Ideological Categories Research Articles

Ideological Connections: An Integrated Humanistic-Social Psychological Approach to Examining the Relationship Between Controversial Opposing Opinions

The social, economic, political, and civil unrest surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 United States election, and the increased activity of the racial justice movement has seemingly divided not just the nation but the world. Thoughts and behaviors are guided by ideological beliefs—collections of ideas or philosophies associated with power structures. I examined the overlap between positions on controversial topics and identified how ideological alignment, values, and identity characteristics influenced the holders’ views. I found significant relationships among the variables categorized as social, political, health and medical, and safety, security, and legal ideologies. The results indicated that participants’ views in one ideological category were similar to those in the other ideological categories. Finally, the current study presents models of integrating worldviews in which ideological viewpoints in the various categories align, supported by the Moral Foundations Theory, Ideological-Conflict Hypothesis, and the Rigidity-of-the-Right Hypothesis.

Трансформация партийно-политической системы ЕС накануне евровыборов-2024

The article analyzes the main trends in the transformation of the political party system of the European Union on the eve of the next European Parliament election, which will be held in June 2024. Long-term trends include: a decrease in the popularity of traditional political parties – conservatives, social democrats and liberals – in most EU member states; an increase in electoral support for populist parties in the same countries; an increase in the representation of women in EU authorities; strengthening the pan-European political space, which leads to deepened impact of EU political institutions on the political systems of EU member states, etc. Relatively new trends in the transformation of this system are: growing popularity and influence of Eurosceptic parties both in individual European countries and in the European Union as a whole; political conflict between the EU and its member states – Poland and Hungary which violate European democratic principles, including the rule of law with respect to the rights of citizens and the independence of the judicial branch of government. The author scrutinises the influence of changes in the socio-class structure of European society on these processes, which occur partly owing to a visible reduction in the number of the industrial proletariat. It is noted that the consequences of these changes are the destruction of the boundary between the traditional right and left parties, and the death of many classical ideological categories. The study also presents the forecast of results of the leading pan-European political parties’ participation in the 2024 European election, made by a number of European non-governmental organizations and mainstream media holdings following public opinion polls, as well as their possible impact on the formation of a new composition of the European Parliament and the European Commission.

Encountering Innovation, Countering Innovation

What could be gained by putting science and technology studies (STS) in conversation with innovation studies (IS)? These distinct fields have shared people over decades, as they build concepts, careers, institutions, and even nations. I review how this collection offers accounts of how STS and IS have been practiced in different times and locations: resisting underdevelopment, Western and middle-class assumptions about progress, or technology-centric policy. I argue, however, that it is critical to clarify the difference between innovation as an analytic and as an emic and ideological category. Neither STS nor IS should take for granted the ways political economy, class relations, racialization and gendering, and even national(ist) ideologies shape what counts as desirable forms of newness, what newness ought to be contained or criminalized, and the hierarchies of socio-technical transformation that emerge out of that. I offer three examples: San Diego’s “smart streetlights” program where “innovation” as an ideology devalues or erases the creativity and knowledge already manifest among residents; Amazon® Mechanical Turk worker advocacy and the limits of doing scholarship with policy relevance when workers do not have organized power; and mid-twentieth-century Iran, where I show what IBM® throwing computers into the ocean can tell us about innovation as a form of enclosure, repression, empire, and waste of collective resources and knowledge.

Обожение как смысл жизни

In the worldview system of any person, the question of the meaning of life is central. However, if for a non-Christian the truth that makes sense of life is something unknown and therefore the movement towards it comes from somewhere from the periphery, then in the worldview system of Christians the meaning-forming truth, which is Christ, is known from the beginning and therefore the ways of understanding the world around us and oneself in it is radically opposite — the entire value range of a person, starting from this Truth, is rethought in the light of the Christian faith79. It causes value-based changes in the nature of the very topology of the world — Christ becomes the dwelling, clothing and food of a Christian. Such a metamorphosis is also possible due to the difference in the specifics of the path to comprehend the meaning of life. For a Christian, this is not just a process of rational and empirical knowledge, but what in Eastern Christianity, from the first centuries of its existence, was called deification — the acquisition by man of Divine properties through communion with the nature of God by grace. Deification covers all aspects of Christian doctrine — dogmatics, soteriology, ecclesiology, asceticism, etc., all spheres of Christian life — personal, family, civil, etc. All this is possible, since deification for a person is ontologically conditioned — the first man, Adam, was called to it as his own appointment. Now that the second Adam, Christ, has restored the fallen nature of man, to be called to deification means to be first of all Christians. The purpose of this article is to trace the ontological connection between the ideological category “meaning of life” and deification, as well as to reveal the essence of deification and the features of its acquisition.

