Abstract

The concept of hegemony has been a mainstay in academic discourse since Greek writers coined the term during the conflicts between city states in ancient times. However, it was not until Antonio Gramsci produced his unfinished, seminal work, the Prison Notebooks, that the concept became a topic of intense discussion in the political sphere. Hegemony has been applied to the international global system relatively unchanged from Gramsci's social application of the concept. Whilst the underlying principles of Gramsci's conception can be applied in international relations without issue, some aspects are not so forthcoming. It is the intention of this paper to attempt to fill the void in international relations theory and provide a succinct and robust re-conception of Hegemony, how to attain it and maintain it. There will be no reinvention of the wheel; Hegemony will still mean dominance over all. Only now there will be a specific conception that can be applied to the current globalized liberal system. The Four Waves of Hegemony are presented here as an alternative to the current conception. Whilst there are inherent limitations mainly being the scope and size of the work presented, these are addressed and signposted for further research.

Highlights

  • The current conception of hegemony used in international relations and security studies lacks sufficient depth and specificity and does not adequately account for the current global Hegemony of the United States of America

  • This viewpoint has been echoed in work around linguistic imperialism (Al Hosni, 2015) which argues that English, welcomed to begin with, becomes the dominant language, whilst any indigenous tongues are relegated to linguistic ghettos (Al Hosni, 2015)

  • Whilst it is acknowledged that globalization is a process, or concept depending on your perspective, that has been happening in its current guise since the Colombian exchange in the 17th century, this contemporary acceleration and intensification has been hijacked and subsequently steered in a specific direction by the imperial apparatus of the United States of America

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Summary

Introduction

When the referent shifts from the state to societal security, as proposed by Buzan, hegemony in this conception creates massive societal insecurity This in line with Galtung’s work on structural violence that highlights that there never had been peace, but just more subtle forms of tolerated conflict in the form of breaches of civil rights and decimation of the environment for capital gain, which all feed into the imperial wave of hegemony in international relations (Galtung, 1969). Upper case Hegemony will mean the domination of the global system, the projection of power and unilateral use of force, but the active implementation of policy, procedures, and behaviors that promote and reproduce the necessary structures and ideologies that guarantee and maintain Hegemony (Chomsky, 2004, 2013) This will explicitly be used in this way in reference to the theory being presented. It will be the contention of the author in this paper that current conceptions do not adequately provide a holistic view of hegemony for international relations

The Four Waves of hegemony
Hegemony in security studies
Critical realism and Antonio Gramsci
Conclusion

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