Gramsci and Contemporary
Anthropology
Hegemony ‘lite’ ?
History of the Hegemony Concept
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Lenin: hegemony referred to the working class moving from purely
economic goals to demand a greater share of political power in Tsarist
Russia.
Gramsci: hegemony is specific constellations of force and consent defined
in particular historical contexts.
Williams: hegemony becomes located purely in the realm of ideas and
representations, not of practises and structures. Becomes very similar to
the concept of ideology, although it also includes unconscious modes of
thinking and feeling.
“Hegemony is a lived system of meanings and values—constitutive and
constituting-which as they are experienced as practices appear as
reciprocally confirming. It thus constitutes a sense of reality for most people
in the soc iety, a sense of absolute because experienced reality beyond
which it is v. difficult for most members of the society to move in most areas
of their lives. It is a culture, but a culture which has also to be seen as the
lived dominance and subordination of particular classes (Raymond
Williams).”
This is the way that hegemony has been interpreted by contemporary
anthropologists, e.g. Jean and John Comoroff.
The Comoroffs and Hegemony
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Their goal was to understand the ways in which missionaries in southern
Africa were able to gain converts and shape the world-views of the Tswana.
See hegemony as a relatively empty sign.
They also differentiate between culture, hegemony and ideology.
Culture:
They define hegemony as the ways in which dominant groups can create
and disseminate worldviews ‘by setting the limit on what will appear as
rational, reasonable, credible, or possible.’ Hence, here hegemony consists
of thos unconscious elements that define reality so that subalterns will
consent to their subalternity.
Ideology: seen as that portion of hegemonic leadership tht has become
conscious, and hence open to debate and contestation.
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When meanings become conscious and negotiable, then it no longer functions
as hegemonic, it becomes ideology and counter-ideology
Cultural politics involves a continuous attempt by the subalterns to make
hegemony conscious and to create alternative visions of the world.
Is this a ‘liberal’ interpretation of Gramsci? Expands the realm of civil society to
take up the entire constellation of power. Relations of force recede into the
background.
Hegemony Lite and Gramsci’s
Hegemony
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Crehan: The concept of hegemony as used by Williams, Hall and the
Comoroffs is not that used by Gramsci.
Hegemony for Gramsci involved culturally and historically specific ways in
which power was constructed:
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“What constitutes a particular hegemonic landscape at any given moment is
likely to include an extremely complicated intertwining of force and consent, and
of the entanglement of accounts of reality with hard realities that are more than
discourse” (Crehan).
The elements of force and consent cannot be pre-judged, but have to be
understood through a thorough examination.
Question of economic determinism refuted by Gramsci: in many situations,
ideological elements, values and beliefs can be organic, i.e. they may also be
determinative of the relations of hegemony that exist at a given point in time.
Marx: studied political economy because he believed that the emerging capitalist
society was one that was very distinctive in that it was the first form of society in
which the economy was both determining and dominant. E.g. of commodity
fetishism: social relations between people become expressed in the form of a
relation between things, while the thing itself acquires life-like properties,
apparently able to rule over their producers without their knowledge, through the
operation of markets. Yet other societies that are not market-dominated are not
determined and dominated by economic ‘laws’ to nearly the same extent.
Religious beliefs and institutions, for example, may be organic, and therefore part
of the base and not the superstructure.
An Example of Hegemony: The Colonial
Order and Constructing Kwaio Kastom
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Keesing shows how the Kwaio practice of writing down their kastoms occurred in the context of
highly unequal power relations deriving from the colonial order.
Late nineteenth century, Papua New Guinea was conquered by the British.
The Kwaio tried to resist, but were crushed militarily; axes, spears, bows and arrows were no
match for the British Navy.
Plantation sector established to which many Malaitans were recruited, sometimes by force.
Kwaio engaged in small-scale resistance, e.g. by killing a missionary and a district commissioner.
Colonialists also brought with them steel axes and other technologies that produced a ‘cornucopia’
of desire.
Colonialism consisted of a complex combination of absolute force plus seduction.
The one area in which there was some leeway was in terms of local laws: colonial administrators
were divided on whether to introduce British laws or to use local ‘customs’ to govern people.
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In this context, Kwaio elders began writing down Kwaio custom, despite the fact that ancestral ways were
still prevalent.
Also began to call each other “chief”, although this was a British concept, as they had to negotiate with
people they thought of as local leaders.
Papua New Guinea acquired independence in 1978, replete with a parliament and a modern state. Some of
the ‘chiefs’ became MPs.
Despite fierce resistance, the Kwaio had to fashion their interactions within and inside the categories of the
European state making that they had first resisted.
This is a process of hegemony: a complex combination of force and consent, but force always has to be
there; it provides here the initial conditions under which people attempt to forge their acquiescence or
resistance.