Practices Of Civil Society Research Articles

We are civil society!

The study expands on the current debate about post-socialist civil society and social movements, specifically in Croatia. Taking the strategic practices of the Croatian feminist movement in relation to the right to abortion in the last decade as the research unit, it employs the conception of post-socialist civil societies, focuses on the practices of civil society, and differentiates between contentious and compliant practices regardless of the form of organisation or engagement. The study examines whether the strategic practices of the Croatian feminist movement have changed in the last decade and, if so, which factors have played the most significant role. The study is based on a critical content analysis of interviews with the actors themselves and draws on their interpretations of the strategic practices. It finds that the Croatian feminist movement has, in the last decade, rethought the dominant compliant strategic practices inherent in the nonprofit sector and the organisations within it and has turned more towards contentious practices. The research described in the paper finds that there are three dominant factors behind the rethinking of the strategic practice: two external – the growing prominence of the conservative movement and the new expected abortion law – and one internal: a generational shift.

Sustainability, the Athens Marathon and Greece’s sport event sector: lessons of resilience, social innovation and the urban commons

Increasingly, a confluence of challenging global forces have precipitated sport sector change. While responses vary, a discernible trend has been the growing extents to which sport organisations and events have transcended typical participatory, performance and/or spectator focused logistics and embraced social responsibility acts that embed sport more deeply into communities. These manoeuvres have also become fundamental to organisation and sector capacity building and sustainability. Accordingly, this paper examines the example set by the Athens Marathon, Greece’s leading sport sector entity, towards sustainable event development through its strengthened volunteer and civil society practices and stakeholder relationships. Drawing data from key Athens Marathon informants and building upon conceptual models of sustainability that emphasise the interplay of resilience, social innovation and an urban commons, we demonstrate how the Athens Marathon affords a useful exemplar of how key organisational events may inform sustainability and sector strengthening.

ИДЕЙНЫЙ ПОТЕНЦИАЛ АНАРХО-КОММУНИЗМА П.А. КРОПОТКИНА ДЛЯ ТЕОРИИ ОБЩЕСТВЕННОГО ДОГОВОРА И ЕГО ЗНАЧЕНИЕ ДЛЯ СОВРЕМЕННОСТИ

The ideas of anarcho-communism by P.A. Kropotkin represent a rich heritage of Russian intellectual thought, relevant and significant for a new understanding of the theory of the social contract. A potential of the anarcho-communism ideas is revealed by the author’s approach: she applies a combination of analysis of a number of Kropotkin’s theoretical positions, the recognition of the uniqueness and exclusivity of the “moral and intellectual qualities” of his personality, the relationship of individual life history and the history of society in the conditions of revolutionary changes. With regard to the significance of the anarcho-communism ideas for the theory of the social contract, answers are given to the tasks of the study – how Kropotkin correlates society and the state, defines the internal determinants for consent in society, which signs (traits) for the characteristics of the social contract are important for the social diagnosis of its effectiveness. Kropotkin’s ideological legacy is an example of an intellectual response to the concrete historical challenges of a crumbling world, which was expressed in the creation of an ideology of anarcho-communism, combining both utopianism and a powerful predictive model of society’s way of life. His ideas of anti-statism, federalism, and the rule of law are in tune with the established modern era of the expansion of human rights, and are important due to the widespread social practices of civil society. Some ideas of Russian thinkers should be taken into account when developing parameters and indicators for the social contract as a necessary and reproducible construct.

Voices of society: the emergence of civil-society practices aiming to engage in the management of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands

During the COVID-19 pandemic, public groups mobilised themselves in civil-society engagement practices (CSEPs) aiming to improve or suggest alternative epidemic management. This study explores the motivation to establish CSEPs and...

Volunteering as civil society practices

The article examines the genesis of the volunteer movement since its inception in Russia, the development of volunteerism in tsarist Russia, in the Soviet and post-Soviet periods and, finally, in modern Russia. The systematic work for the development of the volunteer movement is shown in this paper. The unified network of infrastructure to support volunteerism in the subjects of the Russian Federation is the basis for comfortable participation in volunteering by all citizens of our country. Support of volunteerism at the state level has turned it into a dynamic social trend across the country, in which volunteers are becoming an important tool for solving social problems. It is volunteerism that can be called the basis for the development of civil society in modern Russia, aimed at solving social problems by the people united by common interests and goals.

