Hegemonic Project Research Articles

The new right in the new Europe? Unravelling the ideology of ’ Czech Thatcherism’

The remarkable success of Václav Klaus and the ‘Thatcherite’ right in the Czech Republic was an exception in post‐communist Eastern Europe. Explanations for its success have usually focused on policy performance, fixed historical legacies or generalized understandings of post‐communism, but have largely ignored the role of ideology. However, despite differences of context, ‘Czech Thatcherism’, like its British precursor, can be seen in Gramscian terms as an innovative, populist right‐wing ideology linked to a hegemonic project of social transformation. This article traces the importation of Anglo‐American neo‐liberal and conservative ideas by intellectual counter‐elites under the communist regime. It then examines the ‘revolutionary conservatism’ formulated by the Czech Right after 1989, focusing on its discourse of post‐communist transformation and attempts to ground imported New Right ideas in the Czech context. Finally, the article considers the ideological tensions within ‘Czech Thatcherism’ and discusses alternative Czech readings of conservatism.

Num espelho de mulher: cegueira normativa e questões de direitos humanos não resolvidas

Resumo Este artigo examina as restrições que regem as declarações de direitos humanos, reconhecendo os principais avanços conceituais ao mesmo tempo em que dirige a atenção para questões não resolvidas, que são culturais na sua maioria. A cegueira normativa refere-se a questões de realce relativas a mutilações sexuais e de outra natureza, testes de armas, ou controle de armas como é visto das margens. Um reconhecimento dos abusos de direitos humanos resultantes do comercialismo global é crucial para um movimento de direitos humanos não-hegemônico enquanto a comparação exige que nos tornemos mais autoconscientes do papel do ativismo de direitos humanos euro-americano como projeto hegemônico. Um salto à frente requer uma filosofia de direitos humanos de calibre maior na qual nenhum lugar ou país ou empresa esteja isento.

Soulless Cities: Ann Arbor, the Cutting Edge of Discipline: Postfordism, Postmodernism, and the New Bourgeoisie

Ann Arbor, Michigan's success as a postindustrial city reflects the massive shift toward knowledge‐based economies and the ascendancy of a new bourgeoisie class of corporate and university knowledge brokers. Aside from high‐tech commodities, however, the city and its attendant “aristocracy of innovators” must also produce the cultural narratives to legitimize and rationalize a new capitalism. This article explores how Ann Arbor's elite creates new stories that both inscribe the physical and social landscape with their triumph and act as weapons in the ongoing struggle to solidify a hegemonic project.

Re‐membering the European citizen: The social construction of collective memory in Weimar

Collective re‐membering is examined in the context of the production of Weimar as European city of Culture. Weimar, cradle of German culture, and location of the prototype concentration camp, is formulated as a site of antagonism. The relationship between a walking/talking tour of the city and remembering is discussed with reference to Freud and Wittgenstein. Re‐membering is considered as suturing, and as ideological interpellation, hegemonic practices which are deployed in the context of walking in the city. The subject interpellated in Weimar, European city of Culture, is the blasé cosmopolitan (Simmel) and the flâneur (Benjamin) a subject capable of living with irreconcilable antagonism; an ideal type citizen that would be the keystone of European unity. Limitations of this hegemonic project are considered in light of the conditions of post‐modernity.

Through the looking glass, darkly: the Neoliberal Hegemonic project viewed from the perspective of pluralist labour relations in the Southern Cone

This paper argues that the authoritarian experiments of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s dramatically lowered the material and ideological thresholds of subordinate group consent to present-day dominant class hegemonic projects. By using severe economic and physical oppression to reduce the material and political expectations of lower and working class groups, the departed authoritarian regimes not only promoted subordinate group disarticulation and atomisation: they essentially swept the economic and political landscape clean of militantly counter-hegemonic subordinate group strategies while simultaneously reforging coalitions of new entrepreneurial elites dedicated to fundamentally reordering the composition and character of their national economies.1

Hegemony and Political Discourse: The Lasting Impact of Thatcherism

In his account of Thatcherism as a hegemonic project, Stuart Hall points out that discourse theory provides insight both into the ways in which Thatcherism was constructed as a discourse from a combination of disparate ideological strands and into the ways in which this discourse was engaged in a hegemonic project. However, discourse analysis has rarely been applied in empirical study of the spread of the ideas and values of Thatcherism. The findings of attitude surveys indicate the failure of Thatcherism to produce radical social and cultural change. This paper presents textually oriented discourse analysis as an alternative way of understanding the spread of Thatcherism to that of attitude surveys. Research applying the approach demonstrates the continuing use of elements of Thatcherite discourse across the Conservative party and Labour party and hence the lasting impact of Thatcherism in spite of its failure to become hegemonic.

