Social hegemony example?

[Paul B]

My understanding of hegemony comes from the writings of the late Italian Neo-Marxist, Gramsci. I don't know if this has been extended in recent years to be applied to other facets of society. However, as a Marxist, Gramsci proposed that a society is ruled by a mixture of coercion (e.g. police, law courts, armed forces, etc), and consent. Each society is ruled with a different measure of the two.

In countries that have so called liberal-democracy or representative democracy, the ruling class uses more consent than coercion - or at least, it's important. To gain that consent, the ruling class recognises that there are many groups across society that individuals identify with - not just economic classes, but for example, genders, green issues, home owners, etc. the ruling class makes genuine concessions to enough of these groups, in order to gain consent to keep the status quo. They succeed as can be seen across liberal-democracies, that only conservative parties supporting capitalism hold power in government.

Gramsci proposed that a revolutionary working class movement needed to do the same, and that the class struggle in these democracies was in fact a shuffling around of alliances.

The class that gains consent to rule by building the strongest set of alliances is hegemonic.

I'm sorry if I've just added confusion to your understanding of hegemony.