scholarly journals Civil Society and State: A Historical Review

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 33-42
Author(s):  
Venugopal B Menon ◽  
Chinnu Jolly Jerome
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
New Left ◽  
Historical Review ◽  
World Order ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Strategic Action ◽  
The Face ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

The article attempts to trace the evolution of the concept of civil society. Drawing from the work of political philosophers from the classical period, the period of renaissance, scientific revolution, the period of Enlightenment in the 18th century, and ideologies from the Marxist and Gramscian discourses, the article demonstrates the shifts in the meaning and implications of the concept, its relations to public spaces, accountability, governance, normative ideals of state and the relationship between the state and its citizens. The article concludes its historical progression with the New Social Movements (NSMs), wherein the civil society became synonymous with strategic action to construct 'an alternative social and world order’, a site for problem solving. Other contenders who put forth a renewed interest in the resurgence of civil society were the New Left, who assigned civil society a role to defend people’s democratic will in the face of state power, and the neoliberals who considered civil society as a site for subversion from authoritarian regimes. The article finally concludes with a call for urgent attention towards reclaiming the authority of the civil society in education scenario.

scholarly journals Civil Society and Pro-Democracy Social Movements: Troubled Relations Within Authoritarian Regimes?

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Murad Nasibov
Keyword(s):  
Social Movements ◽  
Civil Society ◽  
Social Movement ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Collective Actions ◽  
Organic Solidarity ◽  
Mechanical Solidarity ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Conceptual Relationship

This article tries to conceptually lay down the troubled relations between civil society and social movements within authoritarian regimes. This is done by, first, bringing clarity to the conceptual relationship between civil society and social movement and, then, applying it to the authoritarian context, still theoretically. Following the “hints” of the Eastern European intellectuals of the late 1970s and the 1980s and building on the appropriation of Durkheim’s differentiation between mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity, the article distinguishes two types of solidarity: associative solidarity and action and collective solidarity and action. Civil society is proposed to emerge on associative solidarities (and their actions), while social movements build on collective solidarities (and their actions). Furthermore, associative and collective actions are identified to be progressive and transgressive, respectively. Consequently, the proposed theoretical account is applied theoretically to the authoritarian context and several hypotheses are proposed on the relationship between civil society and pro-democracy movement within authoritarian regimes.

scholarly journals Weeping in the Face of Fortune: Eco-Alienation in the Niger-Delta Ecopoetics

Humanities ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abba A. Abba ◽  
Nkiru D. Onyemachi
Keyword(s):  
Niger Delta ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Delta Region ◽  
Niger Delta Region ◽  
Cultural Implications ◽  
The Face ◽  
Oil Wealth ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Universe

Scholarship on Niger Delta ecopoetry has concentrated on the economic, socio-political and cultural implications of eco-degradation in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of the South-South in Nigeria, but falls short of addressing the trope of eco-alienation, the sense of separation between people and nature, which seems to be a significant idea in Niger Delta ecopoetics. For sure, literary studies in particular and the Humanities at large have shown considerable interest in the concept of the Anthropocene and the resultant eco-alienation which has dominated contemporary global ecopoetics since the 18th century. In the age of the Anthropocene, human beings deploy their exceptional capabilities to alter nature and its essence, including the ecosystem, which invariably leads to eco-alienation, a sense of breach in the relationship between people and nature. For the Humanities, if this Anthropocentric positioning of humans has brought socio-economic advancement to humans, it has equally eroded human values. This paper thus attempts to show that the anthropocentric positioning of humans at the center of the universe, with its resultant hyper-capitalist greed, is the premise in the discussion of eco-alienation in Tanure Ojaide’s Delta Blues and Home Songs (1998) and Nnimmo Bassey’s We Thought It Was Oil but It Was Blood (2002). Arguing that both poetry collections articulate the feeling of disconnect between the inhabitants of the Niger Delta region and the oil wealth in their community, the paper strives to demonstrate that the Niger Delta indigenes, as a result, have been compelled to perceive the oil environment no longer as a source of improved life but as a metaphor for death. Relying on ecocritical discursive strategies, and seeking to further foreground the implication of the Anthropocene in the conception of eco-alienation, the paper demonstrates how poetry, as a humanistic discipline, lives up to its promise as a powerful medium for interrogating the trope of eco-estrangement both in contemporary Niger Delta ecopoetry and in global eco-discourse.