Schooling, Work and Subjectivity

Most analyses of resistance, subjectivity, and identity formation have been developed out of research on predominantly ‘western’ industrialized nations. This research has been full of insight, but it has limited our understanding of the importance of historical specificity, of conjunclural relations, and of the ways class, gender, and race/ethnic histories and experiences take on specific meanings in different contexts. By focusing on one of these ‘different contexts‘—South Korea and its recent moves to institute career education and to have more students identify as manual workers—we wish to show how such specificities work to produce particular forms of resistance, subjectivity, and identity. In the Republic of Korea (South Korea), the dominant faction of the power bloc has tried to reconstitute work subjectivity through education as part of its ongoing hegemonic project. This has been done in order to deal with economic stagnation and to recover the bloc's political and ideological power which was seriously weakened by the democratic and labor movements of the 1980s. This paper examines the ways in which administrators, teachers, and students in Korean commercial high schools responded to the policies and work subjectivities that were newly articulated by the dominant group. Data used in this paper were gathered in an ethnographic study of two commercial high schools in Korea. The paper combines perspectives from both structural and poststructural theories to explore the complexities of these responses.

Berliner Wagenburgen: Transformation peripherer Räume, Stigmatisierung sozialer Gruppen und die Abwehr von Marginalisierung

This article focuses on the transformation of peripheral spaces in Berlin and the stigmatization of collective living arrangements within this process. The marginalization of the Berlin inner-city laagers (Wagenburgen) and the strategies and tactics they employ to confront this hegemonic project shed a light upon the complex set of relations between spaces, identities and resistance in the process of urbanization. A second topic is the formation of NIMBYism in Berlin in the process of suburbanization. The tensions arising between the inner-city and suburbanites articulate a new set of conflicts in Berlin politics. Regulating inner-city contradictions on the suburban fringe is history. The conflict concerning the (relocation of) laagers serves as just one example - but the most advanced for the time being.

The Global Economy and Democracy: The Tuna-Dolphin Controversy Revisited

The paper investigates the limits and possibilities of democracy in the context of the globalization of the economy and society. Employing the case of the tuna-dolphin controversy, it is argued that though democratic spaces are available, the boundaries of discourses on democracy are shrinking. The movement which was able to establish legislation and procedures which prevented corporate exploitation of the environment is now divided, and existing pro-environment legislation is under attack. Indeed, TNCs have been able to establish a hegemonic project which drew support from segments of the environmental and labor movements. The paper reviews recent events which testify to the erosion of pro-environmental discourses and the shifting of alliances and solidarities around pro-TNC projects. The paper concludes with an analysis of the implications that these recent events have in regard to democracy in contemporary global capitalism. In particular, it is maintained that despite the powerful position of TNCs, they are still subject to contradictions and vulnerabilities which can be exploited by alternative movements.

Spatial Selectivity of the State? The Regulationist Enigma and Local Struggles over Economic Governance

In this paper I assess the value of regulation theory for studying transformations in governance at the local level, focusing on the issue of local economic development. Adopting a third-generation approach, regulation theory is recognised as having varied success at theorising local governance. More advanced third-generation approaches offer some useful concepts that require integration through mid-level concepts. This is to be contrasted to approaches which ‘read off’ local transformation from broader macroeconomic change. Both approaches are, however, trapped in the regulationist enigma, defined in the paper as the difficulty of employing regulation theory to theorise local transformations in local governance. In order to solve the enigma, I utilise concepts from Jessop's strategic-relational state theory. This approach stresses, amongst other things, the political nature of state intervention. Jessop's approach is, however, not sufficiently sensitive to space and I introduce the notion of spatial selectivity to understand adequately the dynamics of local change. Spatial selectivity implies that the state has a tendency to privilege certain places through accumulation strategies, state projects, and hegemonic projects. The process of geographical privileging, which is implied by the notion of spatial selectivity, takes on both material and ideological forms. This tentative concept is explored through a reworking of theoretical approaches to Thatcherism. I conclude by highlighting issues that spatial selectivity needs to address, namely uneven development and structure—strategy—agency dialectics.

