Literature review

Ideology

Martin Seliger defines

“an ideology as a group of beliefs and disbeliefs (rejections) expressed in value

sentences, appeal sentences and explanatory statements…[It is] designed to serve on
a relatively permanent basis a group of people o justify in reliance on moral norms
and a modicum of factual evidence and self-consciously rational coherence the
legitimacy of the implements and technical prescriptions which are to ensure
concerted action for the preservation, reform, destruction or reconstruction of a given
order” (1976:119-120) .

From this definition it follows that politics and ideology are inseparable. All political
action is ultimately oriented towards the preservation, reform, destruction or
reconstruction of the social order, and hence all political action is necessarily guided
by an ideological system of beliefs. The actual implementation of ideology in
concerted action has an effect on the formal structure of the beliefs system. In
fulfilling its practical role, ideology is relied upon to devise and justify specific
policies and to pronounce on issues of everyday politics (ibid). this endangers the
purity and centrality of prescriptions which are essentially moral and leads to the
“bifurcation” of political argumentation into two dimensions:

“that of fundamental principles, which determine the final goals and the grand vistas
on which they will be realized, and which are set above the second dimension, that of
the principles which actually underlie policies and are invoked to justify them” (ibid:
109).

Seliger calls this second dimension “operative ideology” to distinguish it from the
“fundamental ideology” of the first. All the elements of ideology are realized in both
dimensions, but with a different emphasis in each case. In justifying policies in the
operative dimension, more consideration is given to norms of prudence and
efficiency; whereas moral prescriptions are central in fundamental ideology, it is
technical prescriptions which have priority in the operative dimension (ibid).

According to Gouldner (1976) ideologies are “symbol systems, language variants,

elaborated codes; they can carry out their task of mobilizing public projects only by
being expressed in a language, primarily a written language, which is critical, rational
and empirically plausible. He argues that ideologies serve to mobilize social
movements through the mediation of newspapers and related media. Ideologies
pertain to a news-reading public, and hence they may be further defined as

“Symbol systems generated by, and intelligible to, persons whose relationship to
everyday life is mediated by their reading…of newspapers, journals, or books…and
by the developing general concept of news, as well as by the specific and concrete
bits of news now increasingly transmitted by growing media, and is grounded in the
experiencing of life as decontextualized event” (105).

Gouldner argues that ideologies are not rooted directly in the experiential flux of
everyday life but media-ted by the news and the interpretation of news. Ideologies are
second-order accounts,” palimpsistic texts on texts”, which interpret and integrate the
information provided by the news-producing system (231).

According to Marx, ideologies are systems of beliefs which legitimate the class-based
system of production by making it appear right and just, and obscure the reality of its
consequences for those involved. For the dominant ideas, beliefs and values in a class
society (which are the ideas about which there is most agreement) are not there by
chance. These ideas act as ideologies and are transmitted through various key
agencies of socialization. He claims that institutions like the family, the education
system and the mass media play important role in promoting generally held beliefs
and values in our contemporary society (Jones et al, 2011: 39-40).

According to Durkheim (1970), a society is made up of structures of cultural rules,

established beliefs and practices to which their members are expected to conform.
And that a society also consists of social facts which are external to and constraining
upon the individual. Individuals do not choose to believe the things they believe or
act in the way they act. They learn to think or do these things. He argues that pre-
existing cultural rules determine their ideas and behavior. Therefore, individuals’
ideas and acts are the product of external social forces such as institutions (39).

According to Weber (1949), the most obvious truth about thinking is that no human
being can grasp the whole of the reality he or she confronts the meaningless infinity
of the world process as he describes it. Humans can only make sense of an aspect of
reality a selection from the infinite aggregate of events. As Weber put it: “all
knowledge of reality….is always knowledge from a particular points of view”.
“There can be no such thing as an absolutely truth or objective of a social
phenomenon independent of special and one-sided viewpoints” (72, 81). What we
think exists depends upon what we think something’s essence is.

