The Blackwell Companion to Sociology (21 page)

social movements in the West (Keane, 1988). These developments have contrib-

uted to the attractiveness of a normative way of defining civil society and

established its problematic understanding as `àll that is desired in the making

of democratic society'' (Kumar, 1993, p. 388). Seeing civil society as `à noble

hope rather than a possible reality'' (Hall, 1998, p. 32) has, in turn, discouraged an empirically motivated search for the historical and sociological attributes of civil society, while the linkage of this idea to new social movements has limited this approach's usefulness as a general model (Kumar, 1993, p. 387). With the

question about the nature of civil society unexamined, an inflation of the use of the idea has followed.

Second, the idea of civil society has captured the imagination of many social

scientists because of a growing realization that formulae of citizenship have

secured neither solidarity nor an expansion of the public sphere. With many

symptoms of the decline of solidarity, the renewal of civic institutions has been perceived as a new way of constructing identities and enhancing responsibilities.

As the task of protecting solidarity is seen to fall to non-state institutions, civil society becomes identified with the problem of constituting trust in society

(Wolfe, 1989). Therefore, this perspective is confronted with many difficulties

relating to how social trust is produced and to how social solidarity and coop-

eration are generated. These concepts, which date back to Durkheim's emphasis

on group life and shared values as an antidote to anomie and self-destruction,

have related the attractiveness of civil society solely with the positive aspects of social capital. Such a conception of civil society with strong assumptions about trust is, moreover, inconsistent with the notion of complex, highly specialized, and individualized societies where social cooperation does not presuppose

shared norms (Gellner, 1994; Misztal, 1996). Consequently, by calling attention

to the role of trust, this identification has contributed to a muddled understanding of the concept of civil society and has, therefore, jeopardized the term's

heuristic value.

Third, the popularity of the notion of civil society is due to a conviction that civil society provides the synthesis of conflicting claims of abstract justice and shared norms. This belief accompanies the tendency for the language of civil

society to avoid the problem of tensions between particular and universal inter-

ests, which, in turn, obscures strains between diversity and solidarity. Conse-

quently, the concept of civil society is promoted by three opposing camps; those advancing a workable synthesis of conflicting claims of social diversity and

solidarity, as well as ``those who find exclusion inexcusable and those who find inclusion omnipresent'' (Wolfe, 1992, p. 310). The accommodation of these

three contrasting orientations, however, has not advanced the notion's analytical coherence.

Fourth, the revitalization of the notion of civil society is due to its fit with the current sociological interest in the shifting boundaries between private and

public spheres. With the language of civil society reflecting a widespread desire to abandon the traditional public±private dichotomy and to close the gap

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between public and private domains, these new studies conceptualize civil

society as `à realm of social life that contains elements of both the public and private without fully being equated with either one'' (Wolfe, 1997, p. 196).

Although the departure from the classical neutral view of civil society institu-

tions and practices allows us to account for civil society as neither fully public nor fully private, the multiplicity of varied new ways of delimitating boundaries of civil society still presents an obstacle to a more clear use of the idea.

Fifth, the expansion of the notion of civil society is central to modern dis-

course because the idea of civil society as thè`third way'' between ``the atomization of competitive market societies and a state dominated existence'' (Gouldner, 1980, p. 370) seems to be the right response to the perceived weaknesses of the

state and/or the excessive power of the market. In the context of the post-welfare state and the collapse of the Berlin Wall, all main political orientations search for a new solution to the failure of either the state or the market. Following the

commonly accepted assumption that democratic systems are in jeopardy if too

many citizens feel disconnected from organizational life, they all seem to agree that the quest for a new form of civil society is the adequate response to their discomfort with the deficiencies of the existing institutional systems. However, there is as yet no persuasive account of how to bring about the desired stocks of civicness, while recent attempts to that effect only increase the analytical redundancy of the concept of civil society.

Finally, the attractiveness of the notion of civil society can also be attributed to its presumed capacity to capture the widespread sense of change in the polity, the economy, the organization of work, and communication technologies. This

capacity can be traced to the assumed quality of civil society as a sphere of

complexity, dynamism, and choice that functions as the enemy of political

despotism, while providing a foundation for post-industrial, information-

based, global, and even expanding to cyberspace societies (Keane, 1998). The

sociological emphasis on civil society can, however, be accused of relying on too many optimistic assumptions. It is not always realized that while the present

changes have made civil society a more explicitly valuable asset, they have not

made its attainment or maintenance any easier. It is impossible to believe that

civil society can solve problems of limited resources and limited sympathies. It cannot be seen any more as an automatic by-product of macrostructures but

needs to be perceived as an active political accomplishment. Furthermore, while

civil society has traditionally referred to a national society, today we do not have a clear answer to the question of wherè`society'' should be vested. Moreover,

despite talk about a global civil society ``there is yet no sign of any plausible alternative to the state as the primary institutional framework within which

security and solidarity can be established'' (Hann, 1996, p. 7). So the civil society approach is faced with many difficulties due to an increasingly undefined space

for ``society'' and a lack of any answers to the question of how to create trust in

``space'' without clearly defined boundaries.

