Ideological exploitation

Ideological exploitation involves a similar ambivalence in the sense that the exploiter gains from his denunciation of deviance... 

The cult of Isis was developed in ancient Egypt no later than the Third Dynasty of the Old Kingdom, approximately 2780 B.C., and represents one of the earliest formal articulations of the entropic and backward ideology of mother-worship. As known to the Priesthood of the Temple of Isis — true believers themselves — the Isis cult formalizes the elements of a capability for social control, exploitation, and destruction of creative free will in subject populations. The elements include ... 

Like the landlord, the financial capitalist who lends money to a "functioning" capitalist "does not exploit workers and does not come into opposition to labour", although, needless to say, he is an exploiter in the sense of working less than the number of hours embodied in what he can buy for his revenue. In addition to the conflict with the industrial capitalist over the division of the surplus, there also appears, as with the landlord, an ideological opposition ... 

Based on experience, humans have domesticated animals from ancient times to exploit them thereafter, and human societies have domesticated humans from ancient times to exploit them thereafter. In advanced human societies with a high level of culture, governmental methods developed on the basis of influential mythical ideologies have, for thousands of years, served the aim (a) of keeping the members of the community together and (b) of fostering cooperation to create the proper conditions for development. Thus, the manipulative techniques served not only the elites, but also the interest of the community. 

The type of associated deviance varied other deviance of a similar type (hooliganism, vandalism, violence), deviance of other types (drug-taking, promiscuity) or other more general social trends. The point of the association was determined by attitudinal or ideological variables so the New Statesman was worried by other youths being exploited by the hucksters of music and sex and the Tribune by other educational rejects . 

I will categorize these types of exploitation (to which Lemert and Goffman tend to confine their remarks) as commercial exploitation. There is another exploitative pattern, though, in the use of the deviant in communication, particularly public, to defend or announce an ideology, for example, religious or political. The latter is illustrated in Erikson s study of the early Puritans reactions to various forms of religious deviance. This pattern is... 

Social scientists are clearly not immune from this sort of involvement with their subject matter. The researcher who, in spite of himself, hopes that the phenomenon wfU take a particular form in order to prove his theories or give him some other more ideological satisfaction, is only the more obvious example of this and 1 cannot claim that 1 always viewed the Mods and Rockers without any such involvement. When the object of study is deviance, there is the risk of other sorts of involvement. As one researcher notes Many criminologists have an intense (and perhaps vicarious) personal interest in the criminal exploits of their subjects. Many are intrigued voyeurs of the criminal world. ... 

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