Dimensions Of Civil Society Research Articles

Tribalization in civic space: Locating civil society in the Naga context

ABSTRACT The Naga, comprised of various tribes, were traditionally governed by independent village republics. The inclusion of the Naga areas into the modern Indian State has been opposed, ensuing in a long-drawn armed struggle for sovereignty. Military measures have been used to deal with this struggle. Naga society is characterized by dualities in the form of the categorization of tribes as an administrative category against the discourse of a greater Naga identity, experiences of electoral politics to the Naga indigenous form of democracy rooted in the village republic, and the protracted Naga political struggle to the idea of Nagaland state as a solution, among many others. These dualities have shaped collective actions in the forms of associations and organizations to constitute the Naga civil society. The paper examines the socio-political realities and the resulting collective actions as a dimension of civil society.

Reflexões históricas e sociológicas para uma gestão democrática da escola no Brasil

Este artigo analisa a gestão escolar como um processo que revela ser um fenômeno social integrado na superestrutura do Estado, em sua dimensão da sociedade civil (a organização espacial e o caráter cultural da escola etc.). As ações que acontecem nessa dimensão fazem com que a gestão e a organização escolares sejam concebidas em suas contradições, complexidades e heterogeneidade. Este artigo dá-se numa perspectiva sociológica e histórica e tem como referencial teórico-metodológico as formulações conceituais, sobretudo, de Florestan Fernandes, de Antonio Gramsci e de Vitor Henrique Paro. Este referencial teórico-metodológico nos auxilia na compreensão mais refinada sobre a gestão colegiada e autônoma como processo dialético, que pode estar voltada, ou não, aos interesses das classes subalternas. Dessa forma, esta investigação aborda o tema da gestão escolar como um fenômeno educativo que tem as suas peculiaridades em razão de seu momento histórico de continuidade e descontinuidade.

Creation and Preservation in the Constitution of Civil Religion

The primary challenge facing civil religion in the United States is how to accommodate varying conceptions of the content and meaning of civil religion. Courts should be wary of jurispathic tendencies -- their proclivity to kill alternative conceptions of civil religion and to adopt a single official conception. Courts should endeavor to treat civil religion as a dimension of civil society rather than as a tool of the state. They should adopt a modest posture in declaring definitions and setting boundaries in regard to religious symbols and texts.

Impact of the Arts on Individual Contributions to US Civil Society

Many studies have emerged in recent years examining the impact of the arts on educational outcomes, physical and mental health outcomes, local economies, and community well-being. Yet considerably less attention has been given to the impact that participation in the arts has on social behaviour that promotes a civil society. This study seeks to remedy this gap in the literature by examining the effect that both audience-based arts participation and direct participation in the arts have on three measures of civil society. We rely on data from the General Social Survey, which offers information on the arts participation behaviour of a random sample of adults living in the USA (n = 1.341). Multivariate analysis is used to estimate the effects of audience-based arts participation as well as personal participation in the arts (creating art) on three dimensions of civil society: Civic engagement, social tolerance, and other-regarding behaviour. We find strong evidence that the arts enhance civil society. Both audience-based participation in the arts and personal participation in creating art are linked to higher levels of civic engagement, higher levels of social tolerance on some dimensions of the measure, and higher levels of other-regarding behaviour. Our findings have important implications, in that they demonstrate a strong association between the arts and individual-level social outcomes that contribute to the health of civil society.

Civility as a Public Opinion: Theorizing Civility and Discussing an Attitude Survey-Based Research Agenda

Focusing on the normative dimension of civil society requires an explicit reference to the neglected notion of civility, which is a quasi non-existent concept in empirical sociology and beyond. To address this shortcoming, at first the article theorizes about civility as a disposition realized in individual attitudes. This conceptualization implicates a research agenda for civil society studies that transcends the organizational level. Second, a literature review contrasts research traditions which understand civility solely as good manners in interpersonal behaviour to civility as a public opinion: Civility is defined through attitudes and beliefs regarding a hypothetical universalizing community. In this context, the article discusses a Bourdieusian critique of macro-sociological investigations based on the aggregation of micro-level data (‘Public opinion does not exist’). Finally, I demonstrate that an explicit construction of the object under investigation implies specific research methods, which explains why and how large-scale attitude surveys play an important role in operationalizing the sociological understanding of civility proposed in this article.

Review: Civil Society in Wales

Titles can be deceptive. Civil Society in Wales might be thought to have value only for readers with a special interest in contemporary Wales, or perhaps in asymmetrical devolution to Scotland and Wales. The content, however, will appeal to all political sociologists and political scientists who find the concept of civil society indispensable even if it is also problematic. The editors begin by discussing the contested theorisation of civil society. They then bring together thirteen original essays, covering a wide variety of components and dimensions of civil society in Wales, each of which makes clear its particular theoretical grounding. Directly and indirectly, Tocqueville, Gramsci, Putnam, Walzer and Giddens on civil society have been major influences, as have Habermas on the public sphere and Bourdieu on social capital. To these essays are added another on civil society in Scotland (by Isobel Lindsay) for purposes of comparison, and two overviews of civil society in Wales as a whole including the editors' own. There is also a brief foreword from Rhodri Morgan, the First Minister of the Welsh Assembly Government. Just about all the potentials, possibilities and pitfalls of 'civil society' are here knowingly exemplified in a single volume on a single society.

