Cultural Transformation as an Instrument of Global Geopolitical Hegemony in the Era of Great Power Contestation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67429/4f7vpg98Keywords:
Cultural Hegemony; Great Power Contestation; Critical Discourse AnalysisAbstract
This study critically examines cultural transformation as an instrumentalized mechanism of global geopolitical hegemony amid intensifying great power contestation. As material rivalry increasingly extends into normative and symbolic domains, this research addresses a persistent gap between institutional-cultural scholarship and structural geopolitical theory by theorizing how localized cultural engineering is mobilized into macro-level hegemonic strategy. Employing Critical Discourse Analysis grounded in Fairclough's three-dimensional model, the study analyzes strategic policy documents, official speeches, and institutional narratives across textual, discursive, and social practice levels, contextualized within Gramscian hegemony and great power competition theory. Findings reveal that great powers systematically obscure agency behind cultural interventions through nominalization and passivization, legitimating hegemonic order as normative common sense while strategically recirculating narratives across multilateral and institutional sites. Localized cultural engineering is aggregated into geopolitical instruments through financial conditionality, infrastructure-cultural fusion, and elite institutional cultivation. Rising and middle powers respond through a negotiated spectrum of appropriation, contestation, and subversive resistance rather than uniform compliance. These findings demonstrate that cultural transformation operates as a decisive, often concealed vector of hegemonic power, with significant implications for institutional legitimacy, equitable partnership, and the integrity of global governance within the Sustainable Development Goals framework.
References
[1]. Asante, D. (2024). Navigating restrictions: External funding and WPS implementation. Women's Studies International Forum, 107, Article 103000. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2024.103000
[2]. Ates, H. (2004). Management as an agent of cultural change in the Turkish public sector. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 14(1), 33–58. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muh003
[3]. Dewar, B., Barrie, K., Sharp, C., & Meyer, J. (2019). Implementation of a complex intervention to support leadership development in nursing homes: A multimethod participatory study. Journal of Applied Gerontology, 38(7), 931–958. https://doi.org/10.1177/0733464817705957
[4]. Edwards, J. (2016). The rhetoric–reality gap. In International explorations in outdoor and environmental education (Vol. 1, pp. 1–7). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02147-8_1
[5]. Grant, A. (2026). Hegemony. In Elgar concise encyclopedia of geopolitics (pp. 82–85). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803928821.00027
[6]. Homadovski, A. (2009). Transformations in cultural institutions—Contemporary museum destinations and influences of industrial branding values [Transformacije institucija kulture—suvremene muzejske destinacije i utjecaji vrijednosti industrijskog brandinga]. Prostor, 17(2), 386–395.
[7]. Juneau, H. L., Thomas, G. R., Nystrom, M., & Muras, A. (2014). Implementing communities of practice in a matrix organization. In 2014 International Annual Conference of the American Society for Engineering Management (ASEM 2014). American Society for Engineering Management.
[8]. Katewa, D. (2010). Socio-economic transformation of the tribal groups in Rajasthan, India. International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, 5(7), 49–60. https://doi.org/10.18848/1833-1882/CGP/v05i07/51795
[9]. López Novo, J. P. (2012). Spiritual but not religious: The culture of personal transformation [Espiritual pero no religiosa: La cultura de la transformación personal]. Ilu, 17, 77–99. https://doi.org/10.5209/rev-ILUR.2012.v17.39674
[10]. Oelofse, K., & Zaabi, Y. (2025). Cracking the culture code: Building leadership capacity to navigate cultural nuances in energy. In Society of Petroleum Engineers – ADIPEC 2025. Society of Petroleum Engineers. https://doi.org/10.2118/229225-MS
[11]. Paltore, Y., Kozhabekova, R., Mustafayeva, A., & Kulakhmetova, M. (2023). Spiritual culture of modern youth: A cultural and philosophical analysis. XLinguae, 16(3), 117–124. https://doi.org/10.18355/XL.2023.16.03.12
[12]. Praet, M., & du Puy, T. (2016). Cultural diversity and political unity in the innovation ecosystem. In Revolutionising EU innovation policy: Pioneering the future (pp. 283–307). Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55554-0_11
[13]. Purnomo, S., Purwanto, E., & Wahyuningsih, T. (2025). Integrating digital innovation and cultural transformation for the sustainability of ecotourism MSMEs. Polish Journal of Management Studies, 32(2), 186–201. https://doi.org/10.17512/pjms.2025.32.2.12
[14]. Rzayeva Oktay, R. (2016). Modernisation. In SpringerBriefs in philosophy (pp. 49–53). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33885-9_10
[15]. Sabet, A. G. E. (2015). Geopolitics of a changing world order: US strategy and the scramble for the Eurasian Heartland. Contemporary Arab Affairs, 8(2), 163–180. https://doi.org/10.1080/17550912.2015.1018717
[16]. Scotti, D., & Matkin, D. (2016). The survival of a cultural change programme relies heavily upon continual innovation, evolution and maintenance of focus: The 8 years long history of leadership in health and safety programme. In Society of Petroleum Engineers – SPE International Conference and Exhibition on Health, Safety, Security, Environment, and Social Responsibility. Society of Petroleum Engineers. https://doi.org/10.2118/179259-ms
