The state of civil society
ARVIND SIVARAMAKRISHNAN
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Essays providing insights into many of the major issues facing the world
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GLOBAL CIVIL SOCIETY 2006-7: Edited by Mary Kaldor et al; Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd., B-42, Panchsheel Enclave, New Delhi-110017.
Rs. 895.
This wide-ranging collection is filled with insights and useful information on many of the major issues facing the world — the continuing failure to deliver even limited supplies of water to hundreds of millions, the apparently unstoppable arms trade, the inextricably social and public implications of domestic violence against women, the relation between religious institutions and the rest of civil society, and many other themes. The collection also includes hundreds of tables of clear numerical information, on global trade and aid, indices of corruption, the expansion in non-governmental international organizations, and so on.
If the various papers have a common theme, it seems to be that the state is no longer the main provider and guarantor of the spaces in which people and organisations conduct their activities. The significance, respectively, of major arms manufacturers and water corporations, of established religions, and of domestic and international non-governmental organisations, is clearly described, with many valuable examples of the impact of such bodies on the everyday lives of billions around the world.
Critique
None of the bodies concerned escapes criticism either. In a brilliant analysis, the meticulous articulation by early Islamic jurists of the concepts of just war and jus in bello is contrasted with early Christian conceptions of holy war. A salutary example is made of the conduct of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which have been por trayed by their proponents as wars of morality rather than justice. Secondly, the role of private water companies — like Suez, kicked out of Buenos Aires for extortionate price rises, or Bechtel, which even sued the entire Bolivian population over its expulsion from Bolivia (and later dropped the suit) — is given a thorough examination. (The book was prepared too early to include the fact that the World Bank is pulling out of water privatisation in Southern Africa.) Thirdly, NGOs, despite their priceless capacity to raise issues and keep them in the public realm, are not spared.
International NGOs are criticised for preaching democracy and failing to practise it internally, and for simply not listening to the very people whom they purport to help (privately, locally-recruited staff of international NGOs often say angry things about the poor quality of international staff, and about the latter's attitudes of racial and cultural superiority, not to mention sheer racism in the respective appointments systems). Even football, purportedly the global game, is given unflattering attention; Northern governing bodies, broadcasters and commentators, and indeed the entire ethos of the game in the global North, are severely castigated for contemptible neglect of open racism. Attempts by supporters' groups and, more recently, by governing bodies to address this are acknowledged, though the international governing body FIFA is called upon to be less secretive and self-important.
Matter of politics
Unlike many other writers on globalisation, the contributors are free of messianic Year Zero attitudes, and provide examples of how bodies in civil society can influence states for the better.
The authors are also well read in political philosophy, drawing upon Habermas, Arendt, Kant, and Hegel to show that issues of civil society are inseparable from issues in political thought and questions of the state. Yet it is here that certain problems emerge and remain largely unaddressed. Contributors acknowledge that campaigners against the arms trade have far less influence than the arms corporations, who have almost unlimited access to governments and whose senior staff routinely head government bodies which promote arms sales (the British government even guarantees manufacturers payment if foreign buyers default). That is a matter of politics, not civil society, as are the enormously effective strategies adopted by powerful corporations to bully the state, if not hijack it, into doing their will. The first George W. Bush administration adopted as its energy policy all 17 points given to it by the Enron company. (Similar hijackings have been alleged over the drafting of India's Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill.) Additionally, it is unfortunate that no mention is made that the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which provoked much controversy with cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, had earlier decided not to publish a cartoon lampooning Christ.
This underestimation of the effects of inequalities in civil society may also account for what occasionally reads like naïveté about the commitment of various states to acting on rights declarations (Canada, which receives the book's approval, is one state which has been criticised in academic work for not quite living up to its word in this regard). The relative neglect of the significance of the state, nevertheless, is part of what makes this book a thought-provoking contribution to the literature on contemporary civil society, the aggregate sphere of interests. Students, journalists, and scholars will all find much in it.
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