Reflections on the Politics of Culture
February 1, 1999
In the academic social sciences, students are taught to think of culture as representing the customs and mores of a society, including its language, art, laws, and religion. Such a definition has a nice neutral sound to it, but culture is anything but neutral. Much of what is thought to be our common culture is the selective transmission of class-dominated values. Antonio Gramsci understood this when he spoke of class hegemony, noting that the state is only the "outer ditch behind which there [stands] a powerful system of fortresses and earthworks," a network of cultural values and institutions not normally thought of as political
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