Gramscian Concept of Hegemony

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist famous for his theory of Hegemony. Gramsci was arrested for his opposition to Mussolini at the age of 35. He spent his later years in prison. While in jail, Gramsci wrote Prison Notebooks which contains his ideas on society, politics, and culture. 

In the Gramscian perspective, dominant groups in a society maintain their dominance by securing the consent of subordinate groups. Gramsci called this kind of domination as hegemony. The concept assumes plain consent given by the majority of a population. However, this consent is not always peaceful. It is a set of ideas by means of which dominant groups attempt to secure the consent of subordinate groups to their leadership.

In Gramsci’s conception, societies maintained their strength through a combination of “domination” or force, and “hegemony”, defined as consent to “intellectual and moral leadership”. Gramsci argued that the ruling intellectual and cultural forces of the era constitute a form of hegemony or domination by ideas and cultural forms that induce consent to the rule of the leading groups in a society.

Gramsci argued that the working class can develop its own hegemony as a strategy to control the State. If the working class is to achieve hegemony, it needs patiently to build up a network of alliances with social minorities. The way of challenging the dominant hegemony is political activity. Here Gramsci proposed two different kinds of political strategies. They are:

• War of Manoeuvre: It is the frontal attack. The main goal is to win quickly.
• War of Position: It is a long struggle. It is a passive revolution.

Gramsci argued that in his day the press was the dominant instrument of producing ideological hegemony. The institutions such as the church, schools, and different associations and groups also played a role. 

Rene Descartes and Cartesianism

René Descartes was a French philosopher, mathematician, and writer. He has been called the 'Father of Modern Philosophy'. It has been said that both modern philosophy and modern mathematics began with the work of Rene Descartes. His analytic method of thinking focused attention on the problem of how we know, which has occupied philosophers ever since.

After consideration of all the previous methods of inquiry, Descartes decided that there must be a better way to find out the true knowledge. The first principle that he finally felt was self-evident was summarized in the statement, "I think, therefore I am". The method developed by Descartes was based on the following rules:

• The first rule was never to accept anything as true unless I recognized it to be evidently such. That is, carefully to avoid precipitation and prejudgment.
• The second was to divide each of the difficulties which I encountered into as many parts as possible, and as might be required for an easier solution.
• The third was to think in an orderly fashion, beginning with the things which were simplest and easiest to understand, and gradually and by degrees reaching toward more complex knowledge, even treating as though ordered materials that were not necessarily so.
• The last was always to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I would be certain that nothing was omitted.

In short, his method required; 

(1) accepting as "truth" only clear, distinct ideas that could not be doubted, 

(2) breaking a problem down into parts, 

(3) deducing one conclusion from another, and 

(4) conducting a systematic synthesis of all things.

Descartes based his entire philosophical approach to science on this deductive method of reasoning. Descartes was highly optimistic about his plan to reconstruct a new and fully reliable body of knowledge.

Cartesianism

Cartesianism is the name was given to the philosophical doctrine (or school) of René Descartes. Descartes is often regarded as the first thinker to emphasize the use of reason to develop the natural sciences. For him, philosophy was a thinking system that embodied all knowledge and expressed it in this way.

Cartesians view the mind as being wholly separate from the body. The mind can perhaps interact with a physical body, but it does not exist in the body. In general, Cartesian thought divides the world into three areas of existence:

• that inhabited by the physical body (matter),
• that inhabited by the mind, and
• that inhabited by God.

Annales School of Historiography

The Annales School of historiography is one of the most important developments in twentieth-century history-writing. This school of historiography emerged in France with the foundation of a journal – Annales of Economic and Social History. The journal was founded in 1929 by Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. Annals School of historiography was developed through the writings of three generations of historians. They are March Bloch and Lucien Febvre, Fernand Braudel, and Immanuel Ley Roy Ladurie. Annales School was critical of the German scientific school. They also criticised the positive tradition. The Annales School brought a paradigm shift in the writing of history. The British historian Peter Burke evaluated the contributions of this School and considered it ‘The French Historical Revolution’. 

The Founders

The founders of the Annales movement were Marc Bloch and Lucien Febvre. The Annales movement was against the German empiric school. They also criticised the positivist tradition. Instead of focusing on politics and individuals, they focused on social grouping and collective mindsets. Apart from the primary documents, they made use of a wide range of sources, including maps, folklore, and literature. They brought an Interdisciplinary approach and linked the study of the past with approaches and methods of the social sciences. They wrote history beyond the traditional chronological barriers.

Works of Marc Bloch

• Feudal Society (in two volumes)
• The Royal Touch
• French Rural History
• Strange Defeat
• Historians Craft

Bloch stressed the need for comparison - 'there is no true understanding without a certain range of comparison’. He also stressed the need to cross-question historical sources.

Lucien Febvre and the Study of Mentalities

Febvre analysed the area of emotions and beliefs. His book The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century-The Religion of Rabelais is a critique of religion. His celebrated essay, ‘Sensibility and History: How to Reconstitute the Emotional Life of the Past’ extended the domain of history.

Fernand Braudel and the Mediterranean

Fernand Braudel wrote the book The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. The book provides an account of the interplay between the geography of the region and the power struggle between Spain and the Ottoman Turks. He placed the Mediterranean Sea at the centre of his book. The book is vast in scope and he attempted to write a total history. He continued the Annales movement, widening its focus to include long-term history and economic history.

Immanuel Le Roy Laduri

He was a leading exponent of the concept of "total history" pioneered by the French "Annales" school. His important books are:

• The Peasants of Languedoc
• Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French
• Times of Feast and Times of Famines
• Territory of the Historian

Le Roy Ladurie also wrote about rural history and peasants of the early modern period, and the last thousand years of climatic history.

Features and Contributions of Annales School

• Annales School emphasised the need for interdisciplinary research in history. They established collaboration with other disciplines such as geography, sociology, economics, and anthropology.
• Annales School insisted on "a broadened and deepened history". They extended the scope of historical studies by introducing new themes and methods.
• They introduced themes such as emotions, mentalities, and human behaviour in historical research.
• They used a wide range of source materials including maps, literature, folklore, photographs, etc.
• They attacked the “mere narration of facts” and tried to interpret social phenomena.
• Annales School opposed histories of selected individuals and narrow documentation.
• They introduced the concept of “Total History” to observe the long and medium-term evolution of the economy, society, and civilization.
• They wrote history beyond the traditional chronological frames.

Annales School placed history as a part of Social Science. It was an invitation to historians to learn from Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography to assess social movements and change. In its later phase, Annales School contributed to the development of gender history, microhistory, history of minorities, and cultural anthropology.