Civil Society in the Global South

Palash Kamruzzaman, Palash Kamruzzaman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351625432
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

In recent years civil society has been seen as a key route for democracy promotion and solving development 'problems' in low-income countries. However, the very concept of civil society is deeply rooted in European traditions and values. In pursuing civil society reform in non-Western countries, many scholars along with well-meaning international agencies and donor organisations fail to account for non-Western values and historical experiences. Civil Society in the Global South seeks to redress this balance by offering diverse accounts of civil society from the global South, authored by scholars and researchers who are reflecting on their observations of civil society in their own countries.

The countries studied in the volume range from across Africa, Latin America, Asia and the Middle East to give a rich account of how countries from the global south conceptualise and construct civil society. The book demonstrates how local conditions are often unsuited to the ideal type of civil society as delineated in Western values, for instance in cases where numerous political, racial and ethnic sub-groups are 'fighting' for autonomy. By disentangling local contexts of countries from across the global South, this book demonstrates that it is important to view civil society through the lens of local conditions, rather than viewing it as something that needs to be 'discovered' or 'manufactured' in non-Western societies.

Civil Society in the Global South will be particularly useful to high-level students and scholars within development studies, sociology, anthropology, social policy, politics, international relations and human geography.

1 Introduction – civil society in the global South

Palash Kamruzzaman

Background

The meanings of civil society vary according to historical, social and political contexts. Civil society has always been associated with the formation of a particular type of society that seeks the greater good and/or pursues common goals. The conceptual ambiguities, however, rise from its changing meanings over time. For seventeenth- and eighteenth-century thinkers, civil society was characterised by the rule of law, based on certain fundamental individual rights, enforced by a political authority also subject to the rule of law (Kaldor, 2004; Chandhoke, 1995). Black (2001) argues that there was no clear distinction at that time between civil society and the state; rather, the former was a generic term for a secular constitutional order. Up to the end of the eighteenth century, the term was synonymous with the state or political society as civil society was a more or less direct translation of Cicero’s societas civils and Aristotle’s Koinonia politike (Kumar, 1993; Beasley-Murray, 2010). Reflecting on its classical origin, Kumar, 1993: 376) insists that Locke speaks of ‘civil government’ as an alternative to ‘civil or political society’, Kant sees burgerliche Gesellschaft as a constitutional state towards which political evolution tends, and for Rousseau the état civil was the state. In contrast to the uncivilised condition of humanity, civil society has been linked with the notion of civility and polite society where the members treat each other with mutual respect and tolerance, and where rational debate and discussion become possible (Kaldor, 2004). Evidently, the origin of the concept of civil society is deeply rooted in European societies and its transitions.¹ For the context of this book, the key point that needs to be emphasised is that civil society in these conceptions expresses the growth of civilisation to the point where societies are civilised.

The contemporary ideas of civil society, however, underwent something of a renaissance in the 1990s after the demise of the Soviet Union. The new meanings become distinctly different from its original perceptions as they diffuse smart combinations of democratic pluralism with a continuing role for state regulation and guidance, which appears attractive to societies seeking to recover from state socialism. At the same time, it seems to offer help in the refashioning of radical politics in those societies where socialism has lost whatever appeal it once possessed (Kumar, 1993). Democracy promotion became a key agenda (often under the camouflage of development aid) to promote neo-liberal values to the former Soviet and Eastern European countries as ‘civil society broadly considered to be the cradle of democracy’ (Purdue, 2007: 1).

The aspect that demands critical attention is whether the extant narratives are reflective and representative of the civil societies in non-Western countries, where differences, rather than commonality, are the rule. This very much paves the ground for this book, as two dominant trends are visible in civil society literature on non-Western countries. First, one might find an attempt to depict civil society in a ubiquitous manner often as a coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) or coalitions of different groups predominantly led by the NGOs. This largely applies to the ‘post-renaissance’ works where such an indiscriminate depiction shrinks the possibilities of including assorted organisations in understanding civil society in non-Western contexts. Second, the accounts of civil society in non-Western countries are mostly (not always) narrated by Western scholars. These accounts do not necessarily have any issues or limitations. But, taking into account how hegemony is created, in knowledge building and the relations of power,² one might wonder whether the accounts could be any different if they had been written by local scholars. How much might one’s upbringing in a local country/culture and experience of being a citizen of a non-Western country (being somewhat less powerful than Western scholars in building knowledge/epistemology and shaping the agenda/trajectory of global hegemony) portray different accounts of civil society in those countries? Not only might the power that builds hegemony be different there but the values of Western scholars might also be different from those of scholars from these countries.