Voices of Society: the emergence and contributions of civil-society practices aiming to engage in COVID-19 management

Voices of Society: the emergence and contributions of civil-society practices aiming to engage in COVID-19 management

The Party-State’s Hegemonic Project and Responses from Civil Society: The Case of Service-oriented NGOs in China

ABSTRACT This article investigates the Chinese party-state’s hegemonic project to construct social consent in NGOs and how they react to this. Using service-oriented NGOs as examples, it argues that the changing institutional dynamics of NGO governance in China demonstrates that Chinese civil society is a site of ideological struggle. The party-state has adapted some foreign concepts and practices of civil society, which have been popular in China since the reform era, to serve its political and socioeconomic agenda, while avoiding political challenges of liberal values and discourse. Civil society’s hegemonic transformation relies on two major mechanisms—professionalization and Maoist incorporation. This process, however, also leaves some space for NGOs to act differently. Some have been comfortably incorporated into the state-led welfare system and reproduce authoritarian norms and practices among their beneficiaries, whereas counter-hegemonic activism still exists among groups that link their stance and agenda closely with marginalized groups in society.

Serving one client only? Assessing the openness and inclusiveness of European Parliament's intergroups

ABSTRACT Openness and inclusiveness are central mechanisms for civil society participation in EU governance. Focusing on European Parliament’s intergroups, this article explores unofficial participatory venues and their receptiveness towards civil society. Based on a novel data set with 135 intergroup meetings and 435 civil society speakers across four intergroups in the 8th European Parliament (2014-2019), this study delivers the first empirical account of intergroup participants, and thereby provides original insights into the types and functions of intergroups as participatory mechanisms. Employing openness and inclusiveness to assess the density, diversity and insider status of civil society, this explorative study maps intergroups on a continuum of participatory vehicles that serve both pluralist interests and individual clients. It reveals an insider status for different types of interests across the four intergroups and points to the special role of EU associations in intergroups. By opening the black box of intergroups, this study explores an understudied phenomenon in EP-civil society research and sheds light on civil society practices taking place beyond the official structures of the Parliament. It adds to the literature on civil society access in EU governance and contributes to the wider political and academic debates on civil society’s contribution to the EU’s democratic legitimacy.

Expanding the Southern urban critique: Elite politics, popular politics, and self-governance in the wards of Mandalay

This article explores everyday urban governance and politics in Mandalay, Myanmar. We examine this through a focus on state-society interactions within Mandalay’s ward offices, which are the lowest tier of the administrative backbone of the Myanmar state known as the General Administration Department. This reveals the existence of three intertwined forms of urban ‘politics’ in Mandalay: elite politics, which echo the practices of civil society in the sense of Partha Chatterjee; popular politics, which echo the practices of political society; and self-governance, which is an approach to politics culturally and historically situated in Theravada Buddhism and Myanmar’s authoritarian legacies. The situatedness of the case prompts us to argue in favor of expanding the southern urban critique beyond its conventional focus on liberal democratic metropolises of the global South, in order to enrich our understanding of what constitutes postcolonial urban politics. We suggest this could be achieved, as we attempt here, by adopting collaborative research methodologies and by extensively building on southern area scholarship in ways that mediate epistemic expropriation.

Мемориальная культура и политическая мифология: политика памяти в сфере государственного управления России и государств постсоветского пространства

The authors suggest and substantiate a typology of the state policy of remembrance implemented in post-Soviet States: the policy based on the principles of historicism, mythology domination, hybrid policy. Approaches to scientific state institutions activities in the field of modern history, as well as practices of civil society and state institutions functioning in the educational policy are analyzed.

Politics of Memory in Post-Socialist Košice and the Márai-Project

The purpose of the paper is to present and analyse the local politics of memory in post-1989 Slovakia with special attention to Košice, situated in the Eastern part of the Slovak Republic. In this study, local politics of memory is memory politics that the Slovak city leaders, the minority communities and the local civil society practices. The paper will address politics of memory by elaborating on what a currently mono-ethnic Slovak city does with its remarkably rich Hungarian, German or Jewish heritage. The first part of the paper will discuss theoretical issues. The second part analyses the battle for the public space in the city after 1989. For doing so, it is necessary to outline the significance and the place of Košice in the Slovak and Hungarian collective historical memories. The focus of analysis will be on the memory sites inaugurated by the Slovak city leaders and the Hungarian community, as well as the local policy of the civil society in promoting the heritage of the city. The third section will discuss the shifting place of Sándor Márai, an internationally renowned Košice-born writer, in the way this heritage is represented.

‘It depends on your threat model’: the anticipatory dimensions of resistance to data-driven surveillance

While many forms of data-driven surveillance are now a ‘fact’ of contemporary life amidst datafication, obtaining concrete knowledge of how different institutions exploit data presents an ongoing challenge, requiring the expertise and power to untangle increasingly complex and opaque technological and institutional arrangements. The how and why of potential surveillance are thus wrapped in a form of continuously produced uncertainty. How then, do affected groups and individuals determine how to counter the threats and harms of surveillance? Responding to an interdisciplinary concern with agency amidst datafication, this article explores what I term ‘anticipatory data practices’ – future-oriented practices which provide a concrete anchor and a heuristic for action amidst the persistent uncertainties of life with data. This article traces how anticipatory data practices have emerged within civil society practices concerned with countering the harms of surveillance and data exploitation. The mixed-method empirical analysis of this article draws from 50 interviews with digital security educators and technology developers; participant observation at 12 civil society events between 2016 and 2019 and the textual analysis of 100 security manuals produced by NGOs and grassroots groups.

