Hegemonic Forms Research Articles

Women who pay their own brideprice: reimagining provider masculinity through Uganda's thriving wedding industry

AbstractIn Uganda, the ‘traditional’ wedding, wherein a groom brings money and gifts to his father‐in‐law's home, has long been understood as the ultimate demonstration of a man's social maturity. Yet masculine adulthood is becoming increasingly elusive as weddings become more difficult to afford. Widespread unemployment has rendered most young men unable to fund the rituals while weddings themselves have become exceptionally lavish: brideprice payments now include ‘cows’, or millions of Ugandan shillings, as well as furniture sets, refrigerators, televisions, and even cars. With wedding expenses surging and their fiancés out of work, women have begun ‘paying their own brideprice’, as Ugandans say, by contributing substantially to wedding costs. In this article, we explore this oft‐debated phenomenon. We propose that the emergence of women who pay their own brideprice has invited a broad reimagining of the gendered economic ideologies that tether men to money under the rubric of provider masculinity. That celebratory, seemingly innocuous events such as weddings occasion the questioning of hegemonic forms of masculinity is particularly notable in Uganda, where gender conservatism dominates public discourse. Beyond Uganda, our case suggests revisiting the normative as a potent site for observing gendered social change.

Agape and the Antichrist: Soteriological and Eschatological Masculinities in the Homilies of Wulfstan

ABSTRACT This article offers a focused analysis of the construction of masculinity as a byproduct of Wulfstan’s rhetoric in his Old English homilies. Wulfstan presents Christ and the Antichrist as the singular and physically embodied poles in a system of moral masculinity that is instrumental in shaping his representation of the wider Christian community. Wulfstan depicts the Antichrist as performing a seemingly attractive and powerful but ultimately hollow and fraudulent form of masculinity. This, in turn, means that the hegemonic form of masculinity practised by saints, disciples, and priests is atypically strongly characterised by watchfulness and vigilance as means of safeguarding against both deception and corruption.

Reimagining self-determination: Relational, decolonial, and intersectional perspectives

Self-determination language and practice are increasingly perplexing in the 21st century. Historically linked to decolonization processes and post-imperial transformations of the international system, self-determination has espoused both violent and non-violent resistance, and supported both existing and emergent sovereignty. With the Janus-faced relationship between self-determination and colonialism continuing to this day, the contemporary moment is an opportune time to take stock of self-determination. However, as conventional jurisprudence and international legalism framings have, in many ways, hampered its emancipatory potential, alternative ways of reimagining self-determination are needed. Bringing together scholars from the fields of political and development geography, indigenous studies, international relations, and sociology, this intervention demonstrates how articulations of self-determination in specific sites offer powerful critiques of the state system and the liberal world order and unsettle hegemonic forms of knowledge production. These articulations open up conceptual space to push self-determination beyond the realm of rights, allowing us to reimagine self-determination as a vision and practice, and to recover and reconceptualize the hopeful, emancipatory and aspirational politics that have always underpinned self-determination. This intervention seeks to re-envision self-determination from three novel and interlinked angles: decoloniality, intersectionality, and relationality. Drawing on a range of examples of contemporary and historical self-determination claims and contestations, each author focuses on one or more of these angles to examine the extent to which current practices of and visions for self-determination engender novel understandings of emancipation from ‘foreign’ domination and/or colonial systems of governance.

Hegemony Approach and Political Struggles over a New Political Order: The Case of Turkey

Abstract This paper proposes an analytical framework that employs a hegemony approach to political transformations, which bring about significant changes in the fundamental norms and values of a political community, as well as in the organizing principles of the social and economic system. The hegemony approach, drawing inspiration from the works of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, provides political theorists and social scientists with conceptual tools for analyzing struggles over political power. The paper argues that attempts at hegemonic formations, when extended to political transformations, involve articulations around social antagonisms, the construction of the people, establishment of political frontiers, and mobilization of the demands of excluded and oppressed groups. The Justice and Development Party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, serves as a unique case study to illustrate this approach.

On with critique! The necessity of critique in addressing the political deficits of responsible innovation

ABSTRACT This article responds to the calls to address the political deficits of RI frameworks and uptakes by taking recourse to approaches inspired by the methods and emancipatory ambitions of critical theory. By outlining the results of three existing studies, important and varying dimension of R(R)I’s political deficits are identified. Despite each study identifying different aspects of the political deficit, they all share a concern for the power relations implicit in RI frameworks and uptakes. Yet, what is lacking in the critical literature is an appreciation of the role of social norms, social relations, and social structures, which is vital to an analysis and criticism of power. This article encourages RI frameworks to engage with critical practices by addressing the role these factors play in creating, exercising, and perpetuating hegemonic forms of power with the aim of greater social emancipation.

