Roseberry Hegemony Reading Notes

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Roseberry (1994)

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Roseberry, William1994 Hegemony and the Language of Contention.InEveryday Forms of

State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in ModernMexico. Pp. 355-366. Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, eds.

Durham: Duke University Press.

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The article opens with a discussing of Scott, Corrigan and Sayer's work that informeveryday forms of state formation. Roseberry wants to "point out that each of their

founding metaphors" are "taken from the work of E.P. Thompson" (Roseberry 1994:355).

Scott: "took Thompson's references to the 'moral economy' of the poor ineighteenth and nineteenth century England as central image and

starting point for his own theoretical model of peasantconsciousness in the face of capitalist expansion and the formation

of colonial states" (Roseberry 1994:355).

Corrigan and Sayer: "in turn, take Thompson's critique of orthodox Marxistunderstandings of "the bourgeois revolution as a challenge for their

study of the formation of the English state (Roseberry 1994:356).

Thompson: "wrote of a long and particular history of state making andcapitalist transformation, challenging Marxists to abandon

readymade historical and political scripts and explore the historicalformation of particular capitalist civilizations (Roseberry

1994:356).

Field of Force Thompson proposes field of forceClass Struggle Without ClassSpecifically addresses the probs. of pop. cul. w/ relations of dom.

Concerned with "polarization of antagonistic interests and thecorresponding dialectic of culture.

Describes as an image: "in which an electrical current magnetized a plate

covered with iron fillings. The fillings, which were evenlydistributed, arranged themselves at one pole or the other,

while in between those fillings which remains in placealigned themselves sketchily as if directed towards

opposing attractive poles. This is very much how I seeeighteenth-century society, with for many purposes, the

crow at one pole, the aristocracy and gentry at the other,and until late in the century, the professional and merchant

groups bound by lines of magnetic dependency to therulers, or on occasion hiding their faces in common action

with the crowd" (Roseberry 1994:356).


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Problems with above metaphor:1) While the magnetic field is bi-polar, most social situations are more "complex,

with multiple sites of domination or forms and elements of popular experience"2) Due to the bi-polar field the pattern of the fillings are symmetrical in a "ways

that the 'dominant' and the 'popular' can never be"3) The image is static, as new fillings fit easily "within a preexisting pattern and

field of force4) "clarity becomes a problem when we move from a two-dimensional template to

the multidimensional world of the social, political and culture (Roseberry1994:357).

Roseberry intends to "move into that multidimensional world, and attempt to understand

social fields of force in more complex and processual terms," and queries whether thereare "additional and related concepts that can serve as suggestive guides?" (Roseberry

1994:357).

One concept is the "Gramscian understanding of hegemony," although Scott andCorrigan and Sayer are not "especially sympathetic to the concept." In Weapons of the

Weak, Scott challenges those theorists who understand hegemony as "ideologicalconsensus," while Corrigan and Sayer suggest how the "power of the staterests not so

much the consent of its subjects but with the state's regulative and coercive forms andagencies," accomplished not "simply through its police and armies but through its offices

and routines, its taxing, licensing, and registering procedures and papers (Roseberry1994:357).

Roseberry criticizes these perspectives by nothing that "there is more to Gramsci

and his use of the idea of hegemony, however, than the concept of consentappropriated by political scientists and criticized (forcefully and correctly) by

Scott, Corrigan and Sayer" (Roseberry 1994:358).

Gramscian understanding of hegemony:

i) understood and emphasizedthe complex unity of coercion and consent insituations of domination

ii) was a more materialandpolitical concept than it has since becomeiii) focused on the "fragilityof hegemony," as noted by Gramsci's interpretation

of the failure of the Piedmont bourgeoisie to "form a bloc that could rule, throughforce and consent (Roseberry 1994:358).

Roseberry intends to "explore hegemony notas a finished and monolithic ideological

formation but as a problematic, contested, political process of domination and struggle(Roseberry 1994:358).

