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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2025
Ideology can be understood as a type of cultural system, a set of interrelated meanings that are symbolically mediated through semiotic devices such as metaphors. Ideologies underlie social orders as well as help people make sense of their environment and decide on courses of action. While much has been said about ideology, little has been written on the sources of ideological change beyond pointing to ideological entrepreneurship. Even less has been written on the relationship between violent and disruptive social movements and ideology beyond pointing to the ideological motivations for the movements. We contend that extreme protests are often triggered by an ideological crisis, that is, an intolerable disconnection between the ideology adopted by some group and the current circumstances or, alternatively, an inability of their ideology to make sense of their current situation. Moreover, extreme protests are a form of ideological work, as they are often sources of ideological inspiration, development, and change.
1 See, e.g., Gerring, John, “Ideology: A Definitional Analysis,” Political Research Quarterly 50, no. 4 (1997): 958–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a review of competing definitions of ideology. See also Molly Brigid McGrath, “The Insidious Ambiguity of ‘Ideology’,” elsewhere in this volume, who presents alternative interpretations of ideology that contribute to the concept’s ambiguity. We ultimately adopt what she calls the social-scientific approach.
2 de Tracy, Antoine Claude Destutt, Mémoire sur la Faculté de Penser, De la Métaphysique de Kant et Autres Texts, ed. Deneys, Anne and Deneys, Henry (Paris: Fayard, 1992), 71 Google Scholar. For an English translation of the key passage from Tracy’s Mémoire sur la Faculté de Penser, see Antoine Louis Claude Destutt De Tracy’s Elements of Ideology, Volume 1: Ideology Strictly Defined and “On Love” from Elements of Ideology, Volume 5: On Morals, trans. Juan Christian Guerrero (Paris: The American University of Paris, 2011), 72–73.
3 See, e.g., North, Douglass C., Structure and Change in Economic History (New York: W.W. Norton, 1981), 45–58 Google Scholar; Storr, Virgil Henry, “North’s Underdeveloped Ideological Entrepreneur,” in The Annual Proceedings of the Wealth and Well-Being of Nations, 2008–2009, Volume 1: Social Institutions and the Rule of Law, ed. Chamlee-Wright, Emily and Kodl, Jennifer (Beloit, WI: Beloit College Press, 2009), 99–115.Google Scholar
4 See, e.g., Martin, Nona P. and Storr, Virgil Henry, “‘I’se a Man’: Political Awakening and the 1942 Riot in the Bahamas,” The Journal of Caribbean History 41, nos. 1–2 (2007): 72–91 Google Scholar; Martin, Nona P. and Storr, Virgil Henry, “Demystifying Bay Street: Black Tuesday and the Radicalization of Bahamian Politics in the 1960s,” The Journal of Caribbean History 43, no. 1 (2009): 37–50 Google Scholar; Martin, Nona P. and Storr, Virgil Henry, “Bay Street as Contested Space,” Space and Culture 15, no. 4 (2012): 283–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Ideological work can be thought of as efforts to resolve ideological crisis, that is, a disconnection or distance between an ideology and reality.
6 We use “extreme” in a morally neutral way, as we are in no way endorsing or opposing the aims of protestors.
7 Ideological crisis is linked to the concept of cultural dissonance, which is a feeling of disharmony that individuals experience when there are sudden and unexpected shifts in their cultural environment.
8 There is, of course, a sense in which every human action is ideological work, at least in the sense that we mean it here. As such, we should not be read as arguing that riots are ideological work and showing up to one’s job, competing in a sport, or writing a treatise is not ideological work. Each of these can be understood as an effort to make one’s reality make sense. Our essay, however, attempts to highlight the specific ways in which extreme protests are ideological work.
9 The advantage for us of adopting Geertz’s definition of ideology as a cultural system is that it focuses our attention on the bottom-up processes that spur ideological change and shape ideological development.
10 As we will expand on below, riots (and other extreme protests) can be understood as emergent orders that are the result of rule-governed human action, where rioters are not following commands per se but are guided by their ideological commitments, some of which are being worked out as they are rioting.
11 Schmidtz, David, “Freedom of Thought,” Social Philosophy & Policy 37, no. 2 (2020): 6–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
12 Schmidtz, “Freedom of Thought,” 7.
13 Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, The German Ideology, ed. Arthur, C. J. (New York: International Publishers, 1970).Google Scholar
14 Althusser, Louis, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), 159.Google Scholar
15 See Brian Leiter, “How Are Ideologies False? A Reconstruction of the Marxian Concept,” elsewhere in this volume, for a more detailed discussion of ideology in the Marxist tradition. See also Brian Kogelmann, “The Demand and Supply of False Consciousness,” elsewhere in this volume, for an explanation of why the oppressed would adopt the oppressor’s ideology.
