Revolution and Witchcraft: The Code of Ideology in Unsettled Times

ISBN-13: 9783031176814 / Angielski / Twarda / 2023 / 427 str.

Gordon C. Chang

Opis

Ideas influence people.  In particular, extremely well-developed sets of ideas shape individuals, groups, and societies in far-reaching ways.  This book establishes these “idea systems” as an academic concept.  Through three intense episodes of manipulation and mayhem connected to idea systems—Europe’s witch hunts, the Mao Zedong-era “revolutions,” and the early campaign of the U.S. War on Terror—this book charts the cognitive and informational matrices that seize control of people’s mentalities and behaviors across societies.  Through these, the author reaches two conclusions.  The first, that we are all vulnerable to the dominating influence of our own matrices of ideas and to those woven by others in the social system.  The second, that even the most masterful manipulators of idea programs may lose control of the outcomes of programmatic manipulation.  Amongst this analysis, sixty-plus central conceptual terminologies are provided for readers to analyze multiform idea systems that exist across space, time, and cultural contexts.This is an open access book.

Spis treści

​1 Introduction
Part I The European Witch Hunts
2 Making Compact Symbolic Structures
3 Building Internal Coherence
4 Building External Coherence
5 Stepwise Inferences and Chain-Complexes of Ideas
6 Ideas as Chemical and Biochemical Reactions

7 A Five-Tier Model of Idea System and Ideological Creativity
Part II The New Revolution in China
8 Compact Symbolic Structures in a Futuristic Idea System
9 Totality as Internal and External Coherence

10 Detailed, Rigorous Thinking in a Complex Chain of Elastic Codes

11 Destabilizing Contradictions and Implosions I: Synchronic Contradictions

12 Destabilizing Contradictions and Implosions II: Diachronic Contradictions
13 A Five-Tier Assessment
Part III The War on Terror
14 Encoding the War on Terrorism
15 Extending the Idea System to the War on Iraq
16 Encoding the Prisoner’s Abuse Scandal
17 Encoding the Absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction
18 A Five-Tier Reflection
19 Conclusion

O autorze

Gordon C. Chang is Associate Professor at the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Western Illinois University, USA. He has taught political and cultural sociology classes at both Western Illinois University and University of California, Davis. His works in discourse analysis have appeared in Pragmatics, Discourse and Society, and the Journal of Language and Politics.

Blurb

"Dr. Chang expands the utility of micro-level discourse analysis techniques in his investigation of three macro-level idea systems: witch hunt social movements, Mao-era revolutionary campaigns, and the US War on Terror. The result is a fresh understanding of each system, original insight into their historical similarities, and an intriguing display of the strategies that systems leaders deploy to retain power."
—Hugh B. Mehan, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of California, San Diego

"This bold and stunning book excavates the ideological codes that sustain social and political movements across time, space, and cultures. Ranging from early modern European witchcraft to the Chinese cultural revolution and the US War on Terror, this comparative study provides illuminating insights and reflections on how new ideas morph into social movements with rare and extreme political consequences. It is a stimulating and informative ‘must read’ for scholars of social and political philosophy and students of the sociology of knowledge."
—Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of African and African-American Studies Research Center, University of California, San Diego

Ideas influence people. In particular, extremely well-developed sets of ideas shape individuals, groups, and societies in far-reaching ways.  This book establishes these “idea systems” as an academic concept.  Through three intense episodes of manipulation and mayhem connected to idea systems—Europe’s witch hunts, the Mao Zedong-era “revolutions,” and the early campaign of the U.S. War on Terror—this book charts the cognitive and informational matrices that seize control of people’s mentalities and behaviors across societies.  Through these, the author reaches two conclusions.  The first, that we are all vulnerable to the dominating influence of our own matrices of ideas and to those woven by others in the social system.  The second, that even the most masterful manipulators of idea programs may lose control of the outcomes of programmatic manipulation.  Amongst this analysis, sixty-plus central conceptual terminologies are provided for readers to analyze multiform idea systems that exist across space, time, and cultural contexts.

Gordon C. Chang (郑志达) is Associate Professor of Sociology at Western Illinois University, USA.