To do so, he notes how the:

1) historical unity of the ruling classes is realised in the State, and that the

"fundamental historical unity, concretely results from the organic relationsbetween State or political society and "civil society"


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2)The subaltern classes are "not unified and cannot unite until they are able to

become a 'State'"

Due to the fact that the subaltern classes "history is intertwined with that of civil society,and thereby with the history of States," it is necessary to study:

1) "the objective formation of the subaltern groups, by the developments and

transformations occurring in the sphere of economic production, their quantitativediffusion and their origins in pre-existing social groups

2) their active/passive affiliation with dominant political formations, and attempts

to influence programmes of these formations to make their own claims, and theconsequences of these attempts

3) birth of new parties of the dominant groups, intended to conserve the assent of

the subaltern groups to maintain control over them

4) the formations produced by subaltern groups to press claims of a limited/partialcharacter

5) those new formations which assert the autonomy of subaltern groups, but

within the old framework

6) those formations which assert integral autonomy (Roseberry 1994:358-359).

Features of Gramsci's introductory comments that bear emphasis on hegemonic process:

1) For both the ruling and subaltern classes, Gramsci implies plurality or diversity,unityis a political and cultural problem. Through his discussion, his emphasis is on the

plural, classes and groups (Roseberry 1994:359).

2) Unity requirescontrol of the state (the subaltern classes, "by definition," are notunified because they are not the state), but control of the state by the ruling classes is not

assumed. Such control is at once juridical and political, and moral and cultural"(Roseberry 1994:359).

3) By rendering the history of ruling groups and of states and groups of states as

problematican array of questions similar to those posed by Gramsci of subalternclasses needs to be considered (Roseberry 1994:359). Need to consider their 'objective'

formation in the economic spherethe movements, developments and transformations inproduction and distribution, and their social and demographic distribution is space and

time (Roseberry 1994:359).

At the same time one needs to study the ruling groups relations with othergroupsother ruling groups within and beyond their region of spheres of

influence, subaltern groups, within and beyond their region (Roseberry 1994:359).


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As well, one should consider their "political associations and organizations, andthe political institutions, laws, routines, and orders they confront, create and

attempt to control (Roseberry 1994:359).

Such questions show how complex the field of force can become

Sectoraldifferentiation-------- distinct class fractions, based on different roles andpositions within accumulation processes

Spatialdifferentiation----------the uneven and unequal development of social powers in

regional spaces (Roseberry 1994:359).

4) Need to ask the same questions of subaltern classes with regards to their relationshipsto political institutions and dominant groups (Roseberry 1994:360).

5) Subaltern groups are not assumed to be "captured or immobilized" by ideological

consensus, since he "considers the possibility of 'their active or passive affiliation to thedominant political formations'" (Roseberry 1994:360).

6) "Relations between ruling and subaltern groups are characterized by contention,

struggle, and argument" (Roseberry 1994:360). "Gramsci envisions a much more activeand confrontational subaltern population than many of his interpreters have assumed," as

he "places action and confrontation within the formations, institutions, and organizationsof the state and civil society in which subordinate populations live (Roseberry 1994:360).

With the above six points in mind, Roseberry proposes that "we use the concept notto

understand consent but to understand struggle, the ways in which the words, images,symbols, forms, organizations, institutions, and movements used by subordinate

populations to talk about, understand, confront, accommodate themselves to, or resisttheir domination are shaped by the process of domination itself (Roseberry 1994:361).

Hegemony constructs a "common material and meaningful framework for living through,

talking about, and acting upon social orders characterized by domination. That commonmaterial and meaningful framework, is, in part, discursive: a common language or way

of talking about social relationships that sets out the central terms around which and interms of which contestation and struggle can occur (Roseberry 1994:361).

"Attention to such political and discursiveprocesses and projects can illuminate many

aspects of a complexly structured field of force" (Roseberry 1994:363).

Conceptualizing the hegemonic process in terms of the necessity of constructing acommon discursive framework allows us to examine both the power and fragility of a

particular order of domination (Roseberry 1994:363).

Corrigan and Sayer describe the power of States: "Out of the vast range of human socialcapacitiespossible ways in which social life could be livedstate activities more or less

forcibly 'encourage' some whilst suppressing, marginalizing, eroding, undermining others(Roseberry 1994:363).


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"To the extent that a dominant order establishes such legitimate forms of procedure, tothe extent that it establishes not consent but prescribed forms for expressing both

acceptance and discontent, it has established a common discursive framework (Roseberry1994:364).

"If we conceive a hegemonic process and common discursive framework as state projects

rather than state achievements, however, we can advance our understanding of 'popularculture' and 'state formations' in relation to each other (Roseberry 1994:365).

By focusing attention on points of rupture, area's where a common discursive framework

cannot be achieved, it serves as a point of entry into the analysis of a process ofdomination that shapes both 'the state' and 'popular culture' (Roseberry 1994:366).

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