[17]. Tan, M. G., Wider, W., Pang, N. T. P., Lasimbang, H. B., Shoesmith, W. D., Tangau, C. R. M., Jiang, L., & Bhutasang, N. (2024). Gendered narratives and cultural shifts: A qualitative study on decadal changes in community alcohol consumption. PLoS ONE, 19(12), Article e0309378. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0309378
[18]. Unterberg, L. (2025). Resistance and subversive practices in the face of a culture of algorithms—Opportunities and limits of social work in a post-digital world. In Social work and social transformation between exclusion and inclusion: Analyses and perspectives (pp. 53–60). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-47583-3_5
[19]. Wolff, J. (2020). Democracy. In The Routledge handbook to the political economy and governance of the Americas (pp. 341–349). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781351138444-35
[20]. Bekkevold, J. I., & Tunsjø, Ø. (2022). The geopolitical foundations for U.S. strategy in a new U.S.–China bipolar system. China International Strategy Review, 4(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42533-022-00109-y
[21]. Dingil, H. (2025). Great power competition: Structuring an analytical theoretical framework for small/middle power security strategies. In Shifting power dynamics in international relations: From unipolar hegemony to multipolarity (pp. 1–12). IGI Global. https://doi.org/10.4018/979-8-3373-2342-8.ch001
[22]. Farhadi, A., & Galloway, I. (2022). Building trust and advancing U.S. geoeconomic strength through public-private partnership stakeholder capitalism. In The great power competition volume 2: Contagion effect: Strategic competition in the COVID-19 era (Vol. 2, pp. 73–95). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90390-9_5
[23]. Fong, B. C. H., & Chong, J. I. (2024). The Routledge handbook of great power competition (pp. 1–344). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003340997
[24]. Gogny, L., & de Castro, A. (2025). Mali as a theatre of great power competition: A realist approach. International Critical Thought, 15(2), 241–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2025.2520479
[25]. Gontijo, C. (2025). Global crisis and the liberal international order: Critical nodes in a totality. International Studies Review, 27(3), Article viaf013. https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viaf013
[26]. Kitchen, N. (2024). Making net assessment work: Evaluating great-power competition. Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, 66(4), 51–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2024.2380196
[27]. Klinke, I. (2018). Geopolitics and the political right: Lessons from Germany. International Affairs, 94(3), 495–514. https://doi.org/10.1093/ia/iiy024
[28]. Mahmud, K. U., & Hossain, M. S. (2025). Tracing the geopolitical influence and regional power dynamics in Central Asia: A thematic analysis with neorealist perspectives. Discover Global Society, 3(1), Article 132. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44282-025-00269-3
[29]. Mittelman, J., & Falk, R. (2018). Global hegemony and regionalism. In Regionalism in the post-Cold War world (pp. 3–22). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315203201
[30]. Müller, T. (2024). Narratives, knowledge objects, and the making of great power competition. Global Studies Quarterly, 4(3), Article ksae059. https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksae059
[31]. Neafie, J. (2023). Producing the Eurasian Land Bridge: A case study of the geoeconomic contestation in Kazakhstan. International Politics, 60(2), 269–289. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41311-022-00386-9
[32]. Newman, E., & Zala, B. (2018). Rising powers and order contestation: Disaggregating the normative from the representational. Third World Quarterly, 39(5), 871–888. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2017.1392085
[33]. Persson, J. (2016). Escaping a closed universe: World-system crisis, regional dynamics, and the rise of Aegean palatial society. In Hegemonic decline: Present and past (pp. 7–50). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315634173-8
[34]. Rozov, N. S. (2025). Is legal self-restraint of Western hegemony possible? (Socio-evolutionary reflections). World Economy and International Relations, 69(1), 102–112. https://doi.org/10.20542/0131-2227-2025-69-1-102-112
[35]. Schroeder, W. A. (2023). A future US defense program in an era of great power competition. Orbis, 67(1), 85–102. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2022.12.009
[36]. Woldearegay, T. (2024). An offensive realism approach to navigate the changing dynamics of summit-level dialogue between the AU and great powers. Cogent Social Sciences, 10(1), Article 2306706. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2024.2306706
[37]. Zhang, B. (2023). Polarity and strategic competition: A structural explanation of renewed great power rivalry. Chinese Journal of International Politics, 16(4), 383–405. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjip/poad012
[38]. Henningsen, T. B. (2025). Great power competition, proxy war and special operations forces. In Into the void: Special operations forces after the war on terror (pp. 13–33). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780197793930.003.0002
[39]. Kroenig, M. (2020). The return of great power rivalry: Democracy versus autocracy from the ancient world to the U.S. and China (pp. 1–181). Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190080242.001.0001
[40]. Marinova, I. (2023). The EU at a strategic crossroads: A geopolitical player in great power games? European Foreign Affairs Review, 28(2), 117–140. https://doi.org/10.54648/EERR2023007
