Re-energizing ideology studies : the maturing of a discipline / edited by Michael Freeden.

Ideology studies have undergone significant growth over the past couple of decades. The scope of the discipline has been extensively broadened to include not only text and discourse but emotions, imagination, fantasy, rhetoric and visual forms. Its attention to detail and to the micro-manifestations of ideology in the everyday have borne considerable fruit, particularly at a time of ideological fragmentation and reassembly. Its research methods have been refined, embracing both conceptual innovation and empirical evidence drawn from many fields of social creativity. During that period, the Journal of Political Ideologies has been a major vehicle of the discipline’s advance and coming of age. The chapters in this book originally published as two special issues in the Journal. The book assembles and investigates some of the latest approaches and domains in which cutting-edge ideology-research is now under way. The multiple topics, sources and interdisciplinary perspectives it contains illustrate the variety and depth that ideology studies have attained. Its subjects range from historical and literary analyses, through feminist studies, and psycho-social interpretations. It takes in the new means of dissemination that the digital age has introduced, and offers fresh assessments of the many cross-fertilizations possible between ideology research, political theory, and international studies, as traditional ideologies vie with new ideological articulations and forms.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Still the stranger at the feast? Ideology and the study of twentieth century British politics -- 'Submission' : ambiguity, hypocrisy and misanthropy on Michael Houellebecq's imaginary politics -- Totalitarianism and the end of the end-of-ideology -- 'The spark gap is mightier than the pen': the promotion of an ideology of science in the early 1930s -- The attraction of ideology : discourse, desire and the body -- Ideology in the age of mediatized politics : from 'belief systems' to the re-contextualizing principle of discourse -- Neoliberal feminism as political ideology : revitalizing the study of feminist political ideologies -- International ideologies : paradigms of ideological analysis and world politics -- Back to the populist future? : understanding nostalgia in contemporary ideological discourse -- Ideology, socialism and the everyday : forgotten lessons from the inter-war years? -- Ideology in three voices : an adapted methodology for the study of political ideology.

Originally published as a special issue of Journal of political ideologies, volume22, numbers2 (June 2017).

This book reproduces two special issues of the 'Journal of Political Ideologies' which are the fruits of a conference held to celebrate its first twenty years. It was held at the School of Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham in late 2015 under the heading 'Re-energizing Ideology Studies : the Maturing of a Discipline.' -- page 1.