Gramsci uses civil society to mean political and cultural hegemony, not Hegel’s economic sphere.

Evidence

A distinction must be made between civil society as understood by Hegel, and as often used in these notes (i.e. in the sense of political and cultural hegemony of a social group over the entire society, as ethical content of the State), and on the other hand civil society in the sense in which it is understood by catholics, for whom civil society is instead political society of the State, in contrast with the society of family and that of the Church. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 829

Categorization

• DEFINE: Pinpoints Gramsci’s distinctive redefinition of civil society as the site of hegemony rather than economic relations.
• XREF: Core vocabulary for the Islamophobia toolkit: how the ‘Other’ is constructed via hegemonic civil society rather than state coercion alone.