When Was the War in Spain? Liberal State, Illiberal Justice in the Twentieth Century

The article analyzes increasingly militarized state power and public order in twentieth-century Spain, discussing these in the context of other European states’ disciplinary regimes, with their ubiquitous social-Darwinist dimension in an era of accelerating urbanization, industrial change and emergent mass societies. The article offers a dissection of the often problematically opaque term ‘liberal’, arguing that wherever Spain or other twentieth-century European states were positioned on the dictatorial-through-parliamentary-constitutional spectrum, they all came to be ‘gardening states’ (Bauman). Each state's goal was to sculpt its population as part of a nationalist project – nationalism being the norm, whether named as such or not. Francoism is analysed in this framework, as a hybrid war-born political order blending old-style, top-down military control with new forms of populist mass mobilization from below, the latter enabled and accelerated by the war of 1936–1939. The article defines the Franco dictatorship as fascist in the 1940s and totalitarian for far longer, until macro-economic changes – which its cupola believed for a long time need not affect the deep form of Spanish society – hollowed out Francoism's own ideological categories (and its ‘disciplinary’ efficacy), but not its obsession with social control, which it called ‘social peace’.

ART OF TEKE AND WOMAN IDEOLOGY IN THE NGADA HERITAGE, EAST NUSA TENGGARA

The art of teke, which is a part of the Ngadha people's traditional cultural practices, is the material object of this investigation. The formal object concerns the axiology of women's ideology and its existence. What feminist philosophy is expressed in the teke cultural heritage is the central question of this cultural study. This study explores cultural codes based on traditional Ngada hermeneutics in order to analyze the data through qualitative research methods. The research findings offer a fresh perspective on the distinctiveness of the ine weta ideology, which is a set of beliefs about women specific to the matriarchal Ngadha cultural tradition. More than that, ine weta's ideology actually celebrates gender equality through the joy of dance, poetry, and song. This ideology in the art of teke hermeneutics is a variant of the familial ideology, which must be built and purified through teachings, actions, and celebrations in the light of mesu mora (‘charity love’) harmoniously, closely, roundly, and beautifully in the world of life. The conclusion of this writing is that the authors undertake a cultural study in order to contribute to the discussion of women’s equality by proposing one category of woman ideology found in the matriarchal culture of Ngada, namely, the ideology of ine weta (‘mother-sister’) as a variant of familial ideology uncovered in the art of teke.

Short-term rentals’ supply-side structure and the struggle for rent appropriation: Insights from Andalusia, Spain

Platform capitalism is a growing reality with a widening social and economic impact. The rapid expansion of Short-Term Rental (STR) platforms has led to new challenges for policy regulation. The main objective of this paper is to shed some light on current conflicts surrounding the regulation of STR. The body of literature on this topic mainly focuses on the increasing substitution of sharing economy by commercial hosts. By contrast, we explain that the ideological notion of host hinders the understanding of the supply-side structure. A critical approach (as critique of ideology and ideological categories) should entail a class perspective based on rent theory and engage with critical works on platform capitalism. In this article, we propose an innovative analytical approach to STR supply-side supported by rent theory, which focuses on the relationship of agents with land and technology ownership and specialised management services, as these are forms of rent appropriation. From this point of view, these supply-side agents are not hosts, but class factions with common and competing economic interests in rent appropriation. Therefore, they can employ a variety of strategies to influence the political regulation of STRs. Based on in-depth interviews with landlords, individual managers, and corporate agencies in Andalusia (Southern Spain), we show the conflicting internal structure behind the ideological notion of host and even professionalisation.

