Dominant Ideologies Dominant Class Ideologies example essay topic

cultural pedagogy ideology base superstructure industrial capitalism consumer capitalism hegemony consent language chain of meanings mystification persuasion individualism American Dream stereotyping overt racism inferential racism grammar of race base-images (slave, native, clown) ambivalence of vision primitivism Cultural Studies Method Critical, Multicultural, Multiperspectival it looks at texts in context (s) it offers a critique of the distinction between "high" and "low" culture it offers a politically engaged perspective on how media and cultural products operate by means of mystification, persuasion, and seduction in a manner that disguises or veils underlying inequalities. it is aimed at social transformation and does so by paying attention to specific forces of domination and resistance in order to advance an emancipatory politics that counters forms of oppression. Cultural Pedagogy Mass media are a source of cultural pedagogy - i.e. they contribute to teaching us how to behave, what to think, believe, fear, and desire; they show us how to dress and how to shop; how to respond to other social groups; how to be popular; how to conform Media images shape our view of the world and our values; they provide the symbols and myths through which we make a common culture. We insert ourselves into this culture through our consumption, negotiation, and interpretation of these media elements (Kellner). Ideology Ideology is a set of beliefs (i.e. a superstructure) that support and reproduce a set of material relations and distribution of power (a base). Kellner notes that in capitalist societies such as ours, "dominant ideologies serve to reproduce social relations of domination and subordination". (11) "Ideologies make inequalities and subordination appear natural and just, and thus induce consent to relations of domination".

(Kellner, 11) Dominant Ideologies Dominant class ideologies reinforce the idea that upper-class life is inherently superior, morally and materially, to working-class life. Dominant gender ideologies promote the notion that women are inferior to men. Much of this is conveyed through imagery and stories that are generated by the massive but increasingly interconnected culture industries that make TV shows, radio programming, music recording, and movies. Dominant race ideologies advance the notion that people of color are inferior to "white people". Ideology and Language Ideology - "images, concepts and premises which provide the frameworks through which we represent, interpret, understand, and 'make sense' of some aspect of social existence" (Stuart Hall, 89) Language - not the same as ideology but "the principal medium in which we find different ideological discourses elaborated". (Hall 89) Important features of Ideology Ideologies do not consist of isolated and separate concepts, but in the articulation of different elements into a distinctive set or chain of meanings (Hall 89).

Breaking the chain of meaning occurs through social practice and political struggle, not merely the reorientation of a single individual's point of view.