Hegemony, I want to suggest, aligns with Machiavelli’s strategic model of power more than it does with Hobbes’ causal account. That makes it problematic for those who conceive power and domination as emanating from an objective and unitary structure. To exercise hegemony is to be in a temporary relation of supremacy over others, not in absolute possession of power. That is not to deny the existence of structures of domination and concentrations of power. But such forces are only ever partially effective and require active support to sustain them. Hegemony directs attention, then, to the strategies, practices, and networks of influence that achieve this. But, in so doing, it transforms the idea of power as absolute mastery into something less precise: a terrain or field of relations whose various parts do not automatically cohere but are, momentarily, held in balance.
The strategic view of power, we might say, is more like a battlefield than a castle – its parameters shift as allies are made and lost, as key strongholds are taken or relinquished, and as patterns of influence expand and retract. We need to ask what is the scope of hegemony? Who are its agents? What are its techniques? To what degree do concentrations of power – such as the state, capitalism, or patriarchy – rely on consensual leadership, and when do they employ coercion? Is there only ever one system of hegemony or can there be many? These are matters of interpretation that vary according to the focus and application of the concept.
Subjectivity – capturing experience
‘Subjectivity’ refers to how we experience the world – the ways in which our conscious reactions and attitudes are defined and organized through knowledge, moral values, sentiments, or desires. Hegemony’s focus on leadership places emphasis on how these aspects of subjectivity are recruited to support, or oppose, forms of rule. It demands that we think about humans as relatively independent subjects, not as objects that act according to prescribed behaviours derived from their social position.
Hegemony is often associated with categories such as ‘ideology’, ‘culture’, or ‘discourse’ since those describe the broad domains where meanings circulate and are contested. Ideology, in particular, carries both the ‘neutral’ meaning of systems of belief that provide more or less coherent views of the world, and the more ‘critical’ sense of false or partial ideas that mislead people about reality, thereby servicing particular interests. Hegemony combines both senses in so far as some privileged group is often identified as the benefactor of hegemony, though this does not require that all ideas and beliefs are reducible to its interests. One key claim in theories of hegemony is that it succeeds to the extent that people come to experience their world, unquestioningly, through the prism of a dominant group’s preferred categories and concepts (or ideology), which are then accepted as ‘natural’ or ‘universal’.
Our focus, then, might sometimes be the group that benefits from this leadership. But it also might be on the ways other groups and practices come to be led. Some of the most inventive uses of hegemony have been by scholars of cultural studies such as Raymond Williams or Stuart Hall, for whom popular experiences of ‘everyday life’, ‘culture’, or ‘common sense’ (as Gramsci called it) were the locus for ongoing negotiations with dominant social forces. Hegemony, in their analyses, encourages us to ask how seemingly disparate forms of cultural activity – such as writing, cinema, or music – are implicated in contests to determine what it is that society holds in common.
The question of subjectivity is, however, controversial. It requires that we account for how symbols function, how they become activated and deployed (when, and by what mechanisms?), and how they contribute to the persistence (or not) of particular structures of domination. How does ideology or culture relate to social interests (which are assumed to be more or less fixed)? Indeed, what are the limits of this feature of leadership? Hegemony implies that domination is not easily demarcated around one discrete agent but, rather, subtly entangled in the subjectivity of ordinary people via language or forms of cultural attachment. That makes it difficult to identify a single ‘owner’ of ideas or benefactor of power. The complex relation of subjects to forms of violence and coercion is also pertinent here since hegemony rejects exclusive attention to coercion in favour of consent. Yet violence is frequently a feature of struggles over hegemonic leadership – especially when some groups resist it – and sometimes a sign of its internal fracturing. Social crises, when alliances splinter and once-shared values fall into open dispute, may express the subjective symptoms of hegemonic decline.
Ethics – uniting leaders and led
Finally, hegemony implies an ethical relationship that governs the interactions between leading groups and their key allies and supporters.
Most uses of hegemony are focused on analysing strategic features of domination. They tend not to be overtly ‘normative’ or deal with moral questions. Indeed, theorists of hegemony are usually moral ‘realists’ in that respect, treating normative issues as inseparable from practical problems posed by empirical reality. Nonetheless, leadership usually involves expressing common ideals as well as internally organizing and regulating how different groups and interests relate through them. Priority might be given to certain types of association – class solidarity, national identity, democratic respect – that connect hegemony’s politics to an ethic that assists the integration of its various parts.
Hegemonic strategies raise questions about how leaders enact their responsibility to the forces that sustain them. What kinds of elites rule, and from where do they originate? How is popular experience incorporated into the ways they lead? What relationship do supporting groups have with each other? The ethical dimension of hegemony is particularly relevant to those who wish to substitute domination with an alternative, ‘democratic’ or ‘liberated’, order. But it is not always examined closely, possibly because normative commitments are frequently presupposed as given. The question of what ethical terms organize hegemony is, however, a lively issue when old solidarities and modes of participation can no longer be taken for granted. Of note here is the question of the extent to which strategies of hegemony are compatible with pluralistic, democratic ideals.
Hegemony is a powerful concept because it condenses into one term a variety of complex phenomena. It is probably wise, then, to think of it not simply as a concept in the abstract but as the name for a general framework for examining the interaction of these different dimensions. Doing so can help us to draw attention to the different accents and emphases that have characterized its use.
Chapter Outline
The following chapters explore five themes that, in broadly chronological order, have defined new formulations and applications of, or debates about, hegemony. Each chapter deals with a distinct framing of arguments and issues in the evolution of the concept. But the themes are also topics that extend across time and serve as the preferred frame for readers to think about hegemony. So the chapters can be read sequentially or, if preferred, according to the theme that interests you most.
Chapter 2 begins with the seminal work of Antonio Gramsci, who supplied the basic coordinates for many contemporary reflections on hegemony. For him, it was a concept that helped to elaborate a distinctive strategy for revolution in developed capitalist states. That strategy was conceived as a process of consensual state-building rather than a Bolshevik-style, violent seizure of power. It meant gradually extending the cultural and political bases of support for an emergent ruling class. In Gramsci’s work, hegemony expands into a whole framework of analysis for understanding the origins, techniques, and limits of class domination.
In chapter 3, our focus is on Marxist debates over how to apply hegemony to the analysis of the postwar capitalist state. Unlike Gramsci, who wrote during a period of political instability, thinkers