The Interpretation of Cultures

Geertz argues that the study of ideology has been handled improperly in dominant social science interpretations, which have not been explaining it as a cultural system. He believes examining ideology requires attention to its social and psychological contexts, and demands the development of a conceptual vehicle that deals with meaning skillfully. 

Geertz argues that the social sciences have developed only an evaluative conception of ideology. This evaluative conception produces what Geertz refers to as Mannheim’s paradox, whereby the term’s lack of neutrality limits scientific objectivity—in this case, much sociological theory considers the relation between science and ideology in simplistic, judgmental terms. For example, Werner Stark paints ideology as psychologically deformed by human emotion, while more sophisticated arguments also present ideology as “a form of radical intellectual depravity” (197). This raises the question of how ideology can be an analytic tool in the social sciences when scientists exhibit bias in their arguments. 

The weakness of the evaluative conception becomes evident in the two dominant approaches to the study of the social determinants of ideology, which examine ideology’s social and psychological functions. Interest theory conceives ideology as a mask and a weapon within a “universal struggle for advantage” (201), while strain theory sees it as a symptom and a remedy for “sociopsychological disequilibrium” (201).