Hegemony

Hegemony:

The notion of hegemony is especially difficult to enumerate both in concrete political terms and in a less tangible philosophical manner. It is the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others. In Ancient Greece (8th century BCE - 6th century CE), hegemony signified the politico-military supremacy of a city-state over other city-states. The dominant state is known as the hegemon.

In the 19th century, hegemony represented the "Social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu". Afterwards, it could be used to mean "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society." Also, it could be used for the geopolitical and the cultural preponderance of one country over others, from which was derived hegemonism. It means that the Great Powers meant to establish European hegemony over Asia and Africa. In theoretical viewpoint, hegemony is the expression of society's ruling classes over the majority of the nation or state over whom they propose to rule. Gramsci (1971) describes hegemony as, “a conception of the world that is implicitly manifest in art, in law, in economic activity and in all manifestations of individual and collective life.”

Five dimensions of the concept of hegemony:

There are five basic dimensions of hegemony that range from obvious to more subtle. These are explained as under:

1. Military: The hegemon has the strongest military in the world, considerably stronger than any of its rivals. Its military alliance system is significantly stronger than any rival military blocs.
2. Economic: The hegemon has the biggest and most technologically advanced economy in the world. It is a major trading partner of most of the nations of the world, including most of the major powers.
3. Political: The hegemon has array of political allies, and friendly relations with most nations and major powers.
4. Institutional: The hegemon, working with its associates, makes most of the rules that govern global political and economic relations. The hegemon, along with its allies, usually controls most of the international institutions. Thus, most of the policies of the international institutions favour the hegemon and its partners.
5. Ideological: The hegemon mainly determines the terms of discourse in international relations. Marx wrote, "The ruling ideas of any age are the ideas of the ruling class." Currently, the predominant ideas about globalization are the ideas of hegemon.

The Marxist theory of cultural hegemony, related particularly with Antonio Gramsci. It is the idea that the ruling class can influence the value system and customs of a society, so that their view becomes the world view (Weltanschauung). According to Terry Eagleton, "Gramsci normally uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which a governing power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates". Contrasting to authoritarian rule, cultural hegemony "is hegemonic only if those affected by it also consent to and struggle over its common sense". Gramsci defines cultural hegemony, which was of particular significance when he was writing in the 1930's, in a world that was dominated by ideological concerns. This kind of hegemony and cultural control is a persistent political reality that has been a feature of culture and society since the first recorded migrations of man.

Athenians made hegemony an everyday feature of the ancient world, whereby people were defined through their status within the broader Greek political and cultural hierarchy. The Greeks emphasised their cultural ideal of hegemony with language and politics, especially the concept of citizenship, which is the major feature in the study of political and cultural hegemony. The United States uses its visa system, for example, to distinguish between alien visitors from within the wider plates of the hegemony that it has created.

In the ancient world, Plato and Aristotle categorized the several types of hegemony together to form 'civilisation'. Therefore, to be an Athenian Greek was to be a civilised member of the hegemony of the emerging nation state; to be a 'barbarian' was to be an uncivilised member of the outposts of society, the parts where hegemony had previously failed to infiltrate as a paradigm and as a cultural and economic force. This phenomenon has since been reflected in the twenty first century with President Bush's 'with us or against us' stance to global terrorism, where hegemony was once again used as the primary force in the continuation of the dominant military, political and economic power of the period.

It becomes obvious that hegemony must co-exist with the comprehensive notion of empire, which is itself constructed upon the concrete foundations of economic dynamism harvested through the procurement of resources. The notion of empire changed irreversibly during the beginning of modern history where industrialisation proved to be the catalyst for the significant, seismic shift in the view of hegemony as cultural, economic and political benchmark. The nineteenth century was certainly a crisis in terms of the redrawing of the conceptual limitations of hegemony. The Victorian period observed the traditional European empires of France, Belgium, Britain and Germany use their vast military and economic superiority to carve up the undeveloped world amongst each other with the procurement of raw materials and economic resources utilised as the main motivation for extra territorial action.