section_path: Definitions and analysis
section_name: Definitions and analysis
paragraph_text: Definitions and analysis
  
  There are many different kinds of ideologies, including political, social, epistemological, and ethical. Recent analysis tends to posit that ideology is a 'coherent system of ideas' that rely on a few basic assumptions about reality that may or may not have any factual basis. Through this system, ideas become coherent, repeated patterns through the subjective ongoing choices that people make. These ideas serve as the seed around which further thought grows. The belief in an ideology can range from passive acceptance up to fervent advocacy. Definitions, such as by Manfred Steger and Paul James, emphasize both the issue of patterning and contingent claims to truth. They wrote: "Ideologies are patterned clusters of normatively imbued ideas and concepts, including particular representations of power relations. These conceptual maps help people navigate the complexity of their political universe and carry claims to social truth."
  
  Studies of the concept of ideology itself (rather than specific ideologies) have been carried out under the name of systematic ideology in the works of George Walford and Harold Walsby, who attempt to explore the relationships between ideology and social systems. David W. Minar describes six different ways the word ideology has been used:
  
  For Willard A. Mullins, an ideology should be contrasted with the related (but different) issues of utopia and historical myth. An ideology is composed of four basic characteristics:
  
  Terry Eagleton outlines (more or less in no particular order) some definitions of ideology:
  
  German philosopher Christian Duncker called for a "critical reflection of the ideology concept". In his work, he strove to bring the concept of ideology into the foreground, as well as the closely connected concerns of epistemology and history, defining ideology in terms of a system of presentations that explicitly or implicitly lay claim to absolute truth.