Hegemonic Culture In Brazil

In the past years, Brazil has celebrated itself as a great economic performer with emerging markets and increasing influence on the international stage. However, in 2013, Brazil was paralyzed by huge demonstrations expressing deep discontent with their governments’ performance. In this paper, I look at the sudden onset of the protest and the absence of it in the previous years. I will argue that despite these protests, the government of Brazil maintains a hegemonic culture that propagates its own values and practices. Brazil experiences the process of modernization from the above, which does not quite reflect the demands of the lower class. Using Brazil as an example, I will expand on how the political leadership establishes and maintains its control.

Gramsci conceived of hegemony when he was imprisoned by Mussolini’s Fascist regime. He was interested in understanding how a state could remain in power and maintain its control even when so many people were oppressed by it. Gramsci developed his concept of hegemony to understand how forces of power can lead people in the lower class to maintain the status quo rather than rebel against it even in the face of oppression. He maintained that control does not always happen through violence or political and economic coercion but also through ideology. He states that hegemony is the “political leadership...consent in the life and activities of the state and civil society” (Gramsci SPN Q10,I§12). In this sense, Hegemony is defined as, “the ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group” (Lears 1985: 568).

Gramsci would consider the counter movement of the low and middle class in Brazil to b...

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...he notion of hegemony to alert the proletariat of their oppression, he did not view hegemony as fundamentally negative. The rise of the proletariat in Brazil requires a new hegemony that may indeed have positive social effects.

Gramsci’s notion of hegemony is a useful tool in understanding power dynamics. Gramsci makes power movable with his insight that all social systems of inequality have hegemony. Hegemony can even absorb movements initially hostile to the power system. The protests in Brazil illustrate the ability of the hegemony to absorb the counter movement into the capitalist hegemonic system. The groups’ rebellious demands of transport fare reduction, better health and education were funneled into the capitalist hegemon. This example of how full-flown protests and its demands can be made structure friendly to the system shows how pervasive hegemony can be.