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through the selection of content and the ideological perspective of the content published,
education can been seen as a social production, with textbooks as one means of
communicating the selected ideologies. Even when school curriculum is not set directly by
the Education Department, such as the devolved system implemented in Queensland in the
last few decades, a direct link between hegemonic ideological powers exists.
The system in Queensland sees the school curriculum documents, such as syllabuses, written
and approved by a statutory body (known currently as the Queensland Studies Authority or
QSA) independent of, though funded by, the government of the day. Of this, Gramsci writes
of associations, organisations and institutions which are not directly part of the government,
“…are all part of civil society…the sphere in which a dominant social group organizes
consent and hegemony…[and] where the dominated social groups may organize their
opposition and where an alternative hegemony may be constructed” (Forgacs, 1988, p. 420).
The latter part of this statement reinforces the view that particular dominant ideological
perspectives are not static and can change, depending on the views and actions of
stakeholders already involved in the political process of decision making. Additionally, the
move away from seeing power as only physical or overtly intimidating or threatening, is
reinforced with the summary of Forgacs, “hegemony is thus linked by Gramsci in a chain of
associations and oppositions to ‘civil society’ as against ‘political society’, to consent as
against coercion, to ‘direction’ as against ‘domination’ ” (1988, p. 423). Gramsci understood
hegemony as operating in two areas; first as physical force or coercion and second as nonphysical
consent, “…a process of domination whereby the ruling class is said to exercise
political control through its intellectual and moral leadership over allied classes” (Pinar et al.,
2002, p. 250). To reiterate, it is the second understanding—the non-physical aspect of
hegemony—that is of interest in this project. See, for example, Chouliaraki and Fairclough
who write:
Gramsci’s concept of ‘hegemony’ is helpful in analysing relations of power as
domination. Hegemony is relations of domination based upon consent rather than
coercion, involving the naturalization of practices and their social relations as well as
relations between practices, as matters of common sense – hence the concept of
hegemony emphasizes the importance of ideology in achieving and maintaining
relations of domination… (1999, p. 24)
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