Examine individual changes

'{{Short description|Marxist notion of cultural dominance}}[[File:Gramsci.png|thumb| The Marxist intellectual [[Antonio Gramsci]] (1891–1937) developed cultural hegemony to explain the control structures of society, and said that the working class must produce their own [[intelligentsia|intellectual leaders]] to counter the worldview of the ruling class.]] {{Marxism|expanded=Sociology}} In [[Marxist philosophy]], '''cultural hegemony''' is the [[Dominance hierarchy|dominance]] of a culturally diverse society by the [[ruling class]] who manipulate the [[culture]] of that society—the [[belief]]s and [[explanation]]s, [[perception]]s, [[Value system|values]], and [[mores]]—so that the [[worldview]] of the ruling class becomes the accepted cultural [[norm (sociology) |norm]].<ref>Bullock, Alan; Trombley, Stephen, Editors (1999), ''The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought'' Third Edition, pp. 387–88.</ref> As the universal [[dominant ideology]], the ruling-class worldview misrepresents the social, political, and economic ''status quo'' as natural, inevitable, and perpetual conditions that benefit every social class, rather than as artificial [[Social constructionism |social constructs]] that benefit only the ruling class.<ref name = "TheColumbia">''The Columbia Encyclopedia'', Fifth Edition. (1994), p. 1215.</ref><ref>{{cite book | last1 = Comaroff | first1 = Jean | author-link1 = Jean Comaroff | last2 = Comaroff | first2 = John L. | author-link2 = John Comaroff | year = 1991 | title = Of Revelation and Revolution | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=M_RaDwAAQBAJ | series = ATLA Special Series | volume = 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa| location = Chicago | publisher = University of Chicago Press | publication-date = 2008| page = 25 | isbn = 9780226114477| access-date = 7 October 2020| quote = Typically . . . the making of hegemony involves the assertion of control over various modes of symbolic production: over such things as educational and ritual processes, patterns of socialization, political and legal procedures, canons of style and self-representation, public communication, health and bodily discipline, and so on.}}</ref> In philosophy and in sociology, the denotations and the connotations of term ''cultural hegemony'' derive from the Ancient Greek word ''hegemonia'' (ἡγεμονία), which indicates the [[leadership]] and the [[Regime|régime]] of the hegemon.<ref>{{cite book | last1 = Hassig | first1 = Ross| year = 1994| chapter = Mesoamerica and the Aztecs | title = Mexico and the Spanish Conquest| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=BK05BAAAQBAJ | edition = 2 | location = Norman | publisher = University of Oklahoma Press | publication-date = 2014 | page = 28| isbn = 9780806182087 | access-date = 7 October 2020 | quote = The more a hegemonic empire relies on power (the perception that one can enforce one's desired goals) rather than force (direct physical action to compel one's goals), the more efficient it is, because the subordinates police themselves.}}</ref> In political science, [[hegemony]] is the [[Geopolitics|geopolitical]] dominance exercised by an empire, the ''hegemon'' (leader state) that rules the subordinate states of the empire by the threat of intervention, an implied means of [[Power (social and political) |power]], rather than by threat of direct rule—military [[invasion]], [[Military occupation|occupation]], and territorial [[annexation]].<ref>Ross Hassig, ''Mexico and the Spanish Conquest'' (1994), pp. 23–24.</ref><ref>{{Cite book|last=L. Adamson|first=Walter|title=Hegemony and Revolution|publisher=Echo Point Books & Media|year=2014}}</ref> ==Background== ===Historical=== In 1848, [[Karl Marx]] proposed that the [[economic recession]]s and practical contradictions of a capitalist economy would provoke the [[working class]] to [[proletarian revolution]], depose [[capitalism]], restructure social institutions (economic, political, social) per the rational models of [[socialism]], and thus begin the transition to a [[communist]] society. Therefore, the [[dialectics|dialectical]] changes to the functioning of the [[economy]] of a society determine its social [[Base and superstructure|superstructures]] (culture and politics). To that end, [[Antonio Gramsci]] proposed a ''strategic distinction'' between the politics for a War of Position and for a War of Manœuvre. The war of position is an intellectual and cultural struggle wherein the [[anti-capitalist]] revolutionary creates a [[proletarian culture]] whose native value system counters the cultural hegemony of the [[bourgeoisie]]. The proletarian culture will increase [[class consciousness]], teach [[revolution]]ary theory and historical analysis, and thus further develop revolutionary organisation among the social classes.