16 Marx, and Engels, , The German Ideology. See also Sarah Kofman, Camera Obscura: Of Ideology , trans. Will Straw (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998).Google Scholar
17 Stanley, Jason, How Propaganda Works (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 178–222.Google Scholar
18 Shelby, Tommie, “Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory,” The Philosophical Forum 34, no. 2 (2003): 183–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 Fricker, Miranda, Epistemic Injustice: Power & the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 See Allen Buchanan, “The Explanatory Power of Ideology,” elsewhere in this volume, for an explanation of why the concept of ideology—and not merely collective action failure—is needed to explain why the oppressed do not revolt against the oppressor.
21 Lebron, Christopher, The Color of Our Shame: Race and Justice in Our Time (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
22 Lebron, The Color of Our Shame, 57.
23 The relevant part of Marxist theory for our purposes, and one that Leiter, “How Are Ideologies False?” clarifies, is the disconnection between ideology and reality that can influence a group’s adherence to an ideology that does not serve their interests. We do not, however, view ideology as necessarily false or exclusively imposed on a subordinate class. Ideology is, arguably, a means of coordination for subordinate or dominant groups—whether they are social majorities or minorities—to maintain or change current circumstances that may or may not align with their ideology.
24 Freeden, Michael, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).Google Scholar
25 Freeden, Michael, “Ideology, Political Theory, and Political Philosophy,” in Handbook of Political Theory, ed. Gaus, Gerald F. and Kukathas, Chandran (London: Sage, 2004), 6.Google Scholar
26 Freeden, “Ideology, Political Theory, and Political Philosophy,” 6.
27 Geertz, Clifford, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 211–51.Google Scholar
28 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 214, 226.
29 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 226.
30 Percy, Walker, “Symbol as Hermeneutic in Existentialism,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 16, no. 4 (1956): 522–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Percy, Walker, “Metaphor as Mistake,” The Sewanee Review 66, no. 1 (1958): 79–99 Google Scholar; Percy, Walker, “Symbol, Consciousness, and Intersubjectivity,” The Journal of Philosophy 55, no. 15 (1958): 631–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Andrey Zorin, “Ideology, Semiotics, and Clifford Geertz,” History and Theory 40, no. 1 (2001): 57.
31 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 239.
32 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 153.
33 Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures, 236.
34 Gerring, “Ideology,” 968; we also recognize that the lines separating cultural from political or economic phenomena are porous.
35 Hayek, Friedrich A., Law, Legislation, and Liberty , Volume 1: Rules and Order (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Hayek, F. A., Law, Legislation, and Liberty , Volume 2 : The Mirage of Social Justice (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Adrian Blau, “Social Science and Its Critics: An Ideological Analysis,” elsewhere in this volume, who, following Peter Sederberg, distinguishes between “procedural” and “substantive” ideologies that are “perspectival,” that is, those which have features that help people interpret their worlds.
36 Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 2, 54. An implication of this view is that an ideological crisis, as might occur when an adopted ideology does not help to make sense of the existing circumstances, might undermine social order. For example, imagine if an oppressive regime was supported by an ideology that insisted on the inferiority of the oppressed group, but the oppressed group was frequently and unambiguously demonstrating their capacities. This has the potential to shake the ideology and so, too, the oppressive regime that the ideology supports. Similarly, imagine an economic system that rests on an ideology that celebrates free exchange as the foundation of the system, but where cronyism and patently unfair advantages are pervasive. This has the potential to undermine the legitimacy and desirability of that economic system.
37 Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 1, 58.
38 Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 1, 58.
39 Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 1, 58.
40 We admittedly do not engage the contemporary philosophical literature on ideology as much as we could; a more thorough engagement with the philosophical literature, however, is beyond the scope of this essay. See, e.g., Stanley, How Propaganda Works, 178–222, for a useful analysis of the relationship between ideology and injustice in the Marxist tradition, in which false (and often racist) beliefs are understood as perpetuating the low social status ascribed to a group.
41 Goldstone, Jack A. and Ritter, Daniel P., “Revolution and Social Movements,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, 2nd ed., ed. Snow, David A. et al. (Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell, 2019), 690.Google Scholar
42 Sharp, Gene, The Politics of Nonviolent Action (Boston, MA: Extending Horizons, 1973)Google Scholar; Goldstone and Ritter, “Revolution and Social Movements,” 690.
