We Swim in Oceans of Ideology that Pass as Commonsense by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
We Swim in Oceans of Ideology That Pass as Commonsense
by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
In our daily lives, we exist within vast and unperceived oceans of ideology—systems of belief so deeply embedded that they pass as commonsense. These ideological waters shape our thoughts, guide our behaviors, and perpetuate the societal structures we inhabit. Yet, like fish unaware of the water in which they swim, we often remain oblivious to their pervasive influence. This essay explores the critical importance of reflexivity—the active examination of our participation in these systems—and its role in fostering resistance to domination and inequality.
Towards a Critical Interactionism
At the core of this analysis lies a theoretical approach I call Critical Interactionism, which seeks to bridge the microdynamics of social interaction with macro-level concerns for inequality, alienation, and ideological hegemony. This synthesis draws inspiration from scholars such as Anthony Giddens, Dorothy Smith, and Harvey Molotch, whose works reveal how everyday practices sustain or challenge larger societal structures. My goal is to articulate an approach that illuminates how mundane actions recreate the social world while remaining attentive to power dynamics and structural constraints.
Reflexivity is central to this framework. It entails recognizing that our actions, whether conscious or unintentional, contribute to the reproduction of social norms and institutions. Reflexive praxis demands a heightened awareness of this dynamic, enabling us to disrupt patterns of dominance. Conversely, unreflexive praxis perpetuates systems of oppression by default. As I have previously written, to engage in reflexive praxis is to act with deliberate intent to alter the status quo, guided by insights into how our behaviors sustain societal inequities.
Unmasking the Ideological Oceans
Ideologies often become naturalized, presenting themselves as "just the way things are." This process obscures their constructed nature, rendering them invisible to those who inhabit their sphere. Examples abound: prior to the concerted efforts of groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), drunk driving was not widely perceived as a social problem. Similarly, issues like sexual harassment, domestic violence, and environmental degradation have required extensive consciousness-raising to penetrate public awareness.
This raises a troubling question: what pressing social problems of our time remain hidden in plain sight, shielded by the cloak of ideological commonsense? In 50 years, practices we currently deem acceptable—our treatment of the mentally ill, systemic exploitation of animals, or even the pervasive degradation of the environment—may provoke future generations to ask, "How could they not see this?" Just as we recoil at historical atrocities, they may marvel at our moral blindness.
Knowledgeability and Unawareness
Understanding the tension between knowledgeability and unawareness is a central challenge for social theorists. Anthony Giddens’s stratification model of consciousness provides a useful framework, delineating between discursive consciousness (what we can articulate), practical consciousness (what we know tacitly), and the unconscious. These layers reveal how much of our complicity in maintaining oppressive systems operates below the level of awareness.
Despite these theoretical insights, contemporary cultural studies have sometimes erred on the side of romanticizing resistance. Paul Willis’s Learning to Labor, for example, famously celebrated the "lads"’ creative resistance to the structural constraints of working-class life. Yet, my own experiences as an anti-oppression educator suggest that such resistance is neither universal nor consistent. Many individuals remain unreflexive, perpetuating sexist, racist, and homophobic ideologies without recognizing their complicity. Resistance, when it occurs, is often marginal and incomplete.
The Blinding Power of Dominant Ideologies
Dominant ideologies derive their power from their invisibility. Karl Marx’s concept of false consciousness underscores how subordinate classes internalize ruling-class ideas as natural or inevitable. Antonio Gramsci extended this analysis through the notion of hegemony, which describes how dominant cultural norms become accepted as commonsense.
Unmasking these ideologies requires a process of consciousness-raising. Reflexive praxis, as Erica Sherover-Marcuse has argued, involves "unlearning oppression" by identifying and dismantling the cultural assumptions that sustain it. This process is both personal and collective, demanding that we confront our embeddedness in systems of domination while fostering the conditions for transformative action.
