Hegemony

Most basically, hegemony refers to the domination of one group of people over another. More specifically, and more relevant to critical qualitative research, it refers to the domination of the ideas of one group over those of another. As such, hegemony refers to the mainstream deployment and acceptance of ideologies that justify the inequities inherent in modern society including capitalism, sexism, racism, and so on. Hegemonic domination can take place with or without the use of [Page 385]physical force; however, it is often domination achieved not by force, but through ideological means.

Hegemony as a concept was first employed in Marxist thought in the mid- to late 1800s. Marxist conceptions focused on political leadership and domination by the ruling bourgeois over the subordinate working class proletariat through politically endorsed systems of economic and material distribution. The term hegemony, however, was coined by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and most fully explicated in his work Selections From the Prison Notebooks. This work was conducted from 1929–1935 by Gramsci while he was imprisoned in Italy for his role in the development of the nation's Communist Party. Gramsci's work extended Marxist thought beyond its focus on capitalist struggle to an analysis of intellectual struggle and the role of external forces such as the mass media in stifling creative thought. He contended that the masses remained in their oppressed position because society did not allow them to imagine a different way of living; lacking such a conception, they were unable to conceive how they could challenge the prevailing system. Thus, Gramsci freed Marxist thought from economic determinism as he allowed for autonomic individuals, yet placed them within a system of communicative power that encompassed the state, the media, and social interaction.

Hegemony is of interest to qualitative researchers as a lens through which ideologies can be identified, documented, exposed, and used to create alternate ideology. Given the political nature of such research projects, it is no wonder that research into hegemonic thought is concentrated within critical research approaches, such as critical ethnography and critical discourse analysis, which aim to make explicit and often challenge power hierarchies.

No one method suits the collection of data useful to the examination of hegemonic structures or thought. Rather, as Gramsci notes, hegemonic ideologies operate through such social systems as the media, the state, and everyday communicative action. As such, a variety of social artifacts can produce data on prevailing hegemonic thought, including key informant interviews, documents, media analyses, observation, and diaries. These sources can reveal prevailing ideologies used to maintain and enforce existing social structures. Critical data analysis techniques such as critical discourse analysis and reconstructive analysis, as outlined by Phil Carspecken with reference to critical ethnography, can then identify sites of hegemonic thought that can be woven together to produce a picture of how ideologies are circulated, produced, and reproduced to perpetuate existing inequities that benefit the ruling group.