Investigating mechanisms of political polarization: Perceivers spontaneously infer ideological categories from other people's behavior

AbstractWhen observing others' behavior, people routinely infer personality traits from it. Research on the correspondence bias has shown that they draw these inferences even from behavior that is situationally constrained. Moreover, these inferences often happen spontaneously, that is, when people have no intention of forming an impression. The current research investigated whether the same applies for inferences of ideological categories, such as conservative, feminist, or climate change denier. We present a series of five preregistered experiments (N = 1012) employing both direct and indirect measures from the impression formation literature. In Experiments 1 and 2, we found that people deliberately, as well as spontaneously, inferred ideological categories from ideology‐implying behavioral descriptions. In Experiments 3, 4, and 5, we found these inferences to be very robust, in that they persist even when alternative reasons for the ideology‐implying behaviors are presented, suggesting that they are subject to the correspondence bias. We argue that to the extent that people attribute negative valence (affective polarization) or extreme attitudes (perceived issue polarization) to ideological categories, spontaneous inferences of these categories can serve as a precondition for a range of negative interpersonal outcomes related to political polarization.

Ideological Categories in the Discourses of World Health Organization on Covid-19

On 31 December 2019, WHO received information from National Health Commission concerning the outbreak of Covid-19 which was identified by the Chinese authorities. The WHO depends to a great extent on its announcements and instructions on Chinese authorities’ declaration. Consequently, positive and negative announcements and strategies are adopted in dealing with this pandemic. This causes a great extent of fear and confusion for people around the world despite all the efforts that WHO to pass this crucial period successfully and safely. The present study is one of the first studies that seeks to offer critical discourse analysis, description, interpretation, and explanation of ideological categories of institutional discourse, and more specifically of WHO on Covid-19 by using Van Dijk’s Three-Dimensional Model of Ideology (2004). It is found that WHO focuses on certain ideological categories such as repetition, actor description, authority, hyperbole, burden, evidentiality, and number game more than other categories. It is also found that these ideological categories should be based on scientific, psychological, cognitive, social, and cultural perspectives and not just numbers, authority, hyperbole, etc. because they are used to persuade different people around the world with different cultures and they may affect those people lives positively or negatively.

Hitler's American Countermodel

Abstract The fact that the Nazis looked to the United States for inspiration has led some to claim that the US served Nazi thinkers as a “model.” This article argues instead that Nazis looked to America as a countermodel for how not to deal with the “Jewish question.” Through an intertextual analysis of visual and textual primary sources, this article demonstrates how the Nazis used America as a projection screen for developing their vision of empire and “redemptive antisemitism.” The Nazis admired the United States’ racist laws and technological development but despised Americans for ignoring the “Jewish threat.” By showing how the Nazis used the United States as a mirror for developing Nazi ideology, this article reintroduces the category of antisemitic ideology to the Historikerstreit 2.0 debate.

Are Rural People Liberal toward Their Family and Societal Responsibilities? Evidence from Bangladesh

Gender ideology has long been a discussed issue in the field of social science, particularly gender studies. This study aims to explore the category of people's gender ideology toward their family and societal responsibilities in rural Bangladesh. Following a mixed-methods approach, this study interviewed 400 rural people (200 men and 200 women, between 18 and 50 years) and conducted two FGDs from eight cluster villages at Paba Upazila of Rajshahi District in Bangladesh. The result shows that people were liberal in the context of household chores and decisions (strongly agreed to share taking care of an infant, housekeeping/cooking, and freedom of choice in taking matrimonial decisions) but traditional and transitional in acceptance of male privilege and preferences for female privilege respectively. This study argues that patriarchal adherence is reflected in people’s gender ideology. Our study results suggest better awareness of rural people to transform their traditional gender ideology in the family and societal responsibilities in Bangladesh. These findings add new knowledge about the gender ideology of rural people and contribute as a prior field to promote liberal attitudes among both men and women in Bangladesh.

The role of information skewness in shaping extremist content: A look at four extremists

Introduction. Extremism—distinct from activism—poses a serious threat to the healthy functioning of a society. In the contemporary world, the ability of extremists to spread their narratives using digital information environments has increased tremendously. Despite a substantial body of research on extremism, our understanding of the role of information and its properties in shaping extremist content is sketchy. Method. To fill this gap, the current research has used ‘content analysis’ and ‘affective lexicon’ to identify and categorise terms from the publicly available online content of four extremists – two groups and two individuals. The property of information skewness provided the deciphering lens through which the categorised content was assessed. Analysis. Contextual categories of information relevant to all the extremists were developed to analyse the content meaningfully. Six categories of religion, ideology, politics-history, cognition, affection, and conation provided the framework used to analyse and deductively categorise the data using content analysis. The affective lexicon developed by Ortony et al. (1987) was used to identify words belonging to the categories of cognition, affection (emotions and feelings), and conation (behaviour/actions). Results. The findings reveal that the property of information skewness plays a significant role in shaping extremist content and two aspects of this property (a) intensity and (b) positivity or negativity can be used to (1) classify extremists into meaningful categories and (2) identify generalisable information strategies of extremists. Conclusions. It is hoped that the findings of this research will inform future enquiries into the role of information and its properties in shaping extremist content and help security agencies to effectively engage in information warfare with extremists.

