When is civil society a force for social transformation?Published on openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net)

When is civil society a force for social transformation?

When is civil society a force for social transformation?

Michael Edwards [1] 30 May 2014 Subjects:

public sphere [2]NGOs [3]Ideas [4]Democracy and government [5]Civil society [6]Transforming Society [7]Transforming Politics [8]Transforming Activism [9]Trans-partisan politics [10]

[11]

[12] There are more civil society organizations in the world today than at any other time in history, sowhy isn't their impact growing?

Civil society in action? Credit: http://www.iisd.ca [13]. All rights reserved.

When you look at the numbers, the growth of civil society has been remarkable: 3.3 million charitiesin India and 1.5 million across the United States; NGOs like the Bangladesh Rural AdvancementCommittee [14] that work with hundreds of millions of people; 81,000 international NGOs andnetworks, 90 per cent of them launched since 1975. Thats not counting all the street protests, socialmovements and informal community groups that are often omitted from the data. In the UK, forexample, these latter outnumber registered charities by more than four to one.

These statistics are mightily impressive - except when compared to the problems that civil societies

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want to solve. You could argue that things would be worse without the involvement of these groups.Theres also evidence to show that theyre making inroads around the edges of poverty andinjustice.

But theres no sign that the underlying structures of social, political and economic violence andoppression are being shaken to their roots.

As a result, fewer people in the world are dying young, and basic indicators of health and education,income and employment are getting slightly better - at least for most people in most countries [15].However, economic inequality is rising, democracies are being hollowed out, climate change isworsening, and discrimination based on race, gender, ability and sexual orientation remainsendemic.

Social movements have helped to challenge these underlying problems, and theyve successfullyunseated dictators in many parts of the world. But they havent been able to secure lasting gains indemocracy, equality and freedom.

Expecting civil society groups to achieve these gains by themselves would be foolish. However,given the rapid growth of all these organizations, shouldnt they be having at least some impact onthe deep transformation of self and society? What is going wrong?

Ive spent the last 30 years trying to figure out an answer to that question, and every so often I putsome thoughts down in print [16]. Of course, like the proverbial painter on the Forth Rail Bridge inScotland, I have to start afresh as soon as Ive finished each round of revisions, since civil societiesare constantly mutating. But they dont seem to be mutating in the direction of socialtransformation, despite the headline-grabbing protests of the Arab Spring and other revolutions. Infact my conclusion this time around may be surprising: the strength of civil society is declining evenas its size continues to expand.

I think there are two main reasons for this mismatch. The first is that civil society groups areincreasingly divorced from the forces that drive deeper social change. When one looks at the fewtimes in history when civil society has functioned as a powerful and lasting moral and political lever -like the civil rights and womens movements of the 1960s and 1970s - large numbers of peoplebecame active in translating ethical action into power structures at every level, from the family tothe courts and corporations.

In this sense, civil society is like an iceberg, with the peaks of protest rising above the waterline andthe great mass of everyday citizen action hidden underneath. When the two are connected - whenstreet protests are backed up by long-term action in every community, bank, business, localgovernment, church or mosque, temporary gains in equality and diversity have more chance ofbecoming permanent shifts in power and public norms. In that respect its not the Arab or any otherSpring that really makes the difference, but what happens in every other season, of every otheryear, across every generation.

Unfortunately these episodes of large-scale, joined-up action are quite rare, and the long-term trendhas been the opposite, at least in Europe and North America. Traditional forms of participation - likevoting and membership in labor unions and other mass organizations - have declined alarmingly [17]over the last 50 years. Other forms of participation have emerged in their stead, but they haventhad the same effect in pulling large numbers of people into face-to-face, ongoing, and potentiallytransformative activities.

These new forms of participation are largely social media-based, but they also include socialenterprises and professional advocacy groups which have strong messages but much weakermemberships. They may well attract large numbers of people to donate money, sign petitions, andconsume less harmful products, but none of these actions have the same amount of purchase [18] inthe heartlands of politics and economics. They are too thin to have much effect on thetransformation of society.

As an indicator of changing fashions, the number of Google searches for civil society fell by 70 per

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When is civil society a force for social transformation?Published on openDemocracy (http://www.opendemocracy.net)

cent between 2004 and 2012. During the same period, searches for social media and socialentrepreneurs rose by 90 per cent and 40 per cent respectively.

