Hegemony

Hegemony ("leadership" or "hegemon" for "leader") is the political, economic, ideological or cultural power
given by a dominant group over other groups. It requires the consent of the majority to keep the dominant group in power.
While initially referring to the political dominance of certain ancient Greek city-states over their neighbors, the term has come
to be used in a variety of other contexts, in particular Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony. The
term is often mistakenly used to suggest brute power or dominance, when it is better defined as emphasizing how control is
achieved through consensus not force.

In politics
Examples include a province within a federation (Prussia in the German Empire) or one person among a
committee (Napoleon Bonaparte in the Consulate).
Since the 19th century, especially in historical writing, hegemony describes one state's predominance over
other states (e.g. Napoleonic France's European hegemony, the United States' NATO hegemony). By extension, hegemonism
denotes the policies the great powers practice in seeking predominance, leading, then, to a definition of imperialism.
In the early 20th century, Italian political scientist Antonio Gramsci developed the concept of cultural
hegemony by extending political hegemony beyond international relations to the structure of social class, arguing that cultural
hegemony showed how a social class exerts cultural "leadership" or dominance over other classes in maintaining the socio-
political status quo. Cultural hegemony identifies and explains domination and the maintenance of power and how the
(hegemon) leader class "persuades" the subordinated social classes to accept and adopt the ruling-class values of bourgeois
hegemony.[citation needed]
In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985), political theorists Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe define
hegemony as a type or form of political relation in which a given collectivity performs some kind of social task which is not
"natural" to them, i.e., the task is one that serves the interests of some other collectivity or system; this relation always occurs
as an articulation within a field of discursivity, and is a result of both the polysemy of that field (and the elements within it)
and the presence of equivalential chains of identity and difference, which in turn create social antagonisms and "frontier
effects" (the sense of a society being divided, which Laclau and Mouffe argue would be impossible, since society never fully
constitutes itself). Similarly, critic Jennifer Daryl Slack further defines hegemony as "a process, by which a hegemonic class
articulates (or co-ordinates) the interests of social groups, such that those groups actively 'consent' to their subordinated status"

Historical hegemony
Hegemony, or the hegemon, dictates the politics of the hegemony's constituent subordinate states via cultural
imperialism— the imposition of its way of life, i.e. its language (the imperial lingua franca) and bureaucracies (social,
economic, educational, governing), to make formal its dominance — thus transforming external domination into an abstraction,
because power is in the status quo ("the way things are") not in any leader(s). In the event, rebellion (social, political,
economic, armed) is eliminated— either by co-optation of the rebel(s) or by police and military suppression, all without the
hegemon's direct intervention, e.g. the Spanish and the British empires, and the united Germany (extant 1871–1945).[9]
In the Ancient World, Sparta was the hegemon (leader) city-state of the Peloponnesian League, in the 6th
century BC, and King Philip II of Macedon was the hegemon of the League of Corinth, in 337 BC, (a kingship he willed to his son,
Alexander the Great); in Eastern Asia, it occurred in China, during the Spring and Autumn Period (ca. 770–480 BC), when the
weakened rule of the Zhou Dynasty lead to the relative autonomy of the Five Hegemons ("Ba" in Chinese [霸]) who were
appointed, by feudal lord conferences, and were nominally obliged to uphold the Zhou dynastic imperium over the subordinate
states. In late 16th- and early 17th-century-Japan, hegemon applies to its "Three Unifiers"— Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi
Hideyoshi, and Tokugawa Ieyasu— who exercised hegemony over most of the country.
As a universal, politico-cultural practice, the hegemon's cultural institutions maintain the hegemony (cf.
cultural imperialism); in Italy, the Medici maintained their medieval Tuscan hegemony, by controlling the Arte della Lana guild,
in the Florentine city-state; in Holland, the Dutch Republic's 17th-century (1609–1672) mercantilist dominion was a first
instance of global, commercial hegemony, made feasible with its technological development of wind power and sophisticated
"Four Great Fleets" for the efficient production and delivery of goods and services, which, in turn, made possible its Amsterdam
stock market and concomitant dominance of world trade; in France, Louis XIV (1638–1715) established French economic,
cultural, and military domination of most of continental Europe; other monarchies (e.g. Russia) adopted French as their court
language, and imitated the French style.
In the 20th century, many countries, including the USSR, Nazi Germany, and the USA, among others, sought
global hegemony. Nazi Germany would launch WWII in its attempt to gain it while the USA and the USSR, fought the Cold War
(1945–91) after the Second World War (1939–45) broke the old European empires. The Warsaw Pact and NATO were the opposed
alliances in a struggle of communism versus capitalism. Fighting directly (the arms race) and indirectly (proxy wars) against any
country whose internal, national actions might destabilise its hegemony, the USSR defeated the nationalist Hungarian
Revolution of 1956, and the USA precipitated the US–Vietnam War (1965–75) by participating in the Vietnamese Civil War (1955–
65) the National Liberation Front fought against the Republic of Vietnam, the US's client state.
 In the post–Cold War world of the 21st century, the French Socialist politician Hubert Védrine (among others)
describes the USA as a hegemonic hyperpower, while the US political scientists John Mearsheimer and Joseph Nye counter that
the USA is not a "true" hegemony because it does not have the resources to impose a proper, formal, global rule despite its
political and military strength. Several other countries are either emerging or re-emerging as powers, such as China, Russia,
India, and countries within the European Union.

