Cultural Political Economy: Understanding How Hegemony Works (050664-SoSe22)

In Cultural Studies, we often hear and think about how ideologies and power structures become ‘hegemonic’ in a particular society, and analyse texts in terms of how they consolidate or challenge hegemonic ideologies or power relations. ‘Cultural Political Economy’ addresses these (and some other) questions in a new, interdisciplinary and comprehensive way. Its aim is to gain a more in-depth understanding of the relationship between the socio-economic structures that shape our daily lives on the one hand, and the semiotic processes through which we perceive the world and make sense of these lives on the other. The relationship between social and cultural phenomena, as Cultural Political Economy sees it, is not a one-way street: socio-economic structures affect semiotic processes, but semiotic processes also influence the development of socio-economic structures. As an approach, it often begins by analysing a moment of social, economic, or cultural crisis, because these are the times when existing ways of explaining the world are destabilised and we are looking for new ‘stories’ to make sense of what is happening to us.
This course will build on and deepen the understanding of hegemony you attained in the “Introduction to Cultural Studies”, and give you a more interdisciplinary perspective on the processes involved. During the first part of the block, we will be focusing on the method and look at one or more sample ‘case studies’ where others have used the method to explain social phenomena. Then, you will undertake your own case studies on a topic of your choice, which you will present and discuss with the rest of the course during the second block of the seminar.
Assessment/requirements: active participation, case study and reflection paper.