Reconciling the Two Principal Meanings of the Notion of Ideology: The Example of the Concept of the `Spirit of Capitalism'

Eve Chiapello ()
Additional contact information
Eve Chiapello: HEC Paris - Recherche - Hors Laboratoire - HEC Paris - Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: The study of the notion of ideology shows that this corpus lends itself to a wide variety of different definitions. A certain opposition runs all the way through this set of definitions. Ideology would appear to be torn between a conception that emphasises its distortion and dissimulation dimensions and another conception which views as a set of social representations. After rapidly presenting the main characteristics of these two polar extremes, Paul Ricoeur's suggestion that these two conceptions can be united is discussed and illustrated by the concept of the `spirit of capitalism', as defined in the book by Boltanski and Chiapello (1999). It is shown that this constitutes an ideology which is in fact an attempt to encompass both these conceptions. It is also shown that the concept of `trial' as proposed in that book helps greatly to understand how this reconciliation is actually possible

Keywords: criticism; ideology; justice; legitimacy; social representations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003-05-01
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Published in European Journal of Social Theory, 2003, Vol. 6, n° 2, pp. 155-171. ⟨10.1177/1368431003006002001⟩

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-00466537

DOI: 10.1177/1368431003006002001

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().