Abstract:

One of the assumptions of classical political sociology is that people align their political and social orientations as part of a coherent, ideologically oriented continuum (e.g., progressive vs. conservative, left vs. right) with objective social class as a leading factor. This paper, based on the findings of an empirical study of 250 respondents in a transitional socio-economic context of Haryana, India, rejects this assumption. The study results indicate that objective class location is only moderately correlated with general value orientations, but is unable to predict explicit ideological positions. The study turns to event-based attitudes to understand this disjunction. A review of 221 key cross-event and within-event correlations finds that there is a condition of "Fragmented and Hybrid Event-based Consciousness. Respondents’ bricolage the ideology, fusing market-modernism with cultural conservatism, and selective nationalism with agrarian protest sympathy. The paper concludes with a proposed new model of political cognition, in which citizens do not make their judgments based on one single ideology, but rather on four different types of judgments, Substantive, Distributional, and Affective judgments.

Keywords:

Political Consciousness, Ideological Diffusion, Event-Based Judgment, Social Stratification, Ideological Bricolage, Transitional Economy, Haryana.

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