Ideologies: a critical inventory of a concept

Abstract

The first part of this study, under the theme «localization of the object ideologies within the main sociological problématique framework», was published in nº. 45 of Análise Social. There one concluded that the problématique of historical materialism» in spite of being radically opposed to that of the «human action» (which, because it is idealistic, does not succeed in composing a sociological problem from ideologies) has not yet produced a conceptual network fit for a scientific knowledge of the «meaning dimension» of the social formations. The research previously done is now prolonged through the analysis of two new themes, the first being placed beyond the disciplinary frontiers of sociology: «the ideologic work in the significant material of language» and the «the reasons for of ideologies». In the approach to the first theme the analysis is placed in the disciplinary context of the so-called sciences of language, trying circumscribe the conceptual spaces that, concerning the meaning problem, have been defined there. Dealing with the second, one defines zones of convergence between sociology and psychology on one side (concerning the socialization problem) and, on the other side, semiology and psycho-analysis (concerning the way in which Herbert analyses the «form of begetting» of ideologic objects.