Geographic hegemony
Certain Neo-Marxists, most notably Henri Lefebvre, posit that geographic space is not a passive locus of social
relations, but that it is trialectical— constituted by mental space, social space, and physical space— hence, hegemony is a
spatial process influenced by geopolitics. In the ancient world, hydraulic despotism was established in the fertile river valleys
of Egypt, China, and Mesopotamia. In China, during the Warring States Era, the Qin State created the Chengkuo Canal for
geopolitical advantage over its local rivals. In Eurasia, successor state hegemonies were established in the Middle East, using
the sea (Greece) and the fringe lands (Persia, Arabia). European hegemony moved westwards, to Rome, then northwards, to
the Holy Roman Empire of the Franks. Later, at the Atlantic Ocean, Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and the United
Kingdom established their hegemonic centres.

Sociological aspect
The use of language can serve as a means of creating and applying hegemony. Any source that disseminates
information is, intentionally or not, part of hegemony in that the source can only contain a finite amount of information.
Therefore, in the selection of the information it chooses to display, the source is limiting and framing the information that the
recipient gets. In this way, the source is practising its influence over the recipient. Examples of the societal aspect of
hegemony are churches and media organizations that constantly distribute information to the public. These influential
institutions can subtly use language to frame their message and thereby valuate it, helping to further disseminate the adoption
of their message. This phenomenon of language influencing thought within a society is an important tie to the idea of cultural
hegemony.

Gramsci’s Hegemony Theory and the Ideological Role of the Mass Media
By Stuart Hainsworth

A look at Gramsci's theory on governing bodies, their ability to control the masses, and the means employed to do so.

