Cultural hegemonyrefers to dominationor rule maintainedthrough ideologicalorcultural means. It is usually achieved through social institutions, which allow those in power to strongly influence the values, norms, ideas, expectations, worldview, and behavior of the rest of society.
Cultural hegemony is a term developed by Antonio Gramsci, activist, theorist, and founder of the Italian Communist Party. Writing while imprisoned in a Fascist jail, Gramsci was concerned with how power works: how it is wielded by those in power and how it is won by those who want to change the system. The dominant idea at the time amongst Marxist radicals like himself was that in order to attain power you needed to seize the means of production and administration — that is, take over the factories and the state. But Gramsci recognized that this was not sufficient. In his youth, he had witnessed workers take over factories in Turin, only to hand them back within weeks because they were unsure what to do with the factories, or themselves. Gramsci had also observed the skill of the Catholic Church in exercising its power and retaining the population’s allegiance. Gramsci realized that in order to create and maintain a new society, you also needed to create and maintain a new consciousness
Cultural hegemony functions by framing the worldview of the ruling class, and the social and economic structures that embody it, as just, legitimate, and designed for the benefit of all, even though these structures may only benefit the ruling class. This kind of power is distinct from rule by force, as in a military dictatorship, because it allows the ruling class to exercise authority using the "peaceful" means of ideology and culture.
The Italian philosopherAntonio Gramscideveloped theconcept of cultural hegemony out ofKarl Marx’s theorythat the dominant ideology of society reflects the beliefs and interests of the ruling class. Gramsci argued that consent to the rule of the dominant group is achieved by the spread of ideologies—beliefs, assumptions, and values—through social institutions such as schools, churches, courts, and the media, among others. These institutions do thework of socializing peopleinto the norms, values, and beliefs of the dominant social group. As such, the group that controls these institutions controls the rest of society.
Cultural hegemony is most strongly manifested when those ruled by the dominant group come to believe that theeconomic and social conditions of their society are natural and inevitable, rather than created by people with a vested interest, in particular, social, economic, and political orders.
Gramsci developed the concept of cultural hegemony in an effort to explain why theworker-led revolution that Marx predictedin the previous century had not come to pass. Central to Marx’stheory of capitalismwas the belief that the destruction of this economic system was built into the system itself sincecapitalism is premised on the exploitation of the working class by the ruling class. Marx reasoned that workers could only take so much economic exploitation before theywould rise up and overthrow the ruling class. However, this revolution did not happen on a mass scale.
The Cultural Power of Ideology
Gramsci realized that there was more to the dominance of capitalism than the class structure and its exploitation of workers. Marx had recognized theimportant role that ideology played in reproducing the economic system and the social structure that supported it, but Gramsci believed that Marx had not given enough credit to the power of ideology. In his essay “The Intellectuals,” written between 1929 and 1935, Gramsci described the power of ideology to reproduce thesocial structurethrough institutions such as religion and education. He argued that society's intellectuals, often viewed as detached observers of social life, are actually embedded in a privileged social class and enjoy great prestige. As such, they function as the “deputies” of the ruling class, teaching and encouraging people to follow the norms and rules established by the ruling class.
Gramsci elaborated on the role the education system plays in the process of achieving rule by consent, or cultural hegemony, in his essay “On Education.”
The Political Power of Common Sense
In “The Study of Philosophy,” Gramsci discussed the role of “common sense”—dominant ideas about society and about our place in it—in producing cultural hegemony. For example, the idea of “pulling oneself up by the bootstraps,” the idea that one can succeed economically if one just tries hard enough, is a form of "common sense" that has flourished under capitalism, and that serves to justify the system. In other words, if one believes that all it takes to succeed is hard work and dedication, then it follows that the system of capitalism and the social structure that is organized around it is just and valid. It also follows that those who have succeeded economically have earned their wealth in a just and fair manner and that those who struggle economically, in turn, deservetheir impoverished state. This form of "common sense" fosters the belief that success and social mobility are strictly the responsibility of the individual, and in doing so obscures thereal class, racial, and gender inequalities that are built into the capitalist system.
In sum, cultural hegemony, or our tacit agreement with the way that things are, is a result of socialization, our experiences with social institutions, and ourexposure to cultural narratives and imagery, all of which reflect the beliefs and values of the ruling class.
The power of cultural hegemony lies in its invisibility. Unlike a soldier with a gun or a political system backed up by a written constitution, culture resides within us.It doesn’t seem “political,” it’s just what we like, or what we think is beautiful, or what feels comfortable. Wrapped in stories and images and figures of speech, culture is a politics that doesn’t look like politics and is, therefore, a lot harder to notice, much less resist. When a culture becomes hegemonic, it becomes “common sense” for the majority of the population.
No culture, however, is completely hegemonic. Even under the most complete systems of control, there are pockets of what Gramsci, and later Hall, called “counter-hegemonic” cultures: ways of thinking and doing that have revolutionary potential because they run counter to the dominant power. For Gramsci, these cultures might be located in traditional peasant beliefs or the shop-floor culture of industrial workers; for Hall they might be found in youth subcultures like Rastafarians and punks, and even in commercial entertainment. The activist’s job, according to Hall, is to identify and exploit these cultural pockets, build a radical counter-culture within the shell of the old society, and wage the struggle for a new cultural hegemony.
An important caveat: Gramsci never believed that cultural power alone was enough. The fight for cultural hegemony had to be part of an overall strategy that also incorporated struggles for political and economic power.
