Evolution Of Civil Society Research Articles

Postantropocentryczny demos i porządek obywatelski

THE POST-ANTHROPOCENTRIC DEMOS AND CIVIC ORDER The aim of this article is to hermeneutically analyse the narratives associated with the post-anthropocentric turn and their implications for the transformation of political and civic order. These issues can be situated within a framework of broad political thought and theory based on the work of Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, or Michel Serres. Emphasising multispecies justice, the demands of post-humanist positions and adjustments to social theory refer to a concern for a stable future of human and non-human collectivities. They concern the expansion of the public sphere and the political emancipation of hitherto marginalised peripheral actors, reclaiming as they do their voice. This non-anthropocentric point of view refers to elements of nature as well as the technological world gaining legal status. This raises the question of its political consequences for society and the civil order. It involves the restoration or granting of legal and moral subjectivity to non-human entities. Will the next step, therefore, also be to give them political subjectivity and a revolution to match the new social contract? The structure of the text addresses issues such as the evolution of civil society, the possibilities and consequences of moving beyond the category of anthropos, the proposal of monism as ontological egalitarianism, the presentation of examples of non-human actors in the public sphere and Latour’s project of a parliament of things – the pluriversum.

DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY AS A MECHANISM OF CIVIL SOCIETY’S INFLUENCE ON THE STATE

This article explores the role of deliberative democracy in political modernization and the dynamic relationship between civil society and the state. It aims to elucidate the essence of deliberative democracy as a mechanism for civil society’s influence on the state, and systematically analyze the conceptual studies of deliberative democracy in the context of civil society’s power potential, both in Ukraine and globally. The study reflects on the evolution of civil society, highlighting its transformation from a state-dominated concept to one of parity with government institutions. The research emphasizes the significance of public discourse in legitimizing government decisions and examines the roles of various scholars in developing the concept of deliberative democracy.Deliberative democracy, a post-classical theory, is contrasted with electoral democracy, focusing on public discourse as a key legitimacy source for legislative acts. The paper delves into the historical origins of deliberation and deliberative democracy, crediting political scientist J.Bessette with coining the term. It discusses the critical elements of deliberative democracy, including public dialogue, rational discourse, and institutionalized exchange of opinions for decision-making. The model incorporates elements of representative, direct, and participatory democracy, highlighting its basis in public consultation and discourse.The article also examines various forms of the deliberative process, including open public discussions and behind-closed-doors exchanges, underscoring the importance of information, argumentation, and persuasion. It critiques the liberal interpretation of democracy and stresses the need for citizen involvement in governance, spotlighting the role of political civil society organizations in fostering democratic deliberation.

Bound

How do societies shift away from being a nation of gods and omens to one of rules and law? Is this the natural evolution of civil society? In this work of philosophical short fiction, a woman traveling along the river comes across an older man, the “Lord Keeper” with a tied-up boy he is about to kill after three days. The boy, it seems, learned the secrets of the community as part of his duties to become the new “Lord Keeper.” The secret of the community is that, in times long past, the society decided to, literally, brick their stone god up to be kept away from the community and to, instead, become a nation of laws, rather than a nation of seeking god’s favor. However, the “Lord Keeper” is designated, each day, to visit the caged god. This is why the new, “Lord Keeper” was scheduled for death, he learned the secret of the community as part of his training and was planning to tell the community of the long forgotten god they had caged away.

Pandemic as a Factor of Deformation of Social Time and Space in the Postmodern Community

The COVID-19 pandemic has defined new vectors for the development of the world community and social institutions. At the same time, the impact of the pandemic crisis on the evolution of civil society may differ significantly in the national (tactical) and global (strategic) dimensions. If at the national level there is a likely expansion of the space for public activism (medical volunteering, social assistance, etc.), then globally it is threatened by the de-intensification of international non-governmental cooperation and attempts to revise civil rights and freedoms. Today it is no longer possible to name a single area of ​​public life that has not been affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Directly or indirectly, the consequences of the worldwide spread of the COVID-19 virus are experienced by everyone - government authorities, large and small businesses, citizens of the vast majority of countries. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the future of each of the social actors is largely determined today, depending on the adequacy of the response to the pandemic crisis, the ability to absorb its most painful manifestations, and, possibly, find new opportunities for development in this difficult situation. The aim of the article is to investigate the vectors of influence of the coronavirus pandemic as a factor of deformation of social time and space in the conditions of postmodern society.

