Culture Ideology Hegemony

This volume explores the interconnections between culture, ideology and hegemony in an effort to understand and explain how Indians came to terms with colonial subjection and envisioned a future for the society in which they lived. The process of exploring the indigenous epistemological tradition and assessing it in the context of advances made by the west was not unilinear and undifferentiated; it was driven with contradictions, contentions and ruptures. Locating intellectual history at the intersection of social and cultural history, the eight essays in this book cover a wide range of issues, moving from an overview of religious and social ideas in colonial India to empirical studies of themes such as indigenous medicine, the family and literary fiction. Professor Panikkar contests both the imperialist and nationalist paradigms of intellectual history. Meticulously researched and lucidly argued, his analysis is illuminated by a rare sensitivity to the nature of class formation and class values, as well as to the material conditions of human existence.

This collection of readings aims to bring together in one volume representative statements of the different theoretical traditions which have been influential in shaping the subject of cultural studies, now an established part of the teaching of sociology, literature and related areas. Conceived to meet the needs of students on the Open University course Popular Culture, the volume aims to provide an introduction to the main concepts and contemporary debates in the field. Amongst the major themes are the contrast between culturalist and structuralist approaches, the relevance of Gramsci's work to cultural theory, and the contribution of perspectives standing outside Marxist debate.

As a result of his inquiry into the nature of class, culture, and the state, Antonio Gramsci became one of the most influential Marxist theorists. Hegemony and Revolution is the first full-fledged study of Gramsci's Prison Notebooks in the light of his pre-prison career as a socialist and communist militant and a highly original Marxist intellectual. Walter Adamson shows how Gramsci's concepts of revolution grew out of his experience with the Turin worker councils of 1919-1920 as well as his experience combatting the Fascist movement.For Gramsci, revolution meant the steady ascension of a mass-based, educated, and organized "collective will," in which the final seizure of power would be the climax of a broader educative process. Success depended on countering not just the coercive power of the existing economic and political order but also the cultural hegemony of the state. A "counter-hegemony" for Gramsci required the leadership of an organized political party, but at its core lay his conviction that the common people were capable of self-enlightenment and could produce an alternative conception of the world that challenged the prevailing hegemonic culture.Adamson shows how these ideas, which Gramsci developed prior to his imprisonment, led him to a highly original concept of "subaltern" class movements that cohere not just on the basis of economic interest but by virtue of religious, ideological, regional, folkloric, and other sorts of cultural ties as well. These ideas of Gramsci have had enormous influence on a wide variety of subsequent cultural theories including postcolonialism and Foucault-style analyses of discursive practices.

Media, Ideology and Hegemony provides what Raymond Williams once called the "extra edge of consciousness" that is absolutely essential to create, both on and offline, a better, more open, more equitable, and more democratic world.

Popular usage equates hegemony with dominance–a meaning far from Antonio Gramsci′s original concept where hegemony appears as a contested culture that meets the minimum needs of the majority while serving the interests of the dominant class. This text is the first to present cultural hegemony in its original form–as a process of consent, resistance, and coercion. Hegemony is illustrated with examples from American history and contemporary culture, including practices that represent race, gender, and class in everyday life. U.S. cultural hegemony depends in part on how well media, government, and other dominant institutions popularize beliefs and organize practices that promote individualism and consumerism. Corporate dominance and market values reign only through the consent of the majority, which, for the time being - finds material, political, and cultural benefit from existing social relations. As deep social contradictions undermine brittle hegemonic relations, the subordinate majority - including blacks, women, and workers will seek a new cultural hegemony that overcomes race, gender, and class inequality.

A comprehensive survey of how scientific disciplines have always been informed by politics and ideology on the basis of the Gramscian views in historical materialism, hegemony and civil society.

Media, Ideology and Hegemony provides what Raymond Williams once called the “extra edge of consciousness” that is absolutely essential to create, both on and offline, a better, more open, more equitable, and more democratic world.

Though generally associated with the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, the idea of hegemony had a crucial history in revolutionary Russia where it was used to conceptualize the dynamics of political and cultural leadership. Drawing on extensive archival research, this study considers the cultural dimensions of hegemony, with particular focus on the role of language in political debates and in scholarship of the period. It is shown that considerations of the relations between the proletariat and peasantry, the cities to the countryside and the metropolitan centre to the colonies of the Russian Empire demanded an intense dialogue between practical politics and theoretical reflection, which led to critical perspectives now assumed to be the achievements of, for instance, sociolinguistics and post-colonial studies.