For symbolic interactionism, our sense of identity is a product of the way others think
of us. They argue that it is an outcome of the interpretive process. The allocation of
meaning between people is at the root of all social interaction. Our personalities are
constructed by means of this interpreting process as follows.

During the course of our live, we encounter a number of people, all of whom take our
behavior towards them to symbolize something about ourselves. They interpret our
behavior in the light of the evidence they are provides with. They then act towards us
in the light of this interpretation, indicating via the symbolic means available to them
what kind of person they have decided we are. The image we have of ourselves is
crucially influenced by the reactions of individuals we come into contact with. We
cannot ignore what kind of person others are telling us we are; the image of our ‘self’
is seriously affected, if not created, by the image others have of us. Therefore our
social identities are socially constructed. Symbolic interactionism claims that often
what matters is not whether the interpretations are correct or false, but the impact the
can have on their recipients (Jones et al, 2011: 105-7).

Phenomenology emphasizes that things and events have no meaning in themselves.

They only mean whatever human beings take them to mean. It stresses that for the
members of such a meaningfully created world to live together, meanings must be
shared. Members must agree about what things are and social order depends upon
shared meanings. Members do share meanings. This is because of the way they
interpret reality. They do so by using ‘common-sense knowledge’. This is embodied
in language. Through language we acquire an enormous amount of knowledge about
the world, knowledge we can take for granted and which others who speak our
language possess too. We have actually experienced only a tiny number of the things
that we know about. The rest of the knowledge, shared with other members, is sense
that is common to us all (Schutz 1962: 25–6).

LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE AND POWER

Language

The recognition of the importance of language as a principal means by which social

members construct social order has been taken up by Foucault. Foucault follows the
structuralist line in placing language at the centre of the picture. But the ‘languages’
in which he is interested are not the kind normally referred to by the term, like
English, French and Spanish. He is concerned to show how specific ways of thinking
and talking about aspects of the world are forms of knowledge and power, which
work like languages and which we learn in the same way as we learn ordinary
languages. He calls these ‘languages’, or systems of connected ideas which give us
our knowledge of the world, discourses – which is why his version of post-
structuralism is sometimes called discourse theory.

Pierre Bourdieu argues that language is not only an instrument of communication or

even of knowledge, but also an instrument of power. One seeks not only to be
understood but also to be believed, obeyed, respected, distinguished. Whence the
complete definition of competence as right to speak, that is, as right to the legitimate
language, the authorized language, the language of authority. Competence implies the
power to impose reception (1976, 20).

Discourse

A discourse in common-sense language is defined as “a coherent or rational body of

speech or writing; a speech or a sermon” (Stuart & Paul, 1996: 201). Discourses are
‘practices which form the objects of which they speak’ (Foucault, 1972: 49). This
apparently circular statement sums up the relation between discourses and the world
of ‘things’ that we inhabit. A discourse refers to a set of meanings, metaphors,
representations, images, stories, statements and so on that in some way together
produce a particular version of events. It refers to a particular picture that is painted
of an event, person or class of persons, a particular way of representing it in a certain
light

However, the use of this expression here is in a more specific way. I shall explain
Foucault’s notion of discourse in four ways. First, Foucault argues that a discourse is
composed of several statements not just one statement; working together to form
what Foucault calls a “discursive formation” (Cousins & Hussain, 1984: 84).
Therefore, discourse is an assemblage of statements, which provide a sort of
knowledge regarding a topic. Discourse concerns the production of knowledges
throughout language (Stuart, 1992).

Second, according to him, the only way to have knowledge about what is real is for
human being to acquire discourses; it is by using a discourse of one kind or another
that we can only talk and think at all. As he puts it:
 “Discourses are ways of constituting knowledges, together with the
social practices, forms of subjectivity and power relations which inhere
in such knowledges and relations between them. Discourses are more
than ways of thinking and producing meaning. They constitute the
nature of the body unconscious and conscious mind and emotional life
of the subjects they seek to govern” (Weedon, 1987: 108).

