Gramsci and hegemony

Street’s “Culture is a Verb” paper references “Gramsci’s concept of hegemony - the predominance obtained by consent rather than force of one class or group over other classes”, or the idea that one factor leading to oppression is the oppressed’s consent to being dominated/subordinated. This manifests, among other places, in cases of linguistic insecurity, when “cultures” abandon linguistic elements of their identity because of the notion that these elements characterize inferiority.

I see my practice - both as an educator and as a researcher - as decidedly counter-hegemonic, not from a blind “question authority” stance but from a well-sighted one; although the intention to make the world better, whatever that means, may itself be seen as oppressive, as if I am somehow imposing my visions of an ideal world onto those whose worlds are starkly different from that ideal world - I see the goal of critical practice as uncovering hegemonic structures both for my own benefit and for the benefit of those most affected by them. It seems possible, if not likely, that some oppressed populations accept things the way they are because they don’t know any other way, and therefore they consent to those “things”. That is a remarkably simplistic summary of my own counter-hegemonic stance, I admit, but it is my actual starting point when I think about matters of subjugation and legitimacy, and further as I think about research ideas that embrace and engender counter-hegemony.

That said, I can foresee one challenge of undertaking ethnographic work as going into a situation with such a specific stance and intention as discovering and explicating otherwise hidden power structures. If I go into a situation that I informally think to be subject to hegemonic practices, am I not influencing what I will see? If I expect to find hegemonic practices, won’t I surely see them? I think so. This will require some specific preparation, both through reading and through self-reflection, so that I am able to actually see what is happening, not just what I think is happening.