Revolution and Witchcraft

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 systemsEurope's witch hunts, the Mao Zedong-era revolutions, and the early campaign of the U.S. War on Terrorthis 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.

Introduces the concept of idea systems to describe how ideas can codify social groups Analyzes the discursive strategies through which these idea systems are maintained and made impervious to criticism Uses diverse case studies: Europe's witch hunts, the Mao Zedong-era revolutions, and the U.S. War on Terror This book is open access, which means that you have free and unlimited access

Autorentext

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.

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt
Ch. 1: Introduction.- Ch. 2: Making Compact Symbolic Structures.- Ch. 3: Building Internal and External Coherence.- Ch. 4: Stepwise Inferences and Chain-Complexes of Ideas.- Ch. 5: Ideas as Chemical Reactions.- Ch: 6: A Five-Tier Model of Idea System and Ideological Creativity.- Ch. 7: Compact Symbolic Structures in a Futuristic Idea System.- Ch. 8: Totality as Internal and External Coherence.- Ch.9: Detailed, Rigorous Thinking in a Complex Chain of Elastic Codes.- Ch. 10: Destabilizing Contradictions and Implosions.- Ch. 11: A Five-Tier Assessment.- Ch. 12: Codifying the War on Terrorism.- Ch. 13: Extending the Idea System to the War on Iraq.- Ch. 14: Post-Invasion Codification.- 15: Five-Tier Model.- Ch. 16: Conclusion.