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Badino|first=Massimiliano|title=Cultural Hegemony in a Scientific World|publisher=Brill|year=2020}}</ref> On winning the war of position, socialist leaders would then have the necessary political power and popular support to begin the political [[maneuver warfare|manœuvre warfare]] of [[revolutionary socialism]]. ===Socio-economic analysis=== The initial Marxist application of cultural domination was as an analysis of economic class ([[base and superstructure]]), by which Gramsci developed the definition of "social class". Cultural hegemony occurs when the working classes believe that the prevailing cultural norms of a society — the [[dominant ideology]] imposed by the ruling class — are the natural order of things in society. In the strategic war for position, the working-class [[intelligentsia]] ensure that the working classes do not perceive and believe that the ''prevailing cultural norms'' are natural and inevitable, so recognize the artificiality of [[bourgeoisie|bourgeois]] culture; man-made [[social construct]]s used as instruments of social domination, e.g. the [[institutions]] (state, church, and social strata), the [[convention (norm)|conventions]] (custom and tradition), and [[beliefs]] (religions and ideologies), etc. That to realise their own [[working-class culture]] the workers and the peasants, by way of their own intellectuals, must do the necessary analyses of their culture and their national history in order to realise the political liberation of the [[proletariat]] from the old ways of thinking about the order of things in society. In a society, cultural hegemony is neither a monolithic intellectual praxis, nor a unified system of values, but a complex of [[social stratification]] of the [[social structure]]s of a society, wherein each social and economic class has a social purpose, and an internal class-logic that allows them to behave in a way that is particular and different from the behaviours of other social classes, whilst co-existing with the other social classes who constitute society. As a result of their different social purposes, the classes will be able to coalesce into a [[society]] with a greater social mission. When a person perceives the social structures of bourgeois cultural hegemony, personal [[common sense]] performs a dual, structural role (private and public) whereby the individual person applies common sense to cope with daily life, which explains to them the small segment of the [[social order]] stratum that each experiences as the ''status quo'' of life in society; "the way things are". Publicly, the emergence of the perceptual limitations of personal common sense inhibit the individual person's perception of the greater nature of the systematic socio-economic [[exploitation of labour|exploitation]] made possible by cultural hegemony. Because of the discrepancy in perceiving the ''status quo''—the socio-economic hierarchy of bourgeois culture—most people concern themselves with their immediate (private) personal concerns, rather than with distant (public) concerns, and so do not think about and question the fundamental sources of their socio-economic [[oppression]], and its discontents, social, personal, and political.<ref>{{cite journal |doi= 10.1177/019685998601000203 |title= The Problem of Ideology — Marxism without Guarantees |year= 1986 |first= Stuart |last= Hall |author-link= Stuart Hall (cultural theorist) |journal= Journal of Communication Inquiry |volume= 10 |issue= 2 |pages= 28–44 |url= https://archive.org/details/HallS |citeseerx= 10.1.1.1033.1130 |s2cid= 144448154 }}</ref> The effects of cultural hegemony are perceptible at the personal level; although each person in a society lives a meaningful life in their social class, to them the discrete social classes might appear to have little in common with the private life of individual people. Yet, when perceived as a whole society, the life of each person does contribute to the greater social hegemony. Although social diversity, economic variety, and political freedom appear to exist—because most people ''see'' different life-circumstances—they are incapable of perceiving the greater hegemonic pattern created when the lives they witness coalesce as a society. The cultural hegemony is manifested in and maintained by an existence of minor, different circumstances that are not always fully perceived by the people living the culture.