Over its long history, the concept of ideology has acquired a vast and at times incommensurable roster of meanings: positive and negative, analytic and critical, philosophical, psychological and scientific. But how precisely should we understand and study ideology today? What is its connection to key issues in social life and social research, such as capitalism and class, democracy and partisanship, nationality, sex and gender, race and ethnicity?

In this book, Marius S. Ostrowski navigates a path through the complex maze of ideology's rival interpretations, tracing the shifting fortunes of ideology analysis from its classical origins to its recent renaissance. The result is a concise interdisciplinary overview of how ideologies combine and arrange ideas and how they manifest in our psychology and behaviour. Drawing on a wide array of examples from across the world, the book outlines the historical preconditions that allowed modern ideologies to emerge and illuminates how we experience ideology's influence in our day-to-day lives.

Ideology will be an indispensable resource for students and scholars across the social sciences and anyone seeking to understand the way ideology shapes how we understand the world around us.

About the Author
Marius S. Ostrowski is a Max Weber Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute in Florence.

Reviews

'Marius Ostrowski's account of ideology studies is a tour de force, incorporating approaches from the social sciences, history and psychology. His highly intelligent and knowledgeable book is both an indispensable introduction to the centrality of ideology in politics and an exciting stimulus to further research.'
Michael Freeden, University of Oxford

'This book is deeply impressive: it is well written, the argument flows extremely well, and a wide range of complex and difficult theories are treated with a light touch and communicated very clearly.'
Mathew Humphrey, University of Nottingham

Book Information
ISBN 9781509540730
Author Marius S. Ostrowski
Format Paperback
Page Count 170
Imprint Polity Press
Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
Weight(grams) 272g
Dimensions(mm) 213mm * 137mm * 18mm