RESISTANCE AND POLITICAL PROTEST
Common thoughts about political protest revolve around: attempts to change laws or legislation; organised political movements; public protests; petitions; and marches. However, political protest can be seen in terms of cultural resistance and everyday people.
Cultural resistance is looked at because overt political protest is uncommon and when it occurs it often results in backlash. Even if overt political protest results in changes in legislation, it won’t necessarily change public opinion. Culture is what influences people’s hearts, minds, and opinions. This is the site of popular change.
ANTONIO GRAMSCI
Italian philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, is best known for his theory of cultural hegemony, which describes how the ruling capitalist class use cultural institutions to maintain power in capitalist societies.
| Term | Definition |
| Hegemonic | dominant, ruling-class, power-holders |
| Hegemonic Culture | the dominant culture |
| Cultural Hegemony | power, rule, or domination maintained by ideological and cultural means |
| Ideology | beliefs, assumptions and values |
SUBCULTURAL THEORY
Subculture is a working-class youth culture that is: unified by shared tastes in style, music and ideology; a solution to collectively experienced problems; and a form of resistance to cultural hegemony.
In the 1970s, a group of cultural theorists in Birmingham applied Gramsci’s theories to post-war British working-class youth culture. They looked at working class cultures like the teddy-boys, mods, skinheads, and punks – subcultures unified by shared tastes in fashion, music and ideology. They argued that the formation of subcultures offered young working-class people a solution to the problems they were collectively experiencing in society. The Birmingham School’s subcultural theory validated the study of pop-culture, which was previously considered superficial, however, they merely focused on white working-class masculinity and ignored ethnic minority, female, and queer youth cultures.
MARGARET THATCHER
The Prime Minister (from 1979-1990) and a militant campaigner for middle-class interests with a hardline attitude towards immigration, Margaret Thatcher, introduced a series of increasingly tough immigration procedures and excluded Asian people from entering Britain in the British Nationality Act of 1981.