“If I got it, she got it”: Black mothers' food provision and symbiotic mothering

AbstractObjectiveThis study advances contemporary theories of motherhood, mothering, and foodwork within the context of poverty by focusing on the ways that low‐income Black mothers engage interdependent culturally distinct mothering strategies in light of a porous social safety net.BackgroundContemporary standards for good parenting are increasingly resource‐based.As such, the intricate and tactical ways that low‐income Black mothers manage to make food ends meet with little means and few resources are often obscured in favor of hegemonic forms of mothering.MethodThis study draws on 44 in‐depth interviews with low‐income Black mothers and grandmothers to examine their survival strategies, focusing on food provision.ResultsFindings reveal that these mothers prioritize basic needs provision, such as food and feeding, and achieve this often difficult goal by engaging a cultural toolkit that we term symbiotic mothering. Symbiotic mothering is constructed and reinforced through the collective processes of maternal exchange, mutual aid and resource pooling, and the intergenerational and horizontal transmission of cultural knowledges, values, and practices.ConclusionsWhile there is a wealth of scholarship interrogating the ways Black women deviate from dominant mothering expectations, symbiotic mothering highlights the unique cultural skillsets these mothers actively engage to meet the everyday demands of mothering, particularly related to food provision.

Everyday forms of resistance in Istanbul day labourer areas: Comparative experiences of immigrant and local workers

AbstractPrecarity extends beyond economic and material conditions to shape people's identity, belonging and subjectivity. As a process, precarity has made instability a virtue by lifting the smokescreen that previously hid relations of production. Its institutional crystallization becomes concrete in state apparatuses and social relations. It targets both subjectivity and the life of the population as a whole. Therefore, it participates in everyday life as a hegemonic form of rule. This study focuses on the experiences of precarity, the production of subjectivity and the areas of conflict of local and migrant labourers in day‐labour hiring sites in Istanbul. Day‐labour sites are areas where precarity is normalized. In contrast, day labourers produce their own areas of autonomy in day‐labour sites. The loyalties of migrant and non‐migrant labourers to each other differ in day‐labour sites. Due to the production of certain oppositions through identities in labour areas, the relations of domination have certain invisibility. Nevertheless, the practices of day labourers in organizing their mutual relations intersect in these sites.

Protesting the Present/Choreographing the Future

This presentation considers two approaches utilized to contest and redress hegemonic forms of domination: constructing resistance and building relations. It assesses the strengths and limitations of each approach. Focusing specifically on examples from diverse dance practices, it argues that only by embracing multiple and diverse forms of political activism can we possibly choreograph our way through the catastrophic challenges that currently face us.

Many Masculinities: Reading Stories from Shedding the Metaphors by Nandini Sahu

This paper analyses some of the selected stories from Shedding the Metaphors and tries to show the different types of masculinities in the male characters influenced by many factors such as class, caste, age, nationality and identity. It is an attempt to read the selected stories in the light of ‘Many Masculinities’ which emphasizes that there are multiple ways to be masculine, challenging traditional norms and stereotypes that limit masculinity to certain traits or behaviours. This acknowledges the existence of various masculinities, ranging from dominant or hegemonic forms of masculinity associated with power and privilege to marginalized or subordinated masculinities that may face discrimination and social pressures. R. W. Connell provided a useful theoretical account of gender in her book Masculinities which has become a classic work on the nature and construction of masculine identity. Connell argues that there is not one masculinity, but many different masculinities, each associated with different positions of power.
 This paper recognizes the importance of deconstructing and challenging notions of masculinity, promoting and accepting the diverse expressions of gender identity for all individuals. In the present chapter, seven out of twelve stories have been selected from Nandini Sahu’s Shedding the Metaphors, and by reading the selected stories in a new way, a critical analysis has been conducted on various types of masculinity and it tries to show how its form is changing nowadays.

Undoing the boundaries of heteronormative masculinity. Transnational experiences of Senegalese MSM living in Italy

ABSTRACT The article focuses on the transnational trajectories of Senegalese MSM (men having sex with other men) living in northern Italy. It highlights how these individuals creatively adapt or challenge their masculinity and sexuality, taking into consideration the dominant gender norms prevailing in both Senegal and Italy. In Senegal, homoerotic practices are officially condemned, while in Italy they are frequently the source of overlapping discriminations. By looking at the experiences of Senegalese MSM, the article looks at how concrete and symbolic borders may be built and contested, but also how transnational trajectories actively contribute to challenging the hegemonic forms of masculinity in many aspects of everyday life.

