Cultural hegemony

Cultural hegemony is an idea that was formulated by Antonio Gramsci as an explanation for the failure of Soviet communism against capitalism, because of the role of control of the idea of social common-sense. As long as the societal common sense is following a certain ideology, then that ideology will have the hegemony of the culture.

This hegemony is a strong impetus toward control and acceptance of ideology. The concept heavily influenced intellectual discourse on popular culture and scholarly popular culture studies.

A newer treatise is a book by Noam Chomsky, looking at the current US context.

See also: Reformism, cultural identity