WHAT IS CIVIL SOCIETY?

What is civil society? Civil society is a concept located strategically at the cross-section of important strands of intellectual developments in the social sciences. To take account of the diversity of the concept, CCS, adopted an initial working definition that is meant to guide research activities and teaching, but is by no means to be interpreted as a rigid statement:

Civil society refers to the set of institutions, organizations and behavior situated between the state, the business world, and the family. Specifically, this includes voluntary and non-profit organizations of many different kinds, philanthropic institutions, social and political movements, other forms of social participation and engagement and the values and cultural patterns associated with them.

Why civil society? What is this sudden interest in civil society all about? Some may recall that the term was en vogue in the 18th and 19th centuries, but had long fallen into disuse, and became a term of interest to historians primarily. For CCS, the answer is obvious but full of implications. For a long time, social scientists believed that we lived in a two-sector world. There was the market or the economy on the one hand, and the state or government on the other. Our great theories speak to them, and virtually all our energy was dedicated to exploring the two institutional complexes of market and state. Nothing else seemed to matter much.

Not surprisingly, 'society' was pushed to the sidelines and ultimately became a very abstract notion, relegated to the confines of sociological theorizing and social philosophy, not fitting the two-sector world view that has dominated the social sciences for the last fifty years. Likewise, the notion that a 'third sector' might exist between market and state somehow got lost in the two-sector view of the world. Of course, there were and are many private institutions that serve public purposes-voluntary associations, charities, nonprofits, foundations and non-governmental organizations-that do not fit the state-market dichotomy. Yet, until quite recently, such third-sector institutions were neglected if not ignored outright by all social sciences.

Such a short-sided approach has had disastrous consequences for our understanding of how economy and society interact, of which the inability of the social sciences to predict and understand the fall of communism in central and eastern Europe is just one of many examples. One of the most important events of the 20th century escaped the attention of mainstream social science until after the fact. Looking back, we can see how events in central and eastern Europe were indeed instrumental in bringing the topic of civil society to the attention of social scientists in the West.

CCS researchers would reach similar conclusions for the way in which the social sciences typically approached 'development' in the South. For too long we have held preconceived notions of 'the' market and 'the' state that were seemingly independent of local societies and cultures. The debate about civil society ultimately is about how culture, market and state relate to each other.


Note: The description of “What is Civil Society” draws on Chapter 1 and 2 in H. K. Anheier “Civil Society: Measurement and Policy Dialogue” London: Earthscan, 2003.