Democratic values and self-governance

This article analyzes the socio-philosophical views related to the building of civil society and the establishment of democratic values. The objective laws and peculiarities of the formation of civil society are scientifically discussed. At the same time, the principles of civil society research, the evolution of civil society and its interrelated nature with historically changing nature and national values are analyzed.

Sustainability of public-private partnerships in the knowledge economy

The evolution of civil society is taking place in a social and technical format. The generating function of technogenic reasons determines the actual model of the state economic system on the basis of synergy arising through deep penetration of the newest technologies in all spheres of human activity. Economy of knowledge forms a new round of civilization, activity of technological segment in which completely submits to opinions of stakeholders. Symbiosis of fundamental values of knowledge economy, public consciousness and technological resources is a world trend of transformation of society. At the transition stage, the crisis agendas of information and innovation economies transmitted to the knowledge economy must be successfully overcome. The technologies that have led to the improvement of advanced industry for decades to come have been identified. The scheme of transformation of production in accordance with the epochs of technological changes arising in the State is proposed.

Community participation in Intangible Cultural Heritage safeguarding

According to the Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), social actors are at the core of the ICH. Article 2 proposes a subjective, creative and dynamic definition of heritage based on community, groups and individuals (CGIs), highlighting a spiritual connection: ICH safeguarding must respect the “sense of identity and continuity” of CGIs — the main actors in the process of heritage transmission. This community-based vision of heritage is developed in the text of the Convention, the Operational Directives, and reinforced since 2016 by the Twelve Ethical principles introduced in the Basic Texts. A Convention is much more than a text: it determines political, social and cultural contexts, as well as processes of change. A normative tool conceived as guidelines for governments, permeates social life, becoming a framework for the actions and evolution of civil society. This article reflects on the following case study: the “Tocatì Programme for the Safeguarding of Traditional Games and Sports” (TGS). The programme started in Verona, Italy in 2003, connecting a network of communities and building relationships through the organization of an international event: The “Tocatì Festival of Games in the Streets”. From the beginning, this social movement has strengthened the support of institutions at different levels, connecting people, communities and living traditions with representatives of institutions, researchers, artists and policymakers. The cultural association coordinating Tocatì, Associazione Giochi Antichi (AGA) met the UNESCO ICH Convention in 2007. The author examines what has changed in the framework of the Convention in regard to the history of a community-based process and how the Tocatì experience contributes to the effective implementation of the Convention today. An attempt is made to identify the key factors, actors and steps of the Tocatì cultural, social and political process. This is a story that improves our understanding of the role of civil society in the complex, often conflictual and powerful dynamic of heritage-making.

The Emerging Civil Society-State Nexus in Putin's Russia: A Case Study in Public Health

As of 2017, the main principles, values and goals of the Russian health care system are still under discussion, but the role of non-profit organisations in this sphere remains poorly defined and little understood, following the introduction of a controversial 2012 law restricting the role of foreign funding of Russian NGOs. We find that the evolution of civil society in Russia has given rise to a unique model of civil-state interaction, characterised as an uneasy union, in pursuit of scarce financial resources, between the most influential NGOs in the health sphere and the public authorities.

Students and Dissent in Egypt

This essay aims to describe the Egyptian university movement from the birth of University in Egypt (1908) until the end of Nasser period (1970). A particular focus is provided on the political and social role that students’ opposition movements assumed during all the national events, both in the liberal-monarchic age and under the Nasser presidency. A special attention has been payed to the evolution of Islamic student organizations inside Egyptian universities.The ultimate goal is to stress, with an historical perspective, the relations between the history of universities and students movements as a part of the past and recent history of Egypt. The analysis of the history of thought, the progressive evolution of civil society, the complex articulation of political discourse, the authoritarian and repressive regimes, the censorship, is relevant to better understand the actual political Egyptian context.

