Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
rather than its neighboring concepts ideology and hegemony. That these are neigh-
boring concepts is easily comprehended with a closer look at defi nitions. To put it
'very schematically...an ideology is a system (with its own logic and rigour) of
representations (images, myths, ideas or concepts, depending on the case) endowed
with a historical existence and role within a given society' (Althusser, 1996, p. 231).
More specifi cally, it circumscribes the elaboration of representation 'into a system-
atic idealizing of existing conditions, those conditions that make possible the eco-
nomic, social, and political primacy of a given group or class' (Lefebvre, 1968, p.
68). Ideologies 'refract (rather than refl ect) reality via preexisting representations,
selected by the dominant groups and acceptable to them' (p. 69). Ideologies can be
envisaged as one of a dynamic range of cultural practices, immersed in the material
and mental reality of human subjects, by which powerful classes preserve consent
to its primacy within an existing social order or 'hegemony'.
It is not very important whether one agrees with these defi nitions or not, but
what matters is that they do allow me to draw out two points. First, conventional
notions of hegemony and ideology tend to allow for a residual believe in unmedi-
ated access to the material world: a pure point of overview replacing misleading
refractions of reality (ideology) by demystifi ed refl ection of the authentic reality of
social and natural processes (scientifi c knowledge). In one of its key conventional
uses within Marxism, ideology is thought of pejoratively as a distorted set of ideas,
as a 'false' consciousness, which fails to recognise the real circumstances of social
life (Williams, 1977, p. 103). Second, hegemony and ideology have traditionally
been identifi ed with a more centred notion of power, shaped by the interests of the
bourgeoisie or other elite groups.
Discourse analysis won terrain in academic writing in the latest round of debate
around what many saw as positivistic inclinations buried in traditional notions of
ideology critique. Many scholars who have adopted the notion of discourse analysis
insist that there is no extra-discursive, immediate access to reality. They often invoke
the French thinker Michel Foucault whose employment of the term discourse (and
its intimate relationships to power) entailed a profound disagreement with the epis-
temological and ontological status of ideology within Marxism (Foucault, 1980, p.
118). While discourses have truth-effects, Foucault denied that they could be assessed
as ideologies because that would suggest some veridical reference to a pre-discursive
reality. From this reading, discourse analysis signals a rejection of what is seen as
the epistemological realism lurking behind the ideology/science distinction. Scien-
tists, business, green movements, the media and others produce environmental dis-
courses which become received 'truths' because of social processes and positionings,
never because they are 'asocial' refl ections of the biogeophysical things, spaces or
mechanisms they describe. By extension, some claim that discourses structure society
at large and that there is no easily identifi able social interest or class with full control
over their shape, contents and functioning. This also conveys the idea that discourse
(and hence power) tends to be a situation-specifi c, struggled-over, dispersed, rela-
tional and often concealed effect rather than a universal, stable, centred and always
overt resource. By such account, attempts like Peet and Watts' to wed Foucaultian
notions of discourse and power with historical materialist notions of hegemony and
ideology seem contentious.
Perhaps somewhat ironically, the move towards discourse and representation has
reactivated ontological and epistemological quarrels that were also central to earlier
theoretical disputes about ideology critique. A key objection to a focus on discourse
