Hegemony, Counter-Hegemony, Anti-Hegemony
In: Socialist Studies: The Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies, Band 2, Heft 2, S. 9-43
In: Socialist Studies: The Journal of the Society for Socialist Studies, Band 2, Heft 2, S. 9-43
In: Socialist studies: Etudes socialistes, Band 2, Heft 2
ISSN: 1918-2821
This article takes a critical realist stance in exploring the changing conditions for and forms of hegemony and counter-hegemony in "postmodern", "neoliberal", "globalized" times. Current hegemonic practices and projects make common sense of a market-driven politics and a fragmented culture, infusing into them an organization of consent that operates both locally and globally. Yet this amounts only to a thin hegemony, a weak and ecologically unsustainable basis for social cohesion and material reproduction. If contemporary hegemony is deeply yet perilously grounded then counter-hegemony needs to address those grounds. This stricture points to the articulation of various subaltern and progressive-democratic currents into a counter-hegemonic bloc that organizes dissent across space and time. Counter-hegemony needs to walk on both legs, taking up statecentred issues as well as issues resident in national and transnational civil societies. Its durability across conjunctures requires not only a shared ethical vision but a political form appropriate to its tasks. A range of recent developments relevant to these issues is discussed. The article concludes with a critique of the anti-hegemonic politics of dispersed singularities, whose insights, particularly on the value of direct action and prefiguration, need to be integrated into a strategically coherent form.
This article takes a critical realist stance in exploring the changing conditions for and forms of hegemony and counter-hegemony in "postmodern", "neoliberal", "globalized" times. Current hegemonic practices and projects make common sense of a market-driven politics and a fragmented culture, infusing into them an organization of consent that operates both locally and globally. Yet this amounts only to a thin hegemony, a weak and ecologically unsustainable basis for social cohesion and material reproduction. If contemporary hegemony is deeply yet perilously grounded then counter-hegemony needs to address those grounds. This stricture points to the articulation of various subaltern and progressive-democratic currents into a counter-hegemonic bloc that organizes dissent across space and time. Counter-hegemony needs to walk on both legs, taking up statecentred issues as well as issues resident in national and transnational civil societies. Its durability across conjunctures requires not only a shared ethical vision but a political form appropriate to its tasks. A range of recent developments relevant to these issues is discussed. The article concludes with a critique of the anti-hegemonic politics of dispersed singularities, whose insights, particularly on the value of direct action and prefiguration, need to be integrated into a strategically coherent form.
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The article analyses Fiji politics by utilising the analytical framework established by neo-Gramscian scholars, who emphasise the role of social forces and constitutive moments in the making of history. Elite hegemony in Fiji was founded on the hegemony of indigenous chiefs, local and transnational capital and indigenous nationalism. These three pillars of elite hegemony are central arguments of critical and cultural neo-Gramscian theories on power, social forces and neoliberal economic discourses and this neo-Gramscian approach provides both ontological and epistemological frameworks for the study of both hegemony and counter-hegemony in Fiji and reflect convergence, divergence, mobilisation, resistance, and control, and inform counter history and social reframing, where ethnic social forces collide with inter-ethnic alliances, creating new political counter-hegemonic paradigms that usher in new historical and social trajectories.
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In: Cambridge review of international affairs, Band 19, Heft 2, S. 243-260
ISSN: 1474-449X
The emergence of an "American democratic empire", rising from the global informational & transportation revolution, that has its epicentre situated on the territory of the United States (US), has produced a profound metamorphosis in world affairs. National power elites, including those in America, are confronting a dilemma. They are compelled to accept, favour & even defend the so-called globalisation process in order to avoid further erosion of their economic & political power. On the other hand, this process is also directly threatening this same power. The paradox is that the US is the main promoter & defender of last resort of the new global 'order', which at the same time is restricting its own margins for sovereign action. The "democratic empire" is thus fostering the rise of a democratic hegemonism at the expense of a "US hegemonism". This democratic hegemonism is a gradually rising -- & fragile -- consensus on a proliferating set of perceptions & values, stressing individual freedom, responsibility & political & social activism. This consensus arises from the material possibilities of a more individualistic way of life & the increasing capacity of single individuals or organised groups to participate in global & local political decision-making processes. This is a process that favours the empowerment of interest groups whose reference is no longer solely the nation-state. Hence, traditional power elites are progressively losing their ability to present themselves as the ultimate embodiment of a national "general interest". The irony of the seemingly intractable contradiction between US hegemonism & democratic hegemonism is that the actual spreading of the logic of the latter is closely dependent on US power & willingness to defend its own national interest. The greatest challenge for the coming decades will be the construction of supranational governance institutions under democratic hegemony, so as to avoid a classic imperial self-isolation of the US -- a situation that would trigger the inevitable demise of democratic hegemonism &, for the time being, of any order as such. References. Adapted from the source document.