43 Since the early 1990s, there has been a relatively large number of social-scientific, edited volumes published on social movements. See, e.g., Morris, Aldon D. and Mueller, Carol McClurg, eds., Frontiers in Social Movement Theory (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992)Google Scholar; Costain, Anne N. and McFarland, Andrew S., eds., Social Movements and American Political Institutions: People, Passions, and Power (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998)Google Scholar; Porta, Donatella and Diani, Mario, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Social Movements (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Snow, David A. et al., eds., The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; David A. Snow et al., eds., The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, 2nd ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2019), See also, e.g., Novak, Mikayla, Freedom in Contention: Social Movements and Liberal Political Economy (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).Google Scholar
44 David A. Snow et al., “Introduction: Mapping and Opening up the Terrain,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, 2nd ed., ed. Snow et al., 5.
45 Snow et al., “Introduction,” 5.
46 Snow et al., “Introduction,” 5.
47 Snow et al., “Introduction,” 7.
48 Snow et al., “Introduction,” 8.
49 See, e.g., McCarthy, John D. and Zald, Mayer N., “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 6 (1977): 1212–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
50 McCarthy and Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements,” 1212–41.
51 Snow et al., “Introduction,” 1–16.
52 Hayek, Friedrich A., “The Results of Human Action but Not of Human Design,” in The Market and Other Orders, ed. Caldwell, Bruce (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2014), 293–303 Google Scholar; Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Volume 1: Rules and Order. See also Martin, Nona P. and Storr, Virgil Henry, “On Perverse Emergent Orders,” Studies in Emergent Order 1, no. 1 (2008): 73–91.Google Scholar
53 Boettke, Peter J., Haeffele-Balch, Stefanie, and Storr, Virgil Henry, eds., Mainline Economics: Six Nobel Lectures in the Tradition of Adam Smith (Arlington, VA: Mercatus Center at George Mason University, 2016).Google Scholar
54 Lang, Kurt and Lang, Gladys Engel, “Racial Disturbances as Collective Protest,” in Riots and Rebellion: Civil Violence in the Urban Community, ed. Masotti, Louis H. and Bowen, Don R. (Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, 1970), 122.Google Scholar
55 Lang and Lang, “Racial Disturbances as Collective Protest,” 122.
56 Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A., Poor People’s Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail (New York: Vintage, 1978), 37.Google Scholar
57 Piven and Cloward, Poor People’s Movements, 37.
58 Piven and Cloward, Poor People’s Movements, 37.
59 Martin and Storr, “On Perverse Emergent Orders,” 73–91.
60 See Jonathan Bendor, “The Cognitive Complexity of Ideologies and the Ambitious Aspirations of Ideologists,” elsewhere in this volume, who explains the survival of ideologies with “self-correcting properties.”
61 Importantly, there may be a difference between the ideological commitments that even protestors might have believed would govern their behavior ex ante and the commitments that remain in force during the protest. Indeed, extreme protests might lead to ideological discovery. For instance, a rioter may have articulated solidarity with members of all oppressed groups prior to the riot, but they might discover that solidarity beyond their group might be unsustainable. The reverse might also occur. On the streets, as it were, a rioter might discover that they have common cause with some group that they might have “othered” previously.
62 Abraham Klaasen, “The Quest for Socio-Economic Rights: The Rule of Law and Violent Protest in South Africa,” Sustainable Development 28, no. 3 (2020): 479; Ed Stoddard, “South African Riots Over Poor Services, Poverty Hit Record in 2018,” Reuters, October 17, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/ozatp-us-safrica-politics-idAFKCN1MR2GN-OZATP.
63 If we limited our approach to Marx, we arguably could not use the concept of ideology to explain the Tulsa race riots or other cases in which violence is used to enforce social orders that are viewed as unjust.
64 Gal, Susan and Irvine, Judith T., Signs of Difference: Language and Ideology in Social Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
65 Gal and Irvine, Signs of Difference, 168.
66 Gal and Irvine, Signs of Difference, 21.
67 Gal and Irvine, Signs of Difference, 167.
68 Gal and Irvine, Signs of Difference, 172.
69 The 1942 riot in the Bahamas was chosen to illustrate how extreme protests can be a form of ideological work for several reasons. First, it is a generally understudied extreme protest that some of the authors have researched. As such, our understanding of it is not limited to secondary sources, but also includes primary sources, including interviews. See, for instance, Martin and Storr, “I’se a Man.” While this is not meant as a contribution to the historiography of the riot, our teasing out of the relevant aspects of the case for the discussion of ideological work benefits from our understanding of and contributions to the literature on the 1942 riot in the Bahamas. Second, the 1942 riot offers a clear example of the ideological work that we are focusing on here. Our hope is that by discussing the case somewhat deeply, we will illustrate the relationship between ideology and riots, specifically, how riots are triggered by ideological crises, how rioting is a form of ideological work, and how riots inspire further ideological work. As the other examples we point to suggest, however, we do not believe that the 1942 riot differs from other extreme protests in its significance regarding the effects of and its effects on ideology.
