Knowra Hegemony Hegemony Hegemony is leadership or dominance maintained partly by securing consent to a prevailing social order. It can shape institutions, culture, and ideas as well as political control.
Cultural hegemony : The shaping of cultural norms and beliefs so a dominant group's worldview gains broad acceptance. This names the cultural process through which dominance can win consent rather than rely only on force.
Ancient Greek hegemony : Leadership among Greek city-states, often exercised by a powerful state over an alliance. The word first described political leadership, before its later account of cultural and social dominance.
Hegemonic stability theory : A theory that a dominant state can help sustain an open and stable international economic order. It applies hegemony to the role of leading powers in maintaining international rules and institutions.
Domination : The exercise of control over people or groups through authority, dependence, or force. Dominance describes an outcome; hegemony emphasizes how leadership and consent help sustain it.
Ideology : A system of ideas and values through which people interpret society and political life. Shared ideas can make unequal arrangements seem reasonable, inevitable, or beneficial.
Antonio Gramsci : An Italian Marxist theorist whose prison writings developed a major account of cultural and political hegemony. Gramsci made consent and civil society central to explaining how ruling groups maintain power.
World-systems theory : A framework that analyzes the global economy through unequal relations among core, semiperipheral, and peripheral regions. Its account of changing core powers offers a structural view of international dominance.
Power : The capacity to shape actions, decisions, or outcomes in social and political relations. Hegemony is one account of how power becomes durable by shaping beliefs as well as behavior.
Civil society : The network of associations and institutions outside direct state control, including schools, media, and religious organizations. These institutions can spread, negotiate, or contest the assumptions supporting a prevailing order.
Marxism : A tradition of social and political thought analyzing class relations, capitalism, and historical change. Hegemony became influential through Marxist debates about how class power persists beyond economic control.
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