Hegemonic Theory Research Articles

From the Editor

F r o m th e E d it o r As a twenty-eight-year-old assistant professor, I attended my first WLA meeting in 1980 in St. Louis. Helen Stauffer organized the con­ ference, and anyone who knows Helen can well imagine how warmly she welcomed me. The next year Helen and Sue Rosowski accepted for their collection on western women writers my first WLA essay (on Eudora Welty as western writer—what can I say?— I’d just spent five years at the University of Virginia). It was only my second published essay, and they were overgenerous in their praise. They were the first of a host of strong-voiced, warm-hearted, and successful scholarly women WLA offered me—Ann Ronald, who has inspired and sup­ ported me in innumerable ways; Diane Quantic; Lou Rodenberger; Barbara Meldrum; and Dorys Grover— women who gave me a sense of my professional possibilities. But it wasn’t just the women. When I mentioned that my library didn’t have his book, Art Huseboe gave me a copy. When I arrived at the Boise airport for my second WLA conference, Jim Maguire, that year’s president, was there to meet me and drive me to my hotel! The next year Tom Lyon, WAL’s editor, accepted my essay on Mari Sandoz and violence against women, the most outspoken feminist essay I had yet written. John Milton and Mark Busby published later work, while Steve Tatum, Bill Bloodworth, and Forrest Robinson wrote me many letters of recommendation. WLA members stimulated my writing. Sitting in my study in New Hampshire, I imagined faces at WLA meetings. Sometimes I heard laughter. In 1987, I was awarded my greatest honor, the “Willa Pilla Award,” which, old-timers will remember, we used to give annually for the “funniest essay” presented at the conference. (The Executive Council voted at the 1997 meeting to resurrect this award— and the 196 Western American Literature pilla has been found!) My talk was called “Something Offensive for Everyone,” and the title is revealing. Like my tall-tale-telling western grandfather, who wanted to name me “Rebel,” WLA encouraged me to take risks, to try on different voices, to be rambunctious, to be loud rather than ladylike. I’m grateful to WLA for reminding me not to take myself or my work too seriously, for providing a place where I have always felt I could say anything I wanted. While WLA programs occa­ sionally seem to espouse a “separate but equal” gender doctrine, with “male writers,” “female writers,” “cowboys,” and “Willa Cather” pan­ els, there has been considerable support for feminist approaches and, perhaps more importantly, for outspokenness. I’m not saying there haven’t been squirmishes. I well remember talking through tears in front of one hundred people in an after-film discussion of “High Plains Drifter” when someone had responded to my objections to the opening rape scene with a “Jeez, it’s only a film!” But I also remem­ ber three WLA men going out of their way to tell me immediately afterward that they were glad I was there to say such things. I embody WLA’s long tradition of acceptance of and support for younger scholars. (Now I hope I can reap the benefits of WLA’s equally long tradition of respecting the contributions of old-timers.) The amazing growth of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment certainly stems from the energy of its founders, but WLA provided a sustaining seedbed and the support of estab­ lished WLA eco-scholars like Glen Love, Tom Lyon, Michael Cohen, Ann Ronald, and SueEllen Campbell. More graduate students attend the WLA conference every year; they find it a welcoming and un­ pretentious place, a place where they can unite their private voices and public lives—to borrow a phrase from Nancy Owens Nelson— where they can blend scholarship and politics. They bring vitality, diversity, and sophistication to the field of western studies, and I wel­ come their voices. Burdened with the pressures of job markets and tenure and trying to make sense of the latest hegemonic theory, grad students and the rest of us need support...

Hegemonic Decline, West European Unification, and the Future Structure of the Core

This paper queries the applicability of hegemonic cycle theories to the emerging structure in the core of the world political economy and argues that we are likely, following this period of relative decline in American hegemony, to witness the emergence of hegemonic social practices in the absence, however, of a hegemonic state. Contrasting new beginnings with past patterns, we will suggest arguments why history will not be repeated. Drawing on our research on the Single European Act (SEA), we argue that the bargain struck between the Commission of the European Union and West European transnational corporations, which culminated in the SEA, represents more than a decisive step towards economic and political union. We see it, more significantly, as embodying Europe's response to its declining position through an attempt to articulate a new societal model capable of successfully replacing the disarticulated post-WWII Keynesian social-welfare model, and of competing with the Japanese and American societal models. In the future, it is very unlikely that power among the actors in the Triad will be so unevenly distributed as to permit the rise of a new hegemonic state. While it would seem, judging from historical experience, that the presence of a hegemonic state was functionally necessary for the establishment of hegemonic social practices in the core, we argue that another mechanism has now moved to the forefront. Due to pressures generated through increasing economic globalization, linked to demands associated with the quest for legitimacy on the part of democratic governments, we foresee, following a period of increased economic competition, the convergence of social practices around a single societal model.

Dynamic Growth or Pauperization? Small-Scale Industries in Hambantota District, Sri Lanka

Hegemonic theories of Third World regional development maintain that growth in rural small-scale industries can originate in growth linkages from modernized agriculture or in entrepreneurship devel...

Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland by J. Sugden and A. Bairner

There is, then, an ambivalence at the heart of this small but powerful book. An economic analysis, Kennedy’s argument is nonetheless driven by political, not to say moral, imperatives. In ways, Facing the Unemployment Crisis is discouraging because it rightly admits of no ready economic solution. But proposing a political approach offers tangible possibilities, including a clearer collective conscience because something is being done. The mobilization of public opinion would salve the social and economic dualism which long term unemployment threatens to succor. Kennedy’s real concern, underlying the economic discussion, is a broader indictment of Irish society’s urge to avoid facing unpleasent issues be they unemployment , emigration, poverty, abortion, or even Northern Ireland. The usual excuse for such passivity is a claim that they are unsoluable problems. As Kennedy’s title suggests, the real key to finding solutions to social and economic issues is to face them. In the Irish context, that might be revolution enough. One may not find perfect solutions, but the effort in itself promises a form of salvation. —Eamon McKee Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland, by J. Sugden and A. Bairner, pp. 151, Leicester, England: Leicester University Press, 1993, $69.00. A title in the “Sport, Politics and Culture” series published by Leicester University Press, this book explores a much-ignored facet of life in Northern Ireland— that of sport and leisure. While addressing the domestic “political sociology of sport,” Sport, Sectarianism and Society in a Divided Ireland contributes to the growing body of literature in comparative physical education and sport. While not native to Northern Ireland, the authors, John Sugden and Alan Bairner, both lecture at the University of Ulster at Jordanstown and draw from their experience of living, working and playing in the North for over ten years. Their effort is directed primarily for the many members of the Northern Ireland sports community; a reader unfamiliar with the area’s locales and subgroups will suffer initially while getting the terminology sorted out. A section with definitions of the “players”—Nationalist, Unionist, Loyalist, Republican—in this otherwise well-conceived book, would have been helpful. The rst chapter discusses the confrontational nature of modern sport and how this leads to potential political and economic interference as ``the locus of control for defining the context and limits of competition moves progressively away from the athlete towards interests operating outside of the sport . . .” (9). The authors then explore the relationship between sport and national identity, both globally and in the province. They succinctly discuss the social contexts of sport, with contributing factors of sectarianism, ethnic and national identification and social class, as well as civil society and hegemonic theories proposed by Antonio Gramsci. BOOK REVIEWS 171 The chapter concludes by contrasting the dichotomous population’s customs, traditions and symbols. Other chapters portray “Gaelic Games and Irish Politics,” “British Sports and Irish Identity” and ``World Sport in an Irish Setting.” Each provides a unique portrait of the myriad of games and sports that have been national pastimes or are imported physical activities. Extensive citations develop the historical backgrounds of sport in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. Britain can be cited for linking sport with nationalism and introducing rugby, cricket, and field hockey to its colonies. The Irish can boast of their promotion of indigenous games such as hurling , handball, and Gaelic football. The latter have been actively sponsored by the Gaelic Athletic Association since its inception in 1884, and the group continues to provide a strong administrative power base throughout the island. The G.A.A. has been inexorably bound to religious, political and cultural fronts—especially in its historic role in promoting specifically Irish sports and in mobilizing the population in the cause of a united and independent Ireland. For nearly every sport mentioned, Sugden and Bairner recount controversies at local, regional and national levels which have resulted in intercommunity territorial issues, venue and funding conflicts, or violence. Ultimately, the authors conclude that, as is the case in youth football, “. . . administrators of the game in Northern Ireland . . . far from being interested in allowing their sport to help the process of community reconciliation . . . may actually have a vested inerest in maintaining its...

Central problems in the philosophy of the social sciences after postmodernism: reconciling consensus and hegemonic theories of epistemology and political ethics

L'A. analyse le plus grand probleme de la philosophie des sciences sociales, i.e. surmonter le relativisme moral tout en evitant le totalitarisme potentiel de l'universel ou les Verites essentielles des metanarratives modernistes

Rational Hegemons, Excludable Goods, and Small Groups: An Epitaph for Hegemonic Stability Theory?

In defining international free trade as a public good, “hegemonic stability theory” posited early in the 1970s that its reliable supply depended upon a distribution of international power analogous to that within a privileged group. More recently, however, critics have challenged three assumptions fundamental to hegemonic theory: its premises of free trade, public goods, and privileged groups. They have concluded that hegemony is not necessary for, and indeed may be antithetical to, a stable world economy based on market exchange.The author argues that the critics overstate their case. The assumptions they attack allow hegemonic theory to represent analytically several critically important barriers to free trade among states. Among these are the existence of strategic interdependence among the actors and the prevalence of informational asymmetries. The most significant flaw in hegemonic theory is its neglect of the essence of the domain to which it applies: the politics of inter-state trade in an anarchic world.

‘Radical’ Social Theory of Sport: A Critique and a Conceptual Emendation

The social theory of sport literature has taken a new and welcome critical turn in the last few years. That turn is revealed in the emergence of a Marxist-based corpus of literature which challenges headlong the fundamental tenets of mainstream (functionalist) sport sociology. The purpose of the present paper is to critically respond to this new critical theory of sport; in particular to its two major versions—what I call, respectively, vulgar Marxist, and hegemonic sport theory. I argue that both versions of this theory are conceptually flawed, and that these conceptual flaws are themselves ideologically grounded. The point of my criticisms, however, is not to undermine or otherwise deflect the critical thrust of this theory, but to suggest that that thrust requires a new conceptual scaffolding which is more sensitive to the ideological temperament of advanced capitalist society.

Hegemons, IOs, and markets: the case of the substitution account

For eighteen months between 1978 and 1980, the International Monetary Fund and IMF members attempted to reform the international monetary system by establishing a substitution account. Designed to enhance the stability of the monetary system, the proposed substitution account would have accepted dollar deposits from foreign central banks, in return issuing certificates denominated in special drawing rights. The collapse of negotiations about the account in early 1980 confirms the hypothesis of hegemonic stability theorists that the distribution of systemic costs is problematic in the absence of a hegemonic power. The case thereby qualifies recent assertions that a small group of nations can supply stability to the international economy. However, two factors outside the realm of hegemonic theory also helped produce the outcome of the negotiations: the division of power within the United States between Congress and the Executive, and changes in international market conditions during 1979 and early 1980.