Cracking Hegemony in Thailand: Gramsci,Bourdieu and the Dialectics of Rebellion

Gramsci's notion of “hegemony,” like Bourdieu's concept of “habitus,” seems designed to explain accommodation to existing social structures, rather than resistance. In this paper, however, I draw from the Prison Notebooks some arguments that contribute to a Gramscian understanding of how hegemony may break apart under the weight of the same uneven development processes central to hegemony. Drawing also from Bourdieu, I argue that the conceptions of “hegemony” and “habitus” inscribe the possibility of resistance within the embodied experience of accommodation to class rule. I then elaborate a dialectical, Gramscian-Bourdieusian account of the Red Shirt movement in Thailand, showing that the seeds for the destruction of royalist hegemony in Thailand have been sown in the embodied processes of accommodation to ruling class hegemony. The breadth and depth of challenges to this hegemony, moreover, are evident not only from the activities of the Red Shirt movement and regional discontent in Northern and Northeast Thailand but from the resistance of working class women to attempts to police their sexuality and limit their consumerism. The refusal of Thai elites to accept the breadth and depth of Thailand's dispositional transformation has legitimised – in their eyes – the brutal crackdown on Red Shirt protestors that resulted in the April-May 2010 massacres. Yet repression can only kill off political leaders and specific parties; it will not likely derail the growing resentment of ordinary Thais over elitist class rule.     

Gramsci,Counter-hegemony and Labour Union–Civil Society Organisation Coalitions in Malaysia

The dramatic outcome of the Malaysian 2008 elections has been interpreted within a Gramscian framework. It has, for example, been suggested that the hegemony created by the Malaysian ruling class is being contested, leading to a weakening of its legitimacy, and that an active class of organic intellectuals is emerging and helping to develop potential bases for counter-hegemonic participation. We employ an alternative Gramscian approach, restoring relevant aspects of Gramsci's theories to the centre of analysis. We, therefore, focus on mutual perceptions in coalitions between civil society organisations and trade unions as a key indicator of the strength of counter-hegemonic forces. We conclude that accounts that claim that “counter-hegemony” is developing are questionable at best. Fundamental differences exist between these central institutional actors which sit uneasily with claims that the construction of counter-hegemony is under way.     

Putting the Chinese State in its Place: A March from Passive Revolution to Hegemony

The Chinese party-state has been depicted in three major forms by the existing studies – the authoritarian state, developmental state and corporatist state. These depictions, however, only offer a partial understanding of the Chinese party-state and have failed to grasp its totality. Drawing upon the theoretical insights of Antonio Gramsci, this article contends that Chinese economic reform inaugurated in 1978 has been a top-down passive revolution and that, after three decades of reform, the role of the Chinese state has been changing from steering the country’s passive revolution to establishing capitalist hegemony. However, it should be noted that although the Chinese state has been undergoing a hegemonic transformation, capitalist hegemony has not been unambiguously established in the country. Some workers have given consent to the ruling class’s leadership, but a segment of workers has been able to transgress hegemony to formulate a radical critique of capitalists and the state. The transition to hegemony in China is a chaotic and tumultuous process of class struggles between the ruling class and the working class.     

Gramsci, Machiavelli and International Relations

The paper begins by expressing some doubts about how Gramsci has been appropriated by the so-called 'Italian School' of International Relations/International Political Economy (IR/IPE). Particularly questionable is the attempt to 'internationalise' his concepts of 'civil society' and 'hegemony', whose respective meanings are sometimes extended beyond Gramscian usage. Also dubious is the tendency to assume that his conceptual framework supports a counter-discourse within IR/IPE that contradicts the 'realist' mainstream. In his political ideas, Gramsci was as much a child of Machiavelli as of Marx, and he praised the Florentine for developing a progressive or 'transformative' realism in opposition to the conventional type of realism that seeks only to 'manage' the status quo. This interpretation of Gramsci as a kind of realist is defended by highlighting three 'Machiavellian' aspects of his thought: (a) his contempt for abstract ideals of justice or democracy, (b) his hostility to 'vague and purely ideological' (his words) internationalism; and (c) his surprising (for a supposed Marxist) doubts about the prospects for a non-coercive and egalitarian society. In conclusion, it is pointed out that Gramsci helps us to illustrate a tension at the heart of Marxism: that between utopianism and realism. Because of his admiration for Machiavelli, he eventually betrayed second thoughts about Marx's vision of a world without borders or conflict. His idea of transformative realism, rather than his concept of hegemony, should perhaps be seen as his chief contribution to IR/IPE.     

