Civil Society Discourse Research Articles

Global Civil Society and Its Discontents

According to enthusiasts the concept of global civil society is spreading rapidly and becoming pivotal to the reconfiguring of the statist paradigm. However, critics have recently grown more numerous and outspoken in opposition to the term claiming that it is actually perpetuating statism by grafting the idea of civil society onto the global by way of an unhelpful domestic analogy. This paper examines the role the concept is playing in perpetuating/reconfiguring statism. First it summarizes current criticism by identifying three basic accusations: the ambiguity of the term, the “domestic fallacy,” and the undemocratic effects of using it. Second, these criticisms are considered in turn and it is concluded that all three points relate, ultimately, back to the failure of the critics themselves and some global civil society theorists to move beyond a state-centered framework of interpretation. In the final section it is shown how global civil society discourse is beginning to move not only the concept of “civil society” away from its state-centred historical meanings, but also how it is contributing to changing the content of the concept of “the global.”

Gestural Politics: Civil Society in “ New” Singapore

This paper offers a short history of the term and discourse of civil society in Singapore: from its promulgation by then Minister of information and the Arts (MITA) George Yeo as civic society (in the 1990s) to its reassertion as a government vision statement calling for active citizenship and public participation and feedback (from 1999). In 2004, in the lead-up to the installation of the city-state's third Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, civil society has been re-framed and re-branded with political buzzwords like openness and inclusiveness. This paper argues that while to some extent, engagement with the concept of civil society has become a political necessity in the Singapore, the appropriation and propagation of such new rhetoric remains by and large gestural. In the final analysis, this paper posits that gestural politics — where the liberal gestures of the regime is more important than its substance — remains the most meaningful way of understanding the role and direction of civil society in Singapore.

The Desire Called Civil Society: A Contribution to the Critique of a Bourgeois Category

How does ‘civil society’ serve the Washington Consensus while also attracting the aspirations of left political activists and progressive planners? We address this troubling question by interrogating the concept of civil society, with due respect to the actual role played by civil society in the development of capitalism. Based on close readings of Hegel, Marx and planning theory dealing with it, we also argue that the discourse of civil society now serves neoliberalism quite well, but provides dubious support for ‘radical’ or ‘insurgent’ planning. As an ideal for the latter, we propose instead the radical democratization of both the economy and the state.

Contesting models of Islamic governance in Malaysia and Indonesia

This article suggests that there is much to be learnt from studying Islam in Malaysia and Indonesia comparatively to trace their emerging similarities. Various models of an Islamic state, be it by directly involving the shariah as the only source of reference, as it is proposed Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS), or by gradually Islamizing the society (shariah haraki), a model that has been applied with considerable success by both ABIM and the Mahathir administration and receives backing from Islamic mass organizations such as the NU and Muhammadiyah. This suggests that there is a gradual transformation of the Wahhabi‐inspired dakwah‐Islam of the late 1970s into new discourses of Islamic civil society undertaken by the emerging middle classes of both countries. However, Wahhabi‐Islam is nevertheless still important and its impact on the future shape of political Islam in the region cannot be underestimated, especially since dakwah‐organizations link up internationally and continue to be generously sponsored by Saudi Arabia.

Global civil society: an answer to war

Preface. Abbreviations. Chapter 1: Five Meanings of Global Civil Society. Chapter 2: The Discourse of Civil Society. Chapter 3: The Ideas of 1989: The Origins of the Concept of Global Civil Society. Chapter 4: Social Movements, NGOs and Networks. Chapter 5: Globalization, the State and War. Chapter 6: September 11: The Return of the 'Outside'?. Notes. Index

Sociedade civil e globalização: repensando categorias

The discourse of civil society has gone global. Once again theorists of democracy are placing their bets on civil society to generate solidarity, publicity, civicness, awareness of new forms of injustice, and democracy vis-a-vis the new world order. Yet too many analysts are naively optimistic or ideological about global civil society's democratizing role. In order to visualize the proper role of civil society in the global context, careful systematic analysis is needed concerning the ways in which globalization has transformed the key parameters of civil society and how such changes recursively affect how civil society impacts national, regional, transnational, and supranational bodies. There can be no vital democracy without civil society, but civil society cannot replace constitutional democracy or the rule of law at any level of government.

