Comment and analysis

CIVIL SOCIETY IN AN UNCIVIL WORLD

John Samuel

"One of the key predicaments of the ongoing social and political
transition in the world today is the subversion of language and ideas
to create political smoke screen or delusion or to give a semblance
of social and political legitimacy for the hegemonic discourse." John
Samuel argues that the use of the term Civil Society is being used as
a smokescreen to give "social and political legitimacy for the
hegemonic discourse".

Words are like flowers. Flowers have their own colour, texture and
smell. Not every kind of flower blooms in every climate or soil. It's
the same with words. Their colour, texture, smell and meaning arise
organically from a particular socio-historical and cultural milieu.
When demand exceeds the supply of flowers, there arises a market for
manufactured flowers. Plastic flowers need neither soil nor climate;
they transcend space and time. They may sometimes look like the real
thing. But they can never feel like the real thing.

So it is with words in the postmodern condition. There are all too
many plastic words, good for decoration and intellectual
pleasantries, and little else. One of the key predicaments of the
ongoing social and political transition in the world today is the
subversion of language and ideas to create political smoke screen or
delusion or to give a semblance of social and political legitimacy
for the hegemonic discourse. Often progressive-sounding words and
phrases are used to conceal the reality on the ground or to create a
virtual or projected sense of select images and discourse. The
reshuffling of meanings and the subversion of political semantics has
become the order of the day. This has become a part of process of
creating the new pornography of politics. The very term Civil Society
is major protagonist in the post-modern politics of delusive power-
plays and elusive semantics. They together often create political and
policy mirages.

The term 'Civil Society' is contested terrain. Over the last fifteen
years it has been used to denote everything from citizens' groups and
activist formations to highly institutionalized non-governmental
organisations and foundations. There is another dimension to this
process of subversive politics of words from the point of view of the
history ideas and the political economy of knowledge.

Civil society as a concept originated in 18th-century Western Europe.
It was a theoretical construct useful in analyzing and understanding
the emerging socio-political economy of the industrialized west in
the 18th and 19th centuries. The concept was resurrected in the
late-'80s amidst the ruins of the authoritarian regimes of Eastern
Europe. It was born-again in the manufacturing shops neo-
democratization ventures in the North. During the second coming of
the concept, more stress was laid on producing and marketing the
civil society in different colours and shapes, rather than on
reflecting the very validity of the idea in relation to real-life
situations and experiences. The civil society is being paraded as the
new panacea for issues such as poverty, human rights, gender equity
and `good governance'.

What is this civil society all about? Whose civil society are we
talking about? There is no one answer or even set of answers. The
colour and smell of the term will change according to the convenience
of the various proponents. As a result of such ambivalence, the
second coming of the civil society conceals more than it reveals.
Civil society, we are told, is synchronous with democracy, freedom of
speech, freedom of choice, good governance and opportunity for
economic growth. But what do all these goodies entail? Whose
democracy? Whose freedom of expression and choice are we talking about?

The new holy trinity of the State, Market and Civil Society can be
capable of concealing the structural inequalities, marginalization
and patriarchy, and reduces complex reality into neat spaces. There
is an underlying tendency to homogenize the world according to an
idealized notion of governance that skips the entire historical
process of marginalization and unequal distribution of power in the
socio-economic and political arena. The problem with such an
ahistorical theorization is that anything and everything outside the
market and the State can be considered civil society. So the Islamic
Taliban, Sangh Parivar in India and all such fundamentalist
formations as well as small self-help groups, neighborhood
associations or professional groups can be considered part of civil
society. A mega-million non-profit organisation with huge corporate
structures and tens of thousand of staff or a mega billion Foundation
is as much part of civil society as a small NGO or a small community
organisation. This is an interesting logic wherein sharks, sardines
and shrimps all say we are fish, though the sharks would like the
freedom to swallow sardines and other small fish.

This nebulous concept had its origin in western political theory. The
pre-18th century concept emerged in the tradition of Aristotle,
Cicero and modern natural law. Till the 18th century, civil society
was considered "a type of political association which placed its
members under the influence of laws and ensured peaceful order and
good government". The discourse on civil society took a critical turn
in the 18th century, as a corollary to the discourse on emerging
capitalism as well as liberal democratic movements. The ambivalence
of this concept is partly because it was an analytical tool used by
both the proponents and critics of modern capitalism. On the one hand
it served as a convenient tool to legitimize the market outside the
sphere of an authoritarian and mercantile State and on the other; it
was a tool to rationalize the sphere of individuals and associations
to assert their freedom and rights.

