Was ‘Civil Society’ Robbed? (Part I)

As I have mentioned in my previous column, the main task of this piece is to discuss the keyword, CIVIL SOCEITY, with reference to the contemporary social-political affairs, in our country.  Since it has openly been mentioned by many critics that the term of civil society has been ruthlessly misused in the recent past, I think it is important to revisit (or rather to retake) the ‘use of this term’ not only as a concept in the political vocabulary but also as a tool in contemporary political practices. Thus, questions that we should be asking includes, how this term means to us in our day today affairs, what impact it has placed on us in understanding the political situation in our times, and most importantly, what is the role that the civil society plays in larger social settings such as the State mechanism and its apparatus. 

According to the text that I have discussed in my previous column, Keywords for Today: A 21 Century Vocabulary, the term CIVIL has derived from Latin and French, then later started to be used in English with varied meanings. That different meanings vary from words such as ‘polite’, ‘courteous’, ‘not rude’ up to ‘Rights’ related meanings in political theory. It further mentions that, in terms of political theory, the meaning of word Civil has been changed dramatically from one end to another. For example meaning of the term CIVIL starts  ‘accepting the State by limiting the power of monarchy’ and goes to the level of ‘limiting the State by accepting the rights of the individuals’. It should be noted here that this change has not happened overnight in a quick manner but it took a long journey starting from English (rather Scottish) philosophical tradition beginning with John Lock up to the Continental European thinking which was developed mainly based on Germen enlightenment. It was in this development that we could see Hegel’s famous definition of it, which says that “civil society means a space of activity by citizens who belong neither to family nor to the state!” This is the definition that was used by classical Marxism to analyze the role of this phenomenon (Civil Society) as part of the bourgeois society.

Unmaking ‘the’ Meaning

It has been quite a sometime that I was invited to write a column to the newly published newspaper, SUNDAY MORNING, by its editor Mandana Ismail. Though I have promised to contribute to the paper, I was not able to fulfill it until this week. The reason for my failure was partly based on the usual fear that I had in mind on the difficulty of the task of providing a regular weekly column without any delay. On the other hand, I was also bit reluctant to start a new column due to the uncertain nature of the political situation in the country. As some would agree with me, it is very difficult to judge the ongoing political situation in the country and it is not possible at all to forecast the future of our political arena. Since the situation got very complicated while taking an unpredictable shape as such, I have been postponing Mandana’s offer to write a column until now.