70 Martin and Storr, “Bay Street as Contested Space,” 283.
71 Again, see Kogelmann, “The Demand and Supply of False Consciousness,” for an explanation of why the oppressed would adopt the oppressor’s ideology. As he explains, the psychic costs of maintaining that the social order is unjust when the social order is unlikely to change may be too high. Instead, the oppressed may be more likely to succeed within oppressive limits if they adopt the oppressor’s ideology. Indeed, one way to understand our argument that an ideological crisis can trigger extreme protests is to view individuals as wanting to hold an ideology that does not conflict with their reality. The existence of slavery, for instance, triggers an ideological crisis in anyone who truly believes that blacks are dignified equals deserving of liberty and justice. For that individual, they must either restlessly fight against slavery or abandon their ideology.
72 Martin and Storr, “‘I’se a Man’,” 73.
73 Johnson, Doris L., The Quiet Revolution in the Bahamas (Nassau: Family Islands Press Limited, 1972), 27.Google Scholar
74 Martin and Storr, “‘I’se a Man’,” 73.
75 Haslanger, Sally, “Racism, Ideology, and Social Movements,” Res Philosophica 94, no. 1 (2017): 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
76 Haslanger, “Racism, Ideology, and Social Movements,” 16.
77 Christopher Wellman, “Hate Crime Legislation as an Antidote to Hate Ideology,” elsewhere in this volume, helpfully discusses the problems with hate ideology. One additional reason that we might worry about hate ideology is that wherever the hate ideology is not the dominant one and/or the social reality does not conform to it, the holders of hate ideology are constantly going to be confronting ideological crises that may inspire violent responses.
78 As noted above, the boundary separating cultural from political ideologies is porous. Consider, as an example of this, our focus on the 1942 riots in the Bahamas. The problem was both politically and culturally significant: Bahamian blacks were disrespected. It shaped their self-perceptions and how they sensed their natural relationship with Bahamian whites. We see this in the fact that women and men not associated with the Project joined in the riots.
79 The Marxist approach to ideology provides a useful frame for understanding the Bahamas case. The dominant ideology of the pre-1940s riots included the belief that blacks should be grateful for the opportunities available to them, regardless of any mistreatment they faced. This belief was inconsistent with reality in that it made an unjust system appear justified. We thank our anonymous reviewer for sharing this insight with us.
80 Eric Hallinan, cited in what is known as the “Russell Commission,” that is, the Report of the Select Committee of the House of Assembly and Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into Disturbances in The Bahamas which took place in June 1942 (Nassau: Nassau Public Records Offices, 1942).
81 Leonard Storr Green, cited in “Russell Commission.”
82 “Russell Commission.”
83 Napolean McPhee, cited in “Russell Commission.”
84 “Russell Commission.”
85 Fawkes, Randol, The Faith that Moved the Mountain: A Memoir of a Life and The Times (Hialeah: Dodd Printers, 1977).Google Scholar
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87 Nassau Tribune, April 27, 1965, quoted in Craton, Michael and Saunders, Gail, Islanders in the Stream: A History of the Bahamian People, Volume 2: From the Ending of Slavery to the Twenty-First Century (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 341 Google Scholar; Martin and Storr, “Demystifying Bay Street,” 145.
88 The Marxist approach to ideology is again relevant here. The ideological disconnection from reality that was beginning to become unmasked in the 1942 riots was being brought to reality when unequal political representation among blacks and whites was challenged in the 1960s. It could be argued that the dominant ideology before the unmasking was a type of false consciousness. The alternative understanding of reality articulated by the protestors can be thought of as a true consciousness. We thank our anonymous reviewer for bringing this point to our attention.
89 Gurr, Ted Robert, “On the Outcomes of Violent Conflict,” in Handbook of Political Conflict: Theory and Research, ed. Gurr, Ted Robert (New York: Free Press, 1980), 238–94Google Scholar; Isaac, Larry and Kelly, William R., “Racial Insurgency, the State, and Welfare Expansion: Local and National Level Evidence from the Postwar United States,” American Journal of Sociology 86, no. 6 (1981): 1348–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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91 Giugni, “Was It Worth the Effort?” 378.
92 Schumaker, Paul D., “The Scope of Political Conflict and the Effectiveness of Constraints in Contemporary Urban Protest,” The Sociological Quarterly 19, no. 2 (1978): 168–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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94 Giugni, “Was It Worth the Effort?” 378.
95 Giugni, “Was It Worth the Effort?” 378–79.
96 To systematically bring in additional evidence would demand a detailed historical treatment that would take us beyond the scope of our essay.