Michael Edwards
polity
Copyright page
Copyright © Michael Edwards 2020
The right of Michael Edwards to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First edition published in 2003 by Polity Press
Second edition published in 2009 by Polity Press
Third edition published in 2014 by Polity Press
This fourth edition published in 2020 by Polity Press
Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3734-1
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-3735-8(pb)
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Edwards, Michael, 1957- author.
Title: Civil society / Michael Edwards.
Description: Fourth edition. | Medford : Polity Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: «Now in its fourth edition, Civil Society has become a major work of reference for those who seek to understand the role of voluntary citizen action in a troubled world. Ideas about the civil sphere can shed much light on how we might respond to polarization, privatization, and authoritarians of different various stripes»-- Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019017518 (print) | LCCN 2019980643 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509537341 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509537358 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509537365 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Civil society. | Social contract.
Classification: LCC JC337 .E38 2019 (print) | LCC JC337 (ebook) | DDC 300--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019017518
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019980643
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Preface
Economic, cultural, and political developments over the last five years do not bode well for the theory and practice of civil society. In most parts of the world, communities are increasingly divided and fragmented. Violence, intolerance, and inequality are on the rise. Authoritarians and populists of different stripes have gained a foothold even in advanced democracies. Restrictions on freedom of speech and association are increasingly common. Trust in charities has declined as a result of well-publicized recent scandals. And public spheres – privatized, commercialized, hollowed out and distorted by “filter bubbles” on social media and accusations of “fake news” – seem thoroughly incapable of addressing these problems and concerns. As the writer Amanda Ripley put it in a 2018 article for the Solutions Journalism Network, “In the present era of tribalism, it feels like we’ve reached our collective limitations.”1
Does this mean that civil society no longer serves any purpose as a framework for understanding the world and changing it for the better? My answer is no: as this new edition aims to show, these ideas can shed a great deal of light on what is happening, why, and how we might respond. Images of civil society as a sphere of peace and harmony were always somewhat limiting and romantic; perhaps what has brought them into sharper focus is the fact that this romance is being challenged in the United States and Europe – the home of much civic thinking and innovation – and not just in China or Venezuela or Egypt. So it is certainly legitimate to question the relevance of civil society theories in the light of contemporary developments and to critique the ways in which these theories have been applied in practice by governments, politicians, voluntary associations, donor agencies, and the media. Therefore, mounting threats to civil society and how to meet them – with polarization front and center – form the overriding theme of my revisions to the fourth edition of this book.
As in previous editions, my approach is not to see civil society as the solution to problems in and of itself (except in very limited circumstances) but to look to it for frameworks through which we can understand what is happening and explore what might be done. Rejecting the tendency to argue for one particular interpretation of this concept over all the others, the book explores a range of different theories and traditions that fall into three major categories: civil society as a part of society in chapter 2 – the world of voluntary associations; civil society as a kind of society in chapter 3 – marked out by positive social norms such as reciprocity and cooperation; and in chapter 4, civil society as an arena in which these norms are worked out and tested, otherwise known as the “public sphere.” Each of these theories illuminates a different set of questions and suggests its own avenues for action, so rather than choosing one or the other, my approach is to see how they fit together both conceptually (in chapter 5) and in practice (in chapter 6). This approach generates a much richer set of insights across the boundaries of geography, history, and culture.
Nevertheless, analyses of civil society always take place within a particular context, so understanding those contexts is an essential step forward in making sense of what is undoubtedly a complex set of ideas. Over the last five years, four interrelated trends have emerged to shape the contexts in which civil
