Cultural hegemony: For Gramsci, hegemony implies a situation where a “historical bloc” of ruling-class factions exercise social authority and leadership over subordinate classes through a combination of forces and, more importantly, consent. Thus:

Within Gramscian analysis, ideology is understood in terms of ideas, meaning sand practices which, while they purport to be universal truths, are maps of meaning which support the power of particular social groups. Above all, ideology is not separate from the practical activities of life but is a material phenomenon rooted in day-to-day conditions. Ideologies provide people with rules of practical conduct and moral behaviour equivalent “to a religion understood in the secular sense of a unity of faith between a conception of the world and a corresponding norm of conduct. (Gramsci, op. cit., 1971, p.349; here p.59.)

[…]

A hegemonic bloc never consists of a single socio-economic category but is formed through a series of alliances in which one group takes a position of leadership […]

Ideology is lived experience and a body of systematic ideas whose role is to organise and bind together a bloc of diverse social element, to act as social cement, in the formation of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic blocs. Though ideology can take the form of a coherent set of ideas, it more often appears as the fragmented meanings of common sense inherent in a variety of representations.

For Gramsci, all people reflect upon the world and, thought the “common sense” of populate culture, organise their lives and experience. Thus, common sense becomes a crucial site for ideological conflict and, in particular, the struggle to forge “good sense” which, for Gramsci, is the recognition of the class character of capitalism.

Hegemony can be understood in terms of the strategies by which the world views and power of ascendant social groups (be they class, sexual, ethnic or nationally constituted) is maintained. However, this has to be seen in relational terms and aas inherently unstable. Hegemony is a  temporary settlement and series of alliances betweeen social groups which is won and not given. Further, it needs to be constantly re-won, renegotiated, so that culture is a terrain of conflict and struggle over meanings. Hegemony is not a a static entity but a series of changing discourses and practices intrinsically bound up with social power. Gramsci characterises hegemony as “a continuous process of formation and superseding of unstable equilibria … between the interests of the fundamental group and those of the subordinate groups … equilibria in which the interest of the dominant group will prevail, but only up to a certain point.” (Gramsci, Prison Notebooks, London: Lawrence & Lockhart, 1968, p.182; here p.61.)

Since hegemony has to be constantly remade and rewon, it opens up the possibility of a challenge ot it, that is, the making of a counter-hegemonic bloc of subordinate groups and classes. For Gramsci, such a counter-hegemonic struggle must seek to gain ascendancy within civil society (affiliations outside of formal state boundaries including the family, social clubs, the press, leisure activities, &c.) before any attempt is made on state power. Gramsci makes a distinction between “war of position”, which is the winning of hegemony within the sphere of civil society, and the “war of manoeuvre”, which is the assault on state power. For Gramsci, success in the “war of manoeuvre” is dependent on attaining hegemony through the “war of position”. (Gramsci, op. cit, 1968, p.182.)

Winning Hegemony: It is central to Gramscian analysis that hegemony involves education and the winning of consent rather than the use of brute force and coercion alone. Though the state is not conceived as a crude arm of the ruling class, it is nevertheless implicated in class hegemony. Gramsci makes a distinction between the “nightwatchman state” as a repressive apparatus reliant on the army, the police and the judicial system, and the “ethical state”, which plays an educative and formative role in the creation of citizens and the winning of consent. Though force remains an option for social control, during times of relative stability it takes a back seat to the unifying role of ideology.

After Gramsci, cultural studies adopted the view that ideology, understood in terms of maps of meaning which support the power of particular social groups, is rooted in the day-to-day conditions of popular life. For Gramschi, ideologies provide people with rules of practical conduct and moral behaviour. Ideologies are both lived experience and a body of systematic ideas whose role is to organise and bind together a bloc of diverse social elements in the formation of hegemnonic and counter-hegemonic blocs. Ideological hegemony is the proces by which certain ways of understanding the world become so self-evident or naturalised as to render alternatives nonsensical or unthinkable.

For Gramsci, the common sense and popular culture thorugh which people organise their lives and experience becomes the crucial site of ideological contestation. This is the place where hegemony, understood as a fluid and temporary series of alliances, needs to be constantly rewon and renegotiated. The creation and dissolution of cultural hegemony is an ongoing process and culture a terrain of continuous struggle over meanings.

The deployment of Gramscian concepts proved to be of long-lasting significance because of the central importance given to popular culture as a site of ideological struggle. […] (pp.350-51.)

The role of the intellectuals: Gramscian thinking places cultural analysis and ideological struggle at the heart of western politics and by implication elevates cultural studies to a place of pre-eminence for those concerned with social change.s Indeed, it places a special premium on the work of intellectuals and their relation with other participants in social struggle. Here Gramsci’s distinction beetween “traditional” and “organic” intellectuals was of significance.

Traditioanl intellectuals are those persons who fill the scientific, literary, philosophical and religious positions in society […] their status and functiosn lead them to view themselves as independent of any class allergiances or ideological role. However, for Gramsci they produce, maintain and circulate those ideologiies constitutive of hegemony which become embedded and naturalised in common sense.

By contrast, organic intellectuals are said to be a constitutive part of working-class (and later feminist, postcolonial, African-American, &c.) struggle; they are to be the thinking and organising elements of the counter-hegemonic class and its allies. As Gramsci puts it, as a new class develops, it creates “[…] organically […] one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function, not only economic but also in the social and political fields.” (Gramsci, op. cit., 1971, p.5.) Given that Gramsci has an expansive notion of the organic intellectual, this role is not to be played only by those situated withn the educational world, but by trade unionists, writers, campaigners, community, organisers, teachers, and so forth. (p.352.)

[Note: Tony Bennett (Culture: A Reformer’s Science, 1998) critiques Gramsci on the basis that his hankering after ‘organic intellectuals’ functioning as ‘leaders’ is contrary to the dominant mode of ideological transmission in contemporary culture, which is entailed in the notion of ‘governmentality’ and shares more in Michel Foucault’s conception of the ‘discourse’ as a configuration of ‘knowledge/power’ - given that for Foucault there is not an orginatory source of power but rather, that power is dispersed in a ‘region’ of culture and the particular technologies pertaining to it. See Barker, pp.366ff.]