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CIVIL SOCIETY

Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011

Civil society is the sphere of social life that is separate from the intimate bonds of family and autonomous from regulation and scrutiny of the state.

Generally, civil society refers to the social interactions between individuals as free makers of contracts acting with rational self-interest in a society where all have equal legal status.

The concept of civil society also implies limits on the state's role in regulating social life and a generalized responsibility of individuals to act with due regard to the interests and collective life of the community.

The Paradoxes of Civil Society 
Jeffrey C. Alexander, University of California.
Emerging from recent social and political struggles, the notion of `civil society' can and should be transformed into a sociological concept on both the theoretical and empirical level. This means going beyond the Marxist and social democratic understandings of civil society as a world of selfish economic interests, on the one hand, and beyond the liberal equation of civil society with legal protections of individual rights, on the other. Civil society should be conceptualized as a realm of solidarity, a `we-ness' that simultaneously affirms the sanctity of the individual and these individuals' obligations to the collectivity. The solidary sphere, in principle and in practice, can be differentiated not only from markets and states but from such other noncivil spheres as religion, family and science. Yet differentiation does not preclude tension and conflict over boundaries. Civil solidarity is `compromised' and `distorted' by these boundary relations, and also by competing, more primordial definitions of community, such as race, language, nation, territory, and ethnicity. While civil society can be identified with `universal reason' in a philosophical sense, in socio-logical terms it must be articulated by more concrete and identity-related symbolic constructs. For this reason, socio-logical approaches to civil society must be tied to cultural sociology, to theories of symbolic codes and narratives. - iss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/2/115

Race, Media and Civil Society 
Ronald N. Jacobs, State University of New York, Albany 
This article examines current theoretical debates about the public sphere by looking through the prism of race and the media. The history of the black public sphere in the United States illustrates why the publicity strategies of marginalized groups cannot concentrate solely on `mainstream' media and dominant publics, but must also include active participation in, and cultivation of, alternative public spheres. Historically, the black press has served three important functions: providing a forum for debate and self-improvement; monitoring the mainstream press; and increasing black visibility in white civil society. Because a tolerant and inclusive civil society is most likely when there is a differentiated and diverse set of communications media, the current crisis of the black press is a crisis for American civil society. Those in the `mainstream' media have a responsibility to respond to this crisis by recognizing the importance of alternative publics and increasing their engagement with the African-American press. - iss.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/14/3/355

The Roots of Civil Society: A Model of Voluntary Association Prevalence Applied to Data on Larger Contemporary Nations 
David Horton Smith, Ce Shen 
Based on a literature review, a theory of voluntary association prevalence in nations of the world is proposed. Greater associational prevalence is hypothesized to result from certain societal background factors (greater population size, and more favorable historical/cultural/environmental interface), aspects of basic societal structure (more permissive political control, greater modernization, more developed non-associational organizational field, and greater ethno-religious heterogeneity), and societal mobilization factors (aggregate resource mobilization for associations, aggregate social cohesion). Archival data on larger contemporary nations strongly confirm most of the model independently for two separate time periods, the 1970s and early 1990s. The ethno-religious heterogeneity variable is not confirmed as significant. No suitable data were available to test aggregate social cohesion as part of the empirical model tested. The results have important policy implications for the roots of civil society, political pluralism, and participatory democracy, partially as manifestations of social capital in a society. - cos.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/2/93

Is Knowledge-Based Society a Relevant Strategy for Civil Society? 
Maria Häyrinen-Alestalo 
Governments today tend to see the importance of knowledge, information, education and solidarity through instrumentalism. They are elements of modernity that have a selective use value. Modernization has also increasingly been reduced to technology that is supposed to change the structure of industries and to provide citizens with new means of social cohesion and participation. Both the ideas of the information society and civil society, however, aim at strengthening the competitive elements of efficiency and control, where the collective capacity for action is limited. On the political level, the knowledge-based society has been transformed into the information society, where the techno-economic paradigm is expected to function in a socially neutral and progressive way. Due to a rise of new hierarchies and exclusions it has become necessary to ask why efforts for developing a socially inclusive information society have not been successful. Due to conflicting goals between instrumentalism and democracy, the distinction between the state and civil society is unclear. The partners are also uncertain about their roles and responsibilities. To develop the information society towards an inclusive society, the concept of collective responsibility should be redefined, otherwise the danger of growing neo-exclusionism increases. Aside collective responsibility, the conditions of collective morality should also be discussed. - csi.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/49/4/203  

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