Comp. by: LElumalai Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_C Date:31/3/09
Time:21:45:54 Filepath://ppdys1108/BlackwellCup/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-
9781405132879/appln/3B2/revises/9781405132879_4_C.3d
a realm of social mutuality, the idea of civil
society increasingly came to signify aspects of
social existence that occur beyond the state. In
its different uptakes, the concept of civil soci-
ety has been central to the development of
both the liberal-parliamentary tradition and
the socialist-Marxist one. Although demar-
cated differently by theorists of the French,
German and Scottishenlightenments, all
attempts to articulate a notion of civil society
shared the perceived tensions between the
public and the private, the social and the
individual, collective responsibility and self-
interest, and state prerogatives and individual
freedoms. But Italian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci offered an alternative perspective. In
hisPrison Notebooks (1971 [1929–35]), he
explored aspects of the state and civil society
that liberal theory ignores – namely, the rela-
tions of power and influence between political
society (what liberal theorists call ‘state’ or
‘government’) and civil society (the ‘private
sector’ in liberal vocabulary), which mutually
reinforce each other to the advantage of cer-
tain strata and groups.Contra liberalism,
Gramsci recognized civil society as the terrain
ofhegemonyrather than freedom.
The contemporary revival of the idea of
civil society within academia and policy circles
is a curious event. It appears to be correlated
to the demise of the Soviet Union and
themarkettriumphalism that followed (see
neo-liberalism). For advocates of economic
globalization– an institutionalized project of
market deregulation – the term ‘civil society’
functions as placeholder for an array of signi-
fiers that are used almost interchangeably:
private sphere,free market,free society,democ-
racy,social capitaland so on. In short, civil
society denotes that desirable zone of activities
and associations that is putatively free from
state intervention.
Contrast this usage with that by communi-
tarians and left liberals, who worry about
the expansion of administrative and economic
mechanisms into virtually all spheres of life
under latecapitalism. For them, the concept
of ‘civil society’ represents a fading terrain
ofdemocracythat must be preserved and
resuscitated. Thus, civil society appears in
their writings as the sphere of social interaction
composed of ‘the intimate sphere (especially
the family), the sphere of associations (espe-
cially voluntary associations), social move-
ments, and forms of public communication’
(Cohen and Arato, 1992, p. ix). It is differen-
tiated from both a political society of ‘parties,
political organizations and political publics(in particular, parliaments)’ and an economic
society ‘composed of organizations of produc-
tion and distribution, usually firms, coopera-
tives, partnerships, and so on’ (ibid.). vgSuggested reading
Buttigieg (1995); Cohen and Arato (1992);
Edwards (2004); Ferguson (1995 [1767]);
Seligman (1992).civilization (1) A complex sociocultural
formation. (2) An evolutionary process of
cultural development, most often associated
with the German sociologist Norbert Elias
(1897–1990), who traced a ‘civilizing process’
in post-medieval Europe. The two have often
been connected through the distortions of
a colonialist imaginary that treats the ‘west’
as coterminous with ‘civilization’, divides the
world into superiors andsubalterns(often
described as ‘barbarians’ or ‘savages’), and
advances its own ‘civilizing mission’ to
‘enlighten’ or ‘develop’ them (cf.primitivism).
It is scarcely surprising to find that the term
‘civilization’ originated in Europe in the middle
of the eighteenth century, wheneuropewas so
busily encountering its ‘others’ (Mazlish,
2005). In the course of the twentieth century,
anthropologists, archaeologists, ancient histor-
ians and other scholars recognized multiple
civilizations, however, and increasingly treated
civilizations as complex, adaptive systems
(Butzer, 1980). These more technical concepts
were put to work in comparativehistorical
geography: for example, in studies ofurban
origins it is common to distinguish
the Harappan civilization in the Indus Valley
or the Mayan civilization in Meso-America.
But the older colonial distortions have also
resurfaced through polemical arguments
about a contemporary ‘clash of civilizations’.
The most detailed version of this thesis was
proposed by American political scientist
Samuel Huntington (1993, 1997; see also
Kreutzmann, 1998). Huntington argued that
questions of collectiveidentity– ‘Who are
we?’ and ‘Who are they?’ (cf.imaginative
geography) – assumed a special force under
the pressures ofglobalization. He saw these
as intrinsically cultural questions, whose
answers were almost invariably provided
byreligion. Far from the secular world of
modernitycarrying all before it Huntington
believed that the world was witnessing a global
religious revival. For this reason he used reli-
gion to identify seven or eight major civiliza-
tions and to explain the conflicts emerging on
the ‘fault-lines’ between them. His thesis was aGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_C Final Proof page 87 31.3.2009 9:45pmCIVILIZATION