This book is an effort to explore and pursue the diversity issue further, which is not only one of the defining features of civil society but also constitutes a field of global power relations. As Cox (1999) insists, on the one hand, states (and corporate interests as agencies of the global economy) seek to use civil society to stabilise the social and political status quo. On the other hand, civil society is the realm in which those who are disadvantaged by globalisation can mount protests and seek alternatives, often through local community groups of diverse cultures and evolving social practices worldwide. Chapters included in this book show the continual presence of civil society in the global South through various forms of altruism, associations, activisms, religious charity, gender diversity, movements, protests, anti-establishment campaigns, fighting global hegemony etc.³ The structure of this introduction is as follows. The next section provides a brief overview of civil society as described in existing literature. This section also includes a short discussion of the extent to which the contemporary narratives are applicable and relevant in understanding civil society in non-Western countries. The final section offers chapter summaries of this book, followed by a brief note on the main overlapping themes that emerge in different chapters. The later highlight how the arguments made in this book augment, complement and challenge existing understandings of civil society in non-Western country contexts.

A brief overview of civil society

Hegel is widely regarded as the first theorist who distinguished the state from civil society. Hegel (1820/2001) explains that civil society comprises the realm of organisations that lie between the family at one extreme and the state at the other. Chandhoke (1995) insists that Hegel saw civil society as a set of social practices constituted by the logic of the capitalist economy and the ethos of the market, but nonetheless distinct from the economy. A number of other scholars also identify civil society as an intermediary sphere between family, state and market. For example, Anheier (2004) asserts that civil society is the sphere of institutions, organisations and individuals located between the family, state and market in which people associate voluntarily to advance common interests. Cohen and Arato (1994) understand civil society as a sphere of social interactions situated between economy and state, composed above all by the intimate sphere (specially the family), the sphere of associations (especially voluntary associations), social movements, and forms of public communication. For Cohen (1988), civil society encompasses a social realm including a plurality of institutions and associations and voices; a domain of autonomous moral choice; and a legal system incorporating basic rights that protect and demarcate this social realm. Gramsci (1971: 208), however, conceives civil society as standing ‘between the economic structure and the state with its legislation and its coercion’, thus serving as the locus of both resistance and legitimation of the established order. Kumar (1993) observes that the formula most commonly found in Gramsci is that the state equals political society plus civil society. Therefore, from a Gramscian perspective, civil society has political roles as a vehicle for the construction of cultural and ideological hegemony (Edwards, 2013), which also provides an opportunity to create resistance against capitalism (Howell and Pearce, 2002).

Habermas also describes civil society as an anti-hegemonic force, whose purpose is to aggregate the interests of power of the marginalised members of society. Habermas (1996: 365) views civil society as:

associations, organisations, and movements that attuned to how societal problems resonate in the private life spheres, distil and transmit such reactions in amplified form to the public sphere [and] institutionalises problem-solving discourses on questions of general interest inside the framework of organised public spheres.

Contemporary understanding of civil society, nevertheless, is deeply influenced by the ideas of Tocqueville (1835/1945), who envisioned civil society as associational life, composed of voluntary membership organisations that oppose totalitarian regimes in different parts of the world to keep the state accountable and effective. Tocqueville (ibid.) argues that citizens can never live in a society without giving themselves to common enterprise. When citizens are allowed to associate freely in everything, they end up seeing the universal and unique means that can be used to attain the various ends they propose. Civil society, thus, fosters the social norms and trust necessary for people to work together, and teaches individuals to appreciate and effectively use their liberties in promoting democracy and checking despotism. For the neo-Tocquevillians, the ability to form associations and engage freely, therefore, is inherently good.

Such a view portrays civil society as progressive, enlightening and emancipatory. It allows the realisation of individual potential by giving voices to the marginalised and assisting the vulnerable groups (Howell and Pearce, 2002; Schnabel and Scholte, 2002), promoting the pro-poor agenda (Howell, 2002), and forming collective consciousness among large number of voluntary associations against suppressive states in making truly powerful changes (Jenkins, 2001; Hewison, 2017). This is cognate with Putnam’s (1993, 2000) ideas that civil society is composed of groups which crosscut kinship ties and patronage. Putnam identifies social capital as an outcome that emanates from norms of reciprocity and networks of civic engagement found in strong civil societies as the fuel that drives democratic organisations. Moreover, civil society has been delineated as problem-solving agencies that fulfil the governance gaps, tackle market failures, and improve public accountability by serving crucial watchdog roles over the market and public system when those fail to provide basic public services (Brainard and Chollet, 2008; Stiles, 2002; van Rooy, 1998). Conventional understandings outline civil society as the platform where all interest groups (either economic or non-economic) are located (Moravcsik 1998: 22). Nevertheless, the idea of the universal common good conceals the reality that all societies are made up of groups with different and often conflicting interests, and that all groups are equally part of society, whether their goals conform to a specific idea of civility or not. It cannot be assumed that business associations, NGOs and trade unions, all operating within the space of civil society, have access to similar resources or share similar goals and values (Howell, 2002).

