Articulation is a non-necessary linkage connecting ideology to social forces under specific conditions

Evidence

Further, in an early usage of what was to become for him an absolutely critical term, he notes that Marx’s “1857 Introduction” to the Grundrisse contains the basis for what he describes as a theory of articulations between the different elements or levels of a social formation (to use the Althusserian terminology). These different elements are, he suggests, best seen as articulated with each other in complex ways, and critical forms of social change can best be explained by means of the model of overdetermination, which Althusser borrows from Freud. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 293 (#expands, via linked claim)

This notion of the variation between invariant elements has resulted in a formalist way of defining a “mode of production” (following, especially, Balibar): so that some of the real advances made in attempting to ground analysis in a more developed and sophisticated understanding of modes of production and their combination can easily be vitiated by a sort of formalist hunt for one, separate, “mode of production” after another. Nevertheless, we would continue to insist on the potentially generative value of the term and its cognate concepts, which give us a start in thinking the complex unity and differentiae specificae of social formations, without falling back on a naive or “vulgar materialist” reductionism, on the one hand, or a form of sociological pluralism on the other. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 620 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

It can be seen that, far from there being a homologous relationship between the material basis of practice, in capitalism, and how it appears , these now have to be thought, rigorously, as two related but systematically dislocated articulations of a capitalist social formation. They relate, but through their systematic differences—through a necessary series of transformations . The level of ideology, of consciousness, and of experiencing must be thought in terms of this decentering of material practice through ideological forms and relations. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 890 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

Related

• Social formation elements articulate with each other in complex ways (similarity 0.90)
• Articulation lets distinct practices with different contradictions be thought together. (similarity 0.88)
• Ideologies connect to subjects through contingent, breakable articulations rather than necessity (similarity 0.85)
• Articulation rejects reducing one societal level to expression of another. (similarity 0.85)
• Ideology and social force connect by articulation, never by necessity (similarity 0.84)
• A social formation is a structured complex where no single practice reduces to another. (similarity 0.84)
• Articulation links different social structures through their differences, not their identities. (similarity 0.83)
• Articulation resists fixed definition though it marks a theoretical rupture (similarity 0.83)
• Articulation lacks one settled definition yet marks a pivotal theoretical rupture in structuralist Marxism (similarity 0.82)
• Marx’s 1857 Introduction supports viewing social formation as an articulated hierarchy. (similarity 0.81)
• Meaning and social relations form not sequentially but through structural articulation within a whole (similarity 0.81)
• Social formations are complex unities structured in dominance, not determined by a single cause (similarity 0.81)
• Non-reductionist superstructural theory rests on the concept of articulation (similarity 0.80)
• Society operates as a complex formation structured in dominance with relative institutional autonomy (similarity 0.80)
• Ideological elements carry no fixed political meaning by themselves (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Social formation elements articulate with each other in complex ways #expands (0.70) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 293
• Articulation theory can still avoid both vulgar reductionism and sociological pluralism #corroborates (0.60) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 620
• Ideology and material practice relate through systematic disjuncture, not correspondence #corroborates (0.55) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 890