Ideologies are material relations enacted through institutions and practices

Evidence

Both insist, however, that ideologies are not simply “in the head,” but are material relations—what Lenin called “ideological social relations”—which shape social actions, function through concrete institutions and apparatuses, and are materialized through practices. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 628

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the materialist account of ideology that distinguishes Gramsci/Althusser from idealist readings.
• XREF: connects to: Adorno demanded theoretical mediation between superstructure and substructure in historical materialism. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 280; Material things matter to praxis only as social relations embedded in production — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1648