Civil Society

CIVIL SOCIETY IS PLACED between the individual and the state. The term is used in reference to the broad collectivity of voluntary, nonofficial, noncommercial, and more or less formally organized groups that develop in the space between the individual and the state, socializing the former and humanizing the latter.

Civil society refers to autonomous groups and associations that might cooperate but can also compete with each other. Although the associations comprising civil society have widely differing objectives, size, membership, resource levels, institutional forms, organizational cultures, and campaign tactics, they all aim at either reenforcing or altering existing rules, norms, and deeper political, economic, and social structures. Civil society refers to activities by voluntary associations to shape policies, norms, and/or deeper social structures. Civil society is therefore distinct from both official and commercial circles, though the line can become blurred at times.

The term civil society went through a revival in the 1990s. In 2005, it was thought of as a counterbalance to the power of the government. John Locke and others used it to separate the government from organized society, since a contract among rational men had been agreed upon in order to escape the state of nature.

Civil society describes the space of collective action and public discourse that exists between government and private citizens, and which is filled typically by citizens’ movements, relief organizations, peace activists, human rights advocates, labor unions, charities, social and sports clubs, farmers’ groups, environmental groups, ethnic lobbies, criminal syndicates, academia, the media, consumer protection bodies, community-based organizations, women's networks, civic clubs, citizens’ initiatives, citizen action groups, nongovernmental organizations, interest groups, cultural and educational institutions, and private religious and developmental organizations. However, this term does not cover political parties, as their only reason for existence is to work to take political power. Neither is private business part of civil society, as it is private and profit-oriented. Besides the understanding of civil society as “space for action,” the concept is also understood to mean the society we all want to live in: trustful, tolerant, and co-operative. In the past this was a society of good manners. Civil society can refer to the voluntary sector as well as express an alternative vision of society.

The state should be a minimal or noninterventionist state. This type of state should be limited to looking after law and order and military defense, and it should provide space for civil society, as Adam Smith argued in his Wealth of Nations in the 18th century. For Smith, society was separate from the government, and civil society was a counterbalance to repressive government. Smith described the self-regulating economy as civil society. Protestant (Calvinist) individualism had provided the beginnings of civil society.

Smith believed that the market would give one civility, and that civil society was the result of the market, not what the government had wanted to do in the first place. In the 20th century, Antonio Gramsci in Italy emphasized culture and education, which were under threat to be used by the powerful government to impose its perspective on civil society's culture and education. Gramsci, but also before him, G.W.F. Hegel and Karl Marx in the 19th century, understood civil society as a public sphere beyond the control of the government and the family. The market needed individuals who would also play a key role in civil society.

...