Hegemony or the hegemonic model is not a term that I have ever heard outside of a BBC2 cultural identity discussion! Yet it is constantly about us all, adapting and shaping its self into the programme that is life.

The term 'hegemony' was adapted by Antonio Gramsci during his time imprisoned in the early part of the 20th century. It wasn't until 1971 that a full translation came out of the 'Prison Notebooks'.

An example of the strongest force in our world, want to see what this hegemony actually is? Okay, holidays, music and fashionjust to start! Let me start with language, the first tool of communication.

The globalisation of the English language is not simply because of the beauty and strength of it's vocabulary, grammar and structure! Rather through the past literary and cultural, empirical, military and religious associations of the power institutes. Economics and the rise and use of communications enable political power to develop.

The rise of English as a language can be regarded as a new phenomena. Post World War Two, saw the strength of the American economic market grow and the dollar became the world currency. Money talks and the dollar became the language of commerce. Globalisation is progressive capitalism.

Marx believed that capitalist development would result in one state nation, with the basis of conflict as being that of class. Conflicts in this world today consist of clashes of identity, where the old meets the transgressional new. The main influx of ideas and education comes through the mass of telecommunications.

Technology dislocates people from boundaries of time and space and transports them into the ‘new’, a simultaneous world. The sphere of the political world is fought and expressed to people through the media; it is not restricted to one nation. American politics becomes the breakfast news of Ireland.

Heg`e*mon"ic (?), Heg`e*mon"ic*al (?), a. [Gr. . See Hegemony.]

Leading; controlling; ruling; predominant.

"Princelike and hegemonical."

Fotherby.

 

© Webster 1913.

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