To sum up, the new studies of civil society tend to furnish this concept with

many desirable qualities and to see it as the crucial antidote to all social

problems. The lack of sociological realism and the diversity and ambiguity of

76

Barbara A. Misztal

many definitions, in turn, inflate the use of the idea of civil society itself. Yet the broadness of the concept of civil society is one of the reasons why this idea has captured the sociological imagination. This does not mean that the concept of

civil society is popular for all the wrong reasons but that it risks taking on the role of a new grand narrative capable of explaining everything and, therefore,

becoming `àn empty shell'' concept (Edwards and Foley, 1998; Hefner, 1998;

Keane, 1998). To overcome the growing suspicion of the usefulness of this

notion requires a more precise delimitation of historical and sociological attributes of the term ``civil society.''

Variants

Variants of Civil Society

Seeing civil society as the antithesis of the state is the common aspect of recent conceptualizations of this term. This widespread minimal definition of civil

society identifies it as `à collective entity existing independent from the state''

(Seligman, 1992, p. 5) or with ``non-state institutions and practices which enjoy a high degree of autonomy'' (Kumar, 1993, p. 283). Although this minimal

definition of civil society is adequate for the purpose of decoding a despotic

state, its usefulness is questionable when one is trying to reconstruct what role civil society plays in liberal democracies. While we cannot deny that civil society exists in this minimal sense in the West, this does not make it easier to answer questions about its independence and effect on public policy. Difficulties in

addressing these issues are consequences of the continuous existence of arbitrary delimitations of the boundaries between civil and other spheres (for instance,

whether civil society subsumes political society or economy or the public sphere) and of the absence of an agreement as to what civil society's independence from

the state involves, i.e. whether it should be defined as the society's capacity to structure itself and coordinate its actions through free associations or whether it should be measured by its capacity to determine the course of state policy

(Taylor, 1995, pp. 208±23).

Limitations of this predominant definition of civil society become visible when

we examine two traditions that laid the ground for the emergence of the

dichotomous vision of the state and civil society relations. These two traditions, the first labelled L-stream and influenced by John Locke and the second labelled the M-stream tradition and influenced by Montesquieu (and also Alexis de

Tocqueville), consider civil society to be distinct from the state and examine

conditions for constitutional forms of government. Both approaches suggest that

political authority should respect the autonomy of society and stress the importance of the distinction between civil society and the state for the preservation of freedom (Taylor, 1995). In the L-stream's vision of society as a prepolitical

community, civil society features individual rights and mutual sympathy that

ensure the existence of freedom and civilized life. The M-stream perspective,

which stresses the importance of self-rule as a vital condition of freedom, is

concerned with civil society as the realm of associations, wherè`the feelings and ideas are renewed, the heart enlarged, and the understanding developed.''

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77

According to Tocqueville (1835, p. 514), although it is association that is à`seedbed of civic virtue,'' politics precedes civil society since it is politics that spreads a general habit and taste for association.

The L-stream proponents argue that societal cooperation might be achieved

through both debates in the public sphere and organization of private interests in the economy. By stressing society's capacity to achieve unity outside the state, the model of civil society proposed by the writers of the Scottish Enlightenment

bases the resolution of tensions between particularism and universalism in the

achievement of a social connectedness grounded in natural sympathy and bene-

volence. However, the shift to a more individualistic and universalistic notion of citizenship has undermined the view that sociability promotes trust and civility.

In contrast with philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment, contemporary

intellectuals are cynical about the capacity of persons to be benevolent in their relations and endowed with a capacity to have enriched social relations. This is reflected in the present minimal definition of civil society, with its impoverished understanding of social relationship. Now, however, we have significant evidence to suggest that such an understanding is not enough. While rethinking the

old resolution to the tension between individual selfish goals and collective

solidarity, I think, we should not overlook the importance of `ìnformal sociab-

ility'' or `ìnsignificant communities'' (Fleischacker, 1998) in fostering mutual respect, civility, and trust. On the other hand, the extrapolation of the L-variant suggests that we should avoid the anti-modernist nostalgia for a lost human

unity, since the implementation of such a vision undermines freedom.

In contrast with the L-stream, which focuses on the idea of the non-political

dimension of civil society, the M-stream demonstrates the role of intermediary

associations for non-political purposes in teaching citizens how ``to co-operate in their own affairs'' (Tocqueville, 1856, p. 107) and thus in training responsible and trustworthy citizens suited for liberty. However, what really counts here is not that independent associations form a non-political social sphere, ``but rather that they form the basis for the fragmentation and diversity of power within the political system'' (Taylor, 1996, p. 222). So, if taken to its logical conclusion, this tradition results in the emergence of centralized, state-linked, and bureaucratic types of associations, which, as in the case of corporatist arrangements, do not encourage, and may even actually inhibit, the independence of civil society.

From this brief outline we can see that the recent minimal definition of civil

society fails to do justice to the both traditions (Taylor, 1996, p. 219). The

convergence of the L-and M-stream traditions into one approach, which Alex-

ander (1998b) labelled Civil Society I, has resulted in an understanding of civil society as a complex web of institutions outside the state. In this vein, Putnam (1993) identifies civil society with dense networks of associations. However,

such an arbitrary compression of the two approaches reduces their original, rich and distinctive legacies, while, at the same time, increasing ± by using the notion as a general category abstracted from the particular tradition ± a general confusion.

A different tradition, more concerned with the differentiated social forms

functioning outside the ambit of the state, emerged with the development of