Public Words and Body Politics: Reflections on the Strategies of Women Poets in Rural Yemen

This paper provides historical perspective on the mediation of women's public verbal activism in the Republic of Yemen by considering the public expressive strategies of two rural women poets. Much of the research on the expressive lives of Middle Eastern women has focused on verbal genres typically designated private or domestic, such as agricultural and wedding songs, lullabies and songs about personal experiences, and stories, tales, or narratives not traditionally considered "poetry." In contrast, this essay attends to public poetry and related discourses produced by and about two speci�c rural women. By examining how these women have managed, appropriated, and interrogated dominant patriarchal discourses of tribalism, Islamism, and nationalism, and by considering how media technologies contribute in different ways to embodying women's voices, this essay articulates a methodological framework that can better account for the expressive capacities of contemporary women activists in the rural Middle East.

Civil Society Versus Organized Crime

Based on fieldwork in Palermo, this article analyzes the city’s antimafia movement in which the words ‘civil society’ have ample resonance. On the one hand, they convey an ecumenical meaning, suited to overcoming the otherwise polarized Communist and Christian Democratic political identities that anti-mafia activists inherited from the Cold War era. On the other hand, they evoke cultural hegemony, exemplified by antimafia initiatives in the public schools. To understand the contemporary currency of ‘civil society’, the article argues, requires revisiting the Cold War years when the overt and covert exercise of political violence not only impeded the formation of democratic institutions, but made a mockery of such institutions where they existed. Social movements emerging from that era often make rhetorical use of the civil society concept as an umbrella under which to demand transparency, democracy, and human rights. Coincidentally, civil society discourse has acquired enormous currency with the United Nations, the IMF and World Bank, and a vast array of nongovernmental organizations. At this level, the issue is the marginalization of new global enemies, no less threatening than the (Soviet) ‘evil empire’ - specifically, the uncivil forces of crime and corruption that, under the post-Cold War conditions of triumphant neo-liberal capitalism, can only grow and thrive if not held in check.

Taking Liberties

Civil society is an increasingly important concept for anthropology, encountered both in the social theories we employ, and in the discourses and practices of the people we study. This introductory article was written in dialogue with the articles in this issue and attempts to highlight and begin to theorize key themes emerging from those articles. These include: the dialectical relationship between civil society and the state; the important role of middle classes in civil society; and the suffusion of civil society discourses with normative messages of modernization, reform, and salvation. It is argued that the long-standing custom-ary conduct of ethnography amid the organizations, associations, and institutions of daily life has equipped anthropology with conceptual tools that can contribute to a grounded and critical perspective on civil society.

Gender and the Public Sphere: Alternative Forms of Integration in Nineteenth-Century America

This paper intends to evaluate two competing models of multicultural integration in stratified societies: the “multiple publics” model of Nancy Fraser and the “fragmented public sphere” model of Jeffrey Alexander. Fraser and Alexander disagree on whether or not claims to a general “common good” or “common humanity” are democratically legitimate in light of systemic inequality. Fraser rejects the idea that cultural integration can be democratic in conditions of social inequality, while Alexander accepts it and tries to explain how it may be realized. In order to address this debate, I analyze the cultural foundations of the female-led, maternally themed social movements of nineteenth-century America. The language of these movements supports Alexander's position over Fraser's, though it also suggests that Alexander is mistaken in the specifics of his cultural theory of a general and democratic “common good.” While Alexander's model of integration is structured uniquely by what he and Philip Smith have called “the discourse of civil society,” the evidence suggests a distinctly alternative, equally democratic code at play in this case, which I have labeled a discourse of affection and compassion.

