Engendering Citizenship,Feminizing Civil Society

Abstract

In this paper, I describe how feminists in countries of the Middle East and North Africa are challenging their second-class citizenship largely institutionalized in patriarchal family laws-and are calling for an extension of their civil, political, and social rights. I use the term “feminist” to denote de jureand de factofeminists working to advance women's rights. The paper seeks to make theoretical sense of contemporary rights-based movements and discourses in the region through an application of theories of citizenship. It highlights the role of women's organizations in the regional call for democratization, civil society, and citizenship and it provides an empirical content to the discussion of citizenship, state, and civil society. Data and information are gleaned from a close reading of the literature by and on women's organizations in the region, and from personal observations and interviews.     

Global Civil Society and the Question of Global Citizenship

For many recent commentators, the association of citizenship with the nation-state is under siege, as transnational and even global forms of citizenship begin to emerge. The nascent phenomenon of global citizenship in particular is characterized by three components: the global discourse on human rights; a global account of citizenly responsibilities; and finally “global civil society.” This last component is supposed to give a new global citizenship its “political” character, and for many represents the most likely vehicle for the emergence of a global, democratic citizen politics. This paper critically examines this view, asking whether a global form of citizenship is indeed emerging, and if so whether “global civil society” is well-equipped to stand in as its political dimension. The paper examines two opposed narratives on the potential of global civil society to form a political arm of global citizenship, before returning by way of conclusion to the vexed notion of global citizenship itself.This paper draws from the final chapter of Rethinking Equality: the Challenge of Equal Citizenship, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2006.     

Ebenezer Obadare: The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

The Premise and Promise of Citizenship and Civil Society for Renewing Democracies and Empowering Sustainable Communities

State regimes have launched policies to "reinvent" government and "regenerate" communities in peripheral impoverished rural and urban areas to build sustainable communities and reduce poverty. We investigate the impact of policy concepts–the empowerment paradigm, citizenship as citizen participation and inclusion, and associations between the state and civil society–on local areas' success in leveraging dollars to foster sustainable economic and community development in persistently poor rural areas of the U.S. The thirty-three rural sites of the Empowerment Zone/Enterprise Communities Initiative of the Clinton-Gore Administration comprise our database. We find that empowering area-based, low-income residents through the election mechanism to choose their representatives on the local sites' governing board is strongly and significantly related to both inclusion and citizen participation. Also, the presence of elected citizens with connections to civil society on the governing body contributes strongly to later success in leveraging dollars.     

How Civil Society Organizations Foster Insurgent Citizenship: Lessons from the Brazilian Landless Movement

This paper describes how the Brazilian Landless Movement fostered an insurgent citizenship among the poor. We describe three core organizational practices of this movement that supported this insurgent citizenship. We find that these practices bear striking resemblance to the practices of other civil society organizations (CSOs), including social service organizations, when they support the empowerment of marginalized communities. The identification of common practices suggests that despite the differences among CSOs, these distinctions may be less stark than assumed and that there may be common causal pathways between CSOs and insurgent citizenship.     

Democratic Governance and Actors’ Conceptualization of “Civil Society” in Africa: State–Civil Society Relations in Ghana from 1982–2000

Despite civil society’s ambiguity, many scholars tend to focus on the economic reasons for the apparent conflict between state and civil society, with little or no attention to the conceptual differences that may be influencing the behavior of public and civil society actors. Using Ghana under J. J. Rawlings as a backdrop, this article argues that state–civil society relations are partly shaped by the divergent conceptualizations of “civil society” held by state and civil society actors. It suggests that the issue is not just the African state’s limited understanding of the multiple roles that civil society organizations can legitimately play in the polity; it is also civil society’s lack of recognition and acknowledgment of the legitimate functions of the African state.     

Civil society,social movements and Democracy in Southern Africa

The article reviews the theory of civil society and social movements in a general perspective and relates the theoretical argument to recent economic and political changes in Southern African states. Salient aspects of civil society and its role in the democratic process is considered and the role of different key institutions and organizations in the democratic process are analyzed. The role of economic elites is equivocal, both because of the racial dimension in their composition and in the way they avoid addressing problems of living standards of the working class. The most important institutions of civil society seem to be the universities and the church, whereas the role of media is less important than one might have expected, because of widespread state control and state ownership. The article analyzes the particular role of different social movements and offers an interesting comparison of their strengths and weaknesses in democratization processes in various Southern African countries.     

Youth-Driven HIV Prevention Programmes in South Africa: Social Capital,Empowerment and Conscientisation

Abstract

The community-level attributes of two youth HIV prevention initiatives in a single community are examined using the concepts of social capital, empowerment and critical consciousness. The school-based peer education programme and youth-initiated public clinic ‘add-on’ facility for the treatment of adolescent sexually transmitted diseases had differing experiences in terms of implementation, community acceptance, sustainability and achieving their goals. By examining the role of conscientization, networks for accessing resources and power, and community acceptability of adolescent HIV prevention, this paper describes the differing experiences of these two programmes. The paper indicates the need for true adolescent agency in challenging the social constructions of adolescent HIV risk at the social and community levels.     

Democracy,Civil Society and Antislavery in Tocquevillian Perspective

From his earliest encounter with slavery during his journey to America in 1831 until his death in 1859 Alexis de Tocqueville never ceased to regard slavery as a moral outrage and a fundamental contradiction to the principles of liberty, equality and humanity. In France, he was a charter member of the French Society for the Abolition of Slavery. Yet both his writings and political activity were hedged with significant silences and hesitations from beginning to end.     

