Motley Society, Plurinationalism, and the Integral State

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 99-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Freeland
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Reality ◽  
Vice President ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Related Concept ◽  
Analytical Purpose ◽  
History Of

Abstract This article examines Bolivian vice president Álvaro García Linera’s use of concepts originating in the work of Antonio Gramsci and Bolivian sociologist René Zavaleta Mercado. Zavaleta’s concept of sociedad abigarrada (usually translated as ‘motley society’) has a history of misappropriation in which García Linera participates by articulating it with the related concept of the estado aparente to claim that the merely ‘apparent’ state which does not effectively represent the heterogeneous social reality of a country like Bolivia is abolished with the official establishment of the Plurinational State in 2009. This ideologeme of the Plurinational State as one that faithfully represents Bolivia’s abigarramiento is equated with the Gramscian stato integrale, which in Gramsci refers to the state proper plus civil society where these are thoroughly integrated to function as an organic whole (the modern capitalist nation-state). Beyond merely misusing the borrowed terms of this discursive operation, García Linera gives a prescriptive value to concepts developed for an analytical purpose to validate the existing regime.

scholarly journals A Conceptual History of Civil Society: From Greek Beginnings to the End of Marx

2008 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boris DeWiel
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Critical Event ◽  
Political Society ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
French Enlightenment ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Common ◽  
Ways Of Life

The idea of civil society has undergone a renaissance in recent years, but missing from this literature is an explanation for its historical transformation in meaning. Originally civil society was synonymous with political society, but the common modem meaning emphasizes autonomy from the state. This paper traces this historical transformation within the context of the history of ideas, and suggests that the critical event was an eighteenth-century reaction against the rationalistic universalism associated with the French Enlightenment. The continued significance of the question of universalism is suggested by the fact that universalistic Marxist Leninist theories provided the ideological underpinnings for the destruction of civil society in Eastern European nations. The paper concludes that three elements are essential to the modern understanding of civil society: its autonomy from the state, its interdependence with the state, and the pluralism of values, ideals and ways of life embodied in its institutions.

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel: Philosophy of Politics

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thom Brooks
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Seminal Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Philosophy Of Right

G. W. F. Hegel is widely considered to be one of the most important philosophers in the history of philosophy. This entry focuses on his contributions to political philosophy, with particular attention paid to his seminal work: the Philosophy of Right. A particular focus will be placed on Hegel’s theories of freedom, contract and property, punishment, morality, family, civil society, law, and the state.

scholarly journals The Early Literary Evolution of the Notorious Pirate Henry Avery

Humanities ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 6
Author(s):  
Richard Frohock
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Literary History ◽  
The State ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
State Of Nature ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Literary Evolution ◽  
History Of ◽  
Civil Order

Henry Avery (alternately spelled Every) was one of the most notorious pirates of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and scholars have written much about Avery in an effort to establish the historical details of his mutiny and acts of piracy. Other scholars have focused on the substantial literary production that his life occasioned; the early literary history of Avery’s exploits evolves quickly away from the known facts of his life, offering instead a literary trajectory of accumulated tropes about Avery’s motivations, actions, and transformations. This literary invention of Avery is a compelling subject in itself, particularly as writers used his story to explore pressing philosophical and political concerns of the period. In this essay, I consider how early fictions about Avery look well beyond the history of a particular pirate to ruminate on topical ideas about the state of nature, the origins of civil society, and human tendencies toward self-interest and corruption that seem—inevitably—to accompany power and threaten civil order, however newly formed or ostensibly principled.

Nature and the State Apparatus

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Whitehead ◽  
Rhys Jones ◽  
Martin Jones
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
The State ◽  
State Interaction ◽  
State Function ◽  
Antonio Gramsci ◽  
Social Formation ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
State Organizations ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
State Form

