ABSTRACT
Movement organization (MO) cultures vary in terms of the sheer number and systematic interrelation of the cognitive categories making up what we commonly label "ideology." Despite the fact that classic writers on social movements imply otherwise, most MOs possess quite simple ideological systems, so rudimentary that the very word system is too grandiose. One important vehicle for the elaboration of cognition is a strata of intellectuals charged with exactly that job. MOs differ in the degree to which they engage in expressive, collective assemblies and the adroitness and artfulness of the design and consummation of such assemblies. Historically, human cultures were generated in relative or virtually complete isolation from one another. A single person of a different culture coming onto an isolated culture was likely to be either venerated as a god or treated as subhuman. Elaboration and expressiveness are formal rather than substantive dimensions of cultural variation.
