Domination is a structural power relationship in which one individual or, more often, collective actor has overwhelming and continuous power superiority over other individual or collective actor or actors. These unequal power relations ensure the complacency of those who are dominated. Max Weber defined domination (in German Herrschaft) as the “likelihood that a command within a given organization or society will be obeyed”. Weber also specified several sources of domination: legal authority, coercion, and economic power. Michael Mann argues, in The Sources of Social Power (1986), that there are four basic sources of power in society - ideological, economic, military, and political. Mann states that social actors can override existing relations of domination through “organizationally outflanking”.

                            Dominant Ideology Thesis

Antonio Gramsci introduced the concept of "cultural hegemony". He argues that the ruling class in capitalist societies does not rule only through force and repression but imposes its own ideological system, which defends the interests of the ruling class, and other subordinate classes. This imposed value system is what Gramsci calls "cultural hegemony." Hegemony is a synthesis of political, intellectual, and moral leadership within the ruling class. This leadership justifies its interests by creating an image of the world that presents those interests and the economic and political relations that sustain those interests as positive for the entire population. When other classes (which Gramsci calls "subaltern") accept such a picture of the world as normal and common sense, or even better, as the only possible one, then those classes become integrated into that ruling cultural hegemony.

Althusser developed a theory of ideology, in which ideology functions “without history”, by providing people the framework to establish lived relationships within the social reality in which they are located. Ideology locates subjects in the system of relationships that is necessary for the maintenance of unequal class relations. Ideology molds individual identities that are functional to the propagation of the capitalist system of exploitation. Hence, ideology is not a philosophical illusion but a lived practice of everyday life. “Ideological state apparatuses” (legal system, family, school, church, communications, political parties) are predominantly responsible for those practices because they are supported by, and give support to those practices, to ensure the undisturbed functioning of the capitalist system.

In the book Dialectics of Enlightenment (1972, in German 1947b), co-written by Max Horkheimer with Theodore Adorno, the authors explore the history of bourgeois society and culture, primarily in the context of the Enlightenment ideas of science and humanism. The Enlightenment is the product of a dialectical relationship between the ideas of freedom, justice, and personal autonomy, on the one hand, and the values ​​of positive science focused on measurements and exactness, as well as pragmatism and utilitarianism, to control nature, on the other. The Enlightenment was a period in which the preconditions of "totalitarianism" emerged because the principles of positive science were applied to exert control over society. These principles led to the spread of ideas and practices of order, control, and domination, while at the same time eliminating mythical thinking and subjectivity. In the modern society of advanced capitalism, proletarian revolutions have not taken place.

The authors see the main reason for this in the mass culture that spreads conformism and controls social consciousness. They called this form of control over the masses "culture industry." The culture industry dominates all forms of mass culture; the mass media sell artistic values ​​as commodities; democracy is characterized by parties that control the masses through their programs and propaganda; consumer products are standardized and eliminate the need for individual consumer tastes. In Western culture, as a consequence of the Enlightenment, the instrumental form of formal rationality dominates, and the goal of that rationality is to achieve control over human action and society, through dehumanized science and technology. Capitalist societies, through the culture industry and dehumanized science and technology, destroy any real opposition by either assimilating or neutralizing it. In these societies, all models of social communication become monolithic and lead to cultural indoctrination. Modern society is becoming an iron cage of total administration, consumerism, and resignation.

In The Dominant Ideology Thesis (1980), Abercrombie et al. state that proponents of the dominant ideology thesis overestimate the reach and effect of cultural integration in modern societies, and that they underestimate the capacity of subordinate groups to create values and beliefs opposite to dominant ideology.

                    Bourdieu’s Conception of Domination

In Pierre Bourdieu’s theoretical approach, society is divided into several “fields”. He believes that each field is a stratified hierarchical system within which there are relations of power and domination. Of all the forms of power and domination, the most important are symbolic power and symbolic violence. All cultural symbols - art, food and clothing patterns, science, religion, language - serve to pursue the interests of those in power. Those at the top of the hierarchy of a field use symbols to preserve, increase, and legitimize that power, so such strategies are a source of symbolic power and symbolic violence. Symbolic power and violence have the function of creating and increasing social "distinction". The distinction, conceived in this way, is a separate analytical concept in Bourdieu's approach and is the main theme of his book Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment Taste. Society is filled with the great struggle to create social distinctions, because class struggles are, in essence, struggles to create a symbolic classification of people into distinct classes. Symbolic power and symbolic violence serve to create, legitimize, and preserve the distinctions that exist between social classes. When symbolic power succeeds in gaining a monopoly on the legitimacy of power relations and the "distinctions" that exist between classes within a field, then that field begins to have its doxa, that is, common sense, which serves to present power relations and distinctions as natural and self-evident. The goal of those who exercise domination is to, with the help of symbolic power, present the relations of power so legitimate and self-evident that any attempt of resistance by the oppressed is extinguished. That is why self-restraint and self-censorship, imposed on themselves by oppressed actors, are the most effective forms of reproduction of power relations.

                         Foucault's View of Domination

Michel Foucault is critical of the Marxist view of power, control, and domination. While Marx thinks that power is used to achieve the class domination of the bourgeoisie over the proletariat, to accomplish economic exploitation, Foucault believes that power functions in different ways in different fields and different types of relations. Foucault studies how power manifests itself on a micro level and in everyday practices and comes to the conclusion that power is localized and fragmented. Foucault believes that society does not have a center, but multi-layered microcosms. The society represents a large impersonal system of monitoring, mobility, and diffusion, which operates through circulation chains. Discourse is never strictly divided between dominant and dominated, and accepted and excluded discourses. Instead, discourse goes through complex and unstable processes and can be an instrument, and also a consequence of power, as well as a point of resistance around which the opposition strategy can be built.

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