Queering Jihad in South Africa: Islam, Queerness, and Liberative Praxis

This essay examines the theology and politics of queer Muslims in South Africa. Through a queering of the analytical lens of “struggle and praxis” or jihad, this essay traces the deployment of the term jihad by a collective of queer Muslims in Cape Town. In this articulation, queer Muslims play with their inherited traditions of liberation, challenging its presuppositions, and expanding its contours. This essay argues that these queer Muslims read liberation traditions through their experience and praxis which guide their orientations toward theological meaning-making and community practice. By doing so, they challenge the regulatory nature of hegemonic forms of queerness, which emerged in the Global North, resonating in the local posturing of South Africa as a safe space for queer people, ignoring the disparity between the law and public practice, and erasing the experiences of the margins of the queer community. By embracing this marginality, queer Muslims “reimagine” tradition by presenting an inclusive alternative theology and praxis, suggesting a queer possibility within Islam.

Parallel vaccine discourses in Guinea: ‘grounding’ social listening for a non-hegemonic global health

ABSTRACT Misinformation has been identified as a major threat to public confidence in vaccines, particularly during epidemics. As a response, social listening has become a popular and heuristic public health tool for detecting misinformation and adapting vaccine communication. In this article, we take a critical stance on the normalised approach to social listening which solely relies on the analysis of online discourses. We highlight that the current social listening paradigm inherited a reductionist and utilitarian approach from commercial marketing that struggles to grasp – and even misrepresents – the complexity of health-related perceptions and knowledge. This study draws from online COVID-19 vaccines discourses in Guinea and ethnographic fieldwork among Guinean healthcare workers. While the online social listening showcased a predominance of individual and collective safety concerns, distrust towards African elites and Western actors, fieldwork revealed that healthcare workers’ vaccine perceptions were more nuanced and largely shaped by complex kinship relations spanning across online and offline social landscapes. Furthermore, healthcare workers often displayed frontstage and backstage vaccine discourses, their vaccines related representations and claims could evolve depending on the context of enunciation. We advocate for grounding social listening in global health to avoid disconnection from the public. Failure to accomplish this could result in a detached and hegemonic form of ‘social hearing’, rather than authentic social listening. In light of this, the transdisciplinary methodology exemplified in this paper represents one possible solution.

Between Mezhep and Minority: Twelver Shiʿism in the Turkish Public Sphere

AbstractDespite the growth in scholarship on diverse religious communities in Turkey, little attention has been paid to Twelver Shiʿi Muslims. Since the founding of the Republic, the Turkish state's foundational secularist agenda has attempted to control and promote a single hegemonic form of Islam, and Shiʿa have faced continuous issues practicing their faith in public as a result. While the liberalization of the past three decades has allowed Shiʿism to enter the public sphere, the community has had to continue navigating limitations on their expression of religious difference. Based on fieldwork in Eastern Anatolia, this article deepens understandings of Islam in Turkey by showing how Shiʿa have negotiated their position vis-à-vis both secularist and Sunni-majority actors and policies across various religious and political currents. Rejecting categorization as either mezhep (sect) or minority, Shiʿa have demanded independence from state religious control while also asserting their allegiance to the Republic and nation as Turkish Muslims.

Disability in Hindu Mythology: A Reflection

The disabled person has been used as a metaphor for cultural narratives of "lack," "tragedy," and "awed" in hegemonic forms of cultural output. The goal of the current research was to examine how Hindu mythology portrayed people with disabilities. The illustrative tales of Dhritarstra, Gndhr, Manthar, and Astavakra were found to be useful for understanding how people with impairments are portrayed in Hindu mythology. The works chosen for the research included various retellings of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. This essay aims to uncover the karmic view of disability by analysing a few Hindu tales from ancient India. Given the confluence of disability, culture, and marginalization, the consequences of comprehending such conceptions of societal hostility towards people with disabilities were addressed.

