The Concept of Ideology by Jorge Larrain

Review by: Jim Thomas

Contemporary Sociology, Vol. 10, No. 3 (May, 1981), pp. 425-426
Published by: American Sociological Association
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 BOOK REVIEWS
cating which organizational environments fos-
ter creativity and discovery in science. (Four
papers reporting preliminary results from a
six-nation, UNESCO-sponsored study of re-
search organizations are a partial exception.)
While some papers will be of interest to
specialists in the sociology of science and the
sociology of knowledge, this book is unlikely
to have a great impact. Many of the better
papers have already appeared in revised form
as journal articles or in monographs. Further-
more, some papers address questions outside
the sociology of science and research and
could have been omitted (although it is proba-
bly politically naive to think that Farkas could
have actually done so). Finally. the book ad-
dresses specific problems already well worn in
the 1970s, and does not address issues that are
now emerging for the sociology of science.
Although predictions are dangerous, some
of the issues for the eighties can already be
seen. In the United States, at least, research is
increasingly being conducted at nonprofit and
profit-making research organizations, gov-
ernment laboratories, and the research di-
visions of multi-nationals rather than in uni-
versities. Furthermore, emerging technologies
may lead to fundamental alterations in the re-
lationship between science and other institu-
tions. For example, revolutionary discoveries
in molecular biology are now being organized
by private enterprise, and this raises profound
questions for scientists, business, universities,
and the state. In order to enhance their en-
dowments, some universities are considering
financing new venture-capital enterprises to
exploit discoveries in molecular biology, es-
pecially those based on "gene-splicing" tech-
niques. Sociologists of science will have to
assess the impact of these problems and their
resolutions on the communication of scientific
information, the training of new cohorts of
scientists, the use of scientific discoveries,
and the organization of scientific research.
And it is too soon to tell whether in the West
the lure of great wealth will lead to increased
bureaucratization of research along Eastern
lines within many scientific disciplines.
The Concept of Ideology, by JORGE LARRAIN.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1979.
256 pp. $18.00 cloth.
JIM THOMAS
Northern Illinois University
Contemporary Sociology,
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
425
Although the resurgent interest of scholars
in the concept of ideology and its role in the
production and reproduction of the social
world has generated voluminous recent
works, few of these have coherently provided
an adequate description of the subtleties and
nuances of the concept or have articulated the
issues at stake in the debates over the nature
and functioning of ideology. The Concept of
Ideology provides perhaps one of the most
thorough and lucid attempts to trace the his-
tory of the concept as an object of discourse,
and the utility and range of this well-
researched book cannot be done justice in
such a short review.
By chronicling the changing emphasis that
other writers have placed upon the relation-
ship of the contents of consciousness to the
maintenance of social and political order, Lar-
rain proceeds from Machiavelli and Bacon
through the Hegelian/Marxian tradition to
contemporary variants of Marxian and semio-
tic perspectives and describes how the con-
cept has been developed, applied, and
transformed. The theme that unifies divers
positions is that our perceptions of the social
and natural world are distorted by problematic
concepts and interpretive rules that are inade-
quate for the task of apprehending that world
at the level of theory. The problem of ideol-
ogy, most simply stated, is this: Does ideology
create a 'false consciousness" that may be
overcome by rational procedures, such as de-
veloping a more adequate theoretical appara-
tus that allows the subject of knowledge to
perceive the objects to be known with less
distortion? Or does ideology stem from the
structure of the social world such that our
theories and concepts, no matter how sophis-
ticated, must necessarily remain distorted?
That is, is ideological consciousness a subjec-
tive, psychological phenomenon that may be
opposed primarily by omitting the sources of
cognitive error, or is it rather a structural and
objective concept tied to social practices, such
that ideologically biased thought can be over-
come only by transforming its structurally
based sources? At stake in this question is
whether scientific practices themselves are
ideological, or whether they can be used to
dispel the ideological fog surrounding our
comprehension of reality. This is the question
to which Larrain's historical discussion leads.
