Hybridity and Ideology analyzes the structure, development, and significance of political perspectives that mix or fuse the distinct beliefs, practices, and identities found in other ideologies—for example, hybrid worldviews such as liberal nationalism, ecosocialism, and anarchafeminism.
Employing concepts and methods drawn from ideology studies, discourse theory, and cultural studies, Leonard Williams and Benjamin Franks explore the meaning of hybridity, the processes by which ideologies hybridize, and the political implications of the blended ideologies that result. Their hybrid inquiry fashions a theoretical vocabulary and framework for understanding and studying ideological hybridization.
Using examples from a broad spectrum of ideologies, the book discusses the characteristic patterns by which hybrids are constructed from parent ideologies. It explores the operations and processes that enable hybrids to emerge from other ideologies and develop within social and political contexts. Lastly, it addresses how ideologies provide resources for political action and discusses the criteria for judging the success of hybrid ideologies.
Hybridity and Ideology offers insight into the dynamic processes of hybridization central to ideological transformation and political change. It provides a helpful resource for students and researchers in political theory, cultural studies, and philosophy.
1. Introduction 2. Thinking Hybridity and Understanding Ideologies 3. Structure - Models and Phenotypes 4. Development - Hybrid Dynamics 5. Ideological Practices and Hybrid Success 6. Conclusion
Biography
Leonard Williams is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana. He also taught at Georgetown University in Qatar and Texas Tech University. He authored Black Blocks, White Squares: Crosswords with an Anarchist Edge (2021) and American Liberalism and Ideological Change (1997). He also co-edited, with Benjamin Franks and Nathan Jun, Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach (Routledge, 2018) and, with Joseph Losco, Political Theory: Classic and Contemporary Readings (1992).
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Benjamin Franks is Senior Lecturer in Social and Political Philosophy at the University of Glasgow's Dumfries Campus. He is the author of Anarchisms, Postanarchisms and Ethics (2020) and Rebel Alliances: The Means and Ends of Contemporary British Anarchisms (2006) and co-author of Environmental Ethics and Behaviour Change (Routledge, 2016). He also co-edited, with Nathan Jun and Leonard Williams, Anarchism: A Conceptual Approach (Routledge, 2018).
We live in a time in which many people feel bewildered by all the novel forms and styles of politics swirling around them. Leonard Williams and Benjamin Franks draw on years of research to help bring into focus the increasingly important phenomenon of ideological hybridization. As such, Hybridity and Ideology is not only an antidote to the seemingly endless flow of academic books that distort ideology by treating it as an atomistic variable but it also corrects the ordinary person’s mistaken perception that ideologies have hard, impermeable boundaries separating them. As both a theoretical and interpretive contribution, this book is of great value in achieving a more sophisticated understanding of what it means to live in an ideological age.
Jason Blakely, author of Lost in Ideology and We Built Reality
I am delighted to see - at long last! - a careful, systematic, and thoughtful study of this most neglected topic of politics.
Laurence Davis, Senior Lecturer in Government and Politics, University College Cork, Ireland
Bringing the multi-faceted concept of hybridity into conversation with studies of ideology, politics, organisations and institutions, this compelling and innovative study develops a new research programme for the analysis of political ideologies, shedding light on pressing issues and phenomena in the contemporary condition. Hybridity and Ideology engages critically and constructively with the leading theoretical approaches on the topic, and develops a novel set of answers to the questions it asks. In clarifying the concept of ideological hybridity and explaining the logic of its different manifestations, the book represents an essential contribution to our understanding of the concept of ideology. It also provides the theoretical and methodological means to account for some of the most prominent ideologies at play on the current political stage.
David Howarth, Professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex
