Ideology: A Very Short Introduction

Personally I find the VSI series to be among the best of the "short introduction" formats available out there. Rather than oversimplification or reducing ideas to a comic strip format (as opposed even to a graphic novel approach, which can and does work), these tend to be brief but thorough survey introductions to ideas, usually with a great follow-on bibliography. Think of it as a wikipedia entry on steroids and with more academic peer review.

"Ideology" does not disappoint in this regard. I found it a cogent explanation of the concept of ideology from the perspective of political science, but also reaching out to other disciplines. The strongest element for me was the historical description and contextualization of the macro and micro show more ideologies, within the frame of the evolution of "ideology" as an idea. The weakest area was the author's description of critical discourse analysis, which glossed over a lot. But it's hard to fault that in a book such as this - it just means that one must then look for a VSI on discourse...

For the busy professional or individual who doesn't have the luxury of going back to school but would like to explore some key intellectual movements in an academically rigorous, yet accessible, way, the VSI series is a great resource in general. For those who always wondered what politicians mean when they say "ideology" and would like to understand what liberalism versus conservatism is historically, this particular VSI book is a good start. show less

A better title would have been “Reclaiming ideology as a political concept”. The reason Michael Freeden gives is that the many fold usage of the word “ideology” has lead to a rundown of practical usage in (political scientific) analyses.

Though the method used to analyse political ideology are well explained in such a short book, I was not convinced why other field of study such as literature, anthropology and sociology could not use the same methods. Why would those researchers not end up with a valid, let’s say a literature ideology? An ideology that also states how the literate community make collective decisions and deal with conflict of those decisions (Freedens definition of politics).

Read this if your interested in a show more broad overview of the different methods that can be used to read an ideology. show less