Gramsci in Action: Cultural Hegemony and Schooling in the Arab Israeli Conflict

Abstract

Cultural hegemony is placed in relation to Kurt Lewin’s action research and the psychological theories of social conflict by Lewin himself, Carolyn Wood Sherif and Muzafer Sherif, and Henri Tajfel. Consonances between Gramsci’s ideas and these psychological theories are brought to the fore. Assuming this theoretical perspective, the results of an action research conducted in Arab Israeli schools to reduce dispersion highlight the heuristic value of Gramsci’s ideas in the Israeli Arab conflict context. Thus the contradictions of that conflict emerge and, together with them, the possibility of a solution.