Third, given that individuals are constrained to know by means of discourses, these
discourses exercise power over them. What they know, who they are, how they talk,
and what they thing, is produced by the diverse discourses individuals encounter and
use. In another word, individuals’ subjectivity and identity are formed by the
discourses in which they are implicated. It can be said that these discourses are
behind any actions individuals choose to take. Therefore, they provide us with our
thoughts and our knowledge. This links between language, thought, action and
knowledge.

Fourth, he argues that discourse operates through power and that power is
everywhere. According to Foucault if one wants to comprehend individuals’
behaviour in a particular place and time, one should find out the discourses that
dominate there.

Power

According to Foucault power is the operation of the political technologies, it I not a

position, a commodity, a plot or a prize. What sets up the relations and asymmetrical
is exactly the functioning of these political rituals of power (Foucault, 1982). He
claims that in all human relations, power is imminent and that power is not localized
in anyone’s hands. It is:

“Employed and exercised through a net-like organization…[individuals]

are always in the position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising
this power” (Foucault, 1980b: 93).

Therefore, power is
 “Exercised rather than possessed. It operates from the top-down and
from the bottom-up; it is multidirectional” (Foucault, 1977:26).

Power is productive and positive not repressive as Karl Marx agues and that
knowledge like power is socially constructed and power is bound up with knowledge.
As Foucault put it:

“We should admit rather that power produces knowledge…that power

and knowledge directly; that there is no power relation without the
correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that
does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relation”
(Foucault, 1977a: 27).

According to Foucault (1980b), knowledge and power construction are not linked
neither are they independent by a discernible relationship of cause and effect, rather
are seen by him as two sides of the same social relation. He also argues that
power/knowledge function throughout discourse and that power cannot be exercised
without a certain discourse of truth and that power relations cannot themselves be
implemented, established, nor consolidated, without the functioning, circulation,
production, and accumulation of a discourse. Foucault sees disciplinary power
distinct from the juridical-discursive notion of sovereign power. According to him,
this kind of power is based on systematic monitoring, surveillance, reform, training,
and intervention. In Foucault’s view, this disciplinary regime replaces monarchy and
church. Power, Foucault argues is reproduced and maintained throughout a variety of
strategies, technologies and programmes (Foucault, 1980a). He also claims that it is
through power that individuals discipline themselves, which he calls pastoral power
and that norms are involved in the exercise of power (Foucault, 1982).

Therefore, the culture within a particular society derives its rules from the power of
discourses. However, since, he suggests that discourses produce power therefore
power is everywhere. However, if discourses produce power it is arguable that social
institutions produce knowledges and truths through discourses and the exercise of
power. Moreover, Foucault argues that these discourses are controlled, produced and
distributed by those social institutions. According to Foucault (1977), the exercise of
power enables individuals to possess the knowledge they need to be able to attach
meanings to their experiences and to be human rather than remaining merely animals.

Disciplinary power

Foucault therefore rejects the view of power as an essentially repressive force, seeing
it instead as at its most effective when it is productive, when it produces knowledge.
In particular, he believes that over the last hundred years or so we have seen the rise
of a number of institutional and cultural practices that have as their product the
individual that we know today. According to (MCHoul & Grace, 1993), in Foucault’s
perspective, this disciplinary regime replaces by the operation of disciplinary power
can be used and taken over by any institution, such as schools, hospitals, prisons,
bureaucratic agencies, administrative apparatuses, police forces, and so on. Changes
in the nature of society, such as increases in population, the change from an
agricultural to an industrial economy and so on, brought with them social practices
that allowed certain discourses or knowledges of the person to rise to prominence.
These discourses have produced the individual of contemporary western industrial
society. And these knowledges are very powerful, in that they manage the control of
society and its members efficiently and without force (Foucault, 1976: 43).

