BiblioVault - Books about Ideology

Beyond the European Left

Ideology and Political Action in the Belgian Ecology

Herbert Kitschelt and Staf Hellemans

Duke University Press, 1990

Drawing on recent research on the internal politics of the Belgian ecology parties, Agalev and Ecolo, this work demonstrates how political careers in contemporary social movements lead to activism in left-libertarian politics and influence political ideology. Beyond the European Left is the first comprehensive survey of ecology parties in Europe that presents detailed empirical information on the careers, organizational practices, and political beliefs of the activists involved.
The authors employ a new research methodology—surveying party militants—that is better adapted to the study of micropolitics than are expert interviews. Herbert Kitschelt and Staf Hallemans show that European Green party activists express an egalitarian and libertarian vision of a desirable social order that builds on, but radically transforms, ideas of the traditional socialist European left. The authors then examine the debates and disagreements among militants on political objectives and the consequences of conflicting views for party organization and strategy. Their findings illuminate the unique dynamics of left-libertarian politics in a number of Western European countries with obvious relevance to current developments in Eastern Europe.

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Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins

Edited by Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers

University of Chicago Press, 2010

Over the course of human history, the sciences, and biology in particular, have often been manipulated to cause immense human suffering. For example, biology has been used to justify eugenic programs, forced sterilization, human experimentation, and death camps—all in an attempt to support notions of racial superiority. By investigating the past, the contributors to Biology and Ideology from Descartes to Dawkins hope to better prepare us to discern ideological abuse of science when it occurs in the future.

Denis R. Alexander and Ronald L. Numbers bring together fourteen experts to examine the varied ways science has been used and abused for nonscientific purposes from the fifteenth century to the present day. Featuring an essay on eugenics from Edward J. Larson and an examination of the progress of evolution by Michael J. Ruse, Biology and Ideology examines uses both benign and sinister, ultimately reminding us that ideological extrapolation continues today. An accessible survey, this collection will enlighten historians of science, their students, practicing scientists, and anyone interested in the relationship between science and culture.

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Black Identity

Rhetoric, Ideology, and Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalism

Dexter B. Gordon

Southern Illinois University Press, 2006

Exploring the role of rhetoric in African American identity and political discourse

Dexter B. Gordon’s Black Identity: Rhetoric, Ideology, and Nineteenth-Century Black Nationalism explores the problem of racial alienation and the importance of rhetoric in the formation of black identity in the United States. Faced with alienation and disenfranchisement as a part of their daily experience, African Americans developed collective practices of empowerment that cohere as a constitutive rhetoric of black ideology. Exploring the origins of that rhetoric, Gordon reveals how the ideology of black nationalism functions in contemporary African American political discourse.

Rooting his study in the words and works of nineteenth-century black abolitionists such as Maria Stewart, David Walker, and Henry Garnet, Gordon explores the rapprochement between rhetorical theory, race, alienation, and the role of public memory in identity formation. He argues that abolitionists used language in their speeches, pamphlets, letters, petitions, and broadsides that established black identity in ways that would foster liberation and empowerment. The arguments presented here constitute the only sustained treatment of nineteenth-century black activists from a rhetorical perspective.

Gordon demonstrates the pivotal role of rhetoric in African American efforts to create a viable public voice. Understanding nineteenth-century black alienation—and its intersection with twentieth-century racism—is crucial to understanding the continued sense of alienation that African Americans express about their American experience. Gordon explains how the ideology of black nationalism disciplines and describes African American life for its own ends, exposing a central piece of the ideological struggle for the soul of America. The book is both a platform for further discussion and an invitation for more voices to join the discourse as we search for ways to comprehend the sense of alienation experienced and expressed by African Americans in contemporary society.

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Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature

A Vernacular Theory

Houston A. Baker Jr.

University of Chicago Press, 1985

Relating the blues to American social and literary history and to Afro-American expressive culture, Houston A. Baker, Jr., offers the basis for a broader study of American culture at its "vernacular" level. He shows how the "blues voice" and its economic undertones are both central to the American narrative and characteristic of the Afro-American way of telling it.

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Building Modern Turkey

State, Space, and Ideology in the Early Republic

Zeynep Kezer

University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015

Building Modern Turkey offers a critical account of how the built environment mediated Turkey’s transition from a pluralistic (multiethnic and multireligious) empire into a modern, homogenized nation-state following the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. Zeynep Kezer argues that the deliberate dismantling of ethnic and religious enclaves and the spatial practices that ensued were as integral to conjuring up a sense of national unity and facilitating the operations of a modern nation-state as were the creation of a new capital, Ankara, and other sites and services that embodied a new modern way of life. The book breaks new ground by examining both the creative and destructive forces at play in the making of modern Turkey and by addressing the overwhelming frictions during this profound transformation and their long-term consequences. By considering spatial transformations at different scales—from the experience of the individual self in space to that of international geopolitical disputes—Kezer also illuminates the concrete and performative dimensions of fortifying a political ideology, one that instills in the population a sense of membership in and allegiance to the nation above all competing loyalties and ensures its longevity.

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Building Socialism in Bolshevik Russia

Ideology and Industrial Organization, 1917-1921

Thomas F. Remington

University of Pittsburgh Press, 1985

Remington profiles the Bolshevik project of social transformation and political centralization known as War Communism. He argues that the effort to institute a centrally planned and administered economy shapedthe ideology of the regime, the relations between the regime and the working class, and the character of state power.

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