Civil Society, State, Hegemony and Gramsci in the Modern World

This opening chapter does more than introduce the book. It provides the conceptual framework that guides the book. Gramsci’s concepts of hegemony, civil society and organic intellectuals, Shalini Randeria’s ‘entangled histories of uneven modernities’ and Edward Said’s notion of travelling theory are interrogated, clarified and then justified why they are important in working with to understand the relationships that have developed between civil society and the state in Zimbabwe. In particular, the chapter borrows from Gramsci’s understanding of civil society as one of the two superstructures (the other being political society) of the integral state, and its role as a site of consent, hegemony and ideological direction, where different actors go to contest ideas. This role makes civil society important not only to those who seek to provide an alternative hegemony as widely perceived in Zimbabwe but also to the ruling elite who want to maintain their hegemony. Benefiting from the travelling theory logic, local understandings of civil society have been used to develop a working definition of civil society relevant to the context of this book. The role of organic intellectuals in civil society in relation to the development of hegemony is an important aspect of Gramsci’s work, and in this book too, and thus also enjoys coverage in this chapter. The chapter also theorises the notion of a party-state in Zimbabwe and shows how this political culture has been central to the modes of engagement between the state and civil society. In Zimbabwe, the civil society arena has been recast by both the party-state and opposition parties as space limited to, or synonymous with opposition parties, which has not only narrowed its role but also tamed its potential for democratisation. The rest of the chapters will show how this has happened.