Foucault (1976) demonstrates how this came about. He argues that in the eighteenth
century, due to the growth in numbers of people and the consequent problems of
public health, housing conditions and so on, there began to emerge the concept of
‘population’. Until then, those living under the rule of the monarch might have been
thought of as ‘a people’ or ‘loyal subjects’, but the idea of a country having a
population, had different implications. ‘Population’ brings with it estimates of the
country’s labour power, its organisation and the wealth it is capable of generating. It
raises issues of population growth and the resources needed for meeting that growth.
In short, the concept of population was a relatively sophisticated way of
conceptualising the inhabitants of a country that brought with it questions of
management and control. Foucault sees the body, and especially sexuality, as a major
site of power relations, and describes how this came about as follows:

“At the heart of this economic and political problem of population was sex: it was
necessary to analyse the birth-rate, the age of marriage, the legitimate and illegitimate
births, the precocity and frequency of sexual relations, the ways of making them
fertile or sterile, the effects of unmarried life or of the prohibitions . . . Things went
from ritual lamenting over the unfruitful debauchery of the rich, bachelors and
libertines to a discourse in which the sexual conduct of the population was taken both
as an object of analysis and as a target of intervention”. (Foucault, 1976: 25–6)
In the earlier 19th century, sex became an area of intense interest to the state because
of the population growth. Those in positions of authority, in the state or the church,
took on the role of inquisitors and had the power to extort confessions about sexual
practices from the men and women under their supervision. One of the interesting
points about Foucault’s analysis here is that it was only at this point that the ideas of
‘sexual perversion’, ‘unnatural practices’ and ‘sexual immorality’ became a
possibility. With the power to say what practices were permissible and which not
inevitably came the idea of normality. The practice of scrutinising the population’s
sexual behaviour and of encouraging people to confess their sexual ‘sins’ developed
into a powerful form of social control as people began to internalise this process.
Thus, people were encouraged to scrutinise their own behaviour, to ask questions
about their own normality and to adjust their own behaviour accordingly. The powers
of the inquisitor, the power to encourage self-examination and confession, have now
passed into the hands of the present-day bearers of authority, such as the medical
profession and psychiatrists in particular. Practices such as psychoanalysis view
sexuality as the key to self-understanding. They encourage us to believe that in order
to resolve our personality and relationship problems, we must discover the true nature
of our sexuality. In this way personal life is psychologised, and thus becomes a target
for the intervention of experts

Pastoral power

Another example is the pastoral power within the church. For individuals both regard
an external body as concerned with their good and strive to regulate themselves in
accord with the dictates of that external body, are required to internalize various
norms and ideals. The pastoral power secularization involves the state changing the
spiritual end of salvation with worldly ends such as well-being and health. The
individuals’ acceptance of such ends entails an examination, a confession, and a
transformation of their own behaviour in conformity with the bio-power regime.
Government is the entanglement of these forms of power with the Christian ideas of
confession and pastorship. The state intervenes in a way, which intensifies its
normalization, control and regulation of its citizens even in their daily activities. As
Foucault argues:
 “modern power applies itself to everyday life which categorizes the
individual, marks him by his own individuality, attaches him to his own
identity, imposes a law of truth on him” (Foucault, 1982: 212).

Taking for example homosexuality, according to Stuart (1992), in the late 19s of
course, there had always been homosexuality behaviour well before then in human
society but the concept of homosexual itself was something that came into existence
in a particular period. So it brings with it a particular understanding constructing the
subject and it does that for a range of medical, moral and legal discourses. Then, in
Foucauldian sense, the notion of homosexual has defined the subject itself and we as
individual can only then occupied certain positions in society dictated by those
subjects. Individuals then categorized as homosexual will then be seen as sick and
wealthy of punishment. In this case, discourse defines the homosexual person, allows
and limits what can be done and say and how people can behave that it is how they
can occupied those positions. It is not just that individuals accept discourses or
practices and the ideas that go with them, which they are presented with as they come
in contact with society; it is because individuals position themselves within those
practices or discourses and they come to understand themselves in that conceptual
way by using that kind of map. So in one sense, individuals take on roles defined by
those concepts, they think of themselves in those kind of terms, they describe
themselves in those kind of ways and they act in ways that are expected of those kind
of positions. As a result, individuals adopt those subjective positions; they create
individuals’ subjectivity, their sense of selves, and their identity to do that. He claims
that those discourses are creating the very subjective experience of individuals’
selves.

