Ideology, Oppression, and Democracy Department of Philosophy

Why don’t people overthrow their rulers when they both could do so and would benefit from it? The goal of this project is to investigate theories concerning the role of ideology in the maintenance of oppressive social systems. Such theories try to explain oppression by means of a structural functionalist account of society: the social structures of oppressive societies generate individual preferences amongst the oppressed which are functional for their continued oppression. We shall study methodological and conceptual problems with such theories, for example, whether these theories can be subjected to empirical testing (as some have alleged they cannot). We shall also try to develop the best version of such a theory.

Secondly, the project shall investigate the connection between democracy and ideology. We shall focus on conceptions of democracy based on the ideal of equality of influence of all citizens over political decisions. Here we will look at theories of rational preference formation that focus on the capacity of citizens to equally and autonomously express their own political preferences in democratic processes in a manner that approximates the above-mentioned ideal of democracy. A theory of equal democratic influence will provide criteria for political participation of individuals who truly govern themselves; at the same time, a fully worked out theory of ideology will indicate just how oppressive social systems generate distortions of belief and character which are barriers to the fulfilment of the ideals of democracy.

This is a cooperative project between researchers from Sweden and South Africa and is financed by SIDA/VR (Sweden) and NRF (South Africa). It is based at the Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University and the Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University, and is jointly led by Dr. Gustaf Arrhenius and Dr. Tony Fluxman.

For a summary of the output of the project, click here.

För en populärvetenskaplig beskrivning av projektet på svenska, klicka här.

NYTT! Torbjörn Tännsjö skriver om den Egyptiska revolutionen på DN debatt här.

People

Gustaf Arrhenius (co-head of the project) is Docent, Senior Lecturer, and Torgny Segerstedt Pro Futura Fellow at the Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University and the Swedish Collegium of Advanced Study. He has written extensively on our moral obligations to future generations, applying the methods of social choice and game theory. In the project, Arrhenius will focus on game theoretical approaches to domination, and democracy seen as fair distribution of power and influence.

Tony Fluxman (co-head of the project) is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Political and International Studies, Rhodes University. He will focus on the role of ideology in domination, including the critique of coordination theories of domination, functionalism and the role of preference formation in both ideology and the democratic process.

Chandra Kumar is a Research Fellow at the Department of Political Studies, Rhodes University. His research will focus on functional explanation, methodological individualism, and other epistemological questions concerning ideology. He is also working on issues relating to the critique of ideology and meta-philosophy; and on the relation of pragmatism to political thought more generally.

Torbjörn Tännsjö is Professor of Practical Philosophy at Stockholm University. His research in the project concerns rational choice explanations of ideology. Click here for his Swedish homepage.

Associated Researchers

Niklas Olsson-Yaouzis (Stockholm)

Magnus Jiborn (Lund)

Work-in-progress and Publications

Gustaf Arrhenius, “Final Project Report” (April 10)

Gustaf Arrhenius, “The Democratic Boundary Problem” (May 09)

Gustaf Arrhenius, “Defining Democratic Decision Making” (April 09)

Gustaf Arrhenius, “Vem bör ha rösträtt?”

Gustaf Arrhenius, “The Boundary Problem in Democratic Theory”

Tony Fluxman, “Marx and the Theory of Ideology”

Tony Fluxman, “The Coordination Theory of Oppression”

Tony Fluxman, “Coordination, Ideology, and Oppression”

Magnus Jiborn, “The Power of Coordination”

Chandra Kumar, “A Pragmatist Spin on Analytical Marxism and Methodological Individualism” (April 2008)

Chandra Kumar, “Analytical Marxism and Foucault’s Theory of ‘Disciplinary Power’” (Jan 2008)

Chandra Kumar, “Foucault and Rorty on Truth and Ideology: A Pragmatist View from the Left”

Chandra Kumar, “Marxism, Foucault and Two Forms of Methodological Individualism”

Chandra Kumar, “Coordination Power and Ideology: Reflections on Jiborn’s ‘The Power of Coordination’ ” (July 2006)

Chandra Kumar, “Foucault, Disciplinary Power, and the ‘Decentring’ of Political Thought: A Marxian View” (Jan 07)

Niklas Olsson-Yaouzis, “Tocqueville’s Sing-Sing” (MPhil-thesis)

Torbjörn Tännsjö, “Rational Injustice”

Torbjörn Tännsjö, “Cosmopolitan Democracy Revisited”

Torbjörn Tännsjö, ”Varför gör förtryckta sällan uppror?”

Torbjörn Tännsjö, “Future People, the All Affected Principle, and the Limits of the Aggregation Model of Democracy”

Torbjörn Tännsjö, “The Myth of Innocence: On Collective Responsibility and Collective Punishment” (June 07)

Torbjörn Tännsjö, “Social Psychology and the Paradox of Revolution” (June 07)

Events

Presentation of the project at the Linnaeus week, 17 - 23 September 2007, Cape Town. For more information, click here!

Colloquium on Ideology, Oppression, and Democracy, Filosofidagarna, Umeå, June 8-10, 2007. For more information, click here!

Symposium on Ideology, Oppression, and Democracy, Philosophical Society of Southern Africa (PSSA), Stellenbosch, South Africa, January 17-19, 2007.

Symposium on Ideology, Oppression, and Democracy, Stockholm University, June 8, 2006. For more information, click here!

Symposium on Ideology, Oppression, and Democracy, Philosophical Society of Southern Africa (PSSA), Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, January 19-22, 2005.

Colloquium on Ideology, Oppression, and Democracy, Filosofidagarna, Uppsala, June 9-11, 2005.

Symposium on Ideology, Oppression, and Democracy, Philosophical Society of Southern Africa (PSSA), Grahamstown, South Africa, January 16-19, 2006.

Links

The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA)

The Swedish Research Council (VR)

National Research Foundation (NRF)

Miscellaneous

To read the papers published on this site, you need Adobe Acrobat Reader. You can download it here.