FROM VTR TO CYBERSPACE: Jefferson, Gramsci & the Electronic Commons by Mark Surman (msurman@io.org) ************************************ Appendix One - WHAT IS A HEGEMONY ANYWAYS? A "hegemony" is really nothing like a heffalump In fact, it isn't any kind of animal at all. Rather, it is a state of being where everything is in harmony, at least for those with a lot of money and power. More specifically, hegemony is taking one way of seeing things, and convincing people that this way of seeing things is natural, that it is "just the way things are". This "way of seeing things" in question is almost always in the interests of people who are rich and powerful. In other words, ideas that support the rich and powerful usually define the way a society sees the world. In late 20th century North America, most of us see the world through the eyes of consumerism. The mass happiness of mass consumption pretty much dominates our shared conceptions of the way things are. [SIDEBAR -- Cultural hegemony refers to those socially constructed ways of seeing and making sense of the world around us that predominate in a given time and place. In the latter 20th century US the supremacy of commodity relations has exercised a disproportionate influence over the way we see our lives. (Goldman, pg. 2)] This idea of hegemony _ a way of seeing power in which "the war for mens' minds" is paramount _ will help us understand how the corporate world has been able to disable environmentalism. But before we see how this happened, we should take a closer look at the inner workings of hegemony. One way to get at these inner workings is to explore a single element of the consumerist way of seeing the world. The private automobile _ with all of the cultural and structural elements that support it _ is as good an example as any. Most North Americans believe that the private automobile is the only way to get around, and that it is definitely the best and coolest way to get around. In this way, it could be said that the belief system which supports the automobile is hegemonic, it is all encompassing. Given all of the other ways of moving about that are available _ walking, biking, bussing, boating, training _ this overwhelming support for cars as the only way is amazing. It is so amazing that it is hard to believe that it happened on its own, that people just naturally love the car. In reality, the move towards a near universal acceptance of the car as the North American way to get around required a great deal of work on the part of big corporations and the people who help them sell ideas. A number of structural, legal, and cultural shifts had to take place before North Americans would joyously shout in unison _ "the car is the only way to get around, and we love it!". The most significant elements involved in driving this almost univocal shout are: suburban road and shopping systems; the creation of a government funded car-only infrastructure; the destruction of the American public transit industry; the creation of Hollywood myths around the car; the connection of our unfulfilled desires to automobile ownership; and the linking of the car to fundamental cultural values like freedom. Let's start with suburban road and shopping systems. Since the 1940's, North Americans have constructed their new cities in such a way that people almost literally have no choice but to get around by car. We have built suburbs where stores and houses that are too far from each other to allow walking. We have built shopping places surrounded by seas of pavement, making it impossible to stroll along and window shop like we did in our old downtowns. We have built streets so big and wide that we fear for our children's lives if they aren't safely tucked inside our cars. The easiest way to convince people of something is to make sure they don't have any choices. This is exactly what the suburbs have done as a part of their contribution to the hegemony of car culture, and the dominance of consumerism in general. If it is very difficult to get around without a car, people will quickly come to the conclusion that the car is the only way to get around. The governments of North America gave the suburbs a good deal of help in convincing people to buy into this only way scenario. Although there are many other examples, the two biggest contributions that governments made to the development of a car centred culture were road subsidies and centralized planning. Federal, regional and municipal governments in North America massively subsidized _ and continue to massively subsidize _ the road system. If they didn't do this, most people just couldn't have afforded to drive their cars. And that wouldn't have been very good for business, would it? [SIDEBAR -- To find out more about the subsidizing of car infrastructure, you should look at the articles by Sue Zielinski , Gord Laird, Michael Replogle and Charles Komanoff in the book Beyond the Car, by Steel Rail Press] Once people could afford cars, planners were brought in to design spaces that people could only get around by car (the suburbs). This planning aspect of things represents a whole sub-belief system contained within a profession. By directly controlling the ways in which certain aspects of society are organized, these professional belief systems provide essential support for the development of broader public conceptions of the way things are. Of course the car corporations themselves had a big hand in the development of the car centred belief system. They made and advertised the cars that would fill the roads. They also made sure that there was no competition from more economically viable and economically accessible forms of transportation. "In 1936 General Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tire formed a company called National City Lines, whose purpose was to buy up alternative transport systems all across the US., and then close them down. By 1956, over one hundred electric surface rail systems in 45 cities, serving millions of people had bought up and dismantled entirely." With no buses or trains available, it was much easier to convince potential suburban transit users that the car was the only way. National City Lines was a step in this direction. All of these structural motivations couldn't have convinced people to believe so deeply in the car unless people really wanted the car and the suburbs. North America's cultural industries quickly stepped in to help the want develop. From the 1940s to the 1960s, TV shows and movie screens were filled with glorious visions of suburban life. The suburban bliss of the Beaver Cleaver family and the futuristic excitement of the Jetsons made the old downtowns _ where you walked to the market and socialized on the front porch _ look drab and boring. These programs let people know that progress, that ever illusive commodity lusted after by every God-fearing American, was to be found in the car filled suburbs. And, if pulp TV and movie fiction wasn't enough, news producers helped push "White Flight" to the suburbs by constructing downtowns as hostile places filled with criminals and minorities. This muddling mixture of Hollywood fantasy and "real world" news melded together to make the suburbs into "the place to be". Media makers not only helped people with the psychological leap to the suburbs, they also helped to create some powerful, down home myths about what the car could do for