‘Ascendency in a play of social forces’: hegemony in the theory of practice

The application of the concept hegemony in the work of R.W. Connell is best known in his work on gender. However, hegemony has been a significant theme throughout the corpus of Connell’s work, the point of departure is the theory of practice. Specifically, this chapter explicates the theory of practice by analysing its key concept – situation – and showing how hegemony operates upon it to produce a particular understanding of power. The latter part of this chapter will explore the mechanisms that impose and maintain hegemony in the theory of practice and the influence of crisis upon the situation-hegemony nexus.