Chasing Justice: Victim Engagement with Accountability for Human Rights Abuses in North Korea

ABSTRACT This article considers the question of accountability for human rights abuses alleged to have been committed in North Korea, via a possible future process of transitional justice. It focusses on the efforts of South Korean nongovernmental organisations that have worked for more than two decades to document reported abuses and, more recently, to consider how perpetrators of those abuses may be held accountable. While noting the significance of this work, the article draws on research focussed on the efficacy of transitional justice from the victim perspective, to learn more about how those who may identify as victims of the North Korean regime perceive the possible methods for redress and both individual and collective recovery from abuses. The article engages with some preliminary research done with self-identifying victims of the North Korean regime and assesses some of the weaknesses in current South Korean civil society practice involving North Korean escapees. It highlights challenges to pursuing an alternative approach that places victims at the centre and provides some recommendations for how NGOs might develop and pilot new approaches to planning for and implementing a transitional justice process in North Korea if the opportunity arises.

The social community of parents as a part of civil society

The traditional subjects of civil society, which have been active for a long period of time, are losing their former influence and importance. Researchers point out a decrease in the population’s civil engagement in many countries of the world. The existing concepts of civil society are losing their explanatory power. This article presents an attempt to resolve the issue in question. The purpose of this article is to analyze the social community of parents as a new subject of civil society. In order to achieve this goal, civil society is examined from a community approach standpoint, according to which it is interpreted as a special form of social community. Its specific nature is conditioned by the fact that such a community consists of individuals (and their associations) which support distinct needs, interests and value orientations. It is shown that individuals (and their associations), when possessing the necessary resources (mainly social capital), engage in cooperative actions to fulfill and protect their needs and interests within certain boundaries of time and space. The article stresses the fact that such activity turns into a dominant model of living, in other words – a lifestyle for members of a civil society community. Analyzed are the key characteristics, functions and the structure of civil society as a social community, together with the creation and development of a parent community within it as a new element of the former. This serves as a foundation for demonstrating that the modern parent community is evolving. While preserving its traditional community features and functions, the social community of parents is acquiring more traits and functions inherent to a civil society community, transforming into a special type of the latter. The gradual process of integrating the parent social community into the community structure of civil society is shown. Also highlighted is the fact that this process is occurring with varying intensity in time and space, as a result of the non-uniformity and inconsistency of the parent community itself. The objective disparity between parents affects their degree of involvement in practices of civil society, as well as the nature of interactions within and between communities. The article suggests regarding the interior structure of the parent community as dynamic, consisting of a core, semi-periphery and periphery. The conclusion states that in modern conditions the parent community turns into what drives the development of civil society.

Cyberspace Effects on Civil Society. The Ultimate Game-Changer or Not?

ABSTRACTThe article studies the effects of the emergence of cyberspace, or digitization, on civil society, and develops an analytical framework to that effect. It is distinguished between four types of civil societies: apolitical, political, transnational, and uncivic. Each type of civil society is considered separately vis-à-vis cyberspace developments in order to understand what kind of civil society is enhanced by these developments and, conversely, what kind of civil society is constrained. This understanding helps inform how cyberspace has changed the more generic society-state relations. While one can identify many instrumental changes and developments in civil society practices, the article concludes that the emergence of cyberspace has not profoundly changed society in terms of the relative power of one type of civil society over another. Thus, its transformative power is rather limited in a more fundamental sense. The empirical focus of the article is on Norwegian civil society, representing a Western developed democratic state, but it is argued that while the empirical results may vary, the analytical framework can arguably be applied and tailored to any society.

Раздельный сбор бытовых отходов в России: уровень, факторы и потенциал включения населения

Цитирование: Шабанова М.А. (2019) Раздельный сбор бытовых отходов в России: уровень, факторы и потенциал включения населения // Мир России. Т. 28. № 3. С. 88–112. DOI: 10.17323/1811-038X-2019-28-3-88-112
 В статье по результатам двух репрезентативных исследований (2014 г., 2017 г.) представлены данные об уровнях реального и потенциального включения россиян в практику раздельного сбора бытовых отходов (РСБО). С помощью аппарата мультиномиальной логит-регрессии определены факторы, влияющие на попадание индивидов в группы с разной позицией в отношении РСБО. Показано, что, хотя потенциал энтузиастов-первопроходцев практически исчерпан, заявления о неготовности массовых групп россиян к этой практике являются мифом. При этом потенциальные участники предъявляют более сложные запросы на условия своего вхождения в данную практику. На этой основе делается вывод о потенциале и мерах по расширению участия россиян в РСБО.