The evolution of civil society and the rule of law regarding female genital mutilation in Iraqi Kurdistan.

International human rights law relies on state sovereignty to localize suggested policy with codification and enforcement in an attempt to reconcile universalism with particularity. However, amidst domestic governance developments from post-conflict state building and self-determination, governmental instability complicates and often overlooks priorities of international human rights for more tangible domestic infrastructure, such as basic human needs rather than seemingly suggested rights ideals. This does not diminish the significance of human rights, though, pertaining to the rights of the child in addressing gender-based violence through the elimination of female genital mutilation, for example. While state-centric localization is currently prioritized for implementing international law, the rule of law is more integrated throughout the realms of societal structure, culture, and institutions in addition to the legal realm. If the legal realm is disrupted with instability, violence, and discontinuity, how does society internalize and integrate international human rights law over time, and can it be sustainable despite instability? This research evaluates the development of the rule of law, and its effectiveness, regarding female genital mutilation (FGM) as a case study in Iraqi Kurdistan from the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 until 2013, the early years of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s parliament. Comprehensive rule of law evolution can be measured through comparing domestic legal developments through state-centric policy and enforcement, or lack thereof, with cultural internalization and non-governmental engagements. By studying the legal and cultural realms’ interaction with the anti-FGM discourse over Iraqi Kurdistan’s past two decades, this research will determine the role of a continuous society overlaid by intermittent legal structures in the sustainability of negotiating cultural relativity with universal human rights.

The Evolution of Civil Society in Yunnan Province: contending models of civil society management in China

This article examines the evolution of the Yunnan model of civil society management, and through a pretest–posttest research design, finds that new regulations in 2010 create a larger role for the local state in developing civil society. These changes bring the Yunnan model closer to the more supervised model of social management pioneered by Beijing and away from the more autonomous model exemplified by Guangdong. This has important implications for the future regulation and development of civil society as the central government debates adopting one of these models as a national system of social management. While both the Guangdong and Beijing models encourage relaxing registration requirements, the social management model in Yunnan develops new channels for state guidance of civil society such as government training, funding, and project collaboration or supervision.

Liberals under autocracy: modernization and civil society in Russia, 1866-1904

With its rocky transition to democracy, post-Soviet Russia has made observers wonder whether a moderating liberalism could ever succeed in such a land of extremes. But in Liberals under Autocracy, Anton A. Fedyashin looks back at the vibrant Russian liberalism that flourished in the country's late imperial era, chronicling its contributions to the evolution of Russia's rich literary culture, socioeconomic thinking, and civil society. For five decades prior to the revolutions of 1917, The Herald of Europe was the flagship journal of Russian liberalism, garnering a large readership. The journal articulated a distinctively Russian liberal agenda, one that encouraged social and economic modernisation and civic participation through local self-government units (zemstvos) that defended individual rights and interests--especially those of the peasantry--in the face of increasing industrialisation. Through the efforts of four men who turned The Herald into a cultural nexus in the imperial capital of St. Petersburg, the publication catalysed the growing influence of journal culture and its formative effects on Russian politics and society. Challenging deep-seated assumptions about Russia's intellectual history, Fedyashin's work casts the country's nascent liberalism as a distinctly Russian blend of self-governance, populism, and other national, cultural traditions. As such, the book stands as a contribution to the growing literature on imperial Russia's nonrevolutionary, intellectual movements that emphasised the role of local politics in both successful modernisation and the evolution of civil society in an extraparliamentary environment.