Ideological Indoctrination and the Potential for Resistance
While cultural populists have rightly emphasized that culture is a "site of struggle," they often overstate the prevalence of resistance. Not all cultural texts invite subversive readings, nor do all individuals possess the reflexive capacity to challenge dominant ideologies. My own research into early racist imagery in American popular culture revealed a near-total absence of resistance among consumers of blatantly degrading postcards. The handwritten messages on these artifacts mirrored the racist ideologies they depicted, offering little evidence of critical engagement.
This does not negate the potential for resistance but underscores its empirical variability. Reflexivity is neither innate nor evenly distributed; it must be cultivated through education, dialogue, and deliberate practice.
Conclusion: Toward a Reflexive Praxis
To swim against the current of ideological oceans requires more than awareness; it demands sustained efforts to unlearn oppressive ways of thinking and acting. Reflexivity offers a pathway toward this goal, enabling us to challenge the ideologies that pass as commonsense and envision new possibilities for social life.
As we navigate these waters, we must remain vigilant against the twin dangers of cultural dopeyness—the passive acceptance of dominant ideologies—and naive optimism about the prevalence of resistance. Only by critically examining our complicity and potential for transformation can we hope to create a more just and equitable world. The journey is ongoing, and the work is far from complete. But it begins with the recognition that the social world is neither fixed nor inevitable—it is ours to recreate.
We Swim in Ocean of Ideology that Pass as Commonsense
My goal throughout "Doing Modernity" is to articulate an approach to studying everyday life that brings together several distinct intellectual concerns. In particular, I am interested in "grafting" approaches concerned with the dynamics and particulars of social interaction in concrete instances of social life with critical theoretical concerns for domination, inequality, alienation and ideological hegemony. I call this approach Critical Interactionism, and draw inspiration from many others attempting to develop similar interests, such as Harvey Molotch, Dorothy Smith, Norman Denzin, James Forte, and many others.
Recently, I have explored reflexivity in several blogs, including "Reflexive Praxis and Being an Ally" and "Reflexivity and Reflexive Modernity". I am particularly interested in our potential awareness that our mundane actions create and re-create the social world. Moreover, I have argued that this supposedly increasing consciousness of our ability to change the world through altering the specifics of our actions is a constitutive feature of modernity. Supposedly, earlier humans often treated the social world as "out there", merely constraining personal actions, but not really created by them.
For example, I and many others are aware that our shopping patterns and modes of consumption have consequences for the sustainability of our planet. When we stop and thoughtfully consider a purchase and contemplate its effects on our planet we are engaging in reflexive praxis. As I have written (July 18, 2008):
"To engage in reflexive praxis is to take action in the social world based upon awareness and insight into our role in perpetuating or not perpetuating societies structured in dominance."
I referred to reflexive passivity as knowingly not taking an action that could make the social world better, and being aware of how one's inactions contribute the maintenance of the status quo. My concern here is with how much of our behavior remains unreflexive, that is, we remain unaware of how our actions help to maintain a society structured in dominance. We often swim in oceans of ideology that pass as commonsense.
In talking to students about the "social construction of social problems", I am reminded that before the concerted efforts of organizations such as MADD (Mother Against Druck Driving), people had little conception of "drunk driving" as a social problem. And the same is true for numerous other important social issues--before vast organizational efforts did the "work" of raising people's awareness, most people had no inkling of their existence--sexual harassment, domestic violence, litter,... It can take extensive consciousness-raising efforts to get people to be aware of many critical concerns of our world. I have learned this first-hand in my years as an anti-oppression educator.
That being the case, the question must be asked: how many of our own society's current social problems remain hidden from our awareness and remain unarticulated in the realms of social discourse? In this particular class I argued that 50 years from now our MIStreatment of mentally ill people, children, and pets and other animals will be seen as utterly appauling. As we today look back on hundred-year-old photographs of crowds of laughing children at public lynchings and wonder in horror "what were they doing?", people will similarly look back at our age and at activities we can't even fathom and react similarly.