The Emergence of the Disciplinary Welfare Sanction in Hong Kong

This article rejects the contention of liberal writers that the historical development of juvenile justice has been a story of continual reform reflecting the struggle between the principles of justice, welfare and punishment. Instead it presents a revisionist history of the Hong Kong juvenile justice system from a strategic‐relational perspective. The juvenile court is conceptualised as an institutional network of power relations, struggling to formulate policies and programmes to regulate the behaviour of delinquent youth. Out of these struggles a strategic policy direction evolves, not through the work of any one individual or class faction, but as part of a wider hegemonic campaign. This argument is elaborated through an historical account of the emergence of the disciplinary welfare sanction in Hong Kong at the end of the 1970s, and its consolidation in the 1980s and 1990s. This new approach was hailed as a more progressive way of managing the juvenile crime problem. However in reality it provided a more covert and discerning way of disciplining working class delinquents, which matched the hegemonic project of the liberal‐consultative state in other sites of power.

The discursive tactics of neoliberal development in small Third World countries

This paper draws from the regulation approach and from discourse analysis to contextualize and evaluate current trends in the industrial development policies of small Third World countries. The investment promotion guidebooks of eight economically-weak states of the Caribbean Basin and littoral Africa provide evidence for the construction of Third World mediascapes. Through promises of a pro-investor climate, images of scientific production, and avoidance of the reality of social discontent, the guidebooks signal that the country is a signatory to the neoliberal world order and is ripe for investment in export-oriented manufacturing. The guidebooks demonstrate considerable homogeneity regarding discursive tactics, messages, and promises to capital. The typical advertising package combines three themes: neoliberal and contextual depiction (pledges of subsidies, an open economy, and cheap and unorganized labour; tropical paradise and friendly natives), science fiction (dreams of high technology, telecommunications, and informatics), and strategic omission (exclusion of strife, resistance, hardship, and societal degradation). The homogeneity of incentives causes the generous incentive packages across the Third World to cancel each other out, thereby raising the stakes necessary to lure fastidious investors. Homogenization through mediascapes is not total, however. The invitations to international capital are trapped by local context. Investors discover either through the guidebooks or on site that local history and struggle preclude an unproblematic absorption and implementation of the neoliberal hegemonic project.

Deconstructing Apartheid Discourse

Within the movement towards a post-apartheid society in South Africa, questions concerning the nature of apartheid and the identities it fostered are inevitably raised. This book addresses these issues by revealing both their historical specificity and the implications for the full development of a democratic post-apartheid order. The analysis covers the institution of apartheid as a new form of social division, the transformationist project which characterized it during the 1970s and 1980s, and the disarticulation of that project from the mid-1980s to the present. Central to this analysis is the contention that apartheid, as a failed hegemonic project, can only be understood in its full complexity if attention is given to the specificity of the mode of social division it instituted. The book thus seeks to trace the construction and contestation of the central axes around which its political frontiers were organized. Drawing on a combination of post-Marxist and post-structuralist theorizations of social division and identity formation, the book develops an account of apartheid discourse which avoids the twin pitfalls of essentialism and objectivism.

Health system reforms—Toward a framework for international comparisons

Health care reform efforts internationally are focused more on efficiency than on effectiveness or equity. We lack a coherent theoretical framework for understanding those reforms or for engaging in comparative research. This paper presents some theoretical ideas that could contribute to such a framework. A model constructed from expert opinion suggests that hegemonic systems, national systems and medical care systems all contribute, with specific elements identified in each. Three sociological ideas are suggested: a model of trends leading to a fiscal crisis and a crisis and a crisis of alienation; communities, professions and markets as ideal typical organizational alternatives; global post-Fordist and world systems theories; and hegemonic projects. Together these could explain the timing, speed and direction of health care reform efforts throughout the world.

Contesting Colonial Hegemony: State and Society in Africa and India

Introduction - hegemony in a colonial context, Dagmar Engels and Shula Marks. Part 1 State and society: on the construction of colonial power - structure, discourse, hegemony, Sudipta Kaviraj the organization of in British West Africa, 1820s to 1960s, William Gervase Clarence-Smith was there a hegemonic project of the colonial state?, Partha Chatterjee. Part 2 Western education: mode of knowledge, modes of power - universities in 19th-century India, Dagmar Engels at home with hegemony? coercion and consent in the education of African girls for domesticity in South Africa before 1910, Deborah Gaitskell. Part 3 Public health: public health and public power - medicine and hegemony in colonial India, David Arnold managing midwifery in India, Geraldine Forbes health and hegemony - representation of disease and the creation of the colonial subject in Nyasaland, Megan Vaughan the power to heal - African auxiliaries in colonial Belgian Congo and Uganda, Maryinez Lyons. Part 4 Policing and the law: law, lawyers and politics in Ghana in the 1940s, Richard Rathbone policing the settler state - colonial hegemony in Kenya, 1900-1952. Part 5 Relections on hegemony in India and Africa: dominance, hegemony and the colonial state - the Indian and African experiences, Tapan Raychaudhuri hegemony and historical practice, Sumit Sarkar.

