IR2501THEORIES OF

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Lecture 15Gramscian Theory

Antonio Gramsci(1891-1937)

• Founder of the Communist Party of Italy (1921)

• Elected to the Italian Parliament (1924)

• Imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist Government in 1926

• Principal work: Quaderni de Carcere—Prison Notebooks (1929-1935)

Intellectual Roots

• Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

• Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Philosophy

• Radical social ontology—an ontology of praxis, an understanding of social reality as the conscious creation of human history

Philosophy(Continued)

• Gramsci: Reality is a product of the application of human will to the society of things, and this process of producing reality entails the historical transformation of human beings and their social lives.

TWO PRINCIPAL SOURCES

• MARXISM

• ITALIAN PHILOSOPHY

Conventional Marxist Model

SUPERSTRUCTURE

BASE

Major Elements of Gramscian Theory

• Critique of Economic Determinism

• Concept of Hegemony

• Theory of Hegemony

Critique of Economic Determinism

• Significance of culture and social consciousness

• Background: Success of revolution in the East (Russia), failure in the West

• Implicit critique of false consciousness thesis

Concept of Hegemony

• Distinction between mainstream and Gramscian understandings of hegemony

• Mainstream: power as capability or power as a relation

Gramscian Concept of Power

• Dual nature of power

• Centaur: half-man, half-beast

• Coercion and Consent (capability and moral leadership)

Gramscian Theory of Hegemony

• Dual nature of power

• Distinction between Dominance and Hegemony

• Political society/Civil society nexus

Theory of Hegemony(Continued)

• Significance of Civil Society

• Institutions of Civil society

• Moral education

SUMMARY

• Expanded notion of power

• Significance of cultural hegemony

• Civil society/State nexus