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Drawing on poststructuralist approaches, Craig Martin outlines a theory of discourse, ideology, and domination that can be used by scholars and students to understand these central elements in the study of culture.
The book shows how discourses are used to construct social institutions-often classist, sexist, or racist-and that those social institutions always entail a distribution of resources and capital in ways that capacitate some subject positions over others. Such asymmetrical power relations are often obscured by ideologies that offer demonstrably false accounts of why those asymmetries exist or persist.
The author provides a method of reading in order to bring matters into relief, and the last chapter provides a case study that applies his theory and method to racist ideologies in the United States, which systematically function to discourage white Americans from sympathizing with poor African Americans, thereby contributing to reinforcing the latter's place at the bottom of a racial hierarchy that has always existed in the US.
List of contents
Preface
Introduction: Contingency
1. Critique
2. Things
3. Discourse
4. Domination
5. Ideology
6. Recrement
7. Case Study: Racist Ideology in the US
Coda
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Craig Martin is Professor of Religious Studies at St. Thomas Aquinas College, USA. He is the author of
Capitalizing Religion:
Ideology and the Opiate of the Bourgeoisie (Bloomsbury, 2014) and co-editor of
Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés (Bloomsbury, 2017). He is the series editor for
Critiquing Religion: Discourse, Culture, Power.
Summary
Drawing on poststructuralist approaches, Craig Martin outlines a theory of discourse, ideology, and domination that can be used by scholars and students to understand these central elements in the study of culture.
The book shows how discourses are used to construct social institutions—often classist, sexist, or racist—and that those social institutions always entail a distribution of resources and capital in ways that capacitate some subject positions over others. Such asymmetrical power relations are often obscured by ideologies that offer demonstrably false accounts of why those asymmetries exist or persist.
The author provides a method of reading in order to bring matters into relief, and the last chapter provides a case study that applies his theory and method to racist ideologies in the United States, which systematically function to discourage white Americans from sympathizing with poor African Americans, thereby contributing to reinforcing the latter’s place at the bottom of a racial hierarchy that has always existed in the US.
Foreword
Provides a theory of discourse and ideology that could be used to study religion as well as other aspects of culture, including race and gender.
Additional text
This book succeeds in providing a secure base and guide for scholars to apply a poststructuralist critique of culture, whether focused on religion, politics, gender, race or another category of analysis.
