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Sunday, June 27, 2004 |
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Sunday, June 27, 2004 |
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The Conceits of Civil Society
THE book draws our attention to the emergence of normative concepts of democracy and civil society as a bit of consensual concepts, widely celebrated and uncritically accepted as panacea to the ills of contemporary society. The newfound consensus about the neo-liberal democracy and its companion concept of civil society under the auspices of the "contemporary political aid industry" appeared in the aftermath of the "velvet revolutions" in Eastern Europe as the "third wave of democracy" swept the "global village". Democracy as a form of "good governance" has come to form an integral part of the political conditionalities attached by the multilateral funding agencies providing aid. The democratic part of liberal democracy i.e. "the rule of law, a multiparty system, periodic elections, and civil rights" is being privileged over its liberal component i.e. substantive equality, substantial freedom, justice, tolerance and accountability. Such a notion of formal democracy poses no threat to the entrenched power structures as has been the case with the alternative theoretical formulations about the concept of democracy in its substantive forms i.e. radical liberal democracy, socialist democracy, ecological democracy, feminist democracy, participatory democracy, or deliberative democracy. Neera Chandhoke laments that such an uncritical acceptance of a neo-liberal democratic "end of history" has simply resulted in an abstraction of democracy "from a deeper understanding of the human condition". Similar treatment has been meted out to the concept of civil society. Theorised as differently as a realm of social associations; as a region where the capitalist state establishes hegemony over society; contestation between particularity and universality; or as a sphere where the sale and purchase of labour takes place, the concept has come to be simply "yoked to the neo-liberal project of minimalist democracy". As a result, both concepts of democracy and civil society have flattened out. As the post-colonial/post-socialist state increasingly withdraws from the social and economic sectors, the neo-liberal forces feel confident to equate the voluntary agencies euphemistically termed the "third sector" with civil society. The seductive presentation of civil society as "an area of solidarity, self-help, and good will" has been problematic, as in the process, the concept is abstracted from all debates and contestations that emanate in the form of the social movements or political struggle. More significantly, such formulation projects civil society as independent of and an alternative to the state. The idea enables the funding agencies in bypassing the post-colonial/post socialist state and disburse aid directly to the NGO agenda of the international aid industries as who are neither representative nor accountable to people. Chandhoke questions the very idea as she argues that the "very notion of civil transactions demands state regulation in the first instance". Drawing our attention to the differential power relations in social setting, she also interrogates the idea that the emergence of civil society is historically bound with that of democracy and it has been inherently civil and receptive to all. She argues that civil society is both exclusive and exclusionary, as it privileges the politically and economically organised groups of society. The civil space in an existing democracy like India offers limited possibilities for re-appropriation of the civil society for those without capacities and those outside the organised sectors. Chandhoke substantiates her arguments by undertaking concrete studies of two most creative movements of India’s civil society, namely the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Chhattisgarh Mukti Morcha. The study of inherent politics of civil society in such a form and the way identities are constructed through the politics of memory and narrative, and problems of language, vocabulary and meaning enables Chandhoke to argue that the possibility of a social movement succeeding in "mediating and transforming the discourse of civil society" is always going to be remote "given the struggle entailed between the unequally endowed contending agents". Even a non-violent agitation is suppressed with brutality when a social movement questions the complicity of the state with powerful interests in civil society. Chandhoke, author of State and Civil society and Beyond Secularism enables us to think through the notions of democracy and civil society that have been reduced to one-dimensional watered down concepts. Cautioning against the incivilities of civil society, she asks us to understand the paradox of civil society in the sense that "it can be re-appropriated by the marginalised`85 but the re-appropriation of civil society renders it unstable, precarious, and only ambiguously the source of democracy." |
