So, we’ve encountered three different overviews of what ideology is, but let’s organize our own thinking about it. In this discussion board, think about and comment on the following questions:
1. Keeping in mind the material covered in this lesson, describe how you understand ideology in your own words.
Hint: One way to approach this is as follows
a) Describe what ideology is in a brief paragraph (in your own words).
b) Give an example illustrating what you wrote in (a).
c) Write another paragraph (or two), explaining to your reader with additional details, how you understand ideology.
2. How do you understand the difference between conservative and liberal ideology in US politics? What seem to be the big differences, the dividing line? Given an example to backup your arguments.
Hint: try to identify key words (concepts) that play a big role in making someone consider themselves to be liberal or conservative. Then, explain in your own words what those keywords (concepts) mean.
3. How do you understand Althusser’s definition of ideology? Paraphrase it in your own words. Given an example. Hint: you may have to watch the second video again, and find the few places where Althusser’s position is presented.
Hint: Remember, the discussion boards are crucial for us this semester, because they reproduce our in-class conversations. Try to be thorough and write more, rather than less. I will do the same, and make sure by the time we end our discussion, we have covered the key ideas on the module.
To organize things better, I have broken up our conversation into two parts. After finishing here, head over to Discussion Board 3 – part 2 .
Before posting, watch this video, which will show you how to post your answer to this discussion board:
NOTE: Once you’ve scheduled your post to be published on at midnight on Sunday, you can still go back and edit your post until then, if you want to rewrite and/or add to your post.
As a review, follow the following steps to submit your response:
- Click on the “+” button in the black bar at the top of the screen
- Type a title for the post (it should include your full name)
- Type your response
- On the right side, click on Categories: and check “Discussion 3.1”
- Important: On the right side, at the top: click on the date next to Publish, and enter your post date, which is this coming Sunday, at 11:59pm.
- Click Publish and you’re done.
What will happen next is your post will automatically be published by the OpenLab system on Sunday at midnight. The goal here is for all student posts to be published at the same deadline. After that point, you can begin reading each others’ posts, and you have to comment on at least one other student’s post.
Note: please make sure that you schedule your post to be published on Sunday, midnight, not before.
