Ideology expresses how people live their relation to conditions, not the relation itself.

Evidence

In ideology men do indeed express, not the relation between them and their conditions of existence [e.g., the socialization of labor under capitalism] but the way they “live” the relation between them and their conditions of existence [i.e., the way we live, through market relationships, the real conditions of capitalist production] … the expression of the relation between men and their “world” … the (overdetermined) unity of the real relation and the imaginary relation between them and the real conditions of existence. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 893

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ideology as the lived/imaginary overlay on real conditions, distinguishing it from false-consciousness readings of the concept.
• XREF: Connects to Althusser’s ISA essay and to the reading purpose’s interest in how Hall theorizes ideology as distinct from crude base-superstructure models. — connects to: Kierkegaard’s moral universalism is class-bound bourgeois ideology, not genuine universality. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 178; Ideology is actively created by people, not passively received from above.; Ideological labels carry symbolic rather than issue-based meaning for the public.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 893