scholarly journals The Dialectic of Civil and Uncivil Society—Fragility, Fault Lines, and Countervailing Forces

2021 ◽  
pp. 19-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heinz-Dieter Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Economic Dimension ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
Limited Government ◽  
The Past ◽  
Causal Necessity ◽  
Fault Lines

AbstractIn light of the experience of the past three decades—1989 to 2020—the civil society appears as a fragile institution that seems capable of giving rise to the overthrow of dictators as well as to their ready installation; to engender movements of solidarity and inclusion as well as of hatred and violence. To understand what allows these different tendencies to arise from within the civil society requires that we move past a pre-occupation with the structural and socio-economic dimension of the civil society and recover a conception of the civil society as an inherently moral institution. In this regard, the tradition of social analysis pioneered by Alexis de Tocqueville remains singularly instructive. The cultivation of civility, we can learn, is not an automatic by-product of tamed markets, limited government, and vibrant associational life—necessary and important though these are. The dispositions needed to maintain the civil society do not arise with causal necessity even where associations flourish, markets are tamed, and institutions are well-designed. By facing more squarely the deep moral fault-lines of the civil society we can develop a keener sense of the countervailing forces needed to keep the project of the civil society on track.

Overseas Development Administration. A Guide to Social Analysis for Projects in Developing Countries. London: HMSO. 1995. viii+248 pages. Hardbound. £18.95.

1996 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-190
Author(s):  
Mir Annice Mahmood
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Social Change ◽  
Practical Experience ◽  
Development Projects ◽  
Social Analysis ◽  
Economic Perspective ◽  
Human Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Overseas Development

This book, hereinafter referred to as the Guide, has been developed for those social analysts (e.g., anthropologists, sociologists, and human geographers) who have had little or no practical experience in applying their knowledge as development practitioners. In the past, development projects would be analysed from a narrow financial and economic perspective. But with the evolution of thinking on development, this narrow financial and economic aspect has now been broadened to include the impact on society as the very meaning of development has now come to symbolise social change. Thus, development is not restricted only to plans and figures; the human environment in its entirety is now considered for analysis while designing and implementing development projects.

Playing with Positionality?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Kingston
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Civil War ◽  
The Political ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Project ◽  
Associational Life ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Research Site ◽  
Theoretical Assumptions

The chapter outlines how researchers take on different roles and positionalities as they adapt to the field, moving, for instance, from that of an “outsider” laden with externalized theoretical assumptions and having few contacts with and knowledge of the research site to one approaching, to varying degrees, that of a “pseudo-insider.” Indeed, the argument here is that researchers make choices when moving from outsider to insider roles (and between them), contingently adapting their positionality in the hope to better understand the political dynamics that underlie research projects. The setting is post-civil war Lebanon and the research project revolves around an examination of the micropolitics of civil society and associational life in this re-emerging but fragmented polity.

Domestic Colonies

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara Arneil
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Mentally Ill ◽  
Abraham Lincoln ◽  
The State ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Civil Society Organizations ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
Modern History ◽  
Peter Kropotkin

Colonization is generally defined as a process by which states settle and dominate foreign lands or peoples. Thus, modern colonies are assumed to be outside Europe and the colonized non-European. This volume contends such definitions of the colony, the colonized, and colonization need to be fundamentally rethought in light of hundreds of ‘domestic colonies’ proposed and/or created by governments and civil society organizations initially within Europe in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries and then beyond. The three categories of domestic colonies in this book are labour colonies for the idle poor, farm colonies for the mentally ill, and disabled and utopian colonies for racial, religious, and political minorities. All of these domestic colonies were justified by an ideology of domestic colonialism characterized by three principles: segregation, agrarian labour, improvement, through which, in the case of labour and farm colonies, the ‘idle’, ‘irrational’, and/or custom-bound would be transformed into ‘industrious and rational’ citizens while creating revenues for the state to maintain such populations. Utopian colonies needed segregation from society so their members could find freedom, work the land, and challenge the prevailing norms of the society around them. Defended by some of the leading progressive thinkers of the period, including Alexis de Tocqueville, Abraham Lincoln, Peter Kropotkin, Robert Owen, Tommy Douglas, and Booker T. Washington, the turn inward to colony not only provides a new lens with which to understand the scope of colonization and colonialism in modern history but a critically important way to distinguish ‘the colonial’ from ‘the imperial’ in Western political theory and practice.