The Internationalization of the German Political Economy: Evolution of a Hegemonic Project

List of Tables, Figures and Maps - List of Foreign Terms and Abbreviations - Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction W.D.Graf - Internationalization and Exoneration: Social Functions of the Transnationalizing West German Political Economy in the Postwar Era W.D.Graf - Change and Internationalization in Industry: Toward a Sectoral Interpretation of West German Politics C.Deubner - The Federal Republic and the New International Division of Labour: Crucial Developments in the Seventies G.Simonis - Internationalization and the Reorganization of Production and Marketing in the Volkswagen Corporation R.Doleschal - The Integration of the West German Textile and Clothing Industry into the New International Division of Labour S.Raasche & P.Wahnschaffe - German-French Economic Relations within the International Division of Labour: Interdependence, Divergence or Structural Dominance? C.Deubner, U.Rehfeld & F.Schlupp - Towards the New Germany: The Logic of Rapid Unification and the Social Experiment of Radical Marketization in the GDR A.Pickel - The Transformation of the East German Economy: The Visions of the German Parties and Governments: And the Reality J.Roesler - The 'New' Germany and the Third World: Aspects of a Changing Relationship B.H.Schultz - External Dimensions of an Alternative Economic Policy K-G.Zinn - Gross-Deutschland in Europe: Planned or Unplanned Effects of the German Anschluss on Hegemonic Leadership in the European Community T.O.Hueglin - World Market Strategy and World-Power Politics: German Europeanization and Globalization Projects in the 1990's F.Schlupp - Index

The Gendered Nature of Managerial Discourse: the Case of a Local Authority

This paper is a response to organizational analysis which highlights the significance of discursive processes in the formation of occupational gender identity. A recurrent weakness in many of these accounts is their focus on the simple dualisms which structure gendered discourse. This tendency is often associated with the abstraction of debate from specific organizational settings. I aim therefore to address the question of the gendered nature of managerial discourse with reference to a case study of a local authority under restructuring. I argue here that the gendered nature of managerial discourse has to be seen as particularly complex, given the way in which it incorporates both ‘feminine’ and ‘masculine’ identities within an overarching managerial ethos, which is itself related to wider hegemonic projects.

Hegemonic trips: World trade, intellectual property and biodiversity

The attempt to establish uniform global intellectual property rights over living material is a hegemonic project driven by the biotechnology industry with its complex articulations of molecular biology, agro‐chemical transnational corporations and state intervention. Hegemony needs to be understood through a blend of Gramscian and regime theory as a contingent construction of particular interests into an apparently universal good. The GATT has provided a fertile terrain for the hegemonic ambitions of the biotechnology industry, even though intellectual property has been a recent import into the world trade talks.

The new politics of exclusion: Antecedents to the rebellion in Mexico

Thatcherism's search for “the enemies within”; its operations across the different lines of division and identification in social life...its rooting of itself inside a particularly narrow, ethnocentric and exclusivist conception of ‘national identity’; and its constant attempts to expel symbolically one sector of society after another from the imaginary community of the nation-these are as central to Thatcherism's hegemonic project as the privatization programme or the assault on local democracy...

The Three Faces of Privatisation

Starting from the premise that social policies represent solutions to socially constructed problems (Edelman 1987), this article presents an adaptation of Lukes's (1974) theory of power to consider three interpretations of privatisation as illustrated in Britain and the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s. Privatisation is most frequently presented in political and academic discourse as essentially a matter of contracting out public services or functions and selling off state assets. This `first face' of privatisation coincides with a naive pluralist approach to power and a liberal capitalist vision of society. While this view has some justification within a very narrow frame of reference, a `second face' of privatisation is necessary to bring attention to crucially related aspects of exercises of power, such as corruption, homelessness and social inequality, which may be products of contracting out and sell-offs. Additionally, a second face view of privatisation highlights the privatising effects of certain policies which are ignored, obscured or hidden by the first face view. An analysis of public sector expenditure cuts as a process of privatisation is crucial in this regard. Finally, a `third face' of privatisation, as a hegemonic project, is raised. Here, privatisation is viewed as having a cultural and political mission, aiming to alter consciousness and effect changes in power relationships. The hegemonic capacity of privatisation is considered through an examination of ideological constructions such as the binary divide between private and public spheres and a sociobiological rationale for policy.