Cultural hegemony

Deirdre Straughan would agree with the photo of the Slovakian fan in the dracula mask. This photo would help to support her argument immensely because it shows a person supporting other cultures at their own free will and it is disproving cultural hegemony. Straughan defined cultural hegemony as, “ the idea that American culture, as represented in widely exported American movies, TV shows, fast-food restaurants, and brands, is overwhelming the traditional cultures of other countries.” In the passage Cultural Hegemony: Who’s Dominating Whom, Straughan’s argument is that the theory of cultural hegemony is invalid and flawed. She claims the theory is “arrogant” and is also a subtle put-down of other cultures because it concludes other countries are weak and cannot be trusted to make decisions for themselves. America is not dominating any other country, but if anything other countries are the ones who are enforcing their customs upon us. For example, Straughan wrote about Indian directors succeeding well in Hollywood. She quoted, “ others bringing Indian or cross-cultural themes to Western audiences, and/or adding Indian spice to Hollywood-standard movies.” This shows how the Indians are bringing their customs into America.…

Although cultural hegemony is undoubtedly present in New Zealand news media; the representation of women, however, is indubitably adjusting over time (Rios, Rodgers, Thorson & Yoon, 2014; Wood, 1995). As Wood (1995) argues women are under-represented in the news, thus, creating a powerful male-cultural hegemony. Moreover, when women are shown in the news they are depicted in stereotypical ways. In addition to this, Hardin and Shain (2005) argues, men in news – in particular sport – are shown in…

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian communist most noted for his contribution of a Marxist cultural theory. Gramsci’s idea of ‘Cultural Hegemony’ is most relevant when it comes to The Handmaid’s Tale. Cultural Hegemony is concerned with the upper class using culture to justify current economic conditions, a superstructure reinforcing an economic base. This also relates to Althusser’s idea of ‘Ideological State Apparatuses’, how the state transfers ideology to its subjects. The Gileadean government…

The term ‘Cultural Hegemony’ was originally founded and attributed to Antonio Gramsci. Antonio Gramsci was a 1920’s leading Italian Marxist theoretician and politician who however did not agree with the Marxist view. He used the concept to ‘address the relation between culture and power under capitalism’ (Lears 1985). Gramsci gave no pinpoint or specific definition of cultural hegemony but it can be rreferred to as the domination of the cultural society by the ruling class through ideological…

The Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, imprisoned for much of his life by Mussolini, took these idea further in his Prison Notebooks with his widely influential notions of ‘hegemony’ and the ‘manufacture of consent’ (Gramsci 1971). Gramsci saw the capitalist state as being made up of two overlapping spheres, a ‘political society’ (which rules through force) and a ‘civil society’ (which rules through consent). This is a different meaning of civil society from the ‘associational’ view common…

Hegemony is rooted in the struggle for power and influence in a given community. In 1971, Antonio Gramsci wrote in “Selections from Prison Notebooks”, that the ruling class dominates the lower class through intellectual rule. Gramsci added, “The supremacy of a social group manifests itself in two ways, as domination and as intellectual and moral leadership.” This is the foundation of his ideas about cultural hegemony, intellectual and moral leadership. Gramsci started the conversation about…

this sense it can surmised as movements from above providing guidance and orientation to those on the bottom having them accept the current state of affairs as “natural” by which the state could be able mediate and provide an avenue for their grievances tying into the first essay mentioned in the above. Though Gramsci’s analysis was more concerned with the political realm, he would also note the cultural effects of hegemony by noting the ideological apparatus on how the dominant intellectuals…

Escaping Cultural Hegemony & The Philosophy of Praxis One of the lingering questions about cultural hegemony I have is “How do we end it?” or, at the very least, in what ways can we remove ourselves from the apparatus of cultural hegemony and attempt to potentially dismantle it? From Gramsci’s perspective the answer is, of course, the philosophy of praxis. The concept of the philosophy of praxis contains heavy Marxist undertones – which no doubt serves the purpose of invigorating the working…

of transforming one’s indigenous culture into something flashier, yet manufactured and alien? How ruthless is the practice of taking away everything someone knows and replacing it with an overpoweringly foreign system? Not so much, as it turns out, for it is an almost inevitable consequence of these times. With globalization, Western ways spread far and wide, and with them comes the ugly institution of ‘cultural hegemony’, wherein indigenous cultures are manipulated into sacrificing their…

Hegemony is a process of coercion and consent. What does this mean, and how useful is it in explaining the role of culture in maintaining dominant ideologies? The expression ‘hegemony’ can be considered in a number of ways, the first and most apparent definition: a leader or representation of a certain ideology with the ability to gain control over another, weaker power. An example of this shown through history is the Soviet Union’s expansion over Eastern Europe, through the use of dictatorial…