Transformations of Classical Republicanism in Eighteenth‐Century France

Previous articleNext article No AccessTransformations of Classical Republicanism in Eighteenth‐Century France*Keith Michael Baker Keith Michael BakerStanford University Search for more articles by this author Stanford UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Modern History Volume 73, Number 1March 2001 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/319878 Views: 348Total views on this site Citations: 40Citations are reported from Crossref ©2001 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.PDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:John Foley Camus and Rousseau: freedom, justice and ‘the despotism of the general will’, History of European Ideas 48, no.55 (Aug 2021): 614–633.https://doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2021.1971545E. S. Karsanova, O. S. 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A further note on civil society

The discourse of civil society has continued to thrive, despite reservations expressed by thinkers from both East and West. Assuming it is here to stay for the time being, at least, which aspects of the concept still need most scrutiny ? What ate the outstanding problems and themes for further reflection ? How best can we make the concept serviceable ? This essay surveys some of the recent literature with an eye to these questions.

Re-thinking Transition: Globalism, Gender and Class

This article addresses the questions the ending of the Cold War raises for the understanding of gender and politics. It starts with the surprise that has been caused by the events of transition, and reflects this back to ask how expectations of transition which have consistently not been fulfilled, are produced. Why did feminism not develop in the wake of state socialism in the way many thought that it would? An argument is put forward to show how an idea of the West and of liberal freedom is at stake in the interpretation of the events of postcommunism. The article analyses how an idea of western freedom, which presupposes that identities under democratic and communist regimes are the same, also underpins tensions in West–East transnational feminist debate. A reconceptualization of transition is offered, first through a critique of the Newtonian concept of absolute space that underpins the idea of liberal freedom and the way in which this operates in civil society discourse. Second, a new analytical framework is offered, using the alternative, relativistic, concept of 'curved space'. Unlike the notion of absolute space, 'curved space' cannot be defined in the abstract, but is produced by and produces the specific identities which exist at any given moment in time. Different processes of identity formation in the West and in the East, can thus be related to differences in the curvature of space, that is, to the differences, in communist and democratic regimes, of relations of power. These power relation differences are a reflection of the organization of the economy-state. The article then shows how the hierarchization of citizenship is implied in the state/economy changes being put in place in the former Soviet Bloc. The institutionalization of gender after communism can be seen as part of an historically unprecedented process of social differentiation implicated in the re-introduction of private rights, and in the market economy and class relations which for the first time in history, are being required and instituted by (supra)states.

Theorizing the Good Society: Hermeneutic, Normative and Empirical Discourses

Abstract: This paper examines two fundamentally different ways that recent philosophical thinkers have theorized the good society and demonstrates that each tradition has engaged in revisionist efforts that brings it toward its rival tradition. Rawls and Habermas represent the of this contemporary effort, establishing neo-Kantian positions in the sixties and seventies that represent an initial effort at theorizing the good society in terms of an historically unsituated, free floating universalism. The contemporary versions of the hermeneutic, communitarian approaches emerge in response, with thinkers like Walzer, Boltanski and Thevenot, Taylor, and Young arguing for the situated self, community based standards, cultural specificity, and relativism. It is demonstrated, however, that within each of these works there is a decisive space that is, or must be, given to some more universalizing sphere of justice. Responding to this possibility, against these communitarian and hermeneutic approaches, there developed internal revisions of the neo-Kantian, externalist approach, beginning with the large shift manifest in the Rawls of Political Liberalism. Similar changes are demonstrated in the works of thinkers like Benhabib, Honneth, and even in Habermas himself. Just as the communitarians move back, with difficulty, toward universalism, so do these universalists seek to move back, with difficulty, to particularism. In the concluding section of this paper, I argue that if we look empirically at the actual nature of the discourses about the good society that circulate in Western societies, we will see both of these discourses, the universalist and the particular, acting side by side. I try to explain how they actual intertwine in a systematic way, as what I call a binary discourse of civil society. Resume: Ce document examine deux manieres fondamentalement differentes que les philosophes d'aujourd'hui utilisent pour elaborer des theories sur la societe ideale. Ce document demontre aussi que chaque tradition a adopte des vues revisionnistes qui la rapproche de sa rivale traditionnelle. Rawls et Habermans representent la base de cet effort contemporain quia jete les assises des positions neo-kantiennes dans les annees soixante et soixante-dix, marquant un premier effort de theories sur la societe ideale dans le cadre d'un universalisme libre et non situe dans l'histoire. Des versions contemporaines de cette demarche hermeneutique et communautarienne surgissent alors avec des penseurs tels que Walzer, Boltanski et Thevenot, de meme que Taylor et Young qui defendent le sol localise, les normes axees sur les collectivites, la specificite culturelle et le relativisme. On prouve par ailleurs que dans chacun de ces travaux, il existe un espace decisif qui doit, ou devrait, etre laisse a une justice plus universelle. Reagissant a cette possibilite, a l'encontre des demarches communautariennes et hermeneutiques, des revisions internes de la demarche externaliste neo-kantienne sont apparues en commencant par le manifeste radical du Everywhere we look today, certainly in philosophy and even in a great deal of social science, we see a decided turn to ethical and moral concerns, not only as an empirical object but as a practical goal towards which empirical and theoretical investigations aim. It has not always been so. In the two decades after World War II, it was widely believed that morality -- value orientation in Weber's influential formulation -- did not need to, and should not be allowed to, play a direct role in social science or even in much of philosophy. In social science, it seemed possible to uphold this position because the moral seemed imminent to the progressively unfolding historical progress that functionalists called modernization and Marxists called socialism or the welfare state. In the decades preceding the Second World War, of course, this optimism would have seemed totally absurd. In the unstable and threatening time between the two world wars, philosophers and sociological theorists struggled to expand their understandings of action and order so that notions of moral responsibility could become more central and the relation of theorizing to political action more concrete. …