Gramsci’s theory of hegemony is born from the basic idea that government and state cannot enforce control
over any particular class or structure unless other, more intellectual methods are entailed. The reason and motive behind the
concept has been noted to be the way society is structured and exists on a power and class base. Gramsci defined the State as
coercion combined with hegemony and according to Gramsci hegemony is political power that flows from intellectual and moral
leadership, authority or consensus as distinguished from armed force. A ruling class forms and maintains its hegemony in civil
society, i.e. by creating cultural and political consensus through unions, political parties, schools, media, the church, and other
voluntary associations where hegemony is exercised by a ruling class over allied classes and social groups. Gramsci argues in his
Prison Notebooks (which were written whilst he was incarcerated by Mussolini in Fascist Italy) that the way society is controlled
and manipulated is of direct consequence of the practice of a ‘false consciousness’ and the creation of values and life choices
that are to be followed. Gramsci argues that the system of hegemony can be classified as “social basis of the proletarian
dictatorship and of the Workers State." It is this process which Gramsci refers to when he tries to explain the way in which
organisation of people, media and information controls the thought and actions to create a state of domination though the
creation of dominant ideologies. Another aspect of the theory of hegemony includes the economic determination and
intellectual and moral leadership, which degenerates into a domination and consensual managing of life choices. The media has
a central role in this theory and the practice of the process has become more and more to the fore in study of the way the
ideological media are at the centre of the struggle for consumers’ minds and central views. The role of the media has to be
taken into account within the context of the theory of hegemony due to the value of the media and the public-imposed powers
it yields. Communication from government, between and inside classes, is now controlled by the media and any text consumed
by the state has to be considered to be potentially open to the practice of manipulation and therefore, the process of
hegemony.

It could be argued that the media exists as a vehicle and tool for consumerism to grow and for society to
engage in the current purchase-dominated way. If people are not consumers then they may be considered by some areas of
society to be outcasts and different from the ‘norm.’ It is this state of affairs where the media can be key to influencing the
people it informs and instilling the thought that one must be a consumer and if not then at least aspire to be. Gramsci may
argue that the way in which the media operates could equate to what he envisaged when he talked about a ‘class struggle’ and
the creation of values that others must follow. It is this situation where the ideological role of the media can be seen to
influence the way in which people can decode and read advertisements, features, television programmes and any text which
may hold a hidden meaning, therefore creating the possibility for media to become very powerful in terms of ideological
control and leadership. It could be said that the media has become the dominant class in a Western society full of semiotic and
hegemonic traits. No longer can the world be seen through one’s own single apathetic eye. Cultural Theory author Andrew
Edgar states: “Due to the rise of trade unions and other pressure groups, the expansion of civil rights (including the right to
vote), and higher levels of educational achievement, rule must be based in consent. The intellectuals sympathetic to the ruling
class will therefore work to present the ideas and justifications of the class’s domination coherently and persuasively. This work
will inform the persuasion of ideas through such institutions as the mass media, the church, school and family.” Recently, the
proliferation and exploitation of press and interactive media has led to the creation of super media existence, threatening the
objective viewpoints society relies upon to keep an ‘open’ state if one were ever to exist. Gramsci was mainly concerned with
the determinism within the state of Italy in the early part of the 20th Century. He saw the potential for manipulation and the
practice of domination growing in Mussolini Italy. Within the current theoretical climate, the theory has been adapted to
include the theory of ‘consent.’ This allows the scope for many theorists to argue that the way society is now run, with the
increasing emphasis on education, makes the leadership and decision making process less easy to quantify. The theory of
consent exists to try and explain the way in which government policy, legislation and international policy are made and
enforced.

Antonio Gramsci. the Theory of Hegemony and Practical Application In Winning Consent.
Gramsci borrowed his concept of hegemony from Lenin, using it to theorize that a "ruling group" ...must
"govern through a balance of force and persuasion" (McGowan & McGowan, 2004, p. 12).

In discussing intellectuals,Antonio Gramsci gives a clear definition of hegemony in a note to his sister in law,
Tatiana. He said it is "a balance between the political Society and civil Society or hegemony of a social group over the entire
national society, exercised through the so-called private organizations, such as the Church, the unions, the schools" (Gramsci
1994c. ). Hegemony is thus an ideological dominance of society, in which the subordinate levels of society allow the ruling class
to exercise social and economic dominance, with the consent of the subordinate classes in the support of the common good.

That the concept of hegemony works is evident in that marxism has been able to flourish in the Western
Capitalist world and Gramsci's theory of hegemony has been explored further by Althuser, Laclau and Chomsky .

