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<p>This article proposes ideology as a unit of analysis for applied anthropology, providing a theoretical framework for its study. It is argued for a conceptualization of ideology as a discursive articulation of political projects, systematic discursive representations of political dispositions that are made to, in political acts and processes, emanate from fundamentally connected material social relationships. Ideology is a theoretical-practical, elaborated political intervention that (in)tends to serve political-economic interests. Ideology is produced and, therefore, must be&#xa0;reproduced&#xa0;for its existence—in historical social relations, acts, and artifacts of which it is a part. This conception of ideological formations provides a way to understand and theorize structural arrangements and their causal mechanisms that exist beyond empirical observation that are nonetheless the historical, material processes that form the many determinations, understood dialectically, of the configuration of the social formation. The article uses the results of ethnographic research on redevelopment policy in Overtown, a historically segregated, primarily African American neighborhood in Miami, Florida, to illustrate the utility of an approach to ideology for applied anthropology. The focus of this article is on ideological justifications for market-driven redevelopment on the part of state actors representing powerful commercial interests, justifications which had to do with the construction of Black history, ethnicity, and related notions of place. Also documented are counter-representations that attempt to preempt and resist those of the dominant social sectors. The article ends by calling on applied anthropologists to go beyond understanding ideology as a unit of analysis and embrace and cultivate ideology as part of their liberatory praxis.</p>

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The (applied) anthropology of ideology: political representations and/of urban redevelopment

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2025年11月6日

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  • Kevin A. Yelvington

摘要

This article proposes ideology as a unit of analysis for applied anthropology, providing a theoretical framework for its study. It is argued for a conceptualization of ideology as a discursive articulation of political projects, systematic discursive representations of political dispositions that are made to, in political acts and processes, emanate from fundamentally connected material social relationships. Ideology is a theoretical-practical, elaborated political intervention that (in)tends to serve political-economic interests. Ideology is produced and, therefore, must be reproduced for its existence—in historical social relations, acts, and artifacts of which it is a part. This conception of ideological formations provides a way to understand and theorize structural arrangements and their causal mechanisms that exist beyond empirical observation that are nonetheless the historical, material processes that form the many determinations, understood dialectically, of the configuration of the social formation. The article uses the results of ethnographic research on redevelopment policy in Overtown, a historically segregated, primarily African American neighborhood in Miami, Florida, to illustrate the utility of an approach to ideology for applied anthropology. The focus of this article is on ideological justifications for market-driven redevelopment on the part of state actors representing powerful commercial interests, justifications which had to do with the construction of Black history, ethnicity, and related notions of place. Also documented are counter-representations that attempt to preempt and resist those of the dominant social sectors. The article ends by calling on applied anthropologists to go beyond understanding ideology as a unit of analysis and embrace and cultivate ideology as part of their liberatory praxis.