Contestations in Global Civil Society

Roopinder Oberoi, Jamie P. Halsall, Michael Snowden, Roopinder Oberoi, Jamie P. Halsall, Michael Snowden

• Editore: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Anno: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781800437029
• Argomento: Sozialwissenschaften
• Categoria: Soziologie

The concept of Global Civil Society as an 'imagined global community' is raising questions that challenge perceptions of a border-free, footloose, global community. The era of 'hyper-individualism', accompanied by the virtualization of the public sphere, is offering support for collective action and processes in the face of rising economic and social anxieties, such as inequality, poverty, terrorism, xenophobia, nuclear weapons, and environmental destruction. Global Civil Society is now equipping itself to negotiate with resurrected boundaries, calls for decelerating the flow of people, identity clashes and throwbacks to tribal politics.

Contestations in Global Civil Society examines the ways in which the global community is dealing with heightened destabilization, entering what has been dubbed an 'Age of Fracture', and takes a close look at contemporary shifts that accompany the resurrection of multiple normative civil society discourses such as political mobilization, polarization, responsibility, and participation.

What are the contestations within global civil society? What is our current perception of global civil society? How is it coping with the huge changes that are happening all around us? What will global civil society look like in the future?

Chapter 1

Introduction: Global Civil Society

Roopinder Oberoi, Jamie P. Halsall and Michael Snowden

Abstract

This introductory chapter sets the overall context of global civil society in today’s global world. The authors will firstly provide a definition of civil society from social and political science perspectives. Then secondly, the authors provide a contemporary overview of global civil society debates in the current social and political environment; they also offer a short examination of COVID-19 and how this global pandemic has developed new spheres of contestation and collaboration. In the final part of the chapter, the authors present a brief overview of each chapter contributed to this volume.

Keywords: Civil society; COVID-19; globalization; Global Civil Society; governments; organizations

Introduction

In relation to contemporary world politics, civil society is conceived as a political space where voluntary associations seek, outside political parties, to shape the rules that govern one other aspect of social life. Civil society groups bring citizens non-coercively in deliberate attempts to mould the formal and informal norms that regulate social interaction. (Scholte, 2004, p. 214)

As the above quotation illustrates, civil society, in a contemporary political context, is a somewhat complex concept (Allen, 1997; Blakeley, 2002; Lahiry, 2005; Powell, 2013). Politicians and academics of different political ideologies embrace the ideas around civil society. Since the 1990s, there has been a great assurgency of civil society as a political concept; this can be traced back to the political events of the falling of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Countries in Western Europe and the United states put their political faith in civil society, as it was seen at the time as a modernizing idea for the new information age.

According to Carothers and Barndt (1999), the historical beginnings of civil society originate with the roman statesman, Marcus Tullius Cicero, and other Romans and philosophers. Interestingly, Carothers and Barndt (1999) go on to add that:

The modern idea of civil society emerged in the Scottish and Continental Enlightenment of the late 18th century. A host of political theorists, from Thomas Paine to Georg Hegel, developed the notion of civil society as a domain parallel to but separate from the state-a realm where citizens associate according to their own interests and wishes. This new thinking reflected changing economic realities: the rise of private property, market competition, and the bourgeoisie. It also grew out of the mounting popular demand for liberty, as manifested in the American and French revolutions. (p. 18)

Then, from this, the conceptual ideas of civil society were forgotten about due to the rise of the industrial revolution (Carothers & Barndt, 1999). But, civil society reemerged after the Second World War through the writings of Antonio Gramsci and his Marxist theories. In his books, Gramsci focused on the ideas of the state, dictatorships, and hegemony, and how these are bound together with civil society (Öncü, 2003). Gramsci’s publications were instrumental, as noted by Carothers and Barndt (1999) who state:

in the 1970s and 1980s with persons fighting against dictatorships of all political stripes in Eastern Europe and Latin America, Czech, Hungarian, and Polish activists also wrapped themselves in the banner of civil society, endowing it with a heroic quality when the Berlin Wall fell. (p. 19)

Hence, historically, civil society is seen as the growth of civilization, as democracy and society is regulated through relationships. Kumar (1993) notes that civil society is social order driven, whereby citizens actively engage in public life by resolving disputes corresponding to the law of the country. Moving forward today, civil society is situated within the social, economic, political and cultural context, and is perceived as a “democratic catalyst” (Karolewski, 2006, p. 168). As Kumar (1993) acknowledges:

Civil society has been found in the economy and in the polity; in the area between the family and the state, or the individual and the state; in non-state institutions which organize and educate citizens for political participation; even as an expression of the whole civilizing mission of modern society. (p. 383)

The social and political events concerning civil society have turbo-charged the concept, bringing it into focus globally, that is, “Global Civil Society.” In the 2002 Martin Wight memorial lecture, the British academic Mary Kaldor (2003) stated:

global civil society is a platform inhabited by activists (or post-Marxists), NGOs and neoliberals, as well as national and religious groups, where they argue about, campaign for (or against), negotiate about, or lobby for the arrangements that shape global developments. (p. 590)

As Kaldor acknowledges, civil society, in a global context, has many actors that can influence economic development. The premise of this edited book is to critique and demonstrate the ways in which the global community is dealing with a complex political world within the narrative of global civil society.

