The Pro-Social Political Vandal

Abstract

In his original typology of vandalism, Cohen (1973: 35) referred to ‘ideological vandalism’ as that which is perpetrated with the intention of furthering a particular cause or political issue. In referring to a ‘science of ideas’, the French Enlightenment philosopher and aristocrat Destutt de Tracy (1754–1836) was one of the first to use both the notion and term ‘ideology’. His Elements d’ideologie (1817–1818) was foundational in terms of future social scientific work around shared belief systems and culturally taken for granted assumptions (see Hart, 2008). Indeed Emmet (1979: 355) maintained that the ‘science of ideas’ was the first ‘science’ and that all other science would spring forth from the pivotal notion of ‘ideology’, including conceptions of logic, grammar, education and morality. The over-arching goal of ideology was to offer some kind of regulation of society.