However, a few important points can be raised as the basis for continuing the discussion. First, as conventionally defined, civil society is clearly a Western construct. The thinkers who played instrumental roles in the concept’s development have been Europeans or Westerners, living at particular points in history, and their ideas have been based on their situated values and experiences. Those ideas were later exported to non-Western countries without much consideration of diverse sociopolitical, cultural, economic and religious contexts of those countries. Second, it is important to explore whether all organisations in-between family and state would represent civil society. This leads to several other relevant questions, such as what are the different characteristics of the organisations included in civil society (and the organisations that are not in it)? The concept of voluntary association also contains ambiguities (Warkentin, 2001; Whaites, 2000): what should be identified as voluntary? To illustrate, informal cooperative societies or social clubs are voluntary organisations because the decision of membership for individuals to join these organisations is open, while the decision over membership of a family is not chosen. Moreover, Ottaway (2017) asserts that joining political parties is a free choice but a distinctive line has always been drawn between civil society and political society. Furthermore, belongingness to any religious belief in most parts of the world is not chosen, but religious groups are usually considered a definite part of civil society. In all certainty, informal social organisations play crucial roles in constituting civil society in the global South. Third, in existing scholarship, civil society groups do not aspire to control the government and exercise power (as opposed to influencing policies in the public interest), unlike political parties (Ottaway and Carothers, 2000). True, there are organisations within civil society that act purely as pressure or advocacy groups and do not intend to contest public office. But civil society activists are often close to political parties, and many move freely between civil society organisations and parties (Chandhoke, 1995; Howell and Pearce, 2002; Ottaway, 2017). In addition, many political parties, especially when in power, set up organisations in an attempt to neutralise resistance and counter hegemony; those are attributed mainly to civil society.

How can the existing understandings of civil society, therefore, be applied to the countries in the global South? A number of scholars question the usefulness of the concept in a non-Western context, considering it a manifestation of Western liberalism (Anheier et al., 2011; Lewis, 2001; Maina, 1998; Makumbe, 1989; Sogge, 1997). While civil society is innately intertwined with the notion of modernity,⁴ how can the existing narratives be congruent in those countries where a majority of the sociopolitical and democratic institutions are either in their infancy or non-existent and where the boundaries of traditional informal civil society associations and membership of political organisations might be overlapping and blurred? For example, any definition of civil society based on Western experience may appear inappropriate against specific experiences of Islamic and Arab societies where diverse tribal and other groups contest for control within the social power structure. This is also true for states with long colonial experiences and numerous political, racial and ethnic sub-groups that are ‘fighting’ for autonomy. Sogge (1997: 42) elaborates on this by suggesting that an ahistorical application of the concept in previously colonised countries is particularly problematic because, for example, the colonial state controlled the associational space in Mozambique so tightly that ‘ways of associating together hardly ever resemble institutions of civil society known to Westerners’. Maina (1998: 137) also argues that civil society, as we know it, reflects the political reality and evolution of Western society, which have ‘limited explanatory power’ to explain the complexities of African associational life because of its inability to understand the domination of predatory state, the characteristics of class and ethnicity along with the operational modes of informal organisations.

In many non-Western countries, civil society is characterised by parochial associations such as village communities, burial societies, trade unions, industrial confederations, commercial organisations, student groups and fundamentalist religious cults, all of which may not have an interest in matters beyond their own immediate concerns and seek to manipulate the state for their own ‘selfish purposes’ (Moyo, 1993: 4). This is consistent with Migdal’s (1996) observation that two different types, namely traditional and modern civil society, can coexist in non-Western countries. On the one hand, modern civil society, defined and organised into a set of formal professional NGOs, has clear boundaries that separate it from the family and the rest of society, including the state. On the other hand, traditional civil societies are loosely structured but embedded in culturally sanctioned mechanisms for swapping labour and mobilising effort in the performance of large collective tasks. Therefore, universal conceptualisation of civil society, similar to Western models, may be problematic because the preconditions of modernity (and civil society), namely the systemic differentiation between market, state and society, and the concomitant emergence of modern rights-holding individuals, have been either not completed or carried out in a distorted manner. In many countries in the global South, the rule of law is still a pending political project, at least for the majority of the population. In most parts of the world, then, civil society lacks its fundamental preconditions (Olvera, 2012) including traditional civil society actors’ various roles and potential for enacting social change.

Nevertheless, the idea of civil society cannot easily be dismissed as having little meaning outside its Western origins, but neither can it simply be (re)discovered in those countries to promote democracy and good governance (Lewis, 2001) because the construction of an ideal version of civil society highlights the danger of dogmatism. As Ambrose (2000) argues, those who believe that their conceptions of the good are unquestionably correct while all others are seriously misguided often promote the dogmatism that leads to sociopolitical conflict. It is, therefore, argued in this book ...