In: Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies
"Hegemony" published on by Oxford University Press.
In: http://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/34078
An earlier paper by the second author, entitled 'Bella Americana: Some Consequences for the International Community' [1], dealt with the background and consequences of the American dissociation from the international legal and political order created after World War II. The current article examines this divergence in the light of United States foreign policy in general, pointing out that hegemony, unilateralism and pre-emptive strike together represent a certain 'constant' in American foreign policy. The article then examines the so called 'war on terror', trying to understand its flaws within the context of American strategic culture. Arguably, however, what has changed after 9/11 is not just the nature of security threats as such but also the global environment in which these manifest themselves. Taking supremacy of the world's military, technological and financial-economic superpower as a basis for further analysis, the issue becomes how to get that hegemony embedded in a multilateral setting. Here the notion of 'policy by-products' appears to open new venues. Continuing unilateralism, the article argues, would constitute a serious threat to American security proper.
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In: Asian perspective, Band 15, Heft 1, S. 123-156
ISSN: 2288-2871
In: Cambridge review of international affairs, Band 19, Heft 2, S. 243-260
ISSN: 1474-449X
Social justice struggles are often framed around competing hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects. This article compares several organizations of global civil society that have helped shape or have emerged within the changing political-economic landscape of neoliberal globalization, either as purveyors of ruling perspectives or as anti-systemic popular forums and activist groups. It interprets the dialectical relation between the two sides as a complex war of position to win new political space by assembling transnational historic blocs around divergent social visions – the one centered on a logic of replication and passive revolution, the other centred on a logic of prefiguration and transformation. It presents a sociological analysis of the organizational forms and practical challenges that their respective hegemonic and counter-hegemonic projects entail.
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In: Western Political Science Association 2010 Annual Meeting Paper
SSRN
Working paper
In: Cambridge review of international affairs, Band 19, Heft 2, S. 243-260
ISSN: 0955-7571
In: Xing , L 2006 , ' The Crisis of Hegemony and Counter-hegemony under Transnational Capitalism ' , Paper presented at Globalisation and the Political Theory of the Welfare State and Citizenship , Aalborg , Denmark , 04/05/2006 - 05/05/2006 .
This paper explores the issue of hegemony under transnational capitalism. It conceptualizes how transnational accumulation and supraterritorial space has altered capitalism in general and its hegemony in particular. It aims to provide a framework of understanding and analyzing the way globalization has reshaped the terrain and parameters of social, economic and political relations both at the national and the global levels, and exerted pressure on the resilient and hegemonic capacities of capitalism. It proposes to examine the ways social relations of domination, subordination and organic interplay are produced, maintained, decomposed and delinked while continuously undergoing transformations. Inspired by the Gramscian and Polanyian theoretical and analytical categories, the paper analyses the fading "organic" linkage between state, market and civil society under transnational capitalism. It concludes that transnational capitalism is creating serious dual contradictions: the crisis of both hegemony and counter-hegemony. Transnational capitalism is not able to create a "transnational hegemony" similar to that under nation-state capitalism, nor is it able to foster a transnational consensual power of civil society and organic counter-hegemony social forces. Rather, transnational capitalism is producing the opposite result: reducing the legitimacy of capitalism's hegemony and limiting its resilient capacities while creating non-organic counterhegemonic movements in various forms and directions including fundamentalism and terrorism.
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In: An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci : His Life, Thought and Legacy