Hegemony: Studies in Consensus and Coercion, New York: Routledge, (2008), Edited by Richard Howson & Kylie Smith, ISBN: 9780415955447

The originality and depth of Gramsci's theory of hegemony is now evidenced in the wide-ranging intellectual applications within a growing corpus of research and writings that include social, political and cultural theory, historical interpretation, gender and globalization. The reason that hegemony has been so widely and diversely adopted lies in the unique way that Gramsci formulated the 'problematics' of structure/ superstructure, coercion/consensus, materialism/idealism and regression/ progression within the concept hegemony. However, in much of the contemporary literature the full complexity of hegemony is either obfuscated or ignored.

Hegemony, through comprehensive and systematic analyses of Gramsci's formulation, a picture of hegemony as a complex syncretism of these dichotomies. In other words, hegemony is presented as a concept that is as much about aspiration and progressive politico-social relations as it is about regressive and dominative processes. Thus, the volume recognises and presents this complexity through a selection of contemporary theoretical as well as historico-social investigations that mark a significantly innovative moment in the work on hegemony.

Thomson, E. & White, P.R.R. (eds) (2008), Communicating Conflict Multilingual Case Studies of the News Media, Continuum, ISBN 978-0-8264-9782-6

Communicating Conflict brings together a collection of multilingual case studies drawn from the international media. The contributors use methodologies drawn from Critical Discourse Analysis and Systemic Functional Linguistics to explore how these texts overtly or covertly advance particular value positions and world views. They pay particular attention to how the reader is positioned with respect to the events being described, and, using appraisal theory, the various voices which are referenced by the text.

This book is a timely examination of the reporting of conflict around the world. It will be of interest to researchers in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and media studies.