An American Civic Forum: Civil Society Between Market Individuals and the Political Community

1996 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 269-283 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin R. Barber
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
National Service ◽  
The Public ◽  
Democratic Ideology ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Civic Forum

The polarization of the individual and the community that underlies much of the debate between individualists and communitarians is made possible in part by the literal vanishingof civil society—the domain whose middling terms mediate the stark opposition of state and private sectors and offer women and men a space for activity that is both voluntary and public. Modern democratic ideology and the reality of our political practices sometimesseem to yield only a choice between elephantine and paternalistic government or a radically solipsistic and nearly anarchic private market sector—overnment gargantuanism or private greed.Americans do not much like either one. President Clinton's callfor national service draws us out of our selfishness without kindling any affection for government. Private markets service our avarice without causing us to like ourselves. The question of how America's decentralized and multi-vocal public can secure a coherentvoice in debates over public policy under the conditions precipitated by so hollow and disjunctive a dichotomy is perhaps the most important issue facing both the political theory and social science of democracy and the practice of democratic politics in America today. Two recent stories out of Washington suggest just how grave the situation has become. Health-care reform failed in a paroxysm of mutual recrimination highlighted by the successful campaign of the private sector (well represented in Congress) against a presidential program that seemed to be widely misunderstood. The public at large simply went missing in the debates.

Public and Private Citizenship: From Gender Invisibility to Feminist Inclusiveness

1998 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raia Prokhovnik
Keyword(s):  
Political Participation ◽  
Specific Activity ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Social Citizenship ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public ◽  
Private Realm ◽  
The Individual

Conceptions of citizenship which rest on an abstract and universal notion of the individual founder on their inability to recognize the political relevance of gender. Such conceptions, because their ‘gender-neutrality’ has the effect of excluding women, are not helpful to the project of promoting the full citizenship of women. The question of citizenship is often reduced to either political citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of political participation, or social citizenship, in terms of an instrumental notion of economic (in)dependence. The paper argues for the recognition of citizenship as gendered, and as an ethical, that is non-instrumental, social status which is distinct from both political participation and economic (in)dependence. What unites us as citizens, in our equal membership of the political community, need not rely on a conception of us as ‘neutral’ (abstract, universalized, genderless) individuals undertaking one specific activity located in the public realm, but can take account of the diverse ways in which we engage in ethically-grounded activities on the basis of our different genders, ethnic and cultural backgrounds and other differences, in both the public and private realms. A convincing feminist conception of citizenship necessarily involves a radical redefinition of the public/private distinction to accommodate the recognition of citizenship practices in the private realm. The paper builds on the observation that the concept of ‘citizenship’ is broader than the concept of ‘the political’ (or ‘the social/economic’), and contends that feminism provides us with the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity, which applies to both men and women. The recognition of gendered subjectivity opens the way to the recognition of the diversity of citizenship practices. It is not that women need to be liberated from the private realm, in order to take part in the public realm as equal citizens, but that women – and men – already undertake responsibilities of citizenship in both the public and the private realms.

Nobility and Necessity: The Problem of Courage in Aristotle’s

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-83 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Ward
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Individual

In the current debate over the status of moral virtue in ethical and political theory, Aristotle is an imposing and controversial figure. Both champions and critics of the ancient conception of virtue identify Aristotle as its most important proponent, but commentators often obscure the complexity of his treatment of moral virtue. His account of courage reveals this complexity. Aristotle believes that courage, and indeed virtue generally, must be understood as both an end in itself and a means to a more comprehensive good. In this way Aristotle’s political science offers a middle course that corrects and embraces the claims of nobility and necessity in political life. Honor is central to this political science. It acts as a bridge between the desires of the individual and the needs of the political community and reduces the dangers posed by the excessive pursuit of nobility and the complete acquiescence to necessity.