<ref>{{cite book |first=Antonio |last=Gramsci |author-link=Antonio Gramsci |editor-first=Joseph A |editor-last=Buttigieg |title=Prison Notebooks |publisher=Columbia University Press |location=New York City |year=1992 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/prisonnotebooks0003gram/page/233 233–38] |isbn=978-0-231-10592-7 |oclc=24009547 |url=https://archive.org/details/prisonnotebooks0003gram/page/233 }}</ref> ==Intelligentsia== In perceiving and combating cultural hegemony, the working class and the peasant social class depend upon the leadership of the [[intelligentsia]] — scholars, academics, and teachers, scientists, philosophers, administrators ''et al''. — produced by their specific social classes; thus Gramsci distinguished between the intellectuals of the [[bourgeoisie]] and the intellectuals of the [[working class]], respectively, the men and women who are the proponents and the opponents of the cultural ''status quo'': {{Quotation| Since these various categories of traditional intellectuals experience through an ''esprit de corps'' their uninterrupted historical continuity, and their special qualifications, they thus put themselves forward as autonomous and independent of the [[Ruling class|dominant social group]]. This self-assessment is not without consequences in the ideological and political fields; consequences of wide-ranging import. The whole of [[Idealism|idealist philosophy]] can easily be connected with this position, assumed by the social complex of intellectuals, and can be defined as the expression of that social utopia, by which the intellectuals think of themselves as "independent" [and] autonomous, [and] endowed with a character of their own, etc.|''Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci'' (1971), pp. 7–8.<ref>''Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci'' (1971), Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds., pp. 7–8.</ref>}} {{Quotation| The traditional and vulgarized type of the intellectual is given by the Man of Letters, the philosopher, and the artist. Therefore, journalists, who claim to be men of letters, philosophers, artists, also regard themselves as the "true" intellectuals. In the modern world, [[technical education]], closely bound to industrial labour, even at the most primitive and unqualified level, must form the basis of the new type of intellectual. . . . The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer consist of eloquence, which is an exterior and momentary mover of feelings and passions, but in active participation in practical life, as constructor [and] organizer, as "permanent persuader", not just simple orator.|''Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci'' (1971), pp. 9–10.<ref>''Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci'' (1971), Quentin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds., pp. 9–10.</ref>}} ==Gramsci's influence== [[File:Rudi.jpg|thumb|right|300px|In 1968, [[Rudi Dutschke]], a leader of the [[German student movement]], the "68er-Bewegung", said that changing the bourgeois society of West Germany required a long march through the society's institutions, in order to identify and combat cultural hegemony.<ref name=JaButt>{{cite journal|last1=Buttigieg|first1=J. A.|title=The Contemporary Discourse on Civil Society: A Gramscian Critique|journal=Boundary 2|date= 2005|volume=32|issue=1|pages=33–52|doi=10.1215/01903659-32-1-33|url=https://ausm.community/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Buttigieg-Gramsci-and-hegemony-in-civil-society.pdf}}</ref>]] ===German student movement=== In 1967, the [[German student movement]] leader [[Rudi Dutschke]] applied Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony with the phrase ''The [[long march through the institutions|Long march through the Institutions]]'' (''Marsch durch die Institutionen'') to identify the political war of position, a European Communist allusion to the [[Long March]] (1934–35) of the [[People's Liberation Army]], by means of which the working-class intellectuals would produce the popular culture to replace the [[dominant ideology]] imposed by the cultural hegemony of the [[bourgeoisie]].