Page 114 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

HEGEMONY

such an approach denies the diversity of ways in which products are
received, engaged with and transformed through cultural use. Such
strategies and uses are far from uniform. ‘Global’ culture can exist
alongside local and traditional communities, identities and tastes,
encouraging a multiplicity of cultures and providing possibilities for
newcultures to emerge.
Meanwhile, no-one can afford not to play. Countries such as
China, which has a strongly centralised and nationalistic political
culture, and a strong fear of both internal chaos and external
interference, nevertheless greeted its belated acceptance into the
WTO in December 2001 as a major milestone of national
development. China’s own size, dynamism and specificity will
inevitably have ‘feedback’ effects on the globalised economy further
down the track – influencing as much as it is influenced. The same is
true for India.

Further reading: Calabrese (1999); Featherstone (1990); Lechner and Boli (2000)

HEGEMONY

A concept developed by Gramsci in the 1930s and taken up in cultural
studies, where it refers principally to the ability in certain historical
periods of the dominant classes to exercise social and cultural
leadership, and by these means – rather than by direct coercion of
subordinate classes – to maintain their power over the economic,
political and cultural direction of the nation.
The crucial aspect of the notion of hegemony is not that it operates
by forcing people against their will or better judgement to concede
power to the already-powerful, but that it works by winning consent
to ways of making sense of the world that do in fact make sense. They
also happen to fit with the interests of the hegemonic alliance of
classes, or power bloc. Hence our active participation in understanding
ourselves, our social relations and the world at large results in
complicity in our own subordination (see power).
The idea of winning consent extends the concept of hegemony
beyond the analysis of class as such. In cultural analysis, the concept is
used to showhow everyday meanings, representations and activities
are organised and made sense of in such a way as to render the interests
of a dominant ‘bloc’ into an apparently natural and unarguable general
interest, with a claim on everyone. Thus studies which concentrate on
the hegemonic aspect of culture will focus on those forms and

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