Africa and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

This article examines the efforts of a transnational indigenous peoples' civil society network to convince African states to the support the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Indigenous peoples' activism with regards the UNDRIP was successful despite the challenges. The author argues that success with UNDRIP was due to the effectiveness of the main African transnational indigenous peoples' network, though there were favourable conditions including a surge of idealism associated with African bloc politics at the United Nations, South Africa's democratisation and focus on human rights, a global awareness of the need for more effective human rights mechanisms for non-dominant peoples and an unwillingness by Africa to forsake the benefits and alliances of the international system. The emergence of an indigenous peoples' movement in Africa represents an evolution of civil society on the continent and the lobbying in favour of UNDRIP was a measure of its capacity. The reactions of African diplomats provide an opportunity to examine Africa's relationship with its own legal and cultural traditions, its openness to pluralist forms of governance and non-state institutions in post-colonial regimes, as well as Africa's relationship with the international human rights system.

Civil society: a reader in history, theory and global politics

Book synopsis: In the last two decades, civil society has re-emerged as a popular notion amongst academics and politicians alike. John A. Hall and Frank Trentmann provide the first critical selection of texts on the evolution of civil society as a seminal and hotly debated idea from the seventeenth century to the present. Combining European texts with global debates about civil society, including texts about Islam, China, and human rights, this critical edition is essential reading for students and academics in history, sociology, politics, and international relations as well as social activists interested in civil society today.

Searching for balance: Vietnamese NGOs operating in a state‐led civil society

AbstractScholars and practitioners have tried to draw the link between the emergence and growth of non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society in developing and transitional societies. While the literature on the role of NGOs in development is extensive, there is very little attention to the evolution of NGOs in the few remaining communist countries, even though China and Vietnam also display the development of indigenous NGOs. Some of the major political and operational issues concerning the evolution of NGOs in developing countries, especially their relationship with the state and, more broadly, the evolution of civil society, are magnified in one‐party states. This article describes deeper cultural forces that predate both the colonial and communist periods in Vietnam that shaped the evolution of state‐led civil society during the latter part of the 20th century. We argue that the cultural factors outlined are not necessarily appreciated by western donor models of NGOs in development, especially state‐led formation of civil society. The article draws conclusions about the implications of our analysis for international donors who have an interest in facilitating the maturation of local NGOs in Vietnam. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

WORKING FOR THE DOLE: PATTERNS OF PAID AND VOLUNTEER WORK AMONG INCOME SUPPORT RECIPIENTS

1 Introduction The nature and extent of economic and social participation have received increased attention in recent discussion of welfare reform. Active encouragement of participation is a key theme addressed by the Reference Group on Welfare Reform (RGWR, 2000) and the social participation support system developed in its Final Report derives from the belief that: `Participation in paid employment is a major source of self-esteem. Without it, people can fail to develop, or become disengaged from, employment, family and community networks. This can lead to physical and psychological ill health and reduced life opportunities for parents and their children.... Social participation, valuable in itself, can also enable people to develop skills that may be transferable to paid work. For some people, therefore, involvement in voluntary work of various kinds might be an appropriate component of an agreed, strategy to develop their capacity for economic participation.' (RGWR, 2000, pp. 3-4) Economic participation in the form of paid work is thus seen as a major source of income, but also of self-esteem. Social participation (including participation in volunteer work and caring for children and adults) helps to strengthen community networks in ways that may enable people to develop the skills required to participate economically, and is valued both directly and indirectly. The welfare reform debate has been conducted against the backdrop of a changing labour market structure that is producing a more diverse range of labour market opportunities and outcomes. This is resulting in a gradual blurring of the boundary between employment and unemployment. Many of those in employment are experiencing a degree of under-employment and are thus, in part at least, also unemployed. According to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in September 2000, more than 485,000 employed people (5.3 per cent of the employed labour force) were working fewer hours than they would like and were thus partially involuntarily unemployed. (2) At the same time, there has been growing pressure for those of working age who are unemployed and in receipt of income support to actively seek and, where possible, participate in paid work. The Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) reports that, in 1999-2000, 12.6 per cent of customers receiving income support in the form of labour market assistance also received earnings, with the average amount equal to $300 a fortnight (FaCS, 2001a, Table 30, p. 135). (3) Furthermore, as Pech and Landt (2001, p. 27) have observed, the proportion of working-age recipients combining employment with income support more than doubled between the early-1980s and mid-1990s. With the past trend towards growing diversity of labour market attachment expected to continue, the income support system will play an increasingly important role in supporting those seeking to participate in the labour market. Encouraging participation among income support recipients is thus both a response to emerging labour market trends and a goal for policy. This paper examines the extent to which income support recipients are participating in two forms of participation--paid work and volunteer activity. While these specific activities do not cover all possible forms of participation, they are central to the broader policy debate, with the former (paid work) seen by many as the endpoint of attempts' to encourage participation and the latter (volunteering) part of the on-going debate over the role of social capital in the evolution of civil society (Warburton and Oppenheimer, 2000; Wilkinson and Bittman, 2002). The analysis is restricted to those in receipt of Newstart Allowance (NSA), Parenting Payment (PP) and Disability Support Pension (DSP) and draws on data from the Customer Participation Survey (CPS) undertaken on behalf of FaCS by Roy Morgan Ltd. …

