Page 59 - Cultural Studies A Practical Introduction

Ideologies 43

decades in the US, it is impossible to hear anything positive about socialism
(a popular social and economic approach in Europe and elsewhere) in the
US context. You will never see a television show about the virtues of social-
ism in the US media in part because the media are owned and controlled
by people whose interests would be hurt by the socialist ideal of an equi-
table distribution of wealth and in part because the dominant way of think-
ing in the culture is so opposed to socialism as a result of repeated instruction
over many decades from those with economic and cultural power. Even if
the message were broadcast, in other words, it could not be heard.
If ideas shape consciousness, consciousness shapes behavior. A Marine
is not just a person in a uniform; Marines are people who have learned a
particular way of behaving by absorbing particular ideas (rules, values,
ideals, models of behavior, etc.) that shape who they are and determine
how they act in the world. The term we use for the distinct kind of self that
the term Marine embodies is identity . An identity is one thing rather than
another; it is a differentiation between two things. By absorbing one set of
ideas, values, and ideals, a Marine becomes a particular identity that is
NOT something else. To be a Marine is to be tough rather than weak, for

example, capable of killing rather than reflective on the ethical implications
of violence. You could take the cluster of qualities a Marine is NOT and
make out of them an identity antithetical to that of the Marine – someone
with a doctorate in philosophy who is a strict pacifi st, for example.
This explains why in at least one school of thought in Cultural Studies,
ideology refers both to the ideas that circulate in a particular culture and
to the kinds of self - identity that those ideas make possible. Cultures differ
from each other across the globe in the way that they foster different kinds
of self - identity. Different ideas make us into different kinds of people.
People around the world differ and have different kinds of identity because
cultures differ in regard to the kinds of ideas that dominate in each culture.
To study cultural difference is often to study the ways large groups of
people are managed and directed by the dominant ideas of that culture to
have particular kinds of identity that make that particular society work in
a particular way.
In the US, a culture that has already moved away from traditional vil-
lage - based cultural and social forms, young people are encouraged to think
of themselves increasingly as active agents who have full control over their
lives. That is an important break with the previous patriarchal tradition
that held that they should be carefully supervised. In China, by contrast, a
culture still steeped in traditional ideas and values, young women from