CIVIL SOCIETY

Civil society refers to the sphere of human activity outside government, the market economy, and the family. It includes communities, churches, voluntary associations, philanthropic organizations, and social movements. Civil society potentially constitutes a venue for reasoned discussion that bridges social differences, empowers participation in public life, and encourages deliberation concerning ethical issues pertaining to science and technology.

Development and Problems

Derived from Aristotle and applied to the modern nation-state by eighteenth-century liberal reformers, the concept of civil society came to be so closely associated with bourgeois economic and political life that Karl Marx distrusted the idea. Neo-Marxists came to endorse a public arena independent of state- or party-controlled communication, however, and contemporary social scientists generally view intermediary associations as conducive to stable democracy. As civic disengagement became widespread in the 1970s and thereafter, coupled with globalization, deregulation of industry, and the rise of new social movements, the idea of building social capital by strengthening nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other social institutions that make democracywork seemed attractive to many social thinkers and activists, especially in the former Soviet sphere and in Latin America.

Defining the boundaries of civil society proves difficult, however. Publicly funded educational institutions catalyze research and discussion, yet are part of government. Most mass media are profit-making businesses; yet civic life depends on these institutions for informed inquiry. Conversely, some not-for-profit organizations such as hospitals are hard to distinguish from private businesses. Quakers and Unitarians may think deeply about social justice, but other religious groups turn away from social problems. So where exactly is civil society?

Also problematic is the idea of a venue/network where people with public-regarding values interact to produce outcomes endorsed by progressive social forces—saving the Mediterranean, stopping abusive labor practices, bringing AIDS drugs to Africa. However the Heritage Foundation and the Hoover Institution helped conservative Republicans create reform agendas that progressives perceive as exacerbating social differences and disempowering non-elites. Yet those research institutions clearly belong to the system of organized social inquiry and discourse. Perhaps, then, civil society belongs to no particular ideological camp, but can be mobilized by one's allies or opponents in the service of both good and ill.

A third difficulty is that most nongovernmental organizations are not altogether public. The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) lobbies government for taxpayer subsidies for well-paid scientists, with much research arguably serving scientists' hobbies more than the public good. Auto and chemical workers' unions focus on higher wages for current members rather than on fairer income distribution or on innovating technologically to improve the quality of work life for all. And if admission to a not-for-profit science museum costs more than seeing a Hollywood film, in what sense is the museum a public institution?

Fourth, governments and corporations dominate technological decisions, relegating civil society to the periphery of innovations in robotics, nanotechnology, weaponry, computers, pharmaceuticals, electronics, transport, chemicals, and agriculture. There are too many businesses for the few NGOs to watch, and government officials usually side with business. Thus, although Consumers Union and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) make modest contributions to transportation safety, they are no match for investment tax credits to industry, trust funds for building highways, and billions spent marketing new cars.

Achievements and Limitations

Nevertheless, NGOs have been influential on aspects of environmental policy, including technological changes such as catalytic converters on cars, scrubbers on electric power plants, and support for renewable energy. The environmental movement has enrolled millions of people in opposing hazardous waste dumping, fighting installation of polluting facilities, and lobbying for tighter regulations. Health social movements have tilted medical care toward AIDS prevention and treatment. Although quite important, these are exceptions to the rule, and the rule is that civil society organizations participate in only a small fraction of technoscientific choices, rarely winning a large fraction of what they seek.

Such inherent disadvantages are magnified by elite dominance over fundamental ideas circulating within civil society. From clergy and nobles of centuries past to contemporary scientific spokespersons, government officials, and business executives, elites sometimes reinforce myths that limit critical inquiry and thoughtful deliberation concerning science, technology, and ethics. Such myths include, among many others:

• That technoscience benefits all more or less equally, even though poorer persons and countries obviously are less able to purchase innovations;
• That research and development should proceed quite rapidly, despite the fact that humans learn and react rather slowly to the many unintended consequences of technology;
• That inherited economic and political institutions need not be fundamentally reconsidered, despite new organizational challenges involved in governing technological civilization.

