Cultural Hegemony and Local Resistance in the Flow of Global Interconnectedness: Sociological and Postcolonial Perspectives
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Abstract
The acceleration of global interconnectedness — driven by digital communication technologies, transnational capital flows, and the proliferation of global media and entertainment industries — has intensified both the reach of cultural hegemony and the visibility of local cultural resistance. This article examines the dynamics of cultural hegemony and local resistance in the context of contemporary global interconnectedness through an integrative theoretical framework synthesizing Gramsci's hegemony theory, Said's Orientalism and discourse analysis, Bhabha's concepts of mimicry and cultural hybridity, and Spivak's subaltern studies, alongside contemporary digital sociology. Through systematic qualitative literature review and analysis of empirical evidence on Indonesian cultural politics in the global arena, the study identifies four principal domains in which cultural hegemony operates through the mechanisms of global interconnectedness — entertainment and popular culture, academic and knowledge hierarchy, development discourse, and beauty and fashion standards — and maps the corresponding forms of local resistance that Indonesian communities, civil society organizations, and cultural entrepreneurs have developed. The analysis demonstrates that local resistance to cultural hegemony in the digital era takes forms that are neither simply reactive nor purely assimilationist, but reflect the creative hybridization and strategic deployment of both local and global cultural resources that postcolonial theory identifies as characteristic of subaltern agency. The Indonesian case — with its remarkable combination of cultural diversity, Islamic identity politics, national ideology, and digital connectivity — illustrates the complex, multilevel character of contemporary cultural hegemony contestation in a major Global South democracy.
Keywords
cultural hegemony; Gramsci; Indonesia; local resistance; postcolonial theory; global interconnectedness; Bhabha; Said
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