Civil Society

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Michael Edwards. Civil Society

Contents

Guide

Pages

Dedication

CIVIL SOCIETY

Copyright page

Preface

Notes

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction – What’s the Big Idea?

Civil society: a very brief history of an idea

The rise and fall of civil society

Notes

2 Civil Society as Associational Life

Is there an “associational revolution” at work in the world today?

Who is “in” and who is “out”?

Organizations and ecosystems

Associational life in cross-cultural perspective

Associational life in the Middle East

Associational life in Africa

Notes

3 Civil Society as the Good Society

Associational life and the good society

States, markets, and societies that are civil

Civil society and the market

Civil society and the state

Notes

4 Civil Society as the Public Sphere

Why is the public sphere important?

Threats to the public sphere

What causes polarization among the public?

Do social media make things worse?

Conclusion

Notes

5 Synthesis – How Do the Different Models of Civil Society Fit Together?

Associational life, the public sphere, and the good society

The civic culture school

The comparative associational school

The school of skeptics

Global civil society

Conclusion: is any generalization possible?

Notes

6 Action – So What’s to be Done?

Building the preconditions for a true civil society

Pressure points: supporting systemic, non-directive interventions

Conclusion

Notes

References

Index

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For Cora

My own “civil society”

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The furore surrounding alleged sexual harassment and abuse at Oxfam, Save the Children, and other international charities that exploded in the United Kingdom in the spring of 2018 was seen by some commentators as evidence that large nonprofit bureaucracies cannot be trusted to live out their values just because they claim the mantle of civil society rather than government or business, especially when they see themselves as competitors in a global market for humanitarian assistance.8 Any human endeavor that is commercialized will lose its ability to reshape human beings and their relationships in any terms other than money, growth, and organizational self-interest. As with social media in chapter 4, therefore, I have revised the treatment of civil society and the market in chapter 3 to take account of a growing body of research and experience which suggests that the costs of internalizing market values and practices are starting to outweigh the benefits.

Taken together, these four trends pose major challenges to the theory and practice of civil society in all of its guises, though they also open up some important opportunities – in the shape, for example, of new social movements that have arisen in response to the strengthening of nationalist political forces, or the increasing dissatisfaction with the condition of associational life that one sees among many younger activists. I explore these opportunities in chapter 2. It is also clear that these trends feed off each other: authoritarianism and polarization are natural bedfellows which both benefit from and accentuate the fracturing of the public sphere. The decline of voluntary associations which bring people of different views and backgrounds together is a consequence of that fracturing but also another cause. The more civil society is eroded, the less it can do its job; and the less it does its job, the weaker it becomes. Faced by these interlocking and deeply entrenched problems and developments, what can be done?

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