Cultural hegemony

Cultural hegemony by Antonio Gramsci referred to the production consenting ideas.

Domination concept

In bourgeois society rule will generate not only by mere compulsion, but people would believe that they lived in the " best of all possible worlds ": the stable forms of capitalist rule systems would be by consensus, by " hegemony" in civil society ( societa civile ) mediates and by their hegemony apparatus, such as education, integration and education systems and organizations ( schools, .., mass media, churches, charities ..).

Hegemony is, for Gramsci, " that the ruling group will vote in a concrete way with the general interests of subordinate groups and the life of the state is to be taken as an ongoing transforming and overcoming unstable equilibria [ ... ] of equilibria in which the interests of the dominant group prevail, but only up to a certain point, ie, not to a narrow economic- corporate interests "

For Gramsci, the experience of the Russian Revolution were only limited to Western Europe transferable: If there is a fundamental change in the social relations in the industrialized countries, they have the character of a " war of position " than that of a " war of movement " will have the dominant ideas: What matters is not only on the economic balance of power, but also on the politics and the mass media. Here Gramsci explored especially the history and theory of intellectuals with a very broad intellectual concept: each was an intellectual, because everyone has the ability to think; but not everyone have the function of intellectuals. Gramsci referred to as " organic intellectuals " (which can disseminate their findings in the dominant hegemonic apparatuses and may ).

Throughout its history of reception of the concept of hegemony input has been found in many fields of the social sciences:

Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony, for example, increasingly taken up in feminist discussion in order to explain the workings of gender subordination ratios. Thus, the complex structures that are maintained by gender power relations would, with Gramsci's notion of rule by consensus, that is, through the internalization of the power relations that can far more credible declare as with the theory of force and violence as the cause of this cultural hegemony. Therefore, it is spoken by hegemonic gender relations.

Gramsci's hegemony concept was introduced mainly by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe in the post-Marxist discussion. Especially his criticism of the Marxist in the discussion at that time prevailing extreme dualism between the material base and ideational superstructure, which he helped overcome the importance of ideology, with its emphasis, this is due to.

In the field of international relations specifically Gramscian concept of hegemony has coined found ( in contrast to the usual, more political -military ), by the early 1990s a permanent place.

A reformulation and further elaboration of the concept of hegemony is found in Pierre Bourdieu's work on the "symbolic violence ".