Journal of Civil Society最新文献

{"title":"Partha Chatterjee’s concepts of civil society and ‘uncivil’ political society: Is the distinction valid?","authors":"H. Bhattacharyya","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2021.1886759","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886759","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Partha Chatterjee's distinction between civil society and 'political society' in post-colonial countries has provoked much debate and discussion. This has remained controversial in the current literature on post-colonialism in respect of democracy, development and politics. In this article I contest his distinction by pointing out, first that his conception of civil society is limited and abstract (and universalist) that leaves out the vast rural life in India. Second, I question the conceptual and empirical validity of his concept of political society, and argue that his original concept of political society was an urban space of illegality and criminality, but his subsequent shift to cover rural India does not explain how original conception works out in rural India. The empirical evidence available suggests that his so-called political society in rural India is actually part of civil society such as rural clubs, NGOs and other associations that operates in the interface of state, politics and society. In conclusion I seek to restore the political society as the space of the nation-state based on, following Locke, the right to life, liberty and property; trust (contract), definite and codified laws, impartial judiciary, separation of powers, limited government by popular consent and the people's right to revolt.","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886759","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42489737","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Does a plural civil society matter? Reflecting on the varieties of associational life in India","authors":"Gurpreet Mahajan","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2021.1886761","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886761","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Civil society is increasingly being viewed as the domain of communicative rationality; a sphere where the collective ‘we’ emerges and acts to affirm the Kantian ideals of human dignity and equal respect. In these normative accounts, the civil does not simply supplement the existing institutions of constitutional democracy, it embodies the very idea of democracy, albeit in its ideal form. This article engages with this conception and examines whether the civil should be considered as the domain of ‘universal reason’, in which ‘rational’ individuals act to realize the goal of equal rights for all. Not only is the empirical reality quite different, it is indeed desirable to make space for the plural and the diverse within our conception of the civil. Drawing upon the Indian debates and experiences, it is argued that the civil domain is internally differentiated and often deeply fragmented. The task of securing basic rights for all takes many different forms; individuals and collectives that pursue this goal do so with different conceptions of the self and different understanding of the political and economic system. One needs to recognize this plurality for it is the co-presence of deep differences – with regard to assessments, judgments, forms of collective action – that sustain democracy and make civil society central to the democratic imaginary.","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886761","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45876636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Community organizations and educational development among Muslims: Lessons from the ‘Kerala Experience’","authors":"Mohd. Sanjeer Alam","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2021.1886762","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886762","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The overall image of Indian Muslims today is of a community deprived of a minimally decent life, having low educational attainment and experiencing socio-cultural stagnation. But, interestingly, Kerala's Muslims stand out in sharp contrast to their counterparts in most parts of the country as they are doing well, not just in education, but in most other aspects of life as well even as a century ago they were put in a defined image box and appeared to represent a community steeped in illiteracy and poverty. Equally interesting is their story of overcoming barriers to socioeconomic and educational development at the heart of which is the role played by social agencies though not fully captured in the available literature. Against this backdrop, the present paper aims to bring into sharp focus the role of social agencies, notably non-political community organizations, in shaping educational development among Kerala's Muslims. By foregrounding the ‘Kerala Experience’, this paper argues that structural barriers to education of a community, Muslims in the present case, are neither fixed nor immutable. It is possible for Muslims to address their educational backwardness by themselves through sustained, engaged and organized forms of efforts. The paper also discusses the lessons from the Kerala Experience and ask if the ‘Kerala Model’ is worth emulating for overcoming educational backwardness of Muslims in other parts of the country. Key words: community organization, education, Kerala, Mappila, Muslims, voluntary organizations.","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886762","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46775979","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Catholics, caste and citizenship: Engagements in civil society","authors":"R. Robinson","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2021.1886763","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886763","url":null,"abstract":"The article connects discussions on civil society with those on citizenship and foregrounds Young’s notion of ‘differentiated citizenship’. Through fieldwork on Catholic lay associations in Mumbai and Chennai in India, it takes up the specific idea of ‘religious citizenship’ and tries to understand how citizenship works on the ground in the activities and engagements of members of these associations. The article is concerned with a number of questions. In particular, it asks what sense do these Catholics have of themselves as citizens? How is their understanding of citizenship inspired by their faith? Emerging through the different sites of the study is the idea that civil society is a domain of deeply contested notions of citizenship. Some of the new literature on ‘religious citizenship’ favors an understanding that is based on the idea of care; what is shown in the article, however, is that citizenship must implicate power or else it is bereft of meaning for those castes experiencing structural exclusion.","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886763","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"60387932","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Introduction to special issue on Civil Society in South Asia","authors":"David S. Taylor, Heewon Kim","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2021.1896263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2021.1896263","url":null,"abstract":"The articles included in this special issue were, with one exception (from an author who was unable to obtain a visa to travel to India), presented at a workshop on civil society in South Asia, held in Hyderabad in South India in March 2018. The workshop was organized jointly by the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, based