes with some criteria to distinguish what ideology is and what it is not: specifically, ideology’s claim to provide a comprehensive, complete, and correct ‘picture’ of reality.

Chapter 4 explores the relationship between ideology and ideologies. It starts by outlining the historical trends that have led to ideological differentiation, then outlines the social preconditions that typically must be met for ideological traditions to emerge: the existence of hierarchical social differences, factionalism, and a specific context on which ideologies can draw. It surveys the global history of ideologies, especially the last two centuries of intensive consolidation and evolution, and offers a morphology of different ideologies according to the perspectives, dispositions, norms, practices, structures, and systems they embrace. Finally, it addresses the question of ideological categorisation, including the origins of the left–centre–right spectrum and alternative dimensions of ideological comparison.

Chapter 5 turns to how we experience ideology in society. It examines the place of individuals as the basic units of ideology and the processes of ideological socialisation by which we are formed into social ‘subjects’ over the course of our lifetimes. It also considers how these ‘subjectification’ processes can fail, how ideology’s ‘grasp’ on us can be limited and incomplete, and the consequences this can have for our societal experience.

Finally, chapter 6 outlines the different approaches that characterise ideology studies today. It opens by describing its steady coalescence into an independent subdiscipline, then summarises twelve approaches to ideology analysis developed by different fields. It divides these approaches into an ‘epicentre’ rooted within social and political theory, along with a ‘penumbra’ of input from the humanities and social sciences, arguing that they can be categorised along two cross-cutting dimensions: the surface-level or deep-level focus of their engagement with ideology and the theoretical or empirical methodology they use to do so.