Civil Society,Economic Distress,and Social Tolerance

The idea that civil society is declining has been much discussed recently, for example, by Fukuyama (Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity. New York: Free Press, 1995) and Putnam (The American Prospect 13 (Spring):35–42, 19937semi; Nobel Symposium, Uppsala, Sweden, August 27–30, 1994; PS: Political Science and Politics, December: 664–683:. At the same time, another stream of research suggests that racial tolerance is increasing through time (Quillian, American Journal of Sociology 101 (3):816–860, 1996; Firebaugh and Davis, American Journal of Sociology 94 (2):251–272. This paper combines ideas from several intellectual traditions to suggest that economic conditions may affect civil society, which in turn may influence social tolerance. These ideas are explored, using multivariate analysis of pooled General Social Survey data from 1972 to 1994. The results suggest that the fabric of civil society and economic conditions may contribute somewhat to espoused tolerance. Greater economic security, together with the attitudes fostered by a vibrant civil society including greater trust and less anomia, appear to increase espoused social tolerance. Period effects and the effects of other demographic factors remain strongly related to expressions of tolerance. While alternative interpretations may be offered depending on whether the interaction terms, Year × Education or Cohort × Education, are included in the analysis, the high correlation between the two suggests that these interpretations cannot be seen as oppositional. Finally and most important, the analysis reveals many parallels between espoused racial and homosexual tolerance, suggesting a more generalizable model of social tolerance.     

Gramsci, Hegemony, and Global Civil Society Networks

This study offers a first empirical test at a truly global level of two contradictory models of global civil society in the global governance system that are put forth by neo-Gramscian thought. The first model posits that global civil society is coopted by hegemonic capitalist and political elites, and promotes hegemonic interests by distributing neoliberal values and providing a façade of opposition. The second model views global civil society as the infrastructure from which counter-hegemonic resistance, and ultimately a counter-hegemonic historic bloc will evolve and challenge neoliberal hegemony. The predictions that these two views make as to the structure of global civil society networks are tested through network analysis of a matrix of links between 10,001 international NGOs in a purposive sample of INGOs extracted from the database of the Union of International Associations. The findings provide partial support to the predictions of both models, and lead to the conclusion that at present global civil society is in a transitional phase, but that the current infrastructure provided by the global INGOs network is conducive to the development of a counter-hegemonic historic bloc in the future, providing the northern bias in network is decreased. Strategic steps needed to achieve this are presented.     

NGOization,Foreign Funding,and the Nicaraguan Civil Society

A substantial section of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in the global South depend on foreign funds to conduct their operations. This paper explores how the availability of foreign funding affects their downward accountability, abilities to effect social change, and their relative influence in relation to traditional grassroots, membership-based organizations (GROs), which tend not to receive such funding. Drawing on a case study of Nicaragua, we challenge the notion that foreign funding of domestic NGOs leads to the evolution of civil society organizations, which have incentives and abilities to organize the marginalized sections of society in ways to effect social change in their interests. Instead, we find that foreign funding and corresponding professionalization of the NGO sector creates dualism among domestic civil society organizations. Foreign funding enhances the visibility and prestige of the “modern” NGO sector over traditional GROs. This has grave policy implications because foreign-funded NGOs tend to be more accountable to donors than beneficiaries and are more focused on service delivery than social change-oriented advocacy.     

Religion,Nationalism, and Transnational Civil Society in the Eritrean Diaspora

This article examines the emergence and significance of religion among Eritreans in the United States as a basis for building community in diaspora, reconfiguring nationalist identity, and constituting transnational civil society. It argues three related points: that religious identity and gatherings help mitigate against fractured political identities that have weakened secular diaspora associations; that practicing Eritrean identity through religion challenges the hegemonic power of the Eritrean state to transnationally control diaspora communities and dictate national identity; and that the very incipience of religious bodies as transnational avenues provides Eritreans in diaspora with an autonomous space to resist the state's totalizing demands. Through a critical ethnographic investigation of religious identity and church bodies in Eritrea and one United States diaspora community, the article shows that uneven transnational networks between the United States and Eritrea create new spaces for political action. Specifically, the relative autonomy of churches and the incipience of their transnationalism allow diaspora Eritreans to use religion in the constitution of an emergent transnational civil society.     

Envisioning a Feminist Global Society Cypriot Women,Civil Society and Social Change

This article does not have an abstract     

The Foundations of Democracy: U.S. Foundation Support for Civil Society in South Africa, 1988–96

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - This paper analyzes the grantmaking to South African civil society of six major U.S. foundations between 1988 and 1996. It...     

Marginalizing the Self: A Study of Citizenship,Color, and Ethnoracial Identity in American Society

From 1870 to 1952, naturalization legislation in the United States of America restricted citizenship to “free white persons” and “persons of African nativity” or “African descent.” Individuals categorized as “members of the Mongolian race” or as of neither “free white” nor “African descent or nativity” were excluded from membership in the American political community and designated “aliens ineligible for citizenship in the United States.” Examination of the appellate and Supreme Court adjudications of these matters reveals a juridical rhetoric that functioned to marginalize all those declared ineligible for civic status. Although the reasoning process employed by the courts was not dissimilar from that arising whenever individual disparate aggregates must be classified according to a limited set of categories, in the situations under study, it produced and legitimated an invidious hierarchy of peoples, a race-prejudicial sense of vertical group position, and a fundamental departure from the universalistic and individualistic claims that defended America as a thoroughgoing civil society.