“We are all republicans”: Political Articulation and the Production of Nationhood in France's Face Veil Debate

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (4) ◽  
pp. 938-967 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Laxer
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Electoral Politics ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Boundaries ◽  
The Face ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn July 2010, following a year-long nationwide debate over Islamic veiling, the French government passed a law prohibiting facial coverings in all public spaces. Prior research attributes this and other restrictive laws to France's republican secular tradition. This article takes a different approach. Building on literature that sees electoral politics as a site for articulating, rather than merely reflecting, social identities, I argue that the 2010 ban arose in significant part out of political parties’ struggles to demarcate the boundaries of legitimate politics in the face of an ultra-right electoral threat. Specifically, I show that in seeking to prevent the ultra-right National Front party from monopolizing the religious signs issue, France's major right and left parties agreed to portray republicanism as requiring the exclusion of face veiling from public space. Because it was forged in conflict, however, the consensus thus generated is highly fractured and unstable. It conceals ongoing conflict, both between and within political parties, over the precise meaning(s) of French republican nationhood. The findings thus underscore the relationship between boundary-drawing in the political sphere and the process of demarcating the cultural and political boundaries of nationhood in contexts of immigrant diversity.

Freedom and its limitations: The contemporary mainland Chinese debate over liberalism

2018 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 315-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lu Hua ◽  
Matthew Galway
Keyword(s):  
New Left ◽  
World Order ◽  
New World Order ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Mainland Chinese ◽  
Classical Liberal ◽  
New Synthesis ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

The emergence of Chinese liberalism carries with it a specific China-centric character that reflects both a Chinese and a foreign focus on the nation’s complicated domestic situation. As part of the research dialogue on the intellectual public sphere in China, this article provides a historical perspective of the development of contemporary Chinese liberalism and explores the complexities of those Chinese liberals’ engagement with a number of key issues in political thought, both among themselves and with their principal opponents, the New Left. We review four themes in these ongoing debates: the relationship between freedom and equality; the liberals’ demands for a more open civil society; their call for balanced social structures, including a mechanism for expressing interest; and their search for a new synthesis of Chinese tradition with a strong nation state. Contemporary Chinese liberals propose their visions for a China that operates within and against a Euro-American-dominated system. Thus, their interpretation of classical liberal texts is characterized by one of creative adaptation, and informed by both local and foreign intellectual resources. The article’s ultimate goal is to provide a deeper understanding of the internal debates among Chinese liberals, which may give a sense of the multifarious predicaments and opportunities that China’s intellectuals face as China attempts to pursue wealth, power, and a revitalized role in a new world order.

Civil society and democratic transformation in Mauritania: the paradigm of transition and the antecedents of political change

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 372-391
Author(s):  
Ismail Bouganour
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
World Order ◽  
New World Order ◽  
International Pressure ◽  
The People ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Face ◽  
Democratic Transformation ◽  
Tribal Affiliation

Mauritania is among the poorest of the world’s nations due, in good measure, to its itinerant Bedouin population that has moved gradually towards urbanization in accordance with the new world order. The country has undergone extensive transformation in the face of international pressure and influence that were brought to bear on it, and their effects have affected the process of transformation, especially those pertaining to the acknowledgement of human rights and freedoms of citizens. The democratic transformation of Mauritania has to be understood in the context of factors interplaying between the social and cultural spheres, in particular the tribal nature of Mauritanian society which, in a de facto sense, designs the roadmap for action on the basis of the citizen’s perpetual tribal affiliation and belonging, as well as the interaction between economic and political reform conforming to economic demands. This study clarifies the democratic transformation that has taken place in Mauritania through particular phases. Although the transformation did not necessarily bring about change in the prevailing political modus operandi of the state, it did, nonetheless, change the balance of the ‘powers that be’ in favour of reform. The latter arose through the role played by political parties that enabled the development of civil society and the possibility for political reforms in future. The study analyses the Mauritanian experience with regard to the success of civil society institutions in furthering their goal of complete reciprocity between the people and their members,  and in placing these issues at the heart of the discussion and achieving pioneering successes.

