Cultural Power

The dominant culture represents itself as culture. It tries to define and contain all other cultures within its inclusive range. Its views of the world, unless challenged, will stand as the most natural, all-embracing, universal culture. Other cultural configurations will not only be subordinate to this dominant order: they will enter into struggle with it,seek to modify, negotiate, resist or even overthrow its reign – its hegemony. The struggle between classes over material and social life thus always assumes the forms of a continuous struggle over the distribution of ‘cultural power’(Hall 5-6).


Resistance through rituals: youth subcultures in post-war Britain (2nd edition).
Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson, eds. 2006.
Routledge: New York.