According to Foucault, acquiring a discourse is the only human way of knowing

about reality there is; the only way we can think/talk at all is by using a discourse of
one kind or another. Furthermore, since we are compelled to know by means of
discourses, they exercise power over us. Who we are – what we think, what we know,
and what we talk about – is produced by the various discourses we encounter and use.
Thus, the ‘subject’ – the creative, freely choosing and interpreting agent at the centre
of action theory (and at the heart of both Enlightenment philosophies and later
existentialism) – does not exist. People’s subjectivity and identity – what they think,
know and talk about – is created by the discourses in which they are implicated. To
use the post-structuralist jargon: the individual is constituted by discourses. So
discourses – ways of thinking, knowing and talking – provide us with the only ways
in which we can ‘be’ anybody at all. They provide us with our thoughts and our
knowledge and, therefore, can be said to direct, or be behind, any actions we choose
to take. This link between thought, language, knowledge and action is summarized by
Foucault with the phrase ‘discursive practices’ – meaning that social life consists of
activities promoted by discourses.

then, people are who they are – they think what they think, know what they know, say
what they say and do what they do – because of their implication in a configuration
of different, and sometimes competing, discourses. These discourses determine what
people think and know, and therefore how they act. So, for Foucault, discursive
practices are at the root of social life; and the exercise of power through discourse is
everywhere. For Foucauldians, if you want to understand human behaviour in a
particular place and time, find out the discourses that dominate there. For Foucault,
then, power is exercised in two ways. First, it is exercised in order that a discourse
will come into being. Second, it is exercised by a discourse, since it constitutes
identity. We acquire discursive knowledge in the same way as we acquire language,
and the chances of us resisting this knowledge are as remote as our chances of not
learning a particular language as we grow up. This is not, however, the same as
repressive power (the exercise of power in order to stop us doing things). It is the
exercise of power to enable us to be human (rather than remaining merely animals),
and to possess the knowledge we need to attach meaning to our experiences. Just as
the child is only able to become properly human through learning some language or
other, so we are only able to know truth and falsehood, right and wrong, as a result of
the influence of discourses of some kind or other. However, this does not mean we
can therefore claim to know things for certain. However, for Foucault, we are only
able to know the truths provided for us by our discourses; we are clearly hamstrung
and restricted by the particular discourses we encounter. Just as a child has no choice
about the language(s) it has to learn as it grows up, so we have no choice about the
particular knowledge of the world we have to acquire. To put this another way, for
Foucault, it is through the discourses that dominate a time in history and a place in
the world that people acquire their mindset, or worldview. This way of looking at
things through discourse Foucault calls an ‘epistème’. Episteme

“delimits in the totality of experience a field of knowledge, defines the

mode of being of the objects that appear in the field, provides man’s
everyday perception with theatrical power and defines the conditions in
which he can sustain a discourse about things that is recognized to be
true” (Foucault, 2002: 23).
According to Foucault (1980), epistemes build both the world individuals live in and
the idea of rationality that they adopt. They govern our thinking being and are
reflections of a natural order or a product of rational deliberations. The way
individuals classify things and the way they perceive the world depend on the codes
that rule their thoughts. For classifying and the ordering of individuals’ concepts,
each episteme prescribes guidelines and these rules therefore fix at any time their
views of the world. Foucault, moreover, insists that epistemes (discourses) are not
the outcomes of the rational activity of individual subjects. Epistemes define
individuals by giving them their desires, concepts, actions and beliefs, and so. Hence,
he sees the individuals as a product of epistemes or as the outcome of
power/knowledge.

Article 1A(2) Refugee Convention defines a refugee as a person who:

“owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion,

nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the
country of his nationality, and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail
himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being
outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is
unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.”169