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Theories of Communication MCM 511

LESSON 28

HEGEMONY

The concept of hegemony borrowed by critical theorists from Gramsci's term for a ruling ideology

helps to bring a lot of different idea about how the culture of media (news, entertainment, fiction)

and helps to maintain the class-divided and class-dominated society. According to Raymond

Williams in 1977 the development of the concept of hegemony as one of the major turning points in

Marxist cultural theory.

In common usage, hegemony means domination or rule by one state or nation over another.

Marxists use the term in a different manner; rule is based on overt power and at time on coercion,

but hegemony is subtler and more pervasive.

The 'normal' exercise of hegemony on the now classical terrain of the parliamentary regime is

characterized by the combination of force and consent, which balance each other reciprocally,

without force predominating excessively over consent. (Gramsci 1971, p.215 in Storey (1994

This consent is not always peaceful, and may combine physical force or coercion with intellectual,

moral and cultural inducement; can be understood as "common sense", a cultural universe where the

dominant ideology is practiced and spread.

Gramsci describes two different modes of social control:

1. Coercive control: manifested through direct force or its threat (needed by a state when its

degree of hegemonic leadership is low or fractured);

2. Consensual control: which arises when individuals voluntarily assimilate the worldview of

the dominant group (=hegemonic leadership).

A class had succeeded in persuading the other classes of society to accept its own moral, political

and cultural values. The concept assumes a plain consent given by the majority of a population to a

certain direction suggested by those in power. Gramsci said that it can never be taken for granted; in

fact during the post-revolutionary phase (when the labour class has gained control) the function of

hegemonic leadership does not disappear but changes its character. Hegemony is readjusted and re-

negotiated constantly. Something which emerges out of social and class struggles, and serve to

shape and influence peoples minds. It is a set of ideas by means of which dominant groups strive to

secure the consent of subordinate groups to their leadership. Hence, having everything we just said

in mind, one could take it that, first, you have a class "building" a specific and concrete ideology --

based in its specific and concrete interests that will dominate the rest of the society because of the

unavoidable influence of capitalist relations.

According to Williams, rule is political and in critical times is based on coercion or force.

Hegemony, on the other hand, a complicated intermeshing of forces of a political social and cultural

nature.

Hegemony transcends but also includes two other concepts:

Culture, which is how we shape our lives and ideology, which from a Marxist perspective,

expresses and is a projection of specific class interests. Hegemony transcends culture as a concept

because culture can be seen as being tied to specific distributions of power and influence, or the

mode of production and relations that stem from it. Hegemony transcends ideology as a concept

because ideology is limited to systematized and formalized meanings that are more or less

conscious.

Ideology may be masked and camouflaged in films and television programs and other works carried

by mass media, but the discerning Marxist can elicit these ideologies and point them out.

So Hegemony refers to a loosely interrelated set of ruling ideas permeating a society but in such a

way as to make the established order of power and values appear natural, taken for-granted and

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Theories of Communication MCM 511

common-sensical. A ruling ideology is not imposed but appears to exist by virtue of an

unquestioned consensus. Hegemony tends to define unacceptable opposition to the status quo as

dissident and deviant. In effect, hegemony is constantly reasserted definition of a social situation, by

way of discourse rather than political or economic power which becomes real in its consequences.

What exactly is the meaning of "hegemony"?

"...Dominant groups in society, including fundamentally but not exclusively the ruling class,

maintain their dominance by securing the 'spontaneous consent' of subordinate groups, including the

working class, through the negotiated construction of a political and ideological consensus which

incorporates both dominant and dominated groups." (Strinati, 1995: 165)

'Hegemony' in this case means the success of the dominant classes in presenting their definition of

reality, their view of the world, in such a way that it is accepted by other classes as 'common sense'.

The general 'consensus' is that it is the only sensible way of seeing the world. Any groups who

present an alternative view are therefore marginalized:

According to Williams, hegemony is then not only the articulate upper level of `ideology seen as

`manipulation' or indoctrination. It is a whole body of practices and expectations, over the whole of

living: our senses, our assignments of energy, our shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world,

it is lived system of meanings and values- which as they are experienced as practices appear as

reciprocally confirming.

It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people in the society. A sense of the absolute because

experienced reality beyond which it is very difficult for most members of the society to move, in

most areas of their lives.

Hegemony thus is what might be described as that which goes without saying, or the givens or

commonsense realities of the world, which, it turns out, serve an ultimate purpose that of

maintaining the dominance of the ruling class.

Different authors (Foucault, Althauser, Feminist theories, etc.) have taken Gramsci's idea of a

prominent discourse, reinterpreting and proposing it as a suitable explanation about our culture, the

construction of our beliefs, identities, opinions and relations, everything under the influence of a

dominant "common sense".