Key concepts:
● Cultural resistance
● Cultural hegemony
● Subcultural theory
Cultural Hegemony:
- Theorised by Antonio Gramsci, an Italian philosopher in the 1930s
- Hegemonic – dominant, ruling, most powerful
- Hegemonic Culture – the dominant culture
- Cultural Hegemony – power, rule or domination maintained by ideological or cultural means
Cultural hegemony functions by encouraging the ideologies of the dominant social group as the only legitimate ideology. Their ideologies are expresses and maintained through economic, political, moral and social institutions. These institutions surround the people in their every day life, and eventually influence their subconscious into accepting the norms, values and beliefs of the dominant social group. As a result, oppressed groups are lead to believe that the social and economic conditions of society are natural and inevitable, rather than created by the dominant group.
Context:
● Race Relations
● Thatcher’s Britain
Thatcher’s Britain
- Prime Minister 1979-90
- Militant campaigner for middle class interests
- Extreme attitude towards immigration
- British Nationality Act 1981: introduced a series of increasingly strict immigration procedure and prevented Asian people from entering Britain
Resistance and political protest:
- laws don’t necessarily equal change
- change is much more likely through culture- which is normally more subtle and isn’t always riots and big gestures.
- everyday people
- Overt political protest is uncommon. When it occurs, it often results in a backlash.- doesn’t change public’s opinion