An Incomplete Journey Away from the Past: The Life and Ideas of Antonius Ameuney (1821–1881)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 318-338
Author(s):  
Anthony Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Religious Diversity ◽  
Personal Life ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Speaking

Abstract This article recovers a dissonant voice from the nineteenth-century nahḍa. Antonius Ameuney (1821–1881) was a fervent Protestant and staunch Anglophile. Unlike his Ottoman Syrian contemporaries, who argued for religious diversity and the formation of a civil society based on a shared Arab past, he believed that the only geopolitical Syria viable in the future was one grounded in Protestant virtues and English values. This article examines Ameuney’s complicated journey to become a Protestant Englishman and his inescapable characterization as a son of Syria. It charts his personal life and intellectual career and explores how he interpreted the religious, cultural, political, and linguistic landscape of his birthplace to British audiences. As an English-speaking Ottoman Syrian intellectual residing permanently in London, the case of Antonius Ameuney illustrates England to have been a constitutive site of the nahḍa and underscores the role played by the British public in shaping nahḍa discourses.

scholarly journals Come salvaguardare i valori pubblici in un mondo interconnesso? Le sfide per l’Europa. Translated by Eleonora Benecchi

2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
José Van Dijck
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Western World ◽  
Public Values ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
The Past ◽  
Societal Actors

Over the past three years, we have witnessed how online digital platforms have deeply penetrated every sector in society, disrupting markets, labor relations and institutions. Five American tech companies (Google-Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft) are now dominating the western world, not just transforming social and civic practices, but affecting the very core of western democratic processes. The digitization of society involves intense struggles between competing ideological systems and contesting societal actors – market, government and civil society – raising an important question: Who is or should be responsible and accountable for anchoring public values in an online world? This article describes and analyzes the European challenge to govern “platform societies” which are increasingly dependent on global commercial infrastructures – ecosystems that are privatized and whose mechanisms are hidden from public view. Translated by Eleonora Benecchi

FUNDAMENTALISM, BUREAUCRATIZATION, AND THE STATE'S CO-OPTATION OF RELIGION: A JORDANIAN CASE STUDY

2006 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 369-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard T. Antoun
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Middle East ◽  
The State ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Equal Duration ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Past Half

In the Middle East over the past half-century, three religious processes have grown together. One, the growth of fundamentalism, has received worldwide attention both by academics and journalists. The others, the bureaucratization of religion and the state co-optation of religion, of equal duration but no less importance, have received much less attention. The bureaucratization of religion focuses on the hierarchicalization of religious specialists and state co-optation of religion focuses on their neutralization as political opponents. Few commentators link the three processes. In Jordan, fundamentalism, the bureaucratization of religion (BOR), and state co-optation of religion (SCR) have become entwined sometimes in mutually supportive and sometimes in antagonistic relations. The following case study will describe and analyze the implications of this mutual entanglement for the relations of state and civil society and for the human beings simultaneously bureaucratized and “fundamentalized.”

History & Constitution

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luigi Lacchè
Keyword(s):  
Common Core ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
History Taking ◽  
Constitutional History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global Constitutionalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Different Levels

This volume gathers together 25 essays dedicated to the history of four important constitutional experiments (France, Belgium, Switzerland and Italy). While it considers these experiments and developments in the 19th and 20th centuries, comparative constitutional history, nevertheless, offers the possibility of obtaining a wider purview. It is in this sense that we can speak of the myth of the English constitution pervading the discourses and language of the French liberals, of Belgium being referred to as “Little England” in Italy, and the Modell Deutschland as increasingly becoming an object of fascination for Italian scholars of public law. In the 1830s Alexis de Tocqueville analysed the situation in Switzerland and compared the different kinds of federalism present in America and in Europe. A European comparative constitutional history, taking up a global perspective, can help us to better decipher two very important issues pertinent to our times: first, for assessing the identity and the constitutional substance of a living common core of the European constitutional traditions; and second, for considering constitutional history as a useful tool to address different levels of global constitutionalism and new trends of governance. History & Constitution offers not only insights into the past, but also provides some guidelines for the future.

Algeria-Morocco tensions will be contained

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Medical Treatment ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
Investigative Journalism ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cyber Espionage

Significance In June, Morocco accused Algeria of illicitly facilitating the transfer of Western Saharan independence leader Brahim Ghali to Spain for medical treatment. In July, an investigative journalism consortium revealed that Morocco had been engaged in a cyber espionage offensive that targeted, among others, Algerian politicians, military officers, civil society activists and journalists. Morocco extended an olive branch, which Algeria immediately rejected. Impacts Though Brussels has long favoured Rabat over Algiers, Morocco’s recent actions may reinvigorate Algeria-EU relations The developments, which seem detrimental to Morocco’s foreign relations, may indicate that King Mohammed has less control than in the past. Moroccan and Algerian business communities are unlikely to be impacted by the diplomatic spats.

Defenders of Faith

2017 ◽  
pp. 118-142
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Policy Issue ◽  
Same Sex ◽  
The Past

In the past few decades, the question of whether and how civil society should recognize committed intimate relationships between two people of the same sex is a prominent and divisive policy issue. This chapter discusses the heightened lawmaking efforts by legislators that are more inclined toward religious claims due to their opposition to homosexuality.

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