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Michael Freeden; Oxford University Press, Oxford & New York, 2003, 144pp.; ISBN: 0 19 280281 X.
This book, though physically small, is large in intellectual stature. It aims to reclaim the study of ideology for the discipline of politics. Freeden considers that politics is the most apposite 'stamping ground' for ideological discussion. The book, in summary, contains a masterly summary of the career of the concept of ideology from its first usage by Destutt de Tracy, in the early 1800s, through Marx, Mannheim, Gramsci, Althusser, and many others, up to the discourse theory of the last decade. For students of politics or lay readers wishing to know about ideology, one could not wish for a better text. It is a splendid model of concision and clarity, which manages, in a short compass, to cover all the key issues one would want in terms of the history of the concept. However, one should not be misled into thinking that this is simply an introductory survey. For the careful reader, there are much deeper themes, which not only summarize a unique position on the discussion of ideology, but also lay out the groundwork for a fruitful research programme. Many of these themes, sketched in the present volume, have evolved from Freeden's earlier comprehensive study Ideologies and Political Theory (1996).
For Freeden, overall, ideologies are cognitive maps...