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Hegemony Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Research Practice

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Discourse, Culture and Organization

Part of the book series: Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse ((PSDS))

Abstract

This contribution lays out the basics of hegemony analysis, a form of discourse analysis that builds on Ernesto Laclau’s theory of discourse and hegemony. I propose to conceive of hegemony as a function of discourse. Hence, hegemony analysis primarily wants to understand the workings of this function, and not—as many other discourse analytical approaches—the concrete substantial developments within a given discourse. I first introduce the main tools of hegemony analysis: a specific notion of discourse, a typology of discursive linkages, the concept of hegemony, the nexus of subjectivation and discourse coalition building and finally an ideal type of hegemonic strategy. I then proceed to demonstrate how these tools are used in an exemplary analysis of the German discourse on social market economy in the 1940s and 1950s.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    It should be noted that what I talk about here is antagonisms in the plural, that is, concrete societal sense. I do not talk about antagonism’s ontological dimension (cf. Laclau 2014: 101ff.).

  2. 2.

    Just like antagonisms, relations of contrariety resemble neither real opposition nor contradiction (cf. Laclau and Mouffe 1985: 109ff.). They are discursively traceable components of antagonisms.

  3. 3.

    This typology improves my earlier typology and does also take into account changes made after the publication of the original German article the translation of which you read here. The difference between this latest version of the typology and the earliest one (cf. Nonhoff 2006: 85ff., 227f.[Fn. 10]) is the addition of the typical relation of ‘representation’ and a reformulation of the wording of contrariety. The latter was introduced only in Nonhoff (2017: 93).

  4. 4.

    For more on the defensive-hegemonic strategy, and also on the question whether there can be an anti-hegemonic strategy, see Nonhoff (2006: 238ff.).

  5. 5.

    I have described such a situation as a second-order struggle for hegemony; see Nonhoff (2006: 204f., 234ff.).

  6. 6.

    A detailed description of all strategemes can be found in Nonhoff (2006: ch.5).

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Laclau and Mouffe (1985: ch.3) or Laclau (2005: ch.4).

  8. 8.

    Whether there can develop a certain dominant reading of the encompassing demand, is a question that analyses of ‘second-order hegemonies’ would turn to. For the latter, the two secondary hegemonic strategemes (VIII and IX) are relevant (cf. Nonhoff 2006: 204f., 234ff.).

  9. 9.

    The helpful distinction between virtual and concrete discourse corpus has been proposed by Busse and Teubert (2014).

  10. 10.

    The original study (Nonhoff 2006) analyzed 5 (out of 19) texts diligently step by step, at the same time relating them to one another, before turning to a more generalized analysis on the discourse level. Such an elaborate approach is not possible in a chapter like this one.

  11. 11.

    The detailed analysis of the Müller-Armack text can be found in Nonhoff (2006: 254–293).

  12. 12.

    It will not always be possible to make out equivalences and contrarieties verbatim. In Nonhoff (2006: 263ff.) I give a more detailed description of the textual interdependencies that can be read as equivalences and contrarieties.

  13. 13.

    Even though the exact signifier ‘active economic policy’ is not used here (while it is regularly used in the rest of the text), the perhaps best example of this articulation of equivalence is the following passage: ‘We speak of “Social Market Economy” in order to designate a third economic form. This means that we see market economy as the necessary bedrock for the coming economic order, yet not a liberal market economy left to itself, but a consciously governed market economy, governed particularly in a social sense’ (Müller-Armack 1966: 109, my translation).

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  1. Institut für Interkulturelle und Internationale Studien, Universität Bremen, Bremen, Germany

    Martin Nonhoff

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  1. Department of Sociology, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Munich, Germany

    Tomas Marttila

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Nonhoff, M. (2019). Hegemony Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Research Practice. In: Marttila, T. (eds) Discourse, Culture and Organization. Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94123-3_4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94123-3_4

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