Cultural hegemony
Cultural hegemony is the maintenance of social power when a dominant group’s values and ideas become accepted as ordinary, natural, or universal.
Hegemony: Leadership or dominance exercised by one group, state, or power over others. Cultural hegemony is the cultural dimension of broader forms of leadership and dominance.
Antonio Gramsci: An Italian Marxist thinker whose prison writings developed a major account of cultural and political power. Gramsci made consent and cultural leadership central to explaining how ruling classes maintain power.
Cultural studies: An interdisciplinary field studying how culture, meaning, and power shape social life. Cultural studies uses hegemony to connect popular culture with unequal power.
Coercion: The use or threat of force to make someone act against their will. Hegemony works through consent and norms, unlike power exercised directly through force.
Consent: Agreement or acquiescence given by people to an authority, action, or social arrangement. Dominant ideas sustain power partly by securing acceptance rather than imposing obedience by force.
Prison Notebooks: Antonio Gramsci’s notebooks written during his imprisonment under Italy’s Fascist regime. These writings contain Gramsci’s influential reflections on hegemony, civil society, and intellectuals.
Media hegemony: The shaping of public understanding through concentrated media ownership, routines, and dominant frames. Media institutions can privilege some interpretations while making others less visible.
Ideology: A structured set of ideas and values that shapes how people interpret society and politics. Ideology supplies meanings through which dominant arrangements can be justified or challenged.
Common sense: Shared assumptions treated as obvious, practical, and beyond dispute within a community. Hegemonic values often endure by appearing to be ordinary common sense.
Marxism: A political and social theory associated with Karl Marx that analyzes class relations and capitalism. Cultural hegemony extends Marxist analysis by examining how ideas help stabilize class relations.