The previous two chapters have examined key moments and sites of nature– state interaction and have argued for the need to explore the manifold contexts within which these linkages develop. This discussion proved useful as a way of highlighting the different ways in which modern states have sought to frame national natures through ideological and material processes, and began to illustrate the ideological and concrete impacts of national natures on state organizations. This chapter focuses on the ways in which nature has been incorporated into the state apparatus, as well as showing how the state apparatus has helped to frame national natures. When referring to the state apparatus, we mean the ‘set of institutions and organizations through which state power is exercised’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 45). The state apparatus is distinct from the state form, which refers to the relationship between a given state structure and a particular social formation, and the state function, which alludes to the ‘activities which are undertaken in the name of the state’ (Clark and Dear 1984: 37, 41). Despite the reference to a state apparatus in the preceding sentences, it is clear that it does not represent a singular entity. If, as Neil Brenner (2004: 4) maintains, a reference to the state in the singular misleadingly ascribes to it a unity and uniformity that it does not possess, then by the same token, we need to think about the state apparatus as something that is not singular in character. Gordon Clark and Michael Dear (1984) have emphasized the multi-faceted and plural nature of the state apparatus. The state apparatus, in this sense, comprises an agglomeration of different sub-apparatuses, which are the ‘collection of agencies, organizations and institutions which together constitute the means by which state functions are attained’, and para-apparatuses, namely those ‘auxiliary agencies’ that possess ‘some degree of operational autonomy’ (Brenner 2004: 49). The state apparatus ranges, therefore, from those bureaucracies charged with conducting the state’s executive functions to a plethora of agencies involved in its more mundane aspects of governance. For Antonio Gramsci, the state apparatus is even broader in scope, drawing in important aspects of civil society.

State. Civil society. Right.

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lyudmila Grudtsyna ◽  
Alyeksandr CHyernyavskiy ◽  
Dmitriy Pashentsev
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
The State ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Role Of The State ◽  
History Of ◽  
Legal Structures

The monograph is devoted to the study of the role of government in shaping, support and development of Russia´s civil society institutions. by the authors E practical examples and using the theoretical and legal structures proved the leading role of the state in the formation of Russian civil society, which is based in Russia "from below", according to the classical western models, and "from above", taking into account the centuries-old traditions and the history of the Russian people and the Russian statehood. The state acts as the management system in relation to civil society as a managed system. However, civil society functions as a self-regulating social system, the determining state. The fact that civil society - self-regulating system, and at the same time controlled, there is no contradiction. The book will be of interest to lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, public servants, students, graduate students and faculty of liberal arts colleges and faculties, as well as all interested in the development of civil society in Russia and the role of the state in this process.

The State, the Clergy, and British Imperial Policy in Afghanistan during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries

1997 ◽  
Vol 29 (4) ◽  
pp. 581-605 ◽  
Author(s):  
Senzil Nawid
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The State ◽  
The Political ◽  
Territorial Integrity ◽  
History Of

The political and dynastic history of Afghanistan during the 19th and the early 20th centuries is well known. So is British imperial policy toward Afghanistan. However, very little attention has been paid to the role of the clergy, the guardians of the Islamic order and the representatives of the civil society in Afghanistan. They played a major role in domestic politics and in Afghanistan's challenges with foreign powers. This paper attempts to fill the gap in information about the ulama by detailing their role in defending Afghanistan's territorial integrity and by examining the conflict over jihad between the ulama and Afghanistan's rulers, a conflict that adversely affected the legitimacy of successive regimes.

Staat und Zivilgesellschaft

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
The State ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Modern State ◽  
Path Dependencies ◽  
Contextual Dependence ◽  
History Of ◽  
State Of Tension ◽  
The Relationship

The relationship between the state and civil society can be characterised as complex, disharmonious and dynamic. The complexity results from the historical conditions of its origin and the different ways of thinking, grasping and structuring the relationship. The relationship is disharmonious because although it can theoretically be thought of as equal, this equality, in fact, hardly exists. The relationship is dynamic because it is in a permanent state of tension between the path dependencies of the history of ideas, and therefore can and must be constantly rethought. This anthology attempts to grasp and illuminate the relationship between the state and civil society in all its complexity by paying special attention to the contextual dependence of the genesis of this complicated relationship. With the emergence of the modern state based on sovereignty, the state entered into opposition with civil society. Modern political theory has devoted much of its energy to reflecting this antagonism and bridging the gap between the two. With contributions by Nelson Chacón, Julian Dörr, Christopher Gohl, Oliver Hidalgo, Heinz Kleger, Alexander Kruska, Antoine Lévy, Andreas Nix, Edwin QuirogaMolano and Michael Zantke.

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