STUMBLING TOWARDS THE CONSTITUTION

2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Thomas Adams
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Political Control ◽  
The Political ◽  
Social Rights ◽  
Full Membership ◽  
The Public ◽  
Statutory Power ◽  
The Individual

ONE way in which governments may exercise political control over their subjects is by removing their status as citizens. Doing so – denying the individual the political and social rights that are constitutive of full membership of their community – involves making a radical choice, and accordingly such a decision must be properly regulated. One of the ways in which UK law does so is by preventing the exercise of the broad statutory power to rescind the citizenship of a UK national because it is “conducive to the public good”, where doing so would render that person stateless (British Nationality Act 1981, s. 40(2), (4)). Individuals may only be stripped of their citizenship under this provision on the condition that they remain full members of another political community.

Geheimnis und Tod

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-139
Author(s):  
Samuel Salzborn
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Research ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship

The contribution is based on the findings of the theoretical research on antisemitism, while a proposal for a theory of modern antisemitism is formulated. Structural formations of civil society and the socialization of the individual are taken into account. Because antisemitism have to be understood as a negative guiding principle of modernity, a theory of antisemitism must start with the structural forms and contradictions of modern society itself. But it must also go beyond that – and locate the theoretical core of antisemitism in the political itself. At the center of these considerations, the relationship the public, private, and the secret is located, and also the enchanted disenchantment of modern society in its relationship to death.

Emotionalising the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: on the civil society engagements of Israeli mental health professionals in response to the Palestinian uprisings

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Brunner ◽  
Galia Plotkin Amrami
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Mental Health Professionals ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Health Practitioners ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
First Intifada ◽  
The Individual

This article explores how Israeli mental health practitioners emotionalised the Israeli–Palestinian conflict by intervening in the public sphere. Based on a close reading of texts produced by two Israeli civil society associations of psy-professionals – Imut and Natal – we analyse and compare two languages of emotion that they developed in response to two Palestinian uprisings, the First Intifada of 1987–93 and the Al Aqsa Intifada of 2000–05. This allows us to point to differences and similarities in the ways these two associations articulated, conceptualised and represented emotions that they attributed to the Israeli-Jewish collective. Imut voiced a critical and openly political response to the outbreak of the First Intifada, while Natal adopted an ostensibly apolitical position that affirmed mainstream Israeli politics in response to the Al Aqsa Intifada. Though they differed in their politics, both Imut and Natal emotionalised the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in a dual fashion. They depicted emotions as forces (a) whose dynamics have to be understood in order to grapple with the conflict, and (b) whose detrimental effects have to be controlled through proper management. Thus, both associations portrayed emotions as an instrument for understanding the political situation and as a powerful tool to achieve social and political aims. Though both Imut and Natal emotionalised the conflict in their civil society interventions, neither of them depoliticised it. Rather, they transposed the psychological from the individual to the social level, thus embedding it in a dialectic in which the politicisation of the psychological leads to a non-reductionist emotionalisation of the political.

Searching for Political Parties in the Past

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Piero Ignazi
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Common

Chapter 1 introduces the long and difficult process of the theoretical legitimation of the political party as such. The analysis of the meaning and acceptance of ‘parties’ as tools of expressing contrasting visions moves forward from ancient Greece and Rome where (democratic) politics had first become a matter of speculation and practice, and ends up with the first cautious acceptance of parties by eighteenth-century British thinkers. The chapter explores how parties or factions have been constantly considered tools of division of the ‘common wealth’ and the ‘good society’. The holist and monist vision of a harmonious and compounded society, stigmatized parties and factions as an ultimate danger for the political community. Only when a new way of thinking, that is liberalism, emerged, was room for the acceptance of parties set.