One can see three broad varieties of definitions and interpretations
of this term. There is a tradition that can be traced back to John
Locke, Thomas Paine and De Tocqueville -- the liberal tradition.
Though there are differing nuances within this tradition, one of the
significant aspects is that civil society is considered a `natural
condition' for freedom, and a legitimate area of association,
individual action and human rights. Thus the notion of civil society
came to be seen in opposition to the State: it allowed space for
democracy and the growth of markets.

The classical political economy tradition of civil society emanated
from the works of Adam Ferguson, Adam Smith and J S Mill. This stream
of thinking perceived civil society as a sphere for the satisfaction
of individual interests and private wants. This perspective stressed
the primacy of individualism, property and the market. The third
stream of civil society discourse can be traced back to Hegel, Marx,
Gramsci and Habermass. This stream can be seen as a critique of the
liberal and classical political economy tradition. This perspective
interpreted civil society as a historically-produced sphere of life
rather than the natural condition of freedom. This tradition
questioned the notion of an idealized civil society and recognized
the internal contradictions and conflict of interests within civil
society. For Hegel, civil society was sandwiched between a
patriarchal family and the universal State. Though Hegel questioned
the idealized notion of civil society, he tended to idealize a
universal State. By challenging the idealization of both State and
civil society, Marx argued that the contradictions within civil
society are reproduced within the State. For Marx, the State is not
merely an external force that confronts civil society, but the
reflection of it, wherein different interest groups penetrate the
State to rule. Both Hegel and Marx pointed out the role of the elite
in defining the character of civil society. Gramsci emphasized civil
society as the realm of public opinion and culture. It is the public
sphere where hegemony is created through consent and coercion.

In the second coming of the civil society in the late-'80s and
through the '90s, the predominant trend has been a resurrection of
the tradition of Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith, with a doze of De
Tocqueville's liberalism. The new civil society discourse is often
misused as a poaching ground by the New Right to rationalise and
legitimize the privatization of the public services and to reduce the
State as a support mechanism to the market.

The other part of the story is that the Civil Society is also being
used to denote new democratization, grassroots politics and new way
for citizens' participation and engagement in the process of
governance and affairs of the state. While the term Civil Society has
broader social and political connotations, the tendency is often to
equate the Civil Society with NGOs. The very world of NGOs themselves
are very heterogeneous and with multiple institutional, social and
funding power relations at play. The NGO world is increasingly
looking like an Orwellian Animal Farm, wherein everyone is supposed
to be equal but some are more equal than others. This becomes all the
more problematic given that many of the new-generation NGOs are more
like private enterprises in the public domain. The problem occurs
when such groups or entities develop a universalistic claim based on
an imagined or assumed legitimacy.

The various political and knowledge traditions behind the term Civil
Society co-exit w and often intermingle to create new sense and
meaning to the term civil society. This often makes the concept fluid
and ambivalent.

The new civil society discourse is also a symptom of the crisis in
social theorization. Instead of looking for fresh theories to address
the profound socio-political and economic transition, the tendency is
to resurrect concepts and theoretical frameworks from the residue of
the Enlightenment in the 18th century...

We are in the transitory phase of a new epoch. The notions of nation-
state, market, civil society, reason and progress that emerged during
the Enlightenment are beginning to get transformed. In the new
paradigm shift, we once again go back to the lived experiences of
communities and individuals to search for new ways of looking at the
transition of the world. We need a new language, a new set of
insights and a fresh sense of humility to look at our past, present
and future. What we need is to rediscover ethical communities within
our societies and the world. We can still question injustice or
rights violations based on the whole range of humanizing ethical
traditions.

When we have the potential to grow our own beautiful flowers and
organic words, why must we be deluded by plastic flowers and words?

* John Samuel is a human rights activist and is currently
International Director of Actionaid, based in Bangkok.

* Please send comments to [log in to unmask] or comment online at
http://www.pambazuka.org
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