American sociology avoided ideology because it avoided Marxism, substituting norms and values

Evidence

In his labor of rediscovery, Merton openly acknowledged that, “in this respect, as in others, Marxism is the storm centre of Wissensociologie [the sociology of knowledge].… We can trace out its formulations primarily in the writings of Marx and Engels.” The absence of an interest in the problem of ideology in American sociology thus clearly relates to the absence anywhere in this tradition of thought, until very recently, of any major open confrontation with Marxist concepts. An interesting essay could be written on what concepts did duty, in American social theory, for the absent concept of “ideology”: for example, the notion of norms in structural functionalism and of “values” and the “central value system” in Parsons. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 321

Categorization

• SEED: An essay tracing which substitute concepts (norms, values) stood in for ideology in American social science—and what that substitution concealed about power.
• XREF: Directly parallels the Frankfurt School history where critical theory was also marginalized in US empirical sociology.