Associations and the Development of Civil Society in Tsarist Russia

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-42
Author(s):  
Joseph Bradley
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Political Culture ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
State Control ◽  
The Public ◽  
Imperial Russia ◽  
State And Society ◽  
Learned Societies ◽  
The Relationship

This article examines the growth of civil society in imperial Russia by focusing on voluntary associations, especially learned societies, closely watched by tsarist officialdom but neglected by historians. Although scholars often emphasize the peculiarities of Russian development, Russia's societies were part of a broader European phenomenon. A study of associations highlights the relationship between state and society in authoritarian regimes where civil society is most vigorously contested. Because authoritarian regimes close the channels of representative politics and make it difficult for their subjects to act freely in concert, associations demonstrate the potential for the self-organization of society. They cultivate the microspaces of initiative and autonomy not completely under state control where the capacity of citizenship can appear. This study conceptualizes the development of Russian civil society and the way in which the disenfranchised could enter public life by using the examples of six Russian learned societies. Owing to the mission of the learned societies, Russian civil society became inextricably linked to patriotism and the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Associations raised consciousness, accorded an opportunity for special-interest constituencies of men to enter the public arena, framed policy issues, and mobilized a public in the language of representation. Although civil society and the autocratic state are often described as bitter rivals, cooperation, not confrontation, in the project of national prestige and prosperity was more often the rule. However, an increasing public assertiveness challenged autocratic authority, as Russian officialdom was unwilling to relinquish its tutelary supervision of civil society. Thus, associations became a focal point of a contradictory political culture.

scholarly journals An Approach to 18th Century American Exploration Using Automatic Correspondence Analysis

AWARI ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Lucas Kiektik ◽  
Andres Lucas García Fiorini
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Text Mining ◽  
Correspondence Analysis ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
The Face ◽  
The One ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Analysis Of Social Networks

The relationship between America and Europe has been characterized by asymmetry. Towards the end of the 18th century, in the face of the English boom, the Spanish crown began a series of reforms, including sponsoring scientific expeditions. Among them is the one directed by José Celestino Mutis. This work, which mainly uses text mining techniques and analysis of social networks, addresses the understanding of this exploratory project, its motives, difficulties, and consequences, through the automated study of the epistolary file of the aforementioned scientist during the period 1760- 1808. The results of the processing and interpretation were put in relation to the known antecedents, regarding the author's interests, type of relationships, and resources that he implemented to carry out his project and how this was expressed in the correspondence.

Civil society at the turn of the millenium: prospects for an alternative world order

1999 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT W. COX
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
World Order ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Private Interests ◽  
The World ◽  
Society Today ◽  
Different Parts

The meaning of ‘civil society’ has evolved considerably since its use in the context of the 18th century European Enlightenment. Then it signified the realm of private interests, in practice the realm of the bourgeoisie, distinct from the state. While one current of thought retains that meaning and its implications, others view civil society rather as the emancipatory activity of social forces distinct from both state and capital. Antonio Gramsci's thought embraced both meanings: civil society was the ground that sustained the hegemony of the bourgeoisie but also that on which an emancipatory counterhegemony could be constructed. Is civil society today in the latter sense, a surrogate for revolution that seems a remote possibility towards the attainment of an alternative social and world order? It is useful to test this proposition by examining the potential for civil society in different parts of the world.

Colonialism and the Highland Clearances

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Mackinnon
Keyword(s):  
Industrial Development ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
Indigenous Research ◽  
Internal Colonialism ◽  
New Approach ◽  
A Site ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Imperial State ◽  
Late Modern

This article employs a new approach to studying internal colonialism in northern Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries. A common approach to examining internal colonial situations within modern state territories is to compare characteristics of the internal colonial situation with attested attributes of external colonial relations. Although this article does not reject the comparative approach, it seeks to avoid criticisms that this approach can be misleading by demonstrating that promoters and managers of projects involving land use change, territorial dispossession and industrial development in the late modern Gàidhealtachd consistently conceived of their work as projects of colonization. It further argues that the new social, cultural and political structures these projects imposed on the area's indigenous population correspond to those found in other colonial situations, and that racist and racialist attitudes towards Gaels of the time are typical of those in colonial situations during the period. The article concludes that the late modern Gàidhealtachd has been a site of internal colonization where the relationship of domination between colonizer and colonized is complex, longstanding and occurring within the imperial state. In doing so it demonstrates that the history and present of the Gaels of Scotland belongs within the ambit of an emerging indigenous research paradigm.

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