Reimagining civil society in conflict: Findings from post-2001 Afghanistan

ABSTRACTWhat is the meaning and role of civil society in Afghanistan? And what contribution could civil society actors make to promoting peace and political reform? Drawing on a research and dialogue project conducted in 2009–2012, this article explores local understandings and practices of civil society in Afghanistan, and examines their relationship to security and social change. It argues that studying civil society can help shed light on the changing dynamics of political authority and security in the country, as well as offer new avenues for promoting progressive change. The article addresses some of the conceptual and analytical limitations of dominant narratives about civil society in conflict-affected environments, demonstrating how they tend to neglect certain forms of agency that have the potential to be transformative.

The legal organization of the Independent High Electoral Commission between independence and Censorship in Iraq

إن انتقال العراق نحو الديمقراطية ( في مرحلة تعد هي الحاسمة في تاريخه المعاصر) استلزم اللجوء الى آليات يؤدي الاخذ بها الى تفعيل التمثيل السياسي، وذلك عبر اجراء انتخابات ديمقراطية حرة ونزيهة تعبر عن ارادة الشعب في اختيار حكامه. إن ما تحقق في العراق فعلا هو قفزة نوعية غير مسبوقة، اشار اليها الدستور العراقي الدائم لعام 2005، عبر استحداثه احدى المؤسسات الدستورية للانتخابات بوصفها هيئة مستقلة، حيث تلعب مفوضية الانتخابات في الوقت الحالي دورا هاما في تعزيز الاستقرار وخصوصاً في الديمقراطيات الناشئة، من خلال ما تقوم به هذه المؤسسة من عمليات انتخابية يستطيع الشعب بوساطتها ان يعبر عن رأيه في اختيار من يمثله .حيث نفذت ثلاث انتخابات لمجالس المحافظات وأجرت استفتاء على الدستور بالإضافة الى انتخابات مجلس النواب العراقي لثلاث دورات وانتخابات رئاسة وبرلمان اقليم كردستان العراق.اما وسائل الرقابة على عمل المفوضية، اما وسائل الرقابة على عمل المفوضية، التي وردت في الدستور وبموجبها تم منح مجلس النواب حق متابعة ومراقبة الهيئات المستقلة ومنها المفوضية العليا المستقلة للانتخابات، من خلال مجموعة وسائل رقابية متعددة ومتنوعة، تندرج عن طريق استخدام حق السؤال ثم الاستجواب وطريقة تعيين واقالة أعضاء مجلس المفوضين، وفقا للنصوص الدستورية المنظمة لهذا الامر، بالإضافة للدور الرقابي الذي تمارسه كل من مؤسسات المجتمع المدني الوطنية والدولية ومراقبو الكيانات السياسية المشاركة بالعملية الانتخابية ورقابة وسائل الاعلام المختلفة وفقا للمعايير الدولية .

Relocating Civil Society: Theories and Practices of Civil Society between Late Medieval and Modern Society

Civil society is widely considered as a crucial element in contemporary society. Academics and policy makers have traditionally associated it with voluntary associations and organizations, assuming that associational life is an ideal intermediary between citizens and government. While members of associations form large social networks, which they can mobilize at critical moments, the conviviality of group sociability fosters the development of a set of common values, such as a democratic political culture and other civic virtues. Its origins are generally situated in the eighteenth century, and are mostly attributed to secularization, Enlightenment thinking, the birth of the “public sphere,” and growing emancipation from oppressive structures such as the church and the state.

Asylum in Germany: The Making of the ‘Crisis’ and the Role of Civil Society

In most German cities today, refugees are welcomed and supported by a large and growing number of individuals and collectives whose volunteer work covers almost all aspects of refugee reception. At the same time, the arrival and establishment of refugees has been met with xenophobic protest and violence in many German localities. Focusing especially on the example of a local welcome initiative, but also considering exclusionary civil-society practices, this contribution explores recent civil-society involvement in refugee reception against the legal and political context of asylum in Germany. It will be argued that measures of forced dispersal, deterrence and discomfort, in particular, have materially and discursively produced the framing of current refugee movements as a ‘crisis’ and have triggered the differing actions and reactions among local populations. The fact that the ‘refugee crisis’ has been presented not only as a threat, but also as a ‘humanitarian crisis’ that needs to be tackled by both German state actors and civil society has encouraged the wave of positive reactions. Furthermore, taking into account local negotiation processes of asylum is significant if we want to understand the recent and often contradictory civil-society responses. The paper draws on observations from an ongoing research project on local migration regimes and urban asylum, as well as on other studies dealing with refugee reception in Germany.