Increasingly as I approach the topic of the "knowledgeability" of social actors, I realize the immensity of the issues, and the challenges faced by social analysts if they are to avoid the Charbydis of "cultural dopeyness" and the Scylla of "enlightened resisters". By cultural dopeyness I refer to the image of modern humans as passive, unreflexive 'no-nothings' who are well socialized into their roles as happy consumers. This was the dominant image of social actors in the Parsonian functionalism of the late 1950s. By enlightened resisters I refer to the image of modern humans as active, reflexive 'know-it-alls' who have perfect awareness of the dominating structures of contemporary societies and who ongoingly engage in creative acts of resistance. This was a prevalent image of social actors in some versions of American cultural studies in the late 1980s.
It seems that every generation of social theorists reacts against the previous generations. My teachers, reacting against the orthodox consensus of the early 1960s, and its conception of social actors as "oversocialized" (Dennis Wrong) "cultural dopes" and "cheerful robots" sought to return robust knowledgeability and agency to modern subjects.
The social theories that I was drawn to as a graduate student during the 1980s (i.e., ethnomethodology and the cultural studies) sought to conceive of social actors as knowing why they do what they do, reflexively aware of the domination of the systems in which they operate, and creatively resisting the cultural ideologies circulating around them. This is what I mean by 'robust knowledgeability and agency'.
Anthony Giddens, drawing upon these traditions famously articulated his "stratification model" of consciousness and motivation, in which societal members are seen as possessing varying levels of discursive and practical consciousness, and remain unconscious of other matters (Giddens 1984). Drawing upon Paul Willis's Learning to Labor, the classic British ethnography of working-class youth dropping out of secondary schools, a powerful image emerged of the "lads's" awareness of what the dominating structures of the schools were doing to them (preparing them for working-class jobs) and actively struggled with those sytems through creative acts of resistance.
The reflexive awareness and creative resistance of Willis's lads is the dominant image of the knowledgeability and agency of social actors as found in that generation (1980s) of social analysts. Accordingly, oppressed people are not mere "cultural dopes", blind to the powers of dominant ideologies. Moreover, they react against these systems and these powerful ideas through their mundane actions. It is against this image of "enlightened resisters" that I now react.
My point is that many modern social actors are often unreflexive and unaware of the oppressive ideologies that circulate around them and through them. I have learned this first-hand in my efforts for the past 20 years as an anti-oppression educator. People are often blind to dominant ideologies and creative resistance can be much more marginal than the cultural populists proclaim. While Willis's lads might be aware of the role that schools play in reproducing capitalist inequalities, many working-class college students that I have worked with are unaware of their own sexist, racist and homophobic behavior. We swim in oceans of ideology that pass as commonsense.
I also learned about this through my study of early racist imagery in American popular culture. Specifically, I was concerned to see if senders of postcards with images of African Americans sent between 1893 and 1930 ever produced "resistant" readings of those images, as found in their flip-side messages. I examined about 1000 blatantly racist postcards and their flip-side handwritten messages. I NEVER found a resistant interpretation of these degrading images of "happy darkeys" and "savage brutes". (Of course, why would the consumers of these images oppose their racist content?). The predominantly white postcard senders bought into the "dominant ideology" of the time. (Duh!) Resistance to these images was easily found in the wider culture and I explored the creative resistance found in the artwork of John Henry Adams, a prominent proponent of the image of the "New Negro" (Mellinger 1997).
Of course, this is not very surprising. Yet, the cultural theory emerging in the late 1980s when I conceived and launched this study suggested that "resistance" would be readily found, and that ordinary people are wise to the ways of ideological domination. As I wrote, the power of dominant ideologies “… may blind consumers to other interpretations” ( Mellinger 1994:775).