Issues with hegemony appear to revolve around the term consent, or how " one defines consent" (McGowan et
al, 2004). This is a fascinating subject. Given the all consuming day to day issues of life, are the subordinate classes even aware
they have given their consent?
In Gramsci's view, political forces aiming at social change can only gain the upper hand if they are able to mobilize and take
charge in society on their own premises (Englestad, 2003).

An example of consent via gentle persuasion and enforcement (force) of a national cultural perspective, could
be found in the New Zealand anti-smoking stance, or "Smoke Free New Zealand." Via the media, government departments and
places of learning, smoking has been labeled so socially evil, that the idea of smoking in public has become shameful and
socially unacceptable. The prohibitive cost of tobacco is punitive and laws have been passed to enforce where people may
smoke. (Force). I would argue that the cultural ideology of a smoke free society in New Zealand has been introduced in a
hegemonistic way.
Hegemony
By Dr Michael Stanford
power and Ideological Dominance
The modern usage comes from the Italian Communist, Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937), who was put in prison by
Mussolini from 1926 until his death. There he developed theories that made a lasting contribution not only to Marxism but also
to political, historical and social theory and practice. What he observed, and steadily insisted upon, was that any major
historical change, with the emergence of a new élite, was accompanied by a change in men’s consciousness. Any politically
dominant class is also ideologically dominant; that is, it keeps its position because the dominated classes accept its moral and
intellectual leadership. Gramsci, himself, saw the idea largely in terms of the Marxist struggle against capitalism, but the
notion has much wider implications. Anyone who is concerned with politics, history or social theory finds, sooner or later, the
relevance of hegemony. A moment’s thought, for example, about the role of the media in contemporary politics will remind us
of the importance of public opinion. Nor is this true only of democracies. Dictatorships go to great lengths to instil their ideas
into the populace. In any political coup nowadays the first target is not the presidential palace but the radio and TV station.
But Gramsci is not much concerned (as Lenin was) with such seizures of power. Rather was he interested in the
slow, subtle, almost invisible penetration of the moral and intellectual beliefs of the upper class into the minds of the classes
below and their acceptance of those ideas, often against their own interests. The working-class man (or, more often, woman)
who votes conservative offers a familiar example of hegemony. Was Gramsci, therefore, right to insist that any revolutionary or
reformer must change the minds of the masses before gaining power? In his own words:
‘The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as ‘‘domination’’ and as ‘‘intellectual and
moral leadership’’ … A social group can, and indeed must, already exercise ‘‘leadership’’ before winning governmental
power.’
 This implies that there is a close connection between political and intellectual dominance. Which comes first?
As we see, Gramsci thought that intellectual power must precede political. But is this always the case? And, if it is, we must
ask whether ‘leadership’ is a sufficient or a necessary precondition of gaining power. (We recall that a sufficient condition need
not be necessary, nor a necessary one sufficient for the relevant outcome.) And what happens after the gaining of power? Do
the ideas of the ruling class continue to prevail over the ideas of all other classes? Do our social superiors set the patterns of
our thinking? Are they the same as our political superiors? If we do follow the ideas of our social superiors, is that because they
socially superior? Or are they socially superior because they have better ideas - morally and intellectually better? What light
does all this cast upon the dominance of the aristocracy in England right up into the twentieth century? Or upon the public
school ‘old boy network’?
Hegemony and Marxism
Hegemony is unavoidable for Marxism; it is either a strong reinforcement of Marx’s theories or a contradiction
of them. In an important document, the Preface to A Critique of Political Economy (1859), Marx wrote:
The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in
general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that
determines their consciousness.
This is the classic statement of historical materialism. Does not Gramsci’s notion of hegemony run flatly
counter to Marx’s words? Gramsci himself, however, thought that his own ideas improved upon Marx rather than discredited
him. He said that the materialism expressed in the words just quoted were not truly Marxist but ‘must be contested in theory
as primitive infantilism, and combated in practice with the authentic testimony of Marx.’ This dispute has never been
definitively settled; Marxists in the USSR tended to follow the harsher view - that life is determined by material factors;
Western Marxists have, on the whole, favoured Gramsci’s view that ideas are at least equally important.
Gramsci, has some very interesting theories about the role of intellectuals, both in revolutionary movements
and in society in general. Unfortunately there is no space here to consider them. It is, also, fascinating to look at the many
examples in History of groups or classes in societies who owe their power in whole or in part to their intellectual and moral
superiority. One may think of the Catholic Church down the ages, and of priesthoods in general. There is the hegemony, up to
recent times, in the USA of WASPs - white Anglo-Saxon protestants. There was the British culture in India under the Raj, and
the ‘nomenklatura’ of the USSR.
One danger must not be overlooked. If it is necessary to change men’s consciousness before a group can come
to power (as Gramsci insists), does not this present a frightful threat to freedom of thought and the independence of our
thinking? Remember 1984.

