ABSTRACT
When social constructionists talk of the way in which discourses can be employed to keep people willingly in a condition of oppression, they have sometimes drawn upon the sociological notion of ideology. The concept of ideology is often used by social constructionists to talk about the way in which discourses obscure such power relations. Ideology is a term which can have a variety of meanings, and if it is going to be of any use to social constructionism we need to think about what implications the various meanings have and which is the most useful to social constructionism. I will concentrate here on four understandings of ideology, since they raise important questions for social constructionism, not the least of which is the issue in the title of this chapter.
