Terry Eagleton offers 16 definitions of ideology currently in use (_Ideology, p1-2):
a) the process of production of meanings, signs and values in life b) a body of ideas chracteristic of a particular social group of class c) ideas which help to legitimate a dominant politcal power d) false ideas which help to legitimate a dominant political power e) systematically distorted communication f) that which offers a position for a subject g) forms of though motivated by social interest h) identity thinking i) socially necessary illusion j) the conjecture of discourse and power k) the medium in which conscious social actors make sense of their world l) action-oriented sets of beliefs m) the confusion of linguistic and phenomenal reality n) semiotic closure o) the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations
to a social structure p) the process whereby social life is converted to a natural reality
He then offers his own sixfold definition which proceeds from general to specific (pp. 28-31):
1) general material process of production of ideas, beliefs, and values
in social ife 2) ideas and beliefs (whether true or false) which symbolize the connditions
and life-experiences of a specific, socially significant group or class 3) the promotion and legitimation of the interests of such social groups in
the face of opposing interests 4) promotion and legitmation of the interests of a dominant social power 5) ideas and beliefs which help to legitimate the interests of a ruling
group of class specifically by distortion and dissimulation 6) false or deceptive beliefs arising not from the interests of a dominant
class but from the material structure of society as a whole
Michael Hoover