The Power of Ideologies to Blind Us
There is a prominent social theoretical tradition that speaks to human unawareness, "false consciousness", and our vulnerability to ideological blinders. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels's project of historical materialism famously created an approach to modernity which highlighted workers's lack of awareness of their own oppression under capitalism. "Class consciousness" is a reflexive understanding of one's place in the capitalist relations of production. "False consciousness" is an unreflexive consciousness about one's place in the capitalist relations of production.
For Marx, dominant ideologies often become accepted by subordinate classes as "the ways things actually are". Following in Marx's footsteps, Antonio Gramsci developed these ideas into the notion of ideological hegemony, in which ruling ideas become commonsense. For a review of my approach to understanding "dominant ideologies" as discursive texts, see my blog entry:
"How Ideologies Work".
Our understanding of the world is powerfully shaped by our culture. The dominant ideologies of our times can be so powerful that they blind us to other interpretations. I want to take the line of thinking used by Marx to talk about class consciousness and broaden it to incorporate all systems of ideology, including racism, sexism, homophobia, and also our ideological notions of progress, justice and our relationship to the Earth.
Unreflexive consciousness might be another way to discuss our lack of awareness of the dominant ideologies to which we fall victim. We remain unaware of how our ideas help to perpetuate a society structured in dominance. Obviously, there are varying levels of this, and to some extent we must all remain unreflexive about some issues.
One of the important things to note is that unreflexive consciousness can be "raised". To raise consciousness is to remove ideological blinders, to become reflexively aware of power dynamics in modernity, and to understand one's role in reproducing these oppressive systems. For example, a worker's "false consciousness" can be removed and the worker can become class consciousness.
I have been greatly impressed with Erica Sherover-Marcuse's work on "unlearning oppression", and have developed hunks of my life and significant coursework around many of her insightful understandings on how oppression is learned, what it consists of and how it can be "unlearned".
That there is so much oppression to be unlearned is a testament to the power of dominant ideologies to blind us. From my experience, most people have "work" to do on these topics, and I see myself as ongoingly unlearning oppressive attitudes from my childhood--around women, people of color, around gays and lesbians, disability, around adultism, speciesism, ... Yes, we swim in ocean of ideology that pass as commonsense, but we can also unlearn oppressive ways of thinking and acting!
Rightly, the cultural populists have taught us that culture is a "site of struggle" and that domination is not total nor complete. They have rightly opened our eyes to the possibility of resistance. Now we need to train our eyes and figure out how much resistance there really is. Some workers are reflexively conscious of their position in the class system, others are not. These are empirical questions.
Moreover, the cultural populists have taught us that cultural texts are multivocal and different interpretations are possible. Ordinary people do not have to "buy into" the dominant ideologies offered by popular media culture. We must research people's consciousness, reflexivity, awareness and levels of ideological 'indoctrination'.
The concerns for the relationships between knowledge and society are fundamental to any social scientific approach to society. I want to go back to some of my initial concerns in the sociology of knowledge concerning our "embeddedness" in cultural belief systems that we largely cannot escape. In 1983 when I read Mel Pollner's dissertation on "mundane reasoning" and "reality disjunctures", I was fascinated by his discussion of Evans-Pritchard's work on Azande witchcraft, and how their beliefs frame the very assumptions of their minds. (Back then, I was interested in researching neopagan witches I met in San Francisco and some of their metaphysical beliefs concerning the "personal construction of reality").
I know that talk about "false consciousness", "mass delusions" and "weird beliefs" can presuppose an "objective reality" to which the speaker has access. Like everyone else, I think my particular ideas about the world are correct, and that most others believe "unrealistic" stuff. I realize that others think the same way.
Relativism and loving tolerance are pragmatic ways out of this bind. I totally, lovingly accept that you think very differently than me, and I take a "live and let live" attitude on the surface. But deep down, and to myself, I think you are deluded, and wonder why you fall for all these crazy ideas.
Wayne Martin Mellinger
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