John Slifko, PhD has dedicated his work to issues around the world for democratic civil society with major contributions to global efforts in improving the education of young women. He supports the study of the historic links between advancing women’s rights, education and democracy in the United States. In this presentation, he provides a brief overview of the concept of civil society.

1. March 2016
Understanding Civil Society
Presentation by John Slifko, PhD

2. Civil society is one of the most
enduring and confusing concepts
in social science.

3. Classical Greece
✤ From the time of classical
Greece, thinkers have returned
to civil society as one way of
generating new energy and
ideas around old and familiar
questions as the world has
changed around them.

4. What is civil
society?
✤ According to the United
Nations website, “civil society
is the ‘third sector’ of society,
along with government and
business. It comprises civil
society organizations and
nongovernmental
organizations.”
Source: http://www.un.org/en/sections/resources/
civil-society/index.html

5. ✤ The UN recognizes the importance of partnering with
civil society because it advances the Organization’s
ideals, and helps support its work.
Source: http://www.un.org/en/sections/resources/
civil-society/index.html

6. What does it
include?
✤ “Occupying the middle ground
between the state and private
life, the civil sphere
encompasses everything from
associations to protests to
church groups to
nongovernmental
organizations.”
— (The Oxford Handbook of Civil
Society, Ed. Michael Edwards,
Oxford University Press, 2011)

7. However,
✤ As with most popular
academic concepts, there is no
universally accepted definition
of either civil society or the
related notions of a civic
culture and social capital.

8. ✤ The very idea of civil society
touches on and embraces
major themes of Western
political tradition.

9. Emergence of
Idea
✤ Much like today, the
emergence of the idea of civil
society in the later 17th and
18th centuries was the result of
a crisis in social order and a
breakdown of existing
paradigms of the idea of order.
— The Idea of Civil Society, Adam
B. Seligman, 1992, Princeton
University Press

10. Importance of
Communications
✤ From newspapers in the 1700s,
magazines added in the 18th
century, radio and television in
the 20th century, and the
Internet in the 21st century,
communications has always been
central in civil society.

11. 17th Century:
The General Crisis
✤ the commercialization of land,
labor and capital, coupled with
a wider crisis in the relations
between an emerging civil
society and the State,
… all brought into question the
existing models of social order
and authority.

12. 18th Century: Realm
of Social Mutuality
✤ By the 18th century, people
began increasingly to turn
inward, to the workings of
society itself, to explain the
existence of the social order.

13. 19th Century
✤ In the nineteenth century, civil
society expanded rapidly
through a variety of print
publications, such as:
newspapers, books, pamphlets,
declarations and handwritten
letters.
Age of Enlightenment
Image source: wikipedia.org

14. For example
✤ In the early 1830s, Frenchman
Alexis de Tocqueville traveled
the United States for two years.
✤ During this time, Tocqueville
was surprised by the growing
use of newspapers in
expanding democracies.

15. New American
Democracy
✤ One phenomenon that struck
de Tocqueville was the
propensity of Americans of all
backgrounds and classes to
form voluntary associations of
a thousand kinds “religious,
moral, serious, futile, general
or restricted, enormous or
diminutive.”

16. ✤ For de Tocqueville, this creation of a civil society from
the bottom up through communication was a mark of
the new American democracy as much as any political
theory.

17. Freemasons
✤ As Enlightenment spread from
its first strongholds in France
and Britain to most regions of
Europe, a new intelligentsia
emerged.
✤ Its members assembled in
clubs and associations, which
thus became pillars of the
nascent civil society.

18. Civil Society
Today
✤ Civil society remains a
confusing concept because so
many different definitions and
understandings exist.

19. ✤ The claims that are sometimes made for explanatory
power never quite match up to the complexities and
contingencies of real cultures and societies, especially
when interpretations fashioned at one time or in one
part of the world are transported to another.

20. Importance of Study
in Civil Society
✤ Recently, the idea of civil
society is being revived to
provide an answer to the
question of how individuals
can pursue their own interests
while preserving the greater
good of society and, similarly
how society can advance the
interests of the individuals who
comprise it.
Image source: www.africancentreforcities.net

21. About the Author:
John Slifko, PhD
John has dedicated his work to issues
around the world for democratic civil
society with major contributions to global
efforts in improving the education of
young women. He supports the study of
the historic links between advancing
women’s rights, education and
democracy in the United States. For more information of topics in the civil
sphere, visit John Slifko’s website :
civilsphere.net