Cultural Studies - Hegemony and Ideology

Cultural studies has become an increasingly difficult field of communication scholarship and political activism
to define, mostly owing to the attempts of its adherents to transcend the confines of academic boundaries. As a result of this
disciplinary and institutional resistance, cultural studies often is described in terms of the intellectual biographies of some of
its leading scholarly figures (e.g., Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall in the United Kingdom, James Carey, Hanno Hardt, and
Lawrence Grossberg in the United States, and Australians John Fiske, who now teaches in the United States, and John Hartley),
as well as in terms of the geographical locations of cultural studies (e.g., the Birmingham School and the Glasgow School, both
of British cultural studies; U.S. cultural studies at the University of Illinois and the University of Iowa; and cultural studies in
Canada, including the work of Donald Theall and John Fekete). Dozens of spin-offs, reamalgamations, and reconfigurations of
many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, from postcolonial theory to queer theory, have become part of the
landscape of cultural studies.
One mass communication theory text brackets cultural studies within a cultural turn as part of the last of five
broad theoretical bases discussed, thus pointing out by its relation to other media theories the marginality of cultural studies
(Baran and Davis, 1999). In a chapter on “critical cultural studies,” British cultural studies is identified as one of the
“contemporary schools of neo-Marxist theory.” Cultural studies becomes a subtheory of “critical cultural studies,” along with
Marxist theory, textual analysis and literary criticism, the Frankfurt School, political economy theory, the media theories of
Canadians Marshall McLuhan and Harold Innis, popular culture research, media as culture industries, and advertising as a
cultural commodity, among others.
In resisting categories, cultural studies attempts to remain an open field, defying method and tradition. For
example, Cary Nelson, Paula Treichler, and Lawrence Grossberg (1992) discuss cultural studies as defying research domains,
methodologies, and an intellectual legacy of a tradition and language. They suggest that cultural studies averts being a
traditional discipline and is even antidisciplinary. Cultural studies crosses domains, or disciplines, from Marxism and feminism
to psychoanalysis and postmodernism. Cultural studies also has no identifiable methodology, best described as a “bricolage” of
textual analysis, semiotics, deconstruction, ethnography, content analysis, survey research, and other methods. But while
approaches may be methodologically diverse, it must be recognized that every method is applied self-reflexively and in
context.
Despite the difficulties, Nelson, Treichler, and Grossberg attempt a general definition of cultural studies to
include these elements of domain and methodology. Cultural studies is inter-, trans-, and counter-disciplinary, maintaining a
tension between broad, anthropological concepts and narrow, humanistic concepts of culture. It studies primarily modern
industrial societies, insists on treating high and popular culture as equals of cultural production, and compares these cultural
products to other social and historical forms. It is “committed to the study of the entire range of a society’s beliefs,
institutions, and communicative practices.” Culture itself is both conceptualized as a way of life and a set of cultural practices,
the former including “ideas, attitudes, languages, practices, institutions and structures of power,” and the latter including
“artistic forms, texts, canons, architecture, mass-produced commodities” and so forth. In terms of its traditions, cultural
studies has political aims, studying cultural change with the intent of intervening in it, although these aims differ in the British
and U.S. versions. A frequent frame of analysis for cultural studies is race, gender, and class as culture and power are studied
in tandem.
Searching for a definition of cultural studies, Hartley (1992) identifies the institutional and the genealogical
levels of its identity. First, he finds cultural studies to be an “intellectual enterprise of the left” of the 1960s that was
transformed, for the worse, into an “academic subject increasingly of the center” in the 1980s and 1990s. Second, cultural
studies becomes a list of names of “prodigal parents” who begat a field that detests orthodoxy, avoids authority, and is
committed to interdisciplinary work, but “it has no unified theory, textual canon, disciplinary truths, agreed methodology,
common syllabus, examinable content or professional body.”
Scholars Steven Best and Douglas Kellner (1991) situate cultural studies within their call for a multiperspective
and multidimensional critical theory of the media and society, one that relates all dimensions of society, from the cultural to
the social, political, and economic, to each other and to the dominant mode of social organization. Advertising, for example,
not only would be studied under capitalism and its economic effects, but also as it adapts cultural forms and affects cultural
life and as it has changed politics. Stressing multiple perspectives, Best and Kellner advocate using many approaches, theories,
and disciplines, such as Marxism and feminism, critical theory and postmodernism, or economics, sociology, and philosophy. By
multiple dimensions, Best and Kellner mean that each dimension of society is treated as relatively autonomous, thus inviting
analysis from many disciplines or perspectives.
Given this whirlpool of contemporary versions of cultural studies and their instability, cultural studies might
best be approached historically as part of a much wider cultural and critical turn in communication research after World War II.
Reflecting on the divergent history of administrative and critical research in North America, the University of Iowa’s Hanno
Hardt (1992) groups U.S. cultural studies and critical theory together. Approaching communication as environments is one of
the ideas of communication systems that is included in the cultural studies approach, where culture is the social context for
creating meaning. In the longer history of U.S. mass communication research, critical theory and cultural studies are considered
a radical branch.