<ref>{{Citation | url = http://english.nd.edu/faculty/profiles/joseph-a-buttigieg/ | editor1-first = Joseph A | editor1-last = Buttigieg | edition = English critical | last = Gramsci | title = Prison Notebooks | at = p 50 footnote 21 | quote = Long March Through the Institutions²¹ | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100616163619/http://english.nd.edu/faculty/profiles/joseph-a-buttigieg/ | archive-date = 2010-06-16 }}</ref><ref name=JaButt/><ref name= "davidson">{{Citation | format = web log | url = http://carldavidson.blogspot.com/2006/04/strategy-hegemony-long-march.html | title = Strategy, Hegemony & 'The Long March': Gramsci's Lessons for the Antiwar Movement | first = Carl | last = Davidson | date = 6 April 2006}}.</ref><ref>[[:de:Marsch durch die Institutionen|Marsch durch die Institutionen]] at German Wikipedia.{{Circular reference|date=May 2019}}</ref><ref>[[wikiquote:Antonio Gramsci#Misattributed|Antonio Gramsci: Misattributed]] at English Wikiquote for the origin of "The Long March Through the Institutions" quotation.</ref> ===State apparatuses of ideology=== The philosopher of [[Structural Marxism]], [[Louis Althusser]] presented the theory of the [[Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses]] to describe the complex of relationships among the different organs of the State that transmit and disseminate the dominant ideology to the populations of a society.<ref>{{Cite book|title=On The Reproduction of Capitalism|last=Althusser|first=Louis|publisher=Verso|year=2014|isbn=9781781681640|location=London/ New York|pages=74–75; 103–47; 177, 180, 198–206; 218–31; 242–6}}</ref> The ideological state apparatuses (ISA) are the sites of ideological conflict among the social classes of a society; and, unlike the military and police forces, the repressive state apparatuses (RSA), the ISA exist as a plurality throughout society. Despite the ruling class's control of the RSA, the ideological apparatuses of the state are both the sites and the stakes (the objects) of [[class struggle]], because the ISA are not monolithic social entities, and exist amongst society, as the public and the private sites of continual class struggle. In ''On the Reproduction of Capitalism'' (1968), Althusser said that the ideological apparatuses of the state (ISA) are [[overdetermination|overdetermined zones]] of society that are a complex of elements of the dominant ideologies of previous [[modes of production]]; thus, the ISA are sites of continual political activity in a society, which are: * the religious ISA (the clergy) * the educational ISA (the public and private school systems) * the family ISA (patriarchal family) * the legal ISA (the legal and court systems) * the political ISA (political parties) * the company union ISA * the mass communications ISA (print, radio, television, internet, cinema) * the cultural ISA (literature, the arts, sport, etc.)<ref>{{Cite book|title=On the Reproduction of Capitalism|last=Althusser|first=Louis|publisher=Verso|year=2014|isbn=9781781681640|location=London/ New York|page=243}}</ref> The [[parliament]]ary structures of the State, by which elected politicians exercise ''the will of the people'' also are an ideological apparatus of the State, given the State's control of which populations are allowed to participate as political parties. In itself, the political system is an ideological apparatus, because citizens' participation involves intellectually accepting the ideological "fiction, corresponding to a 'certain' reality, that the component parts of the [political] system, as well as the principle of its functioning, are based on the ideology of the 'freedom' and 'equality' of the individual voters and the 'free choice' of the people's representatives, by the individuals that 'make up' the people".