Cited by 8Political theory and GramsciMarxism and Critical TheoryPhilosophy and Social Theory

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 9 of the 9 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 64 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Why Gramsci?

Open access
Crehan, Kate·2022·Dialectical anthropology

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

Kate Crehan argues that Gramsci's prison notebooks remain a vital resource for twenty-first-century analysis precisely because his Marxism is open, undogmatic, and insistent that abstract concepts like "the State" and "common sense" must be mapped onto concrete historical realities rather than imposed as templates. She illustrates this through the ethnographic contributions to the special issue she introduces, covering statelessness, church charity in Portugal and Italy, immigration in Vienna, Covid conspiracy theories in Carinthia, and far-right appropriations of Gramsci.

Key findings

  • Gramsci's shifting definitions of "the State" — from the expansive "entire complex of practical and theoretical activities with which the ruling class not only justifies and maintains its dominance, but manages to win the active consent of those over whom it rules" (1971: 244) to the narrow "governmental-coercive apparatus" distinguished from "civil society" (1971: 265) — are not contradictions but a deliberate refusal to let theory dictate to empirical reality.
  • Crehan argues the far right's appropriation of Gramsci (e.g., Alain de Benoist as "the key far-right 'importer' of Gramsci"; Rush Limbaugh's 1994 *See, I Told You So*) is not a threat, since "no theorist can control the meanings others attribute to their writings," and Gramsci himself held that what matters is "the ensemble of opinions that have become collective and a powerful factor in society" (2007: 347).
  • Gramsci's "common sense" (*senso comune*) is a "chaotic aggregate of disparate conceptions" (1971: 422) containing both a "healthy nucleus" of "good sense [buon senso]" (1971: 328) and dross; Crehan stresses its neutrality, citing Lems's Carinthian fieldwork where villagers' "healthy human wit" (gesunder Menschenverstand) underpinned Covid conspiracy theories rooted in a culture of opposition traceable to the sixteenth century.
  • Karasz's Vienna fieldwork (Monte Laa, 2011 and 2018) traced a shift in common-sense belonging from "Austrians" vs. "non-Austrians" to "Muslim" vs. "non-Muslim," following nearly 90,000 asylum applications in Austria in 2015 and more than 42,000 the next year.

Methods

  • This is a conceptual/theoretical essay introducing a special issue of *Dialectical Anthropology*; it presents no original empirical data of its own.
  • It synthesizes and interprets the special issue's ethnographic contributions — Beyer on statelessness activists, Pusceddu and Alves de Matos on Church charity in Setúbal (Portugal) and Brindisi (Italy, fieldwork 2015–2016), Karasz on Vienna, Lems on an Austrian Alpine village (summer 2020), and Pasieka on far-right organisations Lealtà Azione (Italy) and Praca Polska (Poland) — alongside close reading of Gramsci's notebooks and letters to Tatiana Schucht.
  • Analysis proceeds by juxtaposing Gramscian concepts (State, civil society, common sense, good sense, philosophy of praxis, hegemony) against the ethnographic cases to argue for context-specific mapping over abstract definition.

Limitations

  • The paper states no limitations of its own; it is an interpretive introduction rather than a study with a bounded sample or method.
  • Evident from the text: the argument rests on Crehan's own reading of the notebooks and on secondhand summaries of the special issue's articles, so the ethnographic evidence is reported rather than independently analyzed; the claim that Gramsci "seems to me an exemplary guide" is explicitly framed as her personal reading, and she acknowledges the notebooks are "not an easy read" and that their author's basic Marxist assumptions are left unstated.

Model-written summary. Check it against the paper before relying on it.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1007/s10624-022-09680-7

Cites

9 of 9 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

59 Sources not found · 56 Own interpretation · 9 No basis given · 1 No full text of the sources · 1 Not checked yet

Show all 26 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 95
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 26
  • The quote only partly states this claim. 1
100 of 100

Citations

Cites

Show all 8 references

Research works printed but not linked: 7

  1. Arendt, Hannah. 1994. Understanding and Politics. In Hannah Arendt: Essays in Understanding 1930–1954, ed. Jerome Kohn, 307–327. New York: Hardcourt Brace.
  2. Eribon, Didier. 1991. Michel Foucault. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press.
  3. Gramsci, Antonio .1992. Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks (Vol. I), edited and translated by Joseph A. Buttigieg. New York: Columbia University Press.
  4. Gramsci, Antonio .1994a. Letters from Prison. Vol. I Edited by Frank Rosengarten and translated by Ray Rosenthal. New York: Columbia University Press.
  5. Gramsci, Antonio .1994b. Letters from Prison. Vol. II Edited by Frank Rosengarten and translated by Ray Rosenthal. New York: Columbia University Press.
  6. Gramsci, Antonio .1996. Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks (Vol. II), edited and translated by Joseph A. Buttigieg. New York: Columbia University Press.
  7. Gramsci, Antonio .2007. Antonio Gramsci: Prison Notebooks (Vol. III), edited and translated by Joseph A. Buttigieg. New York: Columbia University Press.

Cited by

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Metadata

Authors
Crehan, K.
Affiliations
The Graduate Center, CUNY (US)
Corresponding author
Crehan, Kate
Venue
Dialectical anthropology
Published
2022-12
Volume
46
Issue
4
Pages
507-520
ISSN
  • 0304-4092 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-0786
OpenAlex
W4312195442
Cited by
5
References
8
Citations by year
2026: 1 · 2025: 1 · 2024: 1 · 2023: 2
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Dialectical Anthropology (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Political theory and Gramsci
  • Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Philosophy › Marxism and Critical Theory
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Philosophy and Social Theory
Keywords
Antonio Gramsci, Gramscian theory, Marxism, historical progress, cultural hegemony, power, Stuart Hall

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