End of life and dimensions of civil society: The Church of Sweden in a new geography of death

Over the past 10 – 15 years the geography of death has changed in Sweden. Dying and end-of-life care has to a great extent been moved out of hospitals back into the local community, and renewed attention is given to dying and spiritual care issues. Yet, at the same time, a new ideological investment in civil society has taken place, which ascribes caring and networking qualities and resources that may not always be encountered in practice. This article discusses the implications of this situation, by focusing on the role of the Church of Sweden, as an actor in civil society, and on its support for parishioners in their end-of-life phase. Questions discussed are: what role do local church parishes play in the care of dying parishioners, and what is the meaning of parish belonging and networks in this context? Results from a study of all parishes in two Swedish, medium-sized, communities indicate that support for dying parishioners is surprisingly uncommon, while most parishes offer support for the bereaved. The article argues that this may be an indication of failing resources, on the part of the parishes, to meet the needs of these contrasting situations. While a relational logic motivates support for the dying parishioner, support for the bereaved seems to follow a service logic, one with which the representatives of the parishes are more at ease. Networks and personal relationships seemed to be the heart of the matter and the concept of social capital was used to capture this phenomenon. In a more general sense, however, the results illustrate the partly contradictory roles and strategies that the Church has adopted in order to face different interpretations of civil society and ongoing societal change in Sweden.

Scientisation vs. Civic Expertise in Environmental Governance: Eco-feminist, Eco-modern and Post-modern Responses

This article examines three critical perspectives in green political theory arguing that environmental governance is emerging as an increasingly scientised and technocratic domain. These are contrasted with work under the banner of 'civic expertise' proposing increased citizen deliberation and participation in the scientific realm to reverse the technocratic features of environmental management. Eco-feminism links the rise of technocratic science to an overall critique of modernity, rationality and patriarchy. Eco-modernism aims at re-configuring scientific rationality in terms of reflexive modernisation, and a stronger participatory dimension of civil society. In the postmodern green critique, the ascendancy of regulatory science marks the influence of biopower or green governmentality. Civic expertise is advanced as a middle ground between these contested appraisals of science in modern societies. This is underpinned by a post-positivist account of scientific knowledge and promotes a reform of the scientific endeavour toward enhanced transparency, participation and democratisation.

Social Networks, Civil Society, Democracy and Rule of Law: A New Conceptual Framework

Although social networks exist in every society, they are widely believed to play a different and more prominent role in Asian societies, especially those with a Confucian heritage, than in Western states, particularly Western states with mature capitalist economies, liberal democratic political systems with robust civil societies, and well developed legal systems characterized by rule of law and a modern bureaucratic administrative system. This chapter article examines the role of social networks along two dimensions: political reform and the implementation and consolidation of democracy; and legal reforms aimed at establishing rule of law and a modern technocratic administrative system. Clearly there are wide variations in the nature and role of social networks in Asia, which is to be expected given the wide diversity in Asian societies in terms of religious and cultural practices, political systems, levels of economic development and legal systems. Rather than attempting a broad comparison of social networks throughout Asia, my main focus will be on China, with reference to the experiences of other countries where relevant. In some Western states such as Poland and other former Soviet Union republics, social groups in the form of civil society played a central role in the transition to democracy; in more established liberal democracies, civil society serves important functions in monitoring the state, holding government officials accountable and counterbalancing state power. Buoyed by the experiences of the former Soviet republics, a number of China scholars turned their attention in the early to mid 1990s to the topic of civil society and whether the proliferation of social organizations in China would lead to democracy. Many scholars cautioned that the concept of civil society as understood in the West may not be applicable to China; some pointed out that civil society was mainly a topic among foreign scholars and Chinese living in exile, and that the idea of civil society has not become part of popular discourse in China; still others argued that state-society relations are better understood in corporatist terms, and that the corporatist nature of social groups in China may serve to bolster the authoritarian regime rather than lead to democracy. I consider whether the concept of civil society is applicable to China and how civil society is best theorized given the differences between the liberal democratic social-political philosophies dominant in the West and alternative conceptions of the relations between the state, society and individual in China. To that end I develop four models for state-society relations: liberal democratic, statist socialist, neo-authoritarian and communitarian. These models combine social political philosophies with a corresponding set of institutions, practices and rules, thus redressing the relative neglect to date in theoretical treatments of civil society in China of the institutional basis of civil society, and in particular the nature of the legal system and its role in creating, structuring and shaping civil society. I also take up the relation between conceptions of civil society and social networks. What do we gain by the change in focus to social networks? What do we lose? I suggest that in calling attention to horizontal relations between individuals and groups in contemporary society, the focus on (affective) social networks offers some insights into the space between the individual and the state missed by the more vertical conceptions of civil society and corporatism. However, social networks are themselves embedded in a vertical structure of state-society relations. Moreover, in many cases, social networks are themselves oriented toward the state in a vertical relationship, and thus constitutive of the vertical state-society structure. In short, attending to social networks enriches our understanding of civil society in China, providing for a form of civil society with Chinese characteristics as it were, rather than offering an alternative framework for analysis. Put differently, social networks studies and theories must still be placed within broader political theories and institutional accounts. The four models that I develop address both the vertical and horizontal dimensions of civil society, thus redressing on the one hand the failure of corporatism to pay adequate attention to horizontal relationships, and on the other the tendency of affective social networks analyses to emphasize the horizontal dimension at the expense of the vertical component or to fail to adequately link up a discussion of affective social networks to different political conceptions of state-society relations.