Creating Civil Society? The Emergence of NGOs in Vietnam

Based on recent research in Hanoi, this article examines the emergence of NGOs in Vietnam, and relates their development to the civil society discourse which is used by elements of the international donor community to predict the growth of pluralism and democracy. After examining the social and political environment of post‐reform Vietnam, it does not appear evident that these organizations fit into any definition of civil society which stresses independence from the state and opposition to state ideology.

Beyond postcolonial theory

Introduction Interrogations and Interventions: Who Speaks for Whom? Postcolonial Theory versus Philippine Reality Unspeakable Subalterns: Lessons from Gramsci, Cabral, Freire The Multicultural Imaginary: Problematizing Identity and the Ideology of Racism Revisiting an 'Internal Colony': U.S. Asian Cultural Formations and the Metamorphosis of Ethnic Discourse Globalization, Dialogic Nation, Diaspora For a Critique of Imperial 'American Exceptionalism' and the Discourse of Civil Society Beyond Post-Colonial Theory: The Mass Line in C.L.R. James Imagining the End of Empire: Emergencies and Breakthroughs Notes Bibliography Index

Collective Action across Borders: Opportunity Structures, Network Capacities, and Communicative Praxis in the Age of Advanced Globalization

This paper analyzes the dynamics of the Zapatista uprising with research tools inspired by recent social movement theory. It finds that the insurgent indigenous peasants of Chiapas rose up in arms under conditions of relative economic and political deprivation at a particularly opportune moment after developing a project of insurgency and acquiring significant organizational strength. Militarily, the Zapatistas would not have been able to hold out long against the overwhelming force of the federal army. But enormous media attention and massive national and international protest prevented the regime from military crackdowns. The Zapatistas' ability to link personal, organizational, and informational networks has helped to gain crucial support. Using globalized means of communication, they were able to disseminate their messages around the world where they touched a chord in the discourse of an incipient global civil society linked by non-governmental organizations, fax machines, and the internet.

The Role and Dynamics of Nongovernmental Actors in Contemporary Korea

This study extends and refines earlier hypotheses about the constructive potential of influences "from below" on questions of democratization and unification in Korea. It carefully distinguishes "direct action" from other forms of political action and suggests that nonviolent direct action, fomented in the discourse of civil society, offers greater potential for constructive change than does "routine" political action, which operates within a more circumscribed institutional framework and yields more predictable and more limited results.