Jensen, J. (2022). Memory Politics and Populism in Southeastern Europe. Routledge

This book is a unique ethnographic project that reveals the hidden trajectories between memory politics and populism in Southeastern Europe through eleven case studies. The authors are putting architectural designs, memorials, and commemorations under the magnifying glass and uncovering the forgotten heroes or historic events to find untold stories and understand how memories are being fabricated, reinterpreted, and redeemed from the oblivion or pulled out of the original context to tailor-make populist narratives which are always serving political actors to pursue their goals and ambitions. The case studies show how the same historic events, personalities, and (non)places can be interpreted in different ways depending on the ethnic-nationalist codes used to (re)produce identities and imagined communities which leads to the strengthening of enmities. The authors explain how war heroes and ideological categories merely represent empty signifiers in their quest to debunk myths that underly the official government policies as well as conspiracy theories that persistently undermine the projects of reconciliation in the region.

Sex Education and Translation of Books for Children and Young Adults – Ideologies, Characteristics, Controversies

This article discusses sex education books for children and young adults published in Poland between 1945 and 2018. After defining the ideological profile of 111 examined publications as either conservative, moderately conservative, neutral, moderately liberal or liberal, the authors compare the whole set of translated books (translations) with the whole set of books by Polish authors (non-translations), taking into account the date of publication and the age of the intended reader. The analysis shows that translations differ from texts written originally in Polish, because they promote other values. Polish books, especially those published before 1989, are usually neutral or moderately conservative, while translations mostly propagate moderately liberal or liberal ideologies. There is also a close correlation between those ideological categories and the age of the reader: books for the youngest audience are ideologically charged to only a small degree, and the ideological content increases with the age of the reader. This seems to be related to the larger number of translations in the older age groups. Translations, which usually reflect a liberal ideology, fill a gap in Polish culture by complementing or replacing the conservative sex education available in Polish schools, and by encouraging Polish authors to write sex education books expressing similar views.

Historical and Аnthropological Сontext and Рersonal Image in the Persian-Tajik Literature of the Heyday Period (X–XIII Centuries)

Тhe study presents an analysis of a unique civilizational phenomenon: the Iranian-Tajik literature of the heyday period (X-XIII centuries), its historical and social environment. The article is rather staged in nature and anticipates the author’s intention to conduct a broader historical and comparative comparison of the epic and artistic works of the peoples of the Indo–Iranian world, of which the Ossetian ethnos is also a part. This research is the initial stage of the planned research, its introductory part. The possibilities of one journal publication allow us to turn to the analysis of Persian literature on the example of only the most prominent representatives of the period of its heyday: Firdousi, Omar Khayyam, Saadi, Rumi. The study provides a brief substantive analysis of the creativity of these authors by the main ideological categories: the semantic context of the eternal confrontation between good and evil; views on the concept of power and the image of the “good king”; understanding of physical labor, humanistic meanings of human existence; religion, love. The specificity of the article is the scientific interest in the socio-cultural orientation of the artistic creativity of medieval poets who wrote in Farsi, its aesthetics, moral motivation, value characteristics and the general historical and anthropological content of the sung ideals. Having settled at the crossroads of trade routes and cultural influences, the Iranians were distinguished by genuine loyalty and at the same time unique civilizational stability. The indescribable charm of Persian literature reflected the influence of various ideological, philosophical, religious, moral and ethical systems and ancient beliefs. But the main focus is still on the “Iranian world’s” own refraction of this unique cultural and ethical symbiosis.

