notes on hegemony
A shift in mentality from master, I work for you... to master, I want my own freedoms… The topic of cultural hegemony which seeks to subjugate those beneath it, so that those under a social order seem to think this is the natural order of things… When the expression of power is indirect, as manifest in social orders, cultural hegemonies, it becomes much harder to identify the source of feelings of powerlessness… The indirectness lends itself to a kind of “self-subjugation”, as labourers cannot identify the upper class as the source of their strifes.. Rather than focusing energy at the source, labourers get confused in the process and their ire is aimed at middlemen…the result of hegemonic indoctrination from infancy… EP Thomson argues that paternalism of 18th century is theatrical… such as great christmas dinners aimed to keep the working class complacent enough after months of short income…
The “magical” command of the church .. fading control over leisure time… EP Thomson is describing structures… Food riots demonstrate an emergent “ideology” of the poorer classes…
Punitive examples lend credibility to the order, restoration of cultural hegemony… Hourani argues that a huge gap in the process of historians is that history studies not the horizontal but the vertical “patrician” voice of politics when looking at these sources…