Any book on civil society in Europe has a lot to contend with. For the continent has a rather tortuous history, a history that has, on the one hand, given us much in our current ideas of civil society, but that has also witnessed different totalitarian and fascist regimes. This project of explication becomes even more complicated when you incorporate the ongoing process of the construction of a supranational entity like the European Union. While the task is a difficult one to take on, the book under review does not balk at it. In 10 chapters, it offers different perspectives on the diverse aspects of civil society, perspectives ranging from the deeply reflective to the empirical. Rather than leave the reader with comfortable answers, the contributions in the volume problematize a lot of issues that scholars of European history and comparative studies of civil society will have to take up. What one gets is a feeling of “matters arising;” a conversation has been set off. This is the second in a series of volumes focusing on civil society in Europe, and features contributions from authors who are currently working in Berlin-based institutions, are affiliated to institutions based in the city, or have worked in academic institutions in Berlin at some point.
The book opens with an essay by Jürgen Kocka, who takes a historical perspective and explores the relationship between civil society, capitalism, the nation, and the state. He starts with a brief exploration of the history of the concept, after which he defines civil society as a social sphere related to but explicitly different from private life, capitalist ventures, and government. He cautions that the idea of civil society does not equate to “real, existing societies” (p. 41). For real societies also include elements that are chaotic, fanatic, and violent. The tone this chapter sets reverberates through the volume. For instance, the relationship between civil society, civility, and violence forms the crux of Reichardt’s chapter.
Paul Nolte’s concern in his chapter is the relationship between civil society and social inequality. He calls for research that will synthesize, analyze, and historicize data on inequality and civil society in Western societies since the end of the Second World War. He also calls for a methodological shift that transgresses the qualitative/quantitative boundary, that combines both social research and social theory, and that melds contemporary analysis with historical contextualization. This kind of research, he says, will provide a better understanding of the relationship between civil society and social inequality. In the same vein, Hans Joas and Frank Adloff present empirical data that seem to confirm the fact that inequality is a breeding ground of sorts for civil society, and that civil society has not so much departed from its founding days when the Bürgher—the bourgeoisie—was the social faction that constituted it.
Although Kocka, in his own chapter, concedes that there are social movements, networks, and NGOs that extend beyond national borders, he nevertheless concludes on a skeptical note about the possibility of the emergence of a European civil society. One reason he gives for this skepticism is the fact that Europe, being essentially multilingual, lacks a single language through which the public spheres of its countries can interact. Claus Offe’s contribution also raises the same issue. His investigation stems from what he calls the “disarticulation between societies and political regimes” (p. 172), the legacy of distrust and disaffection between citizens of member-states of the European Union, and, crucially, the lack of a common language for civil society.
Private businesses find a presence in Dieter Rucht and Susanne-Sophia Spiloti’s separate contributions, and their roles are given different interpretations. In the former, they are part of a group that is the butt of criticisms from civil society organizations, and in the latter they make up what the author calls “corporate civil society.” Spiloti derives this categorization from the actions of the German Business Foundation Initiative that broke from the state-centric approach of retributive justice and accepted that private businesses are “continuous, long-standing and inter-generational association[s] with moral duties” (p. 59).
All the writers in the book, save one, focus on civil society in Europe. Shalini Randeria, the exception, attacks the Eurocentricism of assumptions that civil societies do not exist in places other than Europe, and argues for multiplicity in the conditions of possibility of civil societies, drawing the conclusion that Western societies do not have a monopoly to the claim of having achieved civility in the public sphere.
The book carries much of the local in its flavour, perhaps on the understanding that Europe is one place where the differences between local and continental are becoming harder to distinguish. The volume sets out to present different perspectives on civil society, engaging the challenges, achievements, and current understandings of the phenomenon. In that regard, it is certainly a major contribution by scholars in Europe to the analysis of the idea of civil society and how its social instantiation is currently being shaped and reconfigured in and by certain forces on the continent. Although one or two more contributions along the line of Randeria’s corrective view would have been most welcome, one has to concede that the book’s aim is to examine civil society in Europe.
Open access
