عنوان

Contesting hegemony :

Number

TLets524125

Title Proper

Contesting hegemony :

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Ncube, Cornelias

Title Proper by Another Author

civil society and the struggle for social change in Zimbabwe, 2000-2008

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

University of Birmingham

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2010

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Body granting the degree

University of Birmingham

Text preceding or following the note

2010

Text of Note

This thesis employs Gramsci's language of hegemony in order, firstly, to explore the role of civil society in legitimating and resisting state hegemony, and secondly, to examine the sociological basis of counter-hegemonic politics in post-2000 Zimbabwe. The thesis arose out of a critique of reductionist approaches in the theorising and study of changing state-society relations in post-2000 Zimbabwe that identifies civil society exclusively with opposition politics and excludes organisations aligned to the ruling party, and therefore resulting in functionalist discussions that view civil society as necessarily anti-state. This thesis demonstrates however that a dense hegemonic civil society also exists and it is organically aligned to ZANU-PF in its advocacy for a social change based on a radical transformed terrain of the relations of social forces of production, vis-à-vis land redistribution, albeit implementing this vision through coercive violence, persuasive but exclusionary discourses of radical nationalism, Afro-radicalism and nativism. Confronting it, is an equally militant counter-hegemonic civil society aligned to the MDC, and it deploys the discourses of constitutionalism and human rights to resist state hegemony and to unravel the violent nature of ZANU-PF's nationalist project, but in ways devoid of a serious critique of the structural inequalities of a post-independent Zimbabwe.

DT Africa

HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform

HT Communities. Classes. Races

Ncube, Cornelias

University of Birmingham

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

a

Y