It is of course rare to find societies where the dominant myths do not serve the interests of powerful organizations, affluent people, and experts themselves (Lindblom and Woodhouse 1993).

Perhaps the clearest connection between technological innovation and civil society is that television has displaced political conversation and other leisure activities, because "more television watching means less of virtually every form of civic participation and social involvement" (Putnam 2000, p. 228). Television maximalists lack time for civic engagement; the medium encourages individuation—as epitomized by the ubiquity of television sets in children's bedrooms; and an emphasis on individual rather than collective failings discourages viewers from trying to ameliorate social problems. Cell phones and email have been used in organizing public protests and even toppling a few governments, but cyberspace generally has not lived up to the hopes of early advocates as a space for public inquiry.

Capacities for public thought and action would be stronger in a commendable technological civilization, where civil society might function closer to the ideal speech situation envisioned by Jürgen Habermas. One of the most important changes would be to reduce the domination of public discourse by those with governmental, business, media, religious, and scientific authority; this would allow organizations and spokespersons to champion many more facets of many more issues than now occurs. Another important change, now partially under way, would be the evolution of an international civil society capable of reining in the worst practices of national governments, multinational corporations, and the global communities of technoscientists. Third, civil society participants would need to pay far more attention to ethical and policy issues pertaining to science and technology.

Overall, then, civil society advocates from Alexis de Toqueville to Michael Walzer surely are correct in recognizing that social capital plays an important role in building a society worth living in. Civil society plays an indispensable role in focusing, channeling, and helping to improve the quality of public thought: When anti-environmentalists win public office, for example, they cannot reverse most policies because pro-environmental discourse has become so widespread. Advocacy organizations play important roles in raising questions about the conduct of science and technology, and strengthening civil society probably is a necessary condition for a wiser, fairer technological civilization. However a balanced understanding of civil society must include recognition that it is difficult to conceptualize, is relatively weak compared with market and state, and possibly has been undermined as much as strengthened by the rise of global science and by recent technological developments.

E. J. WOODHOUSE

SEE ALSO Citizenship;Liberalism;Nongovernmental Organizations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Breyman, Steve. (2001). Why Movements Matter: The West German Peace Movement and U.S. Arms Control Policy. Albany: State University of New York Press. Argues that social movements are responsible for much of what works well in technological civilization.

Cohen, Jean L., and Andrew Arato. (1992). Civil Society and Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. One of the most sophisticated analyses of the relationship between civil society and democratic government.

Ehrenberg, John. (1999). Civil Society: The Critical History of an Idea. New York: New York University Press. Places contemporary discussions in a historical context going back to Plato's concern that ambition, greed, and other private concerns would undermine public order.

Habermas, Jürgen. (1981). The Theory of Communicative Action. Boston, MA: Beacon Press. A classic perspective from a later version of critical theory.

Kaldor, Mary. (2003). Global Civil Society: An Answer to War. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Proposes that civil society could become an antidote to the war-making propensities of nation states.

Kaviraj, Sudipta, and Sunil Khilnani, eds. (2001). Civil Society: History and Possibilities. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Learned essays on European civil society and its possible futures, but under-emphasizing science and technology.

Keane, John. (2003). Global Civil Society? Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Argues that new democratic ways of living in a stronger global civil society are the key combating "turbocapitalism."

Lindblom, Charles E., and Edward J. Woodhouse. (1993). The Policy-Making Process, 3rd edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Traces shortcomings in governmental policy to weaknesses in civil society, including "circularity" in public discourse whereby citizens tend to ask for no more than what business and governmental elites find it convenient to provide.

Nyhart, Lynn K., and Thomas H. Broman, eds. (2002). Osiris, Vol. 17: Science and Civil Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Putnam, Robert D. (1993). Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Demonstrates the importance of civic life to democracy via careful study of the public sphere in many Italian communities.

Putnam, Robert D. (2000). Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. One of the most thorough empirical studies of declining participation in community life.

Walzer, Michael, ed. (1997). Toward a Global Civil Society. New York: Berghahn Books. A leading political philosopher's interpretation of globalization and the prospects for a planet-wide civil society.