Hegemoni Kekuasaan dalam Novel Kawi Matin di Negeri Anjing Karya Arafat Nur

In this study, a novel Kawi Matin di Negeri Anjing by Arafat Nur is discussed. This study aims to describe the structure of the novel and the hegemony of the ruling class’s that found in the novel Kawi Matin di Negeri Anjing. The theory that been used is structural theory to analyze the plot, characters, and setting. The theory of hegemony of the ruling class is used to analyze hegemonic forms and the process of hegemony. The method that used to collect data is literature study with reading, listening, and note-taking techniques. Then, to analyze the data used descriptive analytical method by describing the result of data analysis that has been done. Structurally, the plot of novel Kawi Matin di Negeri Anjing contains the initial, middle, and final stages. The setting of place, time, and social support the formation of characters and the course of the story. The elements of plot, characters, and settings are having a relation that is interrelated with each other. The interrelation between these elements represents the hegemony of ruling class. Hegemony of ruling class contained in this novel is divided into three processes, such as cause, implementation, and effect. These three processes are found in the events that occur, such as rape, violence, murder, and sedition.

Cultural memory, white innocence, and United States territory: the 2022 Urban Geography plenary lecture

ABSTRACT In this paper, I explore how hegemonic forms of cultural memory in the United States, specifically, National Historic Landmarks, represent white supremacy and colonization. National Historic Landmarks are a particular form of commemoration that, according to the National Park Service, “represent an outstanding aspect of American history and culture and embod[y] national significance.” We examined how such sites represent white supremacy and colonization, based on the nomination materials as well as fieldwork, especially in terms of territorial development. Through our analysis, we identified four primary forms of representation: erasure, valorization, multiculturalism, and acknowledgement. Erasure, valorization, and acknowledgement all constitute denial, albeit in distinct ways. Altogether, over 90% of all National Historic Landmarks denied white supremacy and colonization. I argue that such monumental denial is essential to reproducing white innocence; acknowledging the racial violence embedded in the territorial development of the United States would constitute a crisis for the white nation.

The Break between Old and New Orders in Laclau’s Theory of Hegemony

Drawing inspiration from Alain Badiou’s philosophical project of thinking radical change and novelty, this paper raises the question of whether Ernesto Laclau’s theory of hegemony provides an adequate conceptualization of social change. Laclau claims that the transition between old and new hegemonic formations constitutes a “radical break.” However, it shall be shown that Laclau’s claim apropos radical break is in tension with his elaboration of the conditions under which a particularity – including particular political projects or social orders – may become hegemonic. As a result, how a process of transformation is to be conceptually distinguished from a process of reproduction is left unclear within the hegemony theory.

Language and Racial Capitalism: Linguistic Anthropological Approaches to Minoritized Labor, Standard Language, and Racial Bias

AbstractThis article examines racial capitalism from a semiotic perspective, arguing that economic value, like language and race, can be described in situated and indexical terms. I attempt to show how raciolinguistic bias in and around the workplace is linked to a larger labor market in which minoritized labor is reproduced in a systemic way, and to explore hegemonic formations of racialization in the workplace and beyond. The jumping‐off point for much of my argument is the work of the historian and political theorist Cedric Robinson.

A relational approach to the role of the state in societal transitions and transformations towards sustainability

The important role of the state in societal transitions and transformations towards sustainability has long been acknowledged. Yet, existing theoretical frameworks in the field remain only partially capable of providing the necessary analytical support to study this. In response, this article proposes a relational approach to the role of state power in societal transitions based on the strategic-relational approach to state theory as developed by Bob Jessop. The resulting analytical framework is built around six mutually intertwined dimensions of the state: forms of representation, internal organisation, forms of intervention, social basis, state projects, and hegemonic formation. The article relates each of these to recent issues and research within energy and transitions scholarship and specifies how the framework can be used in empirical studies. Through this approach a sophisticated conception of the state is provided, moving beyond understanding it in purely institutional terms or as a singular, unitary, or monolithic actor.

Marielle’s seeds: Contesting the emotional life of corruption talk in Bolsonaro’s Brazil

In this paper, we argue the emotional life of corruption narratives underwrite the rise of the extreme Right in Brazil. Further, we argue that the talk of corruption is pervasive, polysemic, contested, racialized and emotional. It is deeply entwined with social struggles over the form, content and ends of political life. Drawing on this perspective, we analyze discourses of corruption in the wake of a seismic corruption scandal, Operation Lava Jato. We identify two competing narratives of corruption. The hegemonic form uses emotions to create political enemies, promote anti-Black punitivism and uphold social hierarchies. In contrast, a counternarrative of corruption rooted in Black feminist epistemology centers racialized spatial inequality as Brazil’s central challenge and offers pathways to reclaim political life from punitive neoliberalism. We contribute by specifying how the emotional life of corruption talk helps build support for Jair Bolsonaro’s cross-class project of revanchist populism. Ultimately, we argue that the Right has successfully mobilized corruption talk in the service of necropolitics.