Revolution and Witchcraft: The Code of Ideology in Unsettled Times

by Gordon C. Chang

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783031176821
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	01/20/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Sales rank:	192,289
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

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.

Table of Contents

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. 

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"​Dr Chang expands the utility of micro-level discourse analysis techniques in his investigation of three macro-level idea systems: witch hunt social movements, Mao-era revolutionary campaigns, and the US War on Terror. The result is a fresh understanding of each system, original insight into their historical similarities, and an intriguing display of the strategies that systems leaders deploy to retain power." (Hugh B. Mehan, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, University of California, San Diego)

"Gordon Chang’s bold and stunning book excavates the ideological codes that sustain social and political movements across time, space, and cultures. Ranging from early modern European witchcraft to the Chinese cultural revolution and the US war on terrorism, this comparative study provides illuminating insights and reflections on how new ideas morph into social movements with rare and extreme political consequences. The book provides an essential roadmap for exploring the symbolic links of ideas to the institutional frameworks that perpetuate them. It is a stimulating and informative 'must read' for scholars of social and political philosophy and students of the sociology of knowledge." (Bennetta Jules-Rosette, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of African and African-American Studies Research Center, University of California, San Diego)

Editorial Reviews

It is within this long and rich tradition that one must situate Gordon C. Chang’s book Revolution and Witchcraft: The Code of Ideology in Unsettled Times. … book’s ambition … identify a ‘basic mechanism’ of how language and idea systems ‘shape the thought processes of entire societies’ … . Chang’s empirical analyses offers those of us interested in identifying and acting on such im/possibilities an invaluable set of analytical resources, primed to the task of deconstructing the power of ideas.” (Claes Tängh Wrangel, CADAAD Journal, January 30, 2024)

“Revolution and Witchcraft may present a start of a fresh academic idea system, with Chang himself a masterful manipulator. … the book showcases a middle-path (中道)toward fair-mindedness (中庸)that utilizes academic idea systems to render ideological systems as observable, as mere human. Through idealization, the book has given readers a novel phenomenological-empiricist … .” (Terry S. H. Au-Yeung, Symbolic Interaction, May 27, 2024)

“Revolution and Witchcraft is a timely, ambitious, and laudable book. Gordon Chang warrants praise for the thoughtful and rigorous work he did in crafting it. Revolution and Witchcraft offers social scientists dozens of useful concepts, strategies, and analyses to enhance their investigations of ideology. It also demonstrates how we can apply these conceptual tools … to comprehend the troubling ideological dynamics currently emerging in the United States and across the globe.” (Kent Sandstrom, Social Forces, August 11, 2023)

From the Publisher