Ideologia e identità. Un approccio storico-sociologico

Abstract

The aim of this essay is to make, through a socio-historical approach, a comparison between certain periods of Western society considered from the advent of the industrial revolution to the present day. The theme that motivates this excursus concerns the function played by ideologies in responding to certain criticalities typical of contemporary societies, criticalities considered not so much from a merely political point of view, but under the lens of a particular cultural factor, the need for identity, an element, the latter, which to a greater or lesser extent is in any case always present in whatever type of society one wishes to consider. Therefore, we will not ask whether and to what extent ideologies have affected political discourse and the relations and dynamics between political actors, but we will ask whether and to what extent ideologies, with their symbolic representations, values, collective meanings and, ultimately, as producers of meaning, have or have not been able to structure collective behaviour and collective belonging, thus generating as many collective identities.