Education for Civil Society: Evolutionary Guidance and the Democratic Ideal

This article honors Bela H. Banathy's work in social systems design and acknowledges his intellectual, professional, and humanitarian gifts to the system sciences community. The author examines Banathy's epistemology of conscious self-guided evolution and how it has influenced the author's thinking and research in design of educational systems, and in particular the study of education's role as an evolutionary guidance system for civil society. Specifically, the author examines Banathy's notions of evolutionary guidance systems (EGSs) and the design inquiry process. Design conversation is elaborated as a communication method for systems design and as a medium for communicative democracy. The concepts of civil society and democracy are examined in depth, providing an etymological analysis of each as a foundation for civil society as an ideal image. Consideration is given to Banathy's ideas of democracy and the New Agoras as ethical systems for the pursuit of conscious evolution. The author presents his considerations for education as an EGS for conscious evolution of civil society.

Citizenship under the Ottomans and Kemalists: How the Kurds were excluded

This article examines the relevancy of concepts of citizenship as tools for analysing and comprehending minorities in ethnically complex societies. Taking the Kurds of Turkey as a case study, this article traces the evolution of civil society from the Ottoman empire through to the modern Turkish state, using a human rights‐based definition of citizenship. The changed situation of the Kurds is shown in each epoch and appropriate conclusions are drawn. The complex diversity among the Kurds themselves is also noted. Finally, an assessment is made of the applicability of what could be called Weberian and Neo‐Weberian concepts of citizenship.

Portuguese Civil Society under Dictatorship and Democracy, 1910-1996

Portuguese civil society has had an eventful twentieth century. It was a marginal player during the First Republic (1910–1926); it was tightly controlled and manipulated by the Estado Novo authoritarian regime between 1933 and 1974; and it was abruptly set free with the 25 April 1974 coup. Since 1976, civil society has played an important role in the consolidation of the new democratic regime; organized labor and business associations have helped to deepen the legitimacy of the new democratic institutions by linking them to the people. Today, for the first time in Portuguese history, civil society-state relations have evolved into a more typical, West European-style democratic situation. How did it happen? Which variables have controlled or influenced the evolution of civil society in the political process? What does the future promise for state-civil society relations?

The Role of Informal Groups and Independent Associations in the Evolution of Civil Society in the Soviet Union

There has been a tremendous proliferation of informal groups in the Soviet Union, by which I mean any organization that comes into being that is independent of the state, where citizens come together, create a group, promote their various intersts, be they political or nonpolitical. Pravda estimates approximately 60,000 of them this year alone; it gave a figure of 30,000 just one year ago. This phenomenon is hard to measure and most Soviet commentators, writers and sociologists basically throw up their arms and say that there are thousands and thousands of these various groups popping up everywhere: some small, some obviously larger with greater networks. I would like to sketch out some of the problems that I found, some of the areas that are worth investigating, and put forward some proposals that we may want to tackle in the discussion subsequent to this panel presentation.