Hegemony and Ideology

False consciousness is the desired end product of the process of hegemony, which U.S. cultural historian
Todd Gitlin (1980) and Williams (1977) both applied in relation to the mass media, as does the tradition of British
cultural studies extended by Stuart Hall. According to Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, hegemony is the ruling class’s
domination through ideology and the shaping of popular consent. Hegemony unites persuasion from above with consent
from below. The concept helps Gitlin’s work and other cultural studies scholars explain the strength and endurance of
advanced capitalism. In his study of the news media, Gitlin suggests that hegemony is secured when those who control
the dominant institutions impress their definitions upon the ruled. The dominant class controls ideological space and
limits what is thinkable in society. Dominated classes participate in their domination, as hegemony enters into
everything people do and think of as natural, or the product of common sense—including what is news, as well as
playing, working, believing, and knowing, Gitlin argues. Hegemonic ideology permeates the common sense that people
use to understand the world and tries to become that common sense.
In capitalist society, the media and other institutions formulate the dominant ideology, Gitlin believes.
The media also incorporate popular opposing messages into the dominant ideology, redistributing them through
journalistic practices. Gitlin focuses on the struggle between the media, which uphold the dominant ideology, and
groups out of power, which contest the ideology. The hegemonic ideology is reproduced in the media through media
practices that stem from the ways journalists are socialized from childhood and then trained, edited, and promoted by
media. Although journalists do not consciously consider ideology when they make news decisions, they tend to serve
the political and economic elite’s ideology by doing their jobs. Gitlin suggests the media remain free as long as they do
not violate the essential hegemonic values or become too sympathetic to radical critiques. Opposition groups can exploit
the contradictions in hegemonic ideology when elites conflict, but opposition groups and autonomous media will be
muffled if the challenge to the hegemonic ideology is critical.
Gitlin contends that the media are controlled by corporate and political elites who bring media
professionals into their social spheres. The ruling elites depend on the culture industry to advance their unity and limit
competing ideologies. The media frame the ideological field within which the dominated classes live and understand
their domination in order to perpetuate the hegemony of the elites. The elite economic class, however, does not produce
and distribute ideology directly. Media workers do this within the culture industry, but only the media owners are
directly linked to corporate and political leaders.
Gitlin suggests indirect control of the hegemonic ideology is difficult because liberal capitalism contains
contradictions. The economic system generates ideologies that challenge and alter its own rationale. The hegemonic
framework narrows the range of worldviews, preferring its version. To do this, the internal structures of the framework
have to be continually re-created and defended, as well as challenged and adjusted superficially. The dominant ideology
seems natural to media workers, who reproduce and defend it unconsciously. Gitlin says the media owners and
managers reflect the ruling class’s interest in private property, capital, the national security state, and individual success
within the bureaucratic system.
The media also reproduce the discontinuity and detachment that characterize capitalism, Gitlin adds.
