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parameters of the terms of the debate…which can incorporate the competing claims of other
groups under its own discourse about education and social goals” (1988, pp. 26-27). A simple
but important aspect of the work of Gramsci on hegemony is his point that texts do not
operate in isolation from each other. Therefore, when investigating texts in an historical
context, they cannot be discussed in isolation from events, values and institutions which
define historical periods, so rather than a “…preoccupation with the text alone…” (S. Jones,
2006, p. 5) when applying Gramsci, it is important to have an “…understanding that texts are
bound up with the agencies involved in cultural production…” (S. Jones, 2006, p.5). A
further significant aspect of Gramsci’s theory of hegemony, is that he intended for it to be
applied to “…the mechanisms of ideological consensus within a developed political system”
(Bellamy, 1994, p. xxvii, emphasis added), making it appropriate for application in an
Australian context.
The decision to apply this concept to curriculum research in this project, is supported by S.
Jones, who reports that “Gramsci’s work…is also a tool for historical and cultural analysis,
enabling us to evaluate those strategies by which different groups attempted to form
hegemonic blocs in the past” (2006, p. 44). Dominant discourses can also be described in
terms of sociopolitical discourses operating explained by Gee as:
One way in which we can define politics is to say that it involves any social
relationships in which things like status, solidarity, or other social goods are
potentially at stake. In this sense of politics, social practices are inherently and
inextricably political because by their very nature they involve social roles
…Because critical discourse analysis argues that language in use is always part and
parcel of, and partially constitutive of, one or more specific social practices,
language in use is inherently and inextricably political. (Gee, 2004, pp. 33-34,
emphasis added)
Aligned with the view of Gramsci that texts do not operate in isolation, are the links
Althusser makes between ideology and conditions of production, asserting, “…every social
formation must reproduce the conditions of its production at the same time as it produces, and
in order to be able to produce” (1984, p. 2). Although this statement discusses the
machinations of economic capital and employment, the underlying principle of reproducing
conditions can be applied to school curriculum documents, such as syllabuses and textbooks,
especially those created or officially endorsed by a Department of Education. In this way,
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