In terms of power and politics, leadership (especially by one state of a federation); more widely, the way in which one social group will represent its interests as being everyone’s interests. This ruling group may keep its grip on society either by social hegemony—the use of force to maintain order—or, more commonly, by cultural hegemony—producing ways of thinking, especially by subtly eliminating alternative views to reinforce the status quo (Laurie and Bennett (2002) Antipode 34, 1; Hoelscher (2003) AAAG 93, 3). See also S. Zukin (1995) on the cultural hegemony of cities.

Perreault (2007) PHG 31, 4 sees the core idea of hegemony as ‘ideological leadership and popular consent’. Kohl (2006) Antipode 38, 2 discusses neoliberalism as a hegemonic system. New approaches to hegemony examine how social identities (of race, gender, etc.) become dominant and how their particular interests are defined and accepted as universal interests; see Gallaher in C. Gallaher et al. (2009).