Hegemony or Survival

Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance is a study of the "American Empire" written by the American linguist and political activist Noam Chomsky, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It was first published in the United States in November 2003 by Metropolitan Books, and later republished in the United Kingdom by Penguin Books.

Chomsky's main argument in Hegemony or Survival is that the socio-economic elite who control the United States have pursued an "Imperial Grand Strategy" since the end of World War II in order to maintain global hegemony through military, political and economic means. He argues that in doing so they have repeatedly shown a total disregard for democracy and human rights, in stark contrast to the US government's professed support for those values. Furthermore, he argues that this continual pursuit of global hegemony now threatens the existence of the human species itself because of the increasing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Noam Chomsky

Avram Noam Chomsky (/ˈnoʊm ˈtʃɒmski/; born December 7, 1928) is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, historian, logician, social critic, and political activist. Sometimes described as "the father of modern linguistics," Chomsky is also a major figure in analytic philosophy, and one of the founders of the field of cognitive science. He has spent most of his career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he is Institute Professor Emeritus, and is the author of over 100 books, primarily on politics and linguistics. Ideologically, he aligns with anarcho-syndicalism and libertarian socialism.

Born to a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Philadelphia, Chomsky developed an early interest in anarchism from alternative bookstores in New York City. At the age of sixteen he began studies at the University of Pennsylvania, taking courses in linguistics, mathematics, and philosophy. He married fellow linguist Carol Schatz in 1949. From 1951 to 1955 he was appointed to Harvard University's Society of Fellows, where he developed the theory of transformational grammar for which he was awarded his doctorate in 1955. That year he began teaching at MIT, in 1957 emerging as a significant figure in the field of linguistics for his landmark work Syntactic Structures, which laid the basis for the scientific study of language, while from 1958 to 1959 he was a National Science Foundation fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study. He is credited as the creator or co-creator of the universal grammar theory, the generative grammar theory, the Chomsky hierarchy, and the minimalist program. Chomsky also played a pivotal role in the decline of behaviorism, being particularly critical of the work of B. F. Skinner.

United States

Coordinates: 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100

The United States of America (USA), commonly referred to as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a federal republic composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major territories and various possessions. The 48 contiguous states and Washington, D.C., are in central North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwestern part of North America and the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific. The territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. At 3.8 million square miles (9.842 million km²) and with over 320 million people, the country is the world's third or fourth-largest by total area and the third most populous. It is one of the world's most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, the product of large-scale immigration from many countries. The geography and climate of the United States are also extremely diverse, and the country is home to a wide variety of wildlife.

Hegemony

Hegemony (UK /hᵻˈɡɛməni/ or /ˈhᵻdʒɛməni/, US /hᵻˈdʒɛməni/ or /ˈhᵻdʒɛmoʊni/; Greek: ἡγεμονία hēgemonía, "leadership, rule") is the political, economic, or military predominance or control of one state over others. In Ancient Greece (8th century BCE – 6th century CE), hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states. The dominant state is known as the hegemon.

In the 19th century, hegemony came to denote the "Social or cultural predominance or ascendancy; predominance by one group within a society or milieu". Later, it could be used to mean "a group or regime which exerts undue influence within a society." Also, it could be used for the geopolitical and the cultural predominance of one country over others; from which was derived hegemonism, as in the idea that the Great Powers meant to establish European hegemony over Asia and Africa.

The Marxist theory of cultural hegemony, associated particularly with Antonio Gramsci, is the idea that the ruling class can manipulate the value system and mores of a society, so that their view becomes the world view (Weltanschauung): in Terry Eagleton's words, "Gramsci normally uses the word hegemony to mean the ways in which a governing power wins consent to its rule from those it subjugates". In contrast to authoritarian rule, cultural hegemony "is hegemonic only if those affected by it also consent to and struggle over its common sense".

Survival

Survival is act of surviving; to stay living.

Survival may also refer to:

Medicine and statistics

Extreme environments, weather, wilderness

Companies and organizations

Literature

Music

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