Southern urban forces derived strength from representing Northern urban prestige

Evidence

The most serious aspect was the weak position of the Southern urban forces in relation to the rural forces, an unfavourable relation which sometimes took the form of a literal subjugation of the city to the countryside. The close links between the urban forces of North and South gave to the latter the strength which came from representing the prestige of the former, and were destined to help the Southern urban forces to gain their autonomy, to acquire consciousness of their historical leadership function in a “concrete” and not merely theoretical and abstract manner, suggesting the solutions to give to the great regional problems. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 532

Categorization

• DEFINE: Illustrates Gramsci’s core mechanism of how a subordinate group’s leadership consciousness is acquired through relation to a dominant group’s prestige — a concrete instance of his theory of hegemony’s formation.