3.1 hegemony collins
TRANSCRIPT
-
8/3/2019 3.1 Hegemony Collins
1/1
hegemony
the power exercised by one social group over another.1.
the ideological/cultural domination of one class by another, achieved by engineering consensus through
controlling the content of cultural forms and major institutions.
2.
In sense 2, the term is derived from the work of GRAMSCI (1971), an Italian Marxist jailed by the fascists in the 1920s.
He used the term to criticize the narrowness of approaches which focused only on the repressive potential of the
capitalist state. Gramsci argued that the domination of ideas in the major institutions of capitalist society, including the
Roman Catholic Church, the legal system, the education system, the mass communications media, etc, promoted the
acceptance of ideas and beliefs which benefited the RULING CLASS. Gramsci compared civil society to a powerful
system of fortresses and earthworks standing behind the state. As a result, the problem of cultural hegemony was
crucial to understanding the survival of capitalism. Gramsci concluded that before winning power the working class
would have to undermine the hegemony of the ruling class by developing its own alternative hegemony. As well as
exercising leadership, this required a cultural and ideological struggle in order to create a new socialist common sense,
and thus change the way people think and behave. It followed, therefore, that a subordinate and oppressed class, in
addition to organizing to resist physical coercion and repression, had to develop a systematic refutation of ruling ideas. In
this sense, of political and theoretical struggle, the idea of hegemony, and often the term itself, was already established
and in common use, for example in the Russian Marxist movements (see Anderson, 1977).
Where Gramsci most influenced later work was in shifting the emphasis from counter-hegemony as a political necessity
for subordinated groups, to hegemony as a factor in stabilizing an existing power structure. In a general sense, there is
nothing new in this for sociologists. Weber, for example, writing more than a decade before Gramsci, had emphasized
that the crude exercise of force was too unstable a method of guaranteeing the continuance of a system. A stable power
system also needed a socially accepted principle of legitimation (see LEGITIMATE AUTHORITY). What distinguished
Gramsci's contribution, and has influenced sociology in the last two decades, is the encouragement to investigate the
ways in which specific institutions operated in the social reproduction of power relations and to examine wider
theoretical issues in understanding belief structures, IDEOLOGY, etc. In the UK, the work of the Birmingham University
Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) (see CULTURAL STUDIES) was one important influence in the
analysis and use of the concept. In recent years, there have been many studies which have used it in relation to issues
such as working-class youth subcultures, the production of television news, and the development of state education.
HarperCollins Publishers 2000
Citing this entry
hegemony. (2006). In Collins Dictionary of Sociology. London: Collins. Retrieved June 04, 2009, from
http://proxy.nss.udel.edu:6959/entry/collinssoc/hegemony
mony from Collins Dictionary of Sociology http://proxy.nss.udel.edu:6959/entry.do?pp=1&id=
6/4/2009