ABSTRACT
There are myriads of conceptions of ideology and it is perhaps fair enough to say that the concept of ideology is essentially contested. It is typically, and perhaps always, the case that an ideology serves principally the interests of a particular class. There are ideological beliefs, ideas, concepts, categories, propositions, forms of consciousness, theories, systems, attitudes, norms, and practices. There is a latitudinarian or, as some have called it, a global employment of “ideology” in which an ideology is said to be any “set of closely related beliefs or ideas, or even attitudes characteristic of a group or community,” or any “cluster of closely interconnected ideas, beliefs, and attitudes which function both to interpret experience and as guides to action.”. It is indeed true that even if there were to be a society not divided into classes or with pronounced stratification, there would still be in that society a world-view incorporating certain values.