Defining Global Civil Society

There is no doubt that the conceptual provenance of the ideas of global civil society has been driven by the empowerment of globalization. McGrew (1992) observes that the concept of globalization “refers to the multiplicity of linkages and interconnections that transcend the nation-states (and by implications the societies) which make up the modern world system” (p. 65). The empowerment of globalization has been driven by the transportation and communication revolution, which has opened up the world and created new global connections. As Leyshon (1995) notes, “Advances in transport and communication technology have served to speed up the space of life and brought progressively more areas within the orbit of capitalist relations of production” (p. 29). For transportation, the level of innovation, especially in the twentieth century, has been a great. Examples include the introduction of air travel (e.g., Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet; Concorde) and high speed passenger trains (e.g., the bullet train, TGV). While for communication technologies, there have been numerous technological advancements, such as computers, mobile phones, and tablets, all of which have access the World Wide Web. The rise of communication technologies in global civil society has created a “Network Society,” and as Manuel Castells (2010) notes:

The new society is made up of networks. Global financial markets are built on electronic networks that process financial transactions in real time. The Internet is a network of computer networks. The electronic hypertext, linking different media in global/local connection, is made up of networks of communication – production studios, newsrooms, computerized information systems, mobile transmission units, and increasingly interactive senders and receivers. The global economy is a network of financial transactions, production sites, markets, and labor pools, powered by money, information, and business organizations. The network enterprise, as a new form of business organization, is made of networks of firms or subunits of firms organized around the performance of a business project. Governance relies on the articulation among different levels of institutional decision making linked by information networks. And the most dynamic social movements are connected via the Internet across the city, the country, and the world. (p. 248)

The rapid development of globalization adds emphasis to the greater importance of global civil society. Martens, Dreher, and Gaston (2010) state:

The concept of global civil society has, when fully fulfilled, wonderful characteristics. The political pursuit of equality, transparency and accountability helps establish a new set of ethical norms taking into account the different circumstances around the world. (p. 576)

The intense relationship between globalization and global civil society has emerged due to the new form of global politics occurring across the world. These closer ties between globalization and global civil society can be perceived within three distinct paradigms (see Table 1.1).

With these emerging paradigms and the emphasis on its relationship with globalization, the social and political sciences have recentred their focus on global civil society. For example, Corry (2006) points out that globalization and global civil society concepts “have become ever more dependent upon each other” (p. 306) due to their global interconnectedness. More interestingly, Corry (2006) also notes that global civil society must be seen as “beyond the state” (p. 309) because it reaches out to global networks that create new ideas and values. Therefore, global civil society is defined as:

the myriad of individuals and institutions which operate under the principles of networking and voluntarism, outside of traditional institutions, and collectively seeking changes in the social order and inequalities, transcending individual interests and national boundaries. (Gonzalez-Perez, 2013, p. 42)

The rapid development of global civil society has been triggered by the continuous focus on the third sector from public policy perspectives (Bernauer & Gampfer, 2013; Keane, 2003; Nanz & Steffek, 2004). Organizations, such as charities, NGOs and social enterprise, have played a more important role in public policy-making in recent times. International organizations such as the United Nations (UN) have nurtured and maintained the concept of global civil society, strengthening the global community and supporting the networks of global citizens (Juergensmeyer, 2013). From this, governments across the world have engaged with the UN on their vision for global civil society.

Table 1.1. The Three Paradigms of Global Civil Society Set Out by Mary Kaldor (2003).

Paradigm One: New Social Movements

• “Developed after 1968 concerned with new issues, like peace, women, human rights, the environment, and new forms of protest • The language of civil society seemed to express very well their brand of non-party politics • The concept was enthusiastically taken up in South Asia, Africa – especially South Africa – and Western Europe • During the 1990s, a new phenomenon of great importance was the emergence of transnational networks of activists who came together on particular issues – landmines, human rights, climate change, dams, AIDS/HIV, and corporate responsibility”

Paradigm Two: New Policy Agenda

• “Civil society was understood as what the West has; it is seen as a mechanism for facilitating market reform and the introduction of parliamentary democracy • The key agents are not social movements but NGOs • NGOs increasingly look both like quasi-governmental institutions, because of the way they substitute for state functions, and at the same time like a market, because of the way they compete with one another”

Paradigm Three: Postmodern Version

• “Social anthropologists criticize the concept of society as Euro-centric, something born of the Western cultural context (according to argument, Latin America and Eastern Europe are both culturally part of Europe) • Non-western societies experience or have potential to experience something similar to civil society, but individualism • Postmodernists, new religions, and ethnic movements that have also grown dramatically over the last decade are also part of global civil society • Global civil society cannot be just the ‘nice, good movements.’”

Source: Adapted from Kaldor (2003, pp. 589–590).

Global Civil Society and the Pandemic: Contestations and Collaborations

The coronavirus disease has caused tall expectations and severe strain on administrations around the globe. A lot has been written on the reoccurrence and revival of big government. To some e...