Hegemony
Hegemony refers to the domination of one group of people over another. More specifically, and more relevant to critical qualitative research, it refers to the domination of the ideas of one group over those of another. As such, hegemony refers to the mainstream deployment and acceptance of ideologies that justify the inequities inherent in modern society including capitalism, sexism, racism, and so on.
Hegemony as a concept was first employed in Marxist thought in the mid- to late 1800s. Marxist conceptions focused on political leadership and domination by the ruling bourgeois over the subordinate working class proletariat through politically endorsed systems of economic and material distribution. The term hegemony, however, was coined by Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937) and most fully explicated in his work Selections from the Prison Notebooks.
Gramsci’s work extended Marxist thought beyond its focus on capitalist struggle to an analysis of intellectual struggle and the role of external forces such as the mass media in stifling creative thought.
Hegemony is of interest to qualitative researchers as a lens through which ideologies can be identified, documented, exposed, and used to create alternate ideology. Given the political nature of such research projects, it is no wonder that research into hegemonic thought is concentrated within critical research approaches, such as critical ethnography and critical discourse analysis, which aim to make explicit and often challenge power hierarchies.