your life. The American film industry re-created the car as a provider of social and sexual power. Hollywood-made home town America drag races from the 1950s _ where the winner always gets the girl _ are only the tip of the iceberg. Car advertising brought similar messages to television. Women draped on the front of slowly rotating automobiles drew the ever stronger connection between cars and the ability to get women. These images of the car as a great thing, as a way to get power and sex, filtered quickly into real and everyday life. The rites of passage that have developed around the car are evidence of this. Most North American teenagers just can't wait to get their driver's license, the official proof of adulthood. This cultural link between the car and sexuality demonstrates how the car centred belief system was built from the rubble of our most valued life experiences and the mortar of our perceived personal inadequecies. Sexuality is one of the most vital and exciting parts of our lives. Unfortunately, the dominant messages of our society and the day to day enforced morality of the 1950s made a good job of quashing the sharing and beauty of sex. If you didn't have a horrible sex life already, the myth-makers did as much as they could to convince you that you did. As sexuality has been broken down into something that we don't have, or can't have, it has been easily sold back to us in the form of cars and other consumer objects. In other words, advertising and other forms of popular culture have linked sexual fulfillment to the car as a way to help us buy the car and love the car. It is important to note that the accelerating car culture of the 1950s focused on the car only as the solution to male sexual needs. In this way, the sexualization of the car not only commercialized desire but also it contributed to the post-war rebuilding of male dominance in North American society. Finally, the car was also brought into the hegemonic consumerist belief system by the skillful application of words. Certain words hold immense power in a society, the power to sway people and justify actions. In North American society, one of these words is "freedom". Freedom has many meanings, and many connotations. The most overarching of these meanings play into the hands of consumerism and the powers-that-be. In our culture, "freedom" can be used to conjure up ideas about the right to espouse any political beliefs you like, the ability control your own body, or the right to protection from oppressive economic and political forces. But more often than not, "freedom" is used to invoke ideas about economic liberty in the marketplace _ the right to make a buck or the right to buy the product you like, the "free" market and the "free" press. These more dominant uses of the word freedom act as fundamental supports to consumerism. In the case of the car, freedom has been strongly linked to freedom from parents, from the state, and the freedom to chose your favourite model of car. By making such strong links between the car and freedom, culture-makers have helped to secure the car's position as a "must have" product, and as a central element to our obsession with mass consumption. All of these things _ the suburbs, government road subsidies, the destruction of public transit in the US, the creation of Hollywood car myths, the appropriation of our desires, and the links between the car and central values like freedom _ have contributed to the creation of an almost all encompassing car loving belief system in North America. This belief system has been so successful, and is so pervasively connected to concepts of personal power and fun, that few North Americans would say that they don't like cars. In fact, they can't get enough of them. This belief system is so pervasive that the vision of the car as the only way to get around seems natural, "just the way things are". Massive support for the car _ and in similar ways for consumerist beliefs in general _ amounts to a tacit public consent to the political and economic system that makes mass consumption work. This natural-seemingness of a belief system and this broad consent for a economic and political system are the elements that make up hegemony. They indicate a situation where the desires of the "general public" and the money making schemes of big corporations are "in harmony". Of course there will always be people who either don't participate in the dominant way of doing things, or who downright oppose it. In the case of the consumerist car culture, there are definitely people who choose to use the predominantly shut out modes of transportation such as walking, biking, busing and training. There are also people who come right out and say that cars should be gotten rid of altogether and that we should all turn to other options. Although these people may be acting and talking in ways that go counter to the dominant way of seeing things _ counter to the hegemony _ the big car corporations don't bother with them much. Corporations are much more interested in keeping consumerist myths rolling along than they are in talking to people who think that the consumerist lifestyle is bunk. Big corporations only start to worry about people who oppose them when there is actually a threat to their ability to make a profit. People can rant and scream and do their own thing all they want as long as they don't interfere with profits. But once you start tampering with profits _ by convincing enough people that consumerism is a bad thing or by directly standing in the way of money making operations _ you have crossed an important threshold. This is the threshold that stands between the powers-that-be being nice to you, and being thrown in jail. It is at this point that the environmentalists re-enter the story. As we saw earlier, the spread of eco-ideas during the 1980s was seen as a threat by those at the top of the consumerist power ladder. Large numbers of people started to question widely held beliefs that stood at the foundation of consumerism. Many North Americans started to understand that using paper doesn't have to mean clearcutting our forests and that getting around doesn't have to mean driving a car. This was a questioning of the dominant way of seeing the world. When the dominant ways of seeing the world start to be questioned, the rich and powerful start to wonder how they can keep the harmony of hegemony. A situation like this is often called a "crisis of hegemony". Such a crisis usually results in two actions on the part of the powers-that-be. The first is to undermine your opponents by making sure that the "general public" gets real happy again, real fast. The second is to use force against the "agitators" who won't get back in line, while convincing everybody else in society that the "agitators" were just a bunch of criminals anyway. In the environmental "war for mens' minds", the rich and powerful generally choose to use the undermining tactic first. ************************************************** For a complete version of this paper -- including pictures, sidebar commentary and a full bibliography -- contact Mark Surman (msurman@io.org) This paper is COPYRIGHT MARK SURMAN (1994). Permission is granted to duplicate, print or repost this paper as long as it is done on a non-commercial (ie. keep it free)and as long as the whole paper is kept intact. **************************************************