It isnt that these new trends are bad in themselves - successful social movements have alwaysmade use of innovations in marketing, revenue-generation and communications. The problemsarrive when they displace other forms of civil society action that remain essential. In that respect,its significant that todays most transformative civil society groups incorporate both online andoffline activism around a strong ethos of democratic participation and accountability. MakingChange at Wal-Mart [19], for example, uses Facebook to help employees identify which of theirfriends works for the company, to supply them with information about their rights, and then toconnect them to ongoing campaigns and demonstrations on the ground.

But in terms of transformation, it does matter that a different ethos of competition and technocracy is increasingly influential [20] in civil society itself. In a classic case of cooptation, what was designedas a solidarity-based alternative is being turned into an integral component of the social capitalisteconomy.

The second reason for the decline in civil societies transformative potential is that structures thatused to mediate between people of different views and backgrounds have largely disappeared.Getting large numbers of people to participate in politics and civic life is priority number one. Butthose people will likely disagree with each other on everything from gay marriage to student debt.Thats the reality of civil societies everywhere, which dont belong to conservatives or progressives,or to anyone else in particular, but to everyone.

So priority number two is to find ways for people to come together across their differences andhammer out some common ground. That common ground then gets translated formally into lawsand policies by voting in reforming governments, and informally into the norms of public opinion thathelp to set some sense of direction for society.

This was precisely the process that underpinned broad, public support for redistributive actions likethe GI Bill of 1944 [21], which made college education and other benefits accessible for all returningveterans in the USA. Many future leaders of the US Civil Rights movement were graduates of theseprograms. Something similar took place in Britain after the end of World War Two, when the newlyelected Labour Government introduced the Welfare State [22]. Greater social intermingling duringthe war years, and a sense of shared experience and responsibility, helped to draw in a wider rangeof support.

In both these examples, the ground was laid for potentially transformative changes in society,though much of it has since been eroded. By guaranteeing the conditions in which broad swathes ofthe population could participate in politics and public life, governments gave civil society atremendous boost.

The problem is that most of the structures through which people participated have been destroyedor allowed to wither on the vine. They included labor unions (which declined by 43 per cent in theUSA between 1950 and 2000), parent-teachers associations (which lost 60 per cent of their membersduring the same period), political parties, and national federations of womens groups. As a result,the rich and diverse ecosystems of civil society that had brought different groups together, howeverimperfectly, began to resemble monocultures in which organizations looked alike or turned intosingle issue or constituency groups.

This process was most visible in the decline of particular kinds of civic institutions, but it also had apersonal face. Coalition building, or simply arguing with each-other to create a sense of the publicinterest, require a willingness to engage [23], and to recognize that sustaining civil society is ashared responsibility, even if we disagree about the details of what civic groups should do.

At its core, civil society has always been a deeply human construction, a way of rearranging thegeometry of human relationships [24] and not just cementing the bricks and mortar of NGOs andother groups. That, too, is being lost to the tide of corporatization and technocratic management.

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Reversing the decline of civil society as a force for transformation will be exceptionally difficult,because the processes of hollowing out and separation, of commercialization and muzzling havebecome so deeply embedded. Any group that bucks these trends will be isolated and undermined.Philanthropists will deny them funding, politicians will curb their rights to organize, corporations willco-opt their language and their tactics, and other, less radical groups will try to colonize their workand capture their supporters.

But since civil societies are ours to lose, they are also ours to reclaim, to refresh and re-energizeagainst the background of a constantly shifting landscape of opportunities, tools and techniques -social media and social enterprise included.

The destruction of civil society is easy, and its happening around us now. Its re-creation is muchmore difficult, a task akin to accumulating all the snow that eventually makes the iceberg ofeveryday citizen action.

That may sound like too little, too late, or simply take too long, or be too much work in an era wheninstant gratification is demanded. But it will be worth it. After all, it was an iceberg that sank theTitanic.SideboxesRelated stories: Liberation in the age of the hashtag activist [18] Welcome to Transformation [25] Not just about the money: corporatization is weakening activism and empowering big business [26] Petition for redress to the Oxford English Dictionary [27] Topics: Civil society Democracy and government Ideas $(document).ready(function(){ $("div#contentgrid").removeClass('grid-8');$("div#contentgrid").addClass('grid-6'); }); About the author

Michael Edwards is a writer and activist based in upstate New York, and the editor of Transformation.The third edition of his book, Civil Society [16], is published today by Polity Press. All the data used inthis article come from that book. Related Articles Liberation in the age of the hashtag activist [18]Ray FilarWelcome to Transformation [25]Michael EdwardsNot just about the money: corporatization is weakening activism and empoweringbig business [26]Peter DauvergnePetition for redress to the Oxford English Dictionary [27]Marisa Handler

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