Week 8 Post

One of the themes in this week’s readings seems to be the relationship between ideologies and power. Kandiyoti writes, “New ideologies have emerged to legitimize and support new forms of state power” (557) Pervasive ideologies can create a new power structure. For example the idea of justice has an entire system framed around a rather abstract ideology. People feel very strongly about the idea of justice and can get very upset when they feel justice is not be upheld in their own country and around the world. It is interesting because power structures and current ideologies feel so permanent, which probably contributes to their power, but they have actually come into formation through a lot of social and ideological work.

As Najmabadi details there were extensive shifts in ideologies about one’s country in order to create a stronger sense of nationalism. The gender differences were also interesting. The creation of nation as beloved/wife versus mother demonstrates how particular interests and motives go into creating stable and overarching ideologies. Therefore, they are not as abstract and overarching as they are assumed to be. They are promoted with very specific intentions and motivations, they do not just come into being as tends to be the assumption. There was not only work to bring about love of country, this work enveloped and relied on heteroeroticizing love so that the analogies made sense and could produce strong enough feelings of agreement to produce societal work. Therefore, it had to produce a nation as something to care about and feel connected to, but through this production it has to create and identity and legitimacy through heteronormative experiences.