Göran Therborn

The Dominant Ideology Thesis ¹ by Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill
and Bryan S. Turner is first of all the story of a hunting exploit. It
relates how the authors hunt down and finally kill a beast called 'the
dominant ideology thesis'. To save some space for due evaluation of
this achievement, the beast will hereafter be shortened to DIT and its
killers to AHT. Though told in the sometimes jarring tones of
Sociologese, it is a fascinating story, which this reviewer read with
considerable pleasure. Unfortunately it has become common for
reviews to say far too much about the reviewer's pleasure or dis-
pleasure, or about his bright ideas in general, leaving the poor reader
in the dark about the actual object which occasioned the review. Before
embarking upon any further assessment, therefore, let us for a
moment allow the authors to speak for themselves.

According to AHT: 'There exists a widespread agreement among
Marxists, such as Habermas, Marcuse, Miliband and Poulantzas, that
there is a powerful, effective, dominant ideology in contemporary
capitalist societies and that this dominant ideology creates an accept-
ance of capitalism in the working class. It is with this dominant ideology
thesis that our book is concerned' (p. 1 ). 'Ideology' AHT equate with
'beliefs' (p. 188 ), without any assumption of necessary falseness or
misleading content. The authors' argumentation starts with two
chapters surveying the theories they criticize and reject. The first
focuses on three Marxist writers, Gramsci, Habermas and Althusser;
the second on sociological 'theories of the common culture', particu-
larly the work of Talcott Parsons and those influenced by him. AHT
hold that there are 'considerable similarities' in the accounts of the
social order given by the neo-Marxist DIT and the sociological
common culture theory. It is argued that Parsonset al., as well as

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