Podemos and the Spanish political crisis

15 May 2011 marked the beginning of a major political and regime crisis in Spain. It has since passed through different stages – the last being the emergence of Podemos, which has become a major player in Spanish politics. The crisis of traditional mechanisms of political representation has become a crisis of hegemony of the ruling class, in the Gramscian sense of the term. The mass support for the ruling class and its traditional form of political representation has been withdrawn. This has led to an open situation with no clear outcome that can be read in terms of Walter Benjamin’s non-linear and deterministic sense of political and historical time.     

Biotechnology and bio-hegemony in Uganda: unraveling the social relations underpinning the promotion of genetically modified crops into new African markets

This paper aims to uncover the social relations used to promote genetically modified (GM) crops into new African markets. It unravels the network of corporate actors, development agencies, policy officials, and research scientists that support the unquestioned dominance of GM in Uganda, which houses one of the largest experimental program dedicated to agricultural biotechnology on the continent. Gramscian insights reveal how these constellations of power align to support biotechnology at the expense of other technological possibilities, and how this consensus maintains its position of dominance while remaining largely unquestioned and unchallenged.     

“Plug into Choice”? The Trouble with Common-Sense Participation in a Smart Electric Grid

Smart electric grids add digital technologies to the grid. While some suggest that they offer many environmental and social benefits, others remain critical and call them a neoliberal project. Considering smart grids a boundary object [Star, Susan L., and James R. Griesemer. 1989. “Institutional Ecology, Translations and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39.” Social Studies of Science 19 (3): 387–420], I examine how multiple social groups come together in cooperation and conflict in the installation of one smart grid. In what follows, I first argue that participation is Gramscian common sense (1971), a taken-for-granted good in producing a smart grid. Gramsci points out that common sense can be used to reinforce oppressive ideologies of a hegemonic status quo, but that it also contains “good sense” that can be developed into counter-hegemonic narratives and movements. Second, I argue that in the course of cooperation and conflict, the smart grid indeed becomes more neoliberal, and this occurs through participation. While the utility often seeks or accepts public participation, the meaning of participation gradually becomes limited to individualistic and financially motivated “choice.” In the discussed case, many of the (less neoliberal) social and environmental benefits of the grid and more collectivist forms of participation were precluded. This article offers a grounded examination of a smart grid and a sympathetic critique of common-sense participation.     

North Korea's hegemonic rule and its collapse

Ideological leadership through the Party was at the core of the North Korean leaders’ hegemonic rule over the people, which resulted in the great popularity of Kim Il-sung. Marketisation in the wake of the economic crisis, however, significantly impaired the mechanism for rule by consent, especially by triggering the influx of outside information and undermining the Party's ideological education activities. The economic crisis led the state to adjust the mechanism of consent and coercion in such a way that the state's control over society could be restored by relying more on rule by force, which was demonstrated by the much stricter penal system, bloody purges and, most of all, military-first politics. This, nonetheless, was a temporary measure because, in Guha's terms, ‘dominance without hegemony’ would not be durable in the long term. The regime can sustain itself in the long-term only through the reinstatement of the consent mechanism, which disintegrated owing to the marketisation. However, as the marketisation, being beneficial to those who have power as well as ordinary people, is irreversible in North Korea today, the reestablishment of hegemonic rule would not be attainable.     

Passive revolution in Brazil: struggles over hegemony,religion and development 1964–2007

This article examines transformations of the role of religion in Brazil, focused on two transitions within the national political economy. A Gramscian framework of analysis is used to investigate the shift from import substitution industrialisation to neoliberalism, and the varying role of religion within class struggles in each period. The central argument is that Brazil has moved from a period of ‘passive revolution’ to one of ‘hegemony’, and that the role of religion has changed significantly in this period. The article examines ideas, institutions and social forces, with particular attention to the Landless Workers Movement and its relationship with Liberation Theology.     

市民社会：从经济交往领域向社会公共领域的演化

对市民社会内在矛盾的不同理解与探讨,影响并决定了对市民社会涵义的不同规定,从而使市民社会的观念呈现出从经济交往领域向社会公共领域的演化过程;葛兰西与哈贝马斯对市民社会的理解,与黑格尔和马克思对市民社会的规定并不相矛盾,而是一种在继承基础上的深化和发展,其总体理论取向对今天社会历史哲学的研究具有重要借鉴意义。