Natural life rhythms are replaced by the artificial time of the workplace. Reading the newspaper or watching television
reproduces the rhythms of capitalist production. The media reflect the production system’s interchangeable time
segments, such as the thirty-minute television show and the three-minute rock record. The fleeting images and abrupt
changes of television socialize viewers into the discontinuity of the system. “Revolution” is co-opted in the changing of
commodities, fashions, and lifestyles in a cycle that reflects the economic system. Individually, perpetual adaptation
becomes the goal of comfort and status. The fast pace of consumer goods and advertising fuels the growth of new
technologies and capital. This process culminates in a “tradition of the new.”
The cultural-commodity process allows minor changes in the hegemonic ideology and may even require
it, Gitlin argues. Contradictions within the ideology make it flexible enough to bend with the times and make opposition
profitable. Opposition movements may be directed into other channels, from politics into culture and lifestyles, for
example. The media balance, absorb, marginalize, and exclude to manage opposition or turn it into a commodity. The
media may intensify change, but as long as the political economy provides goods that most people define as essential,
the hegemonic system will prevail.
In Gitlin’s analysis, ruling elites control media to spread a blanket of false consciousness over
dominated classes, who are left with no room systemically for change. By contrast, Williams builds a hegemonic model
that leaves more room for the emergence of a counterhegemony. Gitlin draws his concept of hegemony from Williams,
who allows for the seeds of liberation and oppositional hegemony to grow. He identifies hegemony as a process rather
than a system or structure. This approach to hegemony lets the process shape individual perceptions as a lived system of
meanings and values that permeates all aspects of life. Hegemony defines reality for most people in the culture and sets
the limit of reality beyond which it is difficult to think or move. However, as a complex process, hegemony does not
passively exist as a form of dominance. It continually has to be renewed, defended, and adjusted. Because it is not
absolute, hegemony is always resisted, challenged, and changed by counterhegemonies and alternative hegemonies that
are produced by emergent social classes. A new class is always a source of emergent cultural practice, but as a
subordinate class its practice is sporadic and partial. If the new class opposes the dominant social order, the new
practice must survive attempts to co-opt it into the hegemonic ideology. As an example, Williams gives the emergence
and successful incorporation, or co-optation, of the radical popular press in nineteenth-century England.
For Williams, the chink in the armor of the dominant ideology is that no hegemonic order includes or
exhausts all human practice. Hegemonic ideology is selected from the full range of human practice, leaving the rest as
the personal or private, natural or metaphysical. The danger of advanced capitalism is the media’s seizure of these
reserved areas of human practice. The dominant culture now reaches much further with mass media. Williams calls for
resistance to the seizure of these private, personal human practices. He provides no program for resistance other than
the study of the ownership and control of the capitalist media tied with wider analyses of capitalist structures. Williams
helped create the strong commitment of cultural studies to a Marxist position as the only position that offers the
potential of creating a new society. He also advocated the cultural studies assumption that culture is ideological.