<ref>{{Cite book|title=On the Reproduction of Capitalism|last=Althusser|first=Louis|publisher=Verso|year=2014|location=London/New York|pages=222–223}}</ref> ==See also== * [[Behavioral contagion]] * [[Collective action problem]] * [[Cultural capital]] * [[Cultural conflict]] * ''Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts'' (1990), by [[James C. Scott]] * [[Focal point (game theory)]] * [[Hegemonic masculinity]] * ''[[Hegemony and Socialist Strategy]]'' (1985), by [[Ernesto Laclau]] and [[Chantal Mouffe]] * [[Herd behaviour]] * "[[Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses]]" (1970), by [[Louis Althusser]] * [[Marxist cultural analysis]] * [[Marx's theory of alienation]] * [[Nicos Poulantzas]] * [[Political consciousness]] * [[Post-hegemony]] * [[Herd_behavior#Sheeple|Sheeple]] * [[Social capital]] * [[Soft power]] * [[Southern strategy]] * [[Subaltern (postcolonialism)]] * ''[[The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society]]'' (1962), by [[Jürgen Habermas]] == References == {{Reflist}} == Further reading == *{{cite book |title=The Free Art Collective Manifesto for a Counter-Hegemonic Art |year=2007 |first=Dave |last= Beech |author2=Andy Hewitt |author3=Mel Jordan | isbn = 978-0-9554748-0-4 |oclc=269432294 |publisher=Free Publishing |location=England}} * {{Citation | editor1-first = Alan | editor1-last = Bullock | editor2-first = Stephen | editor2-last = Trombley | title = The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought | edition = 3rd | year = 1999}}. *{{cite book |first=Lenny |last=Flank |title=Hegemony and Counter-Hegemony: Marxism, Capitalism, and Their Relation to Sexism, Racism, Nationalism, and Authoritarianism |year=2007 |location=[[St. Petersburg, Florida]] |publisher=Red and Black Publishers |isbn=978-0-9791813-7-5 |oclc=191763227}} * {{Citation |first=Antonio |last=Gramsci |author-link=Antonio Gramsci |editor-first=Joseph A |editor-last=Buttigieg |title=Prison notebooks |publisher=Columbia University Press |location=New York City |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-231-10592-7 |oclc=24009547 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/prisonnotebooks0003gram }} * {{Cite journal |title= The Dominant Ideology Thesis |first1= Nicholas |last1= Abercrombie |first2= Bryan S. |last2= Turner |journal= The British Journal of Sociology |volume= 29 |issue= 2 |date= June 1978 |pages= 149–70 |jstor= 589886 |doi=10.2307/589886}} * {{cite magazine|last=Anderson|first= Perry |year=1977| title=The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci|magazine= New Left Review| url=http://newleftreview.org/enwiki/static/assets/archive/pdf/NLR09801.pdf|issue=100|archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20150518080712/http://newleftreview.org/enwiki/static/assets/archive/pdf/NLR09801.pdf |archive-date= 2015-05-18 }} == External links == * {{Citation | url = http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/ | publisher = Marxists | format = archive | title = Gramsci}}. * {{Citation | url = http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/ | title = International Gramsci society}}. * {{Citation | url = http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/research/gramsci-journal/ | title = journal | last = Gramsci | place = AU | publisher = UOW | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://archive.today/20121128022033/http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/research/gramsci-journal/ | archive-date = 2012-11-28 }}. * {{Citation | url = http://rethinkingmarxism.org/cms/ | title = Rethinking Marxism}}. * {{Citation | url = http://www.einet.net/review/1302-869793/Rethinking_Marxism_Association_for_Economic_and_Social_Analysis_Home_Page.htm | publisher = EI Net | format = review | title = Rethinking Marxism: Association for economic & social analysis | url-status = dead | archive-url = https://archive.today/20130221181041/http://www.einet.net/review/1302-869793/Rethinking_Marxism_Association_for_Economic_and_Social_Analysis_Home_Page.htm | archive-date = 2013-02-21 }} * {{Citation | url = http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/selections.htm | publisher = Marxists | title = Prison notebooks | last = Gramsci | contribution = Selections}}. * {{Citation | url = http://www.marxists.org/archive/gramsci/prison_notebooks/ | publisher = Marxists | title = Prison notebooks | last = Gramsci}}. {{DEFAULTSORT:Cultural Hegemony}} [[Category:Cultural hegemony| ]] [[Category:Anti-corporate activism]] [[Category:Conflict theory]] [[Category:Antonio Gramsci]] [[Category:Marxist terminology]] [[Category:Marxist theory]] [[Category:Postcolonialism]] [[Category:Postmodern theory]] [[Category:Social concepts]] [[Category:Socialism]]'