Hegemony

Hegemony refers to the ability of a dominant group to influence and shape others’ attitudes, perceptions, and actions. In contradistinction to related phenomena such as imperialism or empire, hegemony does not rely on force or violence and instead requires considerable consent from the [Page 1419]subordinated group. This entry discusses the evolution of the concept of hegemony and its application in geography.

Much of the theorization and application of hegemony is based in Marxist thought. The Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci developed the notion of cultural hegemony around 1930 to explain why the working class had internalized or adopted the capitalist values of the bourgeoisie rather than carrying out the revolution predicted by Marxist theory. Gramsci opposed Marx's economic determinism, positing that the values and norms adopted by the masses were disseminated primarily by civil society groups such as churches, schools, and intellectuals. The state, or political society, applied coercion through its juridical institutions only when people did not consent to the imposed order willingly.

The Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, or the “Frankfurt School,” dedicated to neo-Marxist critique of ideology, contributed greatly to the notions of hegemony throughout the mid 20th century. Herbert Marcuse, a key Frankfurt thinker, wrote that in advanced industrial (post-1945) societies, social critique is stemmed by technology and consumerism, which occupy passive subjects with created false needs. Thus, marginalized voices are the only source of true dissent. More recently, Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe departed from previous views of hegemony (such as those of many Frankfurt thinkers) as a secondary phenomenon of production relations. Instead, they characterized all contemporary social relations as hegemonic struggles whose outcomes were discourse and the construction of political identities, as well as new resistances. Thus, in contrast to the totalizing consumerism of which Marcuse spoke, Laclau and Mouffe actually saw the post-1945 climate as more conducive to counterhegemonic movements.

Hegemony has received considerable attention in geography, particularly because it informs the social construction of space and place and the ways in which power and ideology are implicated therein. Edward Soja, building on Henri Lefebvre's notions of the production of space, introduced the term sociospatial dialectic to explain the production of space from a Marxist spatialanalytical perspective. Soja (1980) noted that the structure of organized space represents “a dialectically defined component” of the relations of production, which are “simultaneously social and spatial” and arise from “purposeful social practice” (pp. 208–210). In Soja's account, the social production of space was an integral component of class struggle that reinforced the hegemony of contemporary capitalism, though in a dialectical, rather than mechanistic, way.

A number of cultural geographers have gone beyond this materialist context and examined the production of hegemonic identities and relations beyond class. Tim Cresswell demonstrated how place is constructed around multiple ideological practices and beliefs through hegemonic and counterhegemonic struggles. The construction of place is recursive: Place reproduces the beliefs that have produced it, and these beliefs eventually come to appear self-evident and a matter of commonsense. This issue has been examined in the construction of commemorative places, which aim to “etch” a particular collective memory into the cultural landscape, thereby asserting certain identities as dominant while marginalizing others. For example, African Americans and civil rights activists have protested the creation of memorials to Confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. Derek Alderman and Owen Dwyer viewed a memorial to Forrest in an African American neighborhood in Selma, Alabama, as one such example of the operation of collective memory.

...