Larrain rejects the two extreme views that
science is necessarily an ideology, or that, as
positivists argue, science is the antithesis of
ideology. Although he organizes his study as
May 1981, Volume 10, Number 3
426 BOOK REVIEWS
an intellectual and exegetic history rather than
historical analysis, his own view of ideology
explicitly requires that ideology be understood
as a historical phenomenon, as "historically
referred to practice" (p. 18), and not as an
epistemological, methodological, or exegetic
exercise. He defines ideology as those forms
of thought that conceal, and thereby prevent
recognition of class and other contradictions
of social existence. As a consequence, ideol-
ogy cannot be studied simply by identifying
distortions but must also include a displaying
of the historical evolution of social contradic-
tions as they have shaped the corresponding
modes of thought that suppress their recogni-
tion. Larrain does not himself attempt such an
analysis, but rather provides the general
framework from which an analysis should
proceed.
Larrain's solution to the problem of devel-
oping a Marxian framework from which to
study ideology may bother some readers, es-
pecially those committed to instrumentalist or
other objectivistic mechanical positions. His
critical interpretation of Althusser, whose
view of ideology he calls essentially idealist, is
also likely to provoke reaction. The truncated
discussions of those representatives he has
chosen to study may also be annoying for
some, but as Larrain reminds the reader, a
certain level of generality is required in such a
broad and ambitious undertaking, and we
should not let some of the relatively minor
problems of the work divert us from using it
as an excellent summary of both the literature
and the issues. The deceptively clear prose
may lead some readers to conclude that his
work is not the significant contribution that it
will most likely become. It will be useful as a
source book not only for theoretically sophis-
ticated readers but for reasonably informed
students as well. This work is nothing less
than an inventory of central issues facing
theorists of ideology, and serves as an excel-
lent guide to redirecting several potentially
powerful lines of analysis.
National Development and the World System:
Educational, Economic, and Political
Change, 1950-1970, edited by JOHN W.
MEYER and MICHAEL T. HANNAN.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979.
334 pp. $22.00 cloth.
CHARLES C. RAGIN
Indiana University
Contemporary Sociology,
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Ideally, research should be a collective, if
not a communal, activity, for scientists learn
most from other scientists. The more often
researchers are exposed to the ideas and ex-
periences of others in their field, the more
rapidly the field progresses. Usually, exposure
and interaction occurs very gradually, through
journals and professional meetings. Occasion-
ally, however, viable research groups coalesce
at major research institutions, and progress is
fueled by the more intense and regular in-
teraction thereby afforded. One such group
emerged at Stanford University in the 1970s,
organized by John Meyer and Michael Han-
nan and supported by grants from the Na-
tional Science Foundation, the National In-
stitute of Education, the Spencer Foundation,
and Stanford University. National Develop-
ment and the World System, edited by Meyer
and Hannan, presents its major products and
findings.
The book itself expresses the nature of the
group; to some extent, a group mind did exist.
The studies reported were all based on mul-
tivariate analyses of aggregate cross-national
data, and the members of the group display a
common interest in big questions-major
theoretical issues in macrosociology. These
commonalities, which to an outsider give the
book unity, however, betray the great diver-
sity that existed in the group and that is now
embodied in the book. The two principal in-
vestigators, Meyer and Hannan, for example,
disagree on just about everything. Meyer's
approach is Weberian-institutional; Hannan's
is ecological. Meyer prefers to interpret the
panel regression analyses reported as simple
causal models; Hannan prefers to treat them
as dynamic models. Meyer uses ordinary least
squares with ratio variables; Hannan advo-
cates weighted least squares with primitive (or
raw) variables. Because they disagreed on so
many issues, their students and collaborators
were allowed great freedom. The group was
not a shop or training camp in the usual sense,
it was more an arena for exploring macro-
sociological issues with quantitative cross-
national data. "Let a thousand flowers bloom
... in this field" could have been the motto of
the group. The edited volume consequently
has a sort of primitive democratic flavor.
While laudable and healthy, this diversity in
some ways cripples National Development and
the World System. Its major themes are not
presented in the first chapters and then elabo-
rated in the contributions, but are introduced
cautiously, almost as afterthoughts. It is not
May 1981, Volume 10, Number 3