Hegemony

Use this framework and be sure to apply basic concepts (in bold) as well as your selection from the concepts list below. The Culture theories of Marx/Engels, Gramsci,Benjamin, Horkheimer and Adorno, Habermas and Althusser, among others discuss culture, ideology and hegemony. 

Discuss how material and non-material culture are often laden with meaning, values, biases, and messages that advance relations of power and subordination. 

 Apply the notion of hegemony to a contemporary culture form (e.g. arts, language, media, religion, politics, race/class/gendered/age-based subcultures). Add a critique from the theorists that view cultural meaning as constructed. That is, we construct culture; culture forms are produced, sent/ received (Debord) ,coded/encoded (Hall), so that human  agency challenges hegemony.

Concepts:

Use the concepts in an explicit way.  at least 5 of the following concepts and clusters must be in your essay.  Apply the theories to examples, rather than merely define the terms.

Ideology/Hegemony

Culture industries/ State Apparatuses

Culture Literacy

Culture & Social Creation

Culture Meaning and Symbols

Culture and commodity spectacles

Encoding/Decoding Culture

Culture Industries

Culture Producers/Consumers

Cultural Elites/Subcultures

Mass Culture/Public Sphere

Culture change and conflict