How Civil is Civil Society?

Reflections upon conference in Uppsala, March 2010

Tags: Worldwide , Civil Society Building

On March 23/24 the Centre for Sustainable Development (CSD, Uppsala University), in cooperation with the Swedish International Development Cooperative Agency (Sida), organised a conference to debate questions over civil society and democratization processes. The 2-day event is part of a five-year project from CSD, which aims to strengthen Swedish research about civil society and its role in international development as well as to strengthen research-based knowledge in policy development in this area. Another aim is to increase exchange between researchers and practitioners in development cooperation, as well as between researchers in Sweden and the 'Global South'.

The conference, which carried the sexy title “Power to the People? (Con-)Tested Civil Society in Search of Democracy, attracted over one hundred academics and practitioners from Scandinavia, but also welcomed visitors from as far as Kenya, Zimbabwe, India, Bangladesh and Argentina to cold but charming Uppsala. It was held at the Missionskyrkan, a modern church. The somewhat ‘neutral ground’ was meant to create a comfortable, open space for both practitioners and academics out of their usual ‘habitat’. During the plenary sessions and debates, the participants were accommodated in the common room and were grouped around small tables to create an open space for dialogue and networking. Together with the paper presentations, which were held during parallel sessions in the afternoon, the conference gave the participants enough food for thought and debate over the two days.

At the conference it became clear that decades after its introduction into common development discourse we actually still grapple over the notion of the term “civil society”. What is civil society, who is part of it, and who is not? Who takes part in it, and who doesn’t? Is civil society always civil? What does ‘incivility’ mean for democratization, and is it not more interesting to look what is happening in this ‘uncivil space’? And how to support civil society in developing countries, if support it all? These questions were frequently heard at the two-day dialogue. After day one, one participant asked rightly: “why are we still debating over this term civil society, when it is clear that its meaning is at least ambiguous, and its storage life long overdue? Ideologically it makes sense, but analytically it makes no sense at all”. One practitioner questioned: “What is the use of this term, when we can not come to terms over its meaning?”, while another participant continued: “Civil society? Civil society is often not civil, nor has it to do with being social to one another. It is more like a battlefield, an arena of stake holders, and not as sweet as it sounds”. To move beyond debating the term “civil society” itself proved very difficult. To think beyond its notion and ask ourselves which multiple roles citizens play in changing their daily realities, was a question that unfortunately never took centre stage during the conference. This was felt as a missed opportunity. Maybe it didn't because actual civil society actors from the South were overall absent over the two days? However, the dialogue gave rise to thought-provoking questions, which should be taken into account by academics and practitioners who work in this field. After all, meetings like these never come up with Nobel prize winning answers, but spur more interesting questions, which can be debated in the near future.

The conference report will be posted at the website of CSD by the end of 2010, and will include the keynote speaker presentations and the presented papers. Furthermore this conference will be followed by three other conferences in the following years, focussing on different aspects of civil society.

You can find the Uppsala 2010 conference agenda here

You can download the policy document of the Swedish government here

You can read more on how SIDA thinks about supporting civil society organizations here