Gramsci iii
 Subalterns,
Elites, Intellectuals and
Cultural Change
Culture in Anthropology
 Shared
 Socially
Learned
 Knowledge
 Bounded, even in hybridity
 Linked to cultural relativism
Gramsci and culture

Concerned with cultural change
 Not only how cultures change, but how they
can be changed to produce a more equitable
society.
 Also organization and disciplining of the self.
 Not holistic and bounded, but partial and
fragmentary.
 In constant struggle between dominant and
subaltern groups to produce a hegemony.
 Cannot be directly related to modes of
production, but the latter provides external
constraints on the production of culture.
Subaltern Culture

‘The identity of subaltern groups, historically on the defensive, expresses itself,
first of all, as a negation…’
 Relations of subordination shape the consciousness of subaltern groups.
 Hence, their worldview is often fragmentary, because it is often ‘invaded’ by the
beliefs, aspirations and worldviews of dominant groups.
 Expresses itself spontaneously in various ways:
 Common Sense: in conformity with the dominant philosophical conceptions,
the principal elements in Italy being given by religion.
 Good Sense:Sense of identity separate from dominant conceptions of the
world, can be an experience of subordination that is not yet articulate.
 Folklore: defined through its opposition to ‘official conceptions of the world’.
 Subaltern and fragmentary.
Subaltern Studies and
Colonialism

Began with an innovation in Indian historiography.
 Wanted to study the ‘history’ of those who had been left out
of colonial and nationalist narratives, which was the history
of elites.
 Produced numerous methodological innovations through
which it was able to recover the ‘voices’ of those who did not
often enter the official record, e.g. oral histories, and reading
‘through’ the official archive, and paying attention to folklore
to discover the ‘traces’ of subaltern history.
 Questionable, however, whether colonialism could really be
understood as a form of hegemony, since the politico-military
element was predominant.
 Guha: colonialism was ‘dominance without hegemony’.
Gramsci and Intellectuals



Role of intellectuals defined much more broadly by
Gramsci: every person, was partly an intellectual, but
not every person had the function of being a
specialized intellectual.
Organic intellectuals: those most connected to a
specific class in the sense that they can best
articulate the worldview of an emerging, important
class of people.
Traditional intellectuals: those who were deposited by
a previous historical process who believe themselves
to be above history, economy and politics.
War of Manoevre and War of
Position



Gramsci believed that the type of revolution that occurred in
Russia could NOT be replicated in other countries or areas of
the world.
Russia was a country that was not highly developed industrially;
therefore the state could be won through ‘war of manoevre,
which involved a frontal assault’ on the state.
Western Europe had passed into a new phase, monopoly
capitalism, characterized by fordist labour organization, and by a
highly articulated economic structure, and agrowing middle
class. Here the state was not everything; mere ‘conquest of the
state’ would not bring about a social change towards greater
equity.
 What was required here was ‘a war of position’, that involved
a change in the consciousness of many groups and people,
especially the middle-classes who were involved in
managing the articulated economic structures.
Fordism and Flexible
Accumulation

Change in the modes of labour regulation in the past
two decades, from fordism to flexible accumulation.
 Caused by a decline in the rate of profit.





Temporal-spatial fixes, enabled by the computer revolution.
Attempts to cheapen the cost of labour.
Enabled by the computer revolution.
Fordism: large factories, automation, regulation of work
through scientific management, emphasis on extending the
home market through raising wages, Keynesian economic
theory.
Flexible accumulation: contracting out, decentralization,
small companies vertically integrated with multinationals,
greater (global) geographical extent and reach.
State and Civil Society in Fordism
and Flexible Accumulation

Fordism: expansion of state functions in
terms of education and training of workers,
and also welfarist goals.
 Flexible Accumulation: shrinking of the state,
emphasis on its repressive functions and its
role in attracting private investment to a
country, province or region.


Contracting out of social service functions to ‘civil
society’ actors.
Does the war of position have to change?


Decline of unionization due to decentralized character of
production.
Rise of civil society actors as new agents of social
change.