Ideology
This project examines how ideology shapes the ways in which public opinion is formed and expressed. It unites ‘deep-structure’ macroanalysis from social theory with individualised microanalysis of how people come to hold and voice opinions about the world around them. It focuses on the effect of ideologies associated with the occupations that people hold, and the social classes into which they fall as a result, on their values and attitudes, the way they acquire information, how they think, and how they articulate themselves.
More broadly, this project aligns with more recent attempts in ideology studies—especially over the last three decades—to move towards a value-neutral appraisal of ideology, in contrast to its unfairly malign portrayal in historical social thinking and public reception. It explores ideology as a concept that does not just apply within political analysis, but one that also has a range of wider social dimensions: educational, economic, legal, religious, and so on. Above all, it is interested in considering how individual social actors engage with ideology as part of their everyday experience, and in developing new approaches to ideology studies that synthesise the methodological insights of different fields within the humanities and social sciences.
Selected publications:
More broadly, this project aligns with more recent attempts in ideology studies—especially over the last three decades—to move towards a value-neutral appraisal of ideology, in contrast to its unfairly malign portrayal in historical social thinking and public reception. It explores ideology as a concept that does not just apply within political analysis, but one that also has a range of wider social dimensions: educational, economic, legal, religious, and so on. Above all, it is interested in considering how individual social actors engage with ideology as part of their everyday experience, and in developing new approaches to ideology studies that synthesise the methodological insights of different fields within the humanities and social sciences.
Selected publications:
- Ideology (Cambridge: Polity, forthcoming 2021)
- ‘You’ve got to ask the right expert: Who gives political advice?,’ in Colin Kidd and Jacqueline Rose (eds.), Political Advice (London: I.B. Tauris, forthcoming 2020), 161-76.