Thinking with the Sardinian: Antonio Gramsci and social work

Abstract

Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937), who died over 70 years ago, produced a complex body of theorisation which is mostly ignored within social work. In this paper it is maintained that there are a number of obstacles presented for those reading Gramsci. Nonetheless, these obstacles should not deter us from trying to engage with Gramsci. After briefly outlining his biography, the article focuses on just two of his key thematic preoccupations. First, the related ideas of Americanism, Fordism and Taylorism; second, the concept of hegemony. Although conceding that there are problems with his work, it will be argued that these theoretical formulations continue to be of potential use and might aid our understanding of social work and related forms of activity during a period of neoliberal inspired transformations. Furthermore, thinking with Gramsci, and other social theorists, might enable the social professions to help construct counter hegemonic strategies.

Keywords:

• Fordism
• Taylorism
• hegemony
• keywords

Notes

1. The Prison Notebooks (PN), comprising 33 exercise books, were written by Gramsci between 8 February 1929 and June 1935 ‘when a severe setback in his health prevented him from continuing his study’ (Martin 1998, p. 40). Readers new to Gramsci can find English translations of his writings in Bellamy (1994), Forgacs (1988), Hoare (1988) and Hoare and Nowell Smith (2005). An earlier version of this article was prepared as a paper for, but not delivered at, the International Federation of Social Workers’ (IFSW)/European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW) annual conference, held in Palma in March 2007. I am grateful for the thoughtful comments of the two EJSW anonymous referees whose suggestions helped me to refine aspects of the discussion. The Gramsci Reading Group, which took place throughout the early part of 2007, within the School of Political Science and Sociology, at the National University of Ireland, in Galway, was also an invaluable forum in which to talk about ideas with colleagues and students.

2. As Peter Ives (2006), p. 67) observes, many of what are regarded as ‘Gramscian terms’ were not, in fact, his ‘own coinage’ but were terms which he was apt to re-work and promote.

3. Ives (2004), p. 63) observes that the ‘term “hegemony” has a long history before Gramsci. Derived from hegemon, literally meaning leader, and its Greek root … traditionally signifies some combination of authority, leadership and domination’. Hegemony also has a more specific Italian linage which predates Gramsci's theorising (Bellamy 1994). Moreover, the concept can be associated with the evolution of Marxism in Russia prior to the Bolshevik Revolution. As Perry Anderson (1976) observes, hegemony was one of the most central political slogans in the Russian Social-Democratic movement, from the late 1890s to 1917, and it was forged to theorise the role of the working class in a bourgeois revolution against a feudal order. Gramsci, however, was intent on using the notion of hegemony in order to try and understand the mechanisms of bourgeois rule over the working class in a stable capitalist society.

4. Wolfgang Fritz Haug (1999), p. 107) had maintained that in the present-day ‘hegemony changes its meaning under … de-centered multichannel TV’. Nonetheless, it would also be mistaken to view counter hegemonic projects as inevitably doomed to fragmentation and failure. Globally, developments in Central and Latin America suggest that there is still the space for oppositional national-popular projects which set themselves against the power of the United States. Martin (2002) has provided a lucid outline of how post-Marxists, particularly Laclau and Mouffe, have attempted to develop the concept of hegemony by drawing on post-structuralist approaches (see also Smith 1998).

5. Perhaps, Bourdieu (2003b), ch. 5) is more helpful than Foucault because his notion of ‘symbolic violence’ potentially adds to our understanding of hegemony (see also Hobsbawm 2007).