Sentientist Democracy

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alasdair Cochrane
Keyword(s):  
Public Good ◽  
Political Community ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public

Chapter 3 asks what kinds of institutions are needed to protect the worth and rights of sentient creatures. The chapter’s ultimate claim is that they are best protected by democratic institutions: that is, institutions which are participative, deliberative, and representative, and underpinned by a set of entrenched rights. Crucially, the chapter further argues that those institutions should be comprised of dedicated animal representatives. The job of those representatives should be to act as trustees of the interests of ‘animal members’ of the political community. In other words, their job should be to translate the interests of animals with whom we share a ‘community of fate’ into their deliberations with other representatives over what is in the public good.

scholarly journals An ethic of care? Academic administration and pandemic policy

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 632-638
Author(s):  
Stephanie A Bryson
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Ethic Of Care ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Administration ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
The Impact

This reflexive essay examines the adoption of an intentional ‘ethic of care’ by social work administrators in a large social work school located in the Pacific Northwest. An ethic of care foregrounds networks of human interdependence that collapse the public/private divide. Moreover, rooted in the political theory of recognition, a care ethic responds to crisis by attending to individuals’ uniqueness and ‘whole particularity.’ Foremost, it rejects indifference. Through the personal recollections of one academic administrator, the impact of rejecting indifference in spring term 2020 is described. The essay concludes by linking the rejection of indifference to the national political landscape.

War without Citizens

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-38
Author(s):  
Stephen J. Rosow
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Consumer Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Community ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Public ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Advanced Technologies

Contestation over war memorialization can help democratic theory respond to the current attenuation of citizenship in war in liberal democratic states, especially the United States. As war involves more advanced technologies and fewer soldiers, the relation of citizenship to war changes. In this context war memorialization plays a particular role in refiguring the relation. Current practices of remembering and memorializing war in contemporary neoliberal states respond to a dilemma: the state needs to justify and garner support for continual wars while distancing citizenship from participation. The result is a consumer culture of memorialization that seeks to effect a unity of the political community while it fights wars with few citizens and devalues the public. Neoliberal wars fought with few soldiers and an economic logic reveals the vulnerability to otherness that leads to more active and critical democratic citizenship.

Democracy and Its Limits: Gender and Rights in the Czech Lands, 1918–1938

2002 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Feinberg
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Ethnic Nationalism ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Public ◽  
Universal Language ◽  
National Ideology ◽  
Democratic Nation ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Czech Lands ◽  
Public Imagination

On 28 October 1918, a group of Czech nationalists stood on the steps of the Obecni Dům (Municipal House) in Prague and proclaimed their independence from the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, allying themselves with the new state of Czechoslovakia. Their declaration marked the beginning of a new era in the Czech lands, one in which Czechs, as the majority nation, hoped to redefine the terms of political discourse. The new Czechoslovak Republic, its Czech supporters declared, would be the antithesis of the Habsburg regime. In the place of a multinational Monarchy, they would erect a democratic nation-state. The second half of this political vision was complicated by the fact that the new Czechoslovakia actually contained many ethnic groups, but Czechs still tended to imagine their new Republic as the political expression of the Czech nation. At the same time, this “Czech-centered” politics also emphasized the democratic basis of the new country. Czechoslovakia, Czech leaders said, would be a state governed by its people and dedicated to protecting their rights and freedoms as individuals. A political culture that rested on both ethnic nationalism and democratic values obviously contained some internal tensions: the need to protect the interests of one specific nation and the duty to protect the individual rights of all citizens could rub uncomfortably against each other. Yet, at that moment in 1918, most Czechs failed to register this potential for ideological conflict, instead seeing an essential link between democratic politics and the good of the Czech nation. For many Czechs, democracy itself was a need of the nation, a political structure crucial to Czech national self-realization. This idea came from one prominent conception of Czech nationhood that had captured the public imagination in the fall of 1918. According to this strain of Czech national ideology, the Czech nation had a sort of democratic character. This meant that only an egalitarian, democratic government would suit a “Czech” state. So, paradoxically, a universal language of rights and freedoms was the key to building a truly national Czechoslovak Republic. It was with a state that emphasized equality and personal freedom that the Czechs would fulfill their national destiny.

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