The Ritual Solidarity of Masked Processions in Calabar, Cameroon, and Cuba

The Ritual Solidarity of Masked Processions in Calabar, Cameroon, and Cuba

The Ovidian Sublime. Antiquity and After1

This article makes the case that the sublime plays a more important part in the poetry of Ovid, and its reception, than is generally acknowledged. It surveys Ovid's use of the word sublimis, from the early amatory to the exilic poetry, and argues that it often connotes sublimity as an aesthetic and ideological category. Within the Metamorphoses particular attention is given to the Phaethon episode (whose sublimity is well recognized) and to the storm in the Ceyx and Alcyone episode (which has less often been considered under the heading of the sublime). Ovid's lost Medea may have anticipated the sublimity of Senecan tragedy. In exile Ovid experiences a failed sublimity in the face of the overwhelming power of the 'storm-god' Augustus.

The Tragedy of the Quaker Hero as a Reflection of the Crisis of Spiritual Life in Theodore Dreiser's novel "The Bulwark"

The subject of the research in this article is the peculiarities of the coverage of the problem of the religious crisis with the United States at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries in the work of one of the most famous realist writers, Theodore Dreiser. He depicted in detail in his works various aspects of the life of Americans of this period, including the religious aspect. The religious crisis in American society is closely connected with the destruction of the ideological ideals of the past. In the artistic heritage of Theodore Dreiser, one can single out a whole system of images, with the help of which he showed the crisis of the religious and moral component of the spiritual life of American society of this period. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by the need to consider the religious aspect in the writer's creative heritage, which for various reasons often fell out of the field of view of earlier critical works. The purpose of the presented work is to study the artistic images in Theodore Dreiser's novel "The Bulwark" in a religious and moral way as a manifestation of the spiritual crisis common to Americans of that time. The following conclusions were presented during the study: 1) Theodore Dreiser is a witness to the crisis in the spiritual and moral life of the USA at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries, which is one of the main themes of the writer's creative heritage; 2) This crisis is connected with the destruction of the fundamental ideological categories of American society (the "great American dream"); 3) In the novel "The Bulwark" T. Dreiser examines the moral and religious picture of American society on the example of the Quaker-Barnes family. He depicts the collapse of religious beliefs in the perception of both the older generation and the younger; 4) The beginning of the XX century was a transitional period. When the forcible imposition of religious norms became a tragedy for many young people; 5) The new age requires new forms of interaction between man and religion.

Nasionalis-cum-Nahdliyin: a new identity for nominal Javanese Muslims

This article discusses contemporary developments in Islam in Indonesia by specifically looking at Muslims living in rural Java. Whereas most studies examine urban Muslims and mostly define Islamization that leads to the emergence of the middle class and the so-called “conservative turn,” this article offers a brief discussion of the transformation of non-practicing Muslims or abangan. Through fieldwork in a remote village in Tulungagung, East Java, the article argues that the massive Islamization in contemporary Java has invited the abangan to construct their new identity of Nasionalis-cum-Nahdliyin. While the term “Nasionalis” refers to a modern ideological category, “Nahdliyin” represents a mode of religiosity that confirms local customs and traditions. Looking at their communal ceremonies, such as yasinan-tahlilan, this new identity has given the abangan a means to maintain their communal bond with their ancestral spirits on the one hand and community cohesion on the other. These communal activities are an amalgam of santri and abangan traditions with which the latter exercise their communal piety in the public space.

Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee, eds., <i>Blake and Conflict</i>

With Blake and Conflict Palgrave Macmillan extends its role as the academic press now most consistently showcasing new Blake scholarship. The volume presents selected revised papers from a conference of the same title held in Oxford in 2006. Although it does not entirely surmount the miscellaneous quality that most conference anthologies have, synergies among several contributions provide a fairly strong thematic coherence. Sarah Haggarty and Jon Mee’s introduction outlines two kinds of conflict as salient for the volume, both involving the conversation of “Visionary forms dramatic” that Blake envisions in humanity’s future (Jerusalem 98, E 257). The first centers on ideological or intellectual conflict as an aspect of pluralistic harmony: Blake, the editors say, imagines “the kind of community that arises from the communication between differences” (4). A second, more mundane, type of conflict involves Blake’s contentious “relationships with his precursors and precursor texts,” and these too, for the editors, are relationships among “Contraries,” so that conflict emerges as a “risk inherent in fully engaging with the other” (4, 5). This breakdown, however, only partly accounts for the volume’s contents; more than half the essays involve “conflict” with recent views of Blake or Blake-like ideas as complicit with imperialism and its ideological categories, with elite political domination, or with masculinist gender conceptions. These essays suggest a turn away from a “complicit” Blake by at least some now working in the field.