Hot off the Press!

Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion. New York: Routledge. 2008 Edited by Richard Howson & Kylie Smith

The Faculty is pleased to announce this new publication from Routledge which contains contributions from a number of Faculty staff and students including: Andrew Wells, Alastair Davidson, Charles Hawksley, Susan Engel, Ruchira Ganguly-Scrase and Timothy J. Scrase and Yoko Harada.

Congratulations to Richard, Kylie and the other contributors.

About the book

The originality and depth of Gramsci's theory of hegemony is now evidenced in the wide-ranging intellectual applications within a growing corpus of research and writings that include social, political and cultural theory, historical interpretation, gender and globalization. The reason that hegemony has been so widely and diversely adopted lies in the unique way that Gramsci formulated the 'problematics' of structure/superstructure, coercion/consensus, materialism/idealism and regression/progression within the concept hegemony. However, in much of the contemporary literature the full complexity of hegemony is either obfuscated or ignored.

Hegemony, through comprehensive and systematic analyses of Gramsci's formulation, a picture of hegemony as a complex syncretism of these dichotomies. In other words, hegemony is presented as a concept that is as much about aspiration and progressive politico-social relations as it is about regressive and dominative processes. Thus, the volume recognises and presents this complexity through a selection of contemporary theoretical as well as historico-social investigations that mark a significantly innovative moment in the work on hegemony.

For more information : http://www.routledgepolitics.com/books/Hegemony-isbn9780415955447

Last reviewed: 9 April, 2008