in London, and the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad. Both organizing institutions belong to the Aga Khan Development Network, which has for many years seen the strengthening of civil society through the promotion of community-based organization and initiative as a core part of its work. The purpose of the Hyderabad workshop was not, however, to focus only or even primarily on the way that contemporary development discourse has incorporated ideas of voluntarism and local initiative into its work but to consider how a concept that emerged from seventeenth and eighteenth century European reflections on social and political life in the age of absolutism has been received by scholars and intellectuals in different times and places, and the extent to which it can illuminate contemporary political movements as well as offering ways to address and engage with the full range of issues that concern the contemporary world. Gurpreet Mahajan sets out one of the key issues by contrasting the abstract universality of certain conceptions of civil society with the lived reality of noisy quotidian politics. This tension can be observed in all states but is particularly striking in South Asia, where the legitimacy of post-colonial institutions is constantly challenged, and where, spurred on by international agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become major service providers. Mahajan’s article includes a section that deals specifically with organizations that have an explicit focus on the needs of particular religious populations, a theme that is also the focus of the contributions by Rowena Robinson and Sanjeer Alam. She argues that the work of such organizations can benefit the wider society both directly and indirectly, even while carrying an element of risk to social integration and democratic values. More generally, it is precisely these divergent interests and value-orientations that make up the democratic imaginary. Two of the contributors to this special issue, Harihar Bhattacharyya and Sanjeeb Mukherjee, continue the themes raised by Mahajan by engaging with the work of Partha Chatterjee. Chatterjee has made one of the most influential interventions in the debate over civil society in regions such as South Asia and his work over many years has advanced the idea that civil society is indeed a Western concept that transplants poorly to a South Asian postcolonial context. Those who wish to accompany him on","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2021.1896263","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48403509","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Civil society in Bengal: The postcolonial conundrum","authors":"Sanjeeb Mukherjee","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2021.1886760","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886760","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article seeks to interrogate the concept of civil society in the postcolonial context of Bengal. Under colonialism the English educated Bengali elite engaged with colonialism in a critical and creative manner and played a crucial role in the making of civil society, public institutions and a new nation. All these overlapped and reinforced each other. This article critiques the works of the Subaltern school scholars, Partha Chatterjee and Dipesh Chakraborty for discounting the role of civil society in the history of Bengal.","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2021-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2021.1886760","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42534293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Open Tenders in Public Procurement of Welfare Services: Professionalization, Standardization, and Innovation among Civil Sector Providers","authors":"Nils Asle Bergsgard, Svein Ingve Nødland","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2020.1827810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2020.1827810","url":null,"abstract":"In the article we discuss the increased use of open tenders in the public procurement of welfare services in Norway in order to determine if this implies standardization, professionalization, and/ or innovation among civil sector providers and if this differs between welfare areas. The study is based on a review of public documents over the last 40 years and interviews with both purchasers and providers of welfare services in two welfare areas: SUD treatment and vocational rehabilitation. We emphasize the systemic and in part organizational levels, focusing on what the purchaser and management of the provider perceive as the result of these changes in the procurement regime. In light of neoinstitutional theory and theories on innovation, we find that the increased use of public procurement and tenders have professionalized and standardized non-profit organizations while also providing room for innovations, according to our informants. We find a kind of dual process, where organizations become more alike in structure, administration, and – to some degree – treatment while also becoming more specialized and, in some cases, arriving at new and innovative solutions regarding content.","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-11-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2020.1827810","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43451158","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Ratification of multilateral environmental agreements: Civil society access to international institutions","authors":"Vassiliki Koubi, Steffen Mohrenberg, T. Bernauer","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2020.1859227","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2020.1859227","url":null,"abstract":"The stage in which countries formally decide on whether to participate in (i.e., ratify) international agreements is crucial to global governance efforts. The reason is that, by and large, internat...","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2020.1859227","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46611037","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An institutionally Ableist State? Exploring civil society perspectives on the implementation of the convention on the rights of persons with disabilities in India","authors":"Paul Chaney","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2020.1852824","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2020.1852824","url":null,"abstract":"In response to international concerns about ongoing rights violations, this benchmark study analyses the situated knowledge of civil society organizations and examines their discourse on the implem...","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2020.1852824","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47467355","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"‘Authoritarian civil society’: How anti-democracy activism shapes Thailand’s autocracy","authors":"Janjira Sombatpoonsiri","doi":"10.1080/17448689.2020.1854940","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17448689.2020.1854940","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, the author argues that civil society can actively foster anti-democratic agendas that propel young democracies on an autocratic path. Therefore, civil society is not idly coopted b...","PeriodicalId":46013,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Civil Society","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.6,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/17448689.2020.1854940","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44904516","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}