Ideology in Late Modern Society: Disappearance or Transformation?

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the specific role of ideology in the political reality of late modern society. The authors describe a notable contradiction between a steady interest of social science to the competition of ideas of the development of society and the growing doubts of the applicability of classical theories of ideology for describing and comprehending such a competition. The theoretical analysis of contemporary social theory shows that ideology can be described as an action-oriented system of beliefs, and that there are different views on the status of such systems in the political reality of late modern society. During the theoretical analysis, the authors conclude that the idea of the disappearance of ideology from the political process of late modern society has an important conceptual argumentation, but it does not find any cogent empirical evidence. It is more likely that ideology does not disappear from the political reality of late modern society, but it changes to meet new social requirements. Late modern society creates special conditions for the manifestation of ideology by diversifying the information field, reducing the role of political parties, discrediting many fundamental ideological projects, and reducing the class struggle. Altogether, these conditions make ideology change, but they do not make it disappear from the political reality. This hypothesis is correlated with the data of the sociological research conducted by the authors on the case of ideological competition in Russian society before the parliamentary elections in 2016. The analysis of the data of this research shows that ideology still exists in contemporary Russian society, and allows its description as a hybrid in the value kernel and local in its rhetoric system of beliefs. Thus, the authors conclude that it is possible to describe the political processes of late modern society with using the term “ideology”. The term “ideology” which does not lose its heuristic possibilities, but requires a “reconfiguration” of the methodology of social science.

Propensity for social surfing among the Russian youth: Regional specificity

“…Постепенно истончаются и пропадают границы нормы и девиации. Информационная открытость, высокая мобильность, гибридность ценностного ядра общественного и политического пространства [31], насыщенность цифровой среды предоставляют широчайший выбор для молодого человека в «супермаркете стилей» [32], но и отношение к данному выбору прагматично, инициировано локально личными интересами и потребностями, а зачастую и игровыми мотивами [33]. В итоге «социальный серфинг» является воплощением не столько стратегии жизни, сколько стратегии игры в жизнь, где можно, закончив уровень, начать все заново с новым персонажем и новыми целями и установками.…”