.

 -


Скачать книгу
theory and practice of civil society. In most parts of the world, communities are increasingly divided and fragmented. Violence, intolerance, and inequality are on the rise. Authoritarians and populists of different stripes have gained a foothold even in advanced democracies. Restrictions on freedom of speech and association are increasingly common. Trust in charities has declined as a result of well-publicized recent scandals. And public spheres – privatized, commercialized, hollowed out and distorted by “filter bubbles” on social media and accusations of “fake news” – seem thoroughly incapable of addressing these problems and concerns. As the writer Amanda Ripley put it in a 2018 article for the Solutions Journalism Network, “In the present era of tribalism, it feels like we’ve reached our collective limitations.”1

      As in previous editions, my approach is not to see civil society as the solution to problems in and of itself (except in very limited circumstances) but to look to it for frameworks through which we can understand what is happening and explore what might be done. Rejecting the tendency to argue for one particular interpretation of this concept over all the others, the book explores a range of different theories and traditions that fall into three major categories: civil society as a part of society in chapter 2 – the world of voluntary associations; civil society as a kind of society in chapter 3 – marked out by positive social norms such as reciprocity and cooperation; and in chapter 4, civil society as an arena in which these norms are worked out and tested, otherwise known as the “public sphere.” Each of these theories illuminates a different set of questions and suggests its own avenues for action, so rather than choosing one or the other, my approach is to see how they fit together both conceptually (in chapter 5) and in practice (in chapter 6). This approach generates a much richer set of insights across the boundaries of geography, history, and culture.

      Authoritarianism both encourages and thrives on polarization and fearmongering as a way of stoking up support for leaders who claim to be defending “the nation” or “national values” against inside or outside threats and enemies – most notably in the contemporary context, immigrants. The apparent depth of this polarization in the United States after the election of President Donald Trump, in the United Kingdom around the Brexit vote to leave the European Union, and in the nationalist agendas of politicians in countries like Hungary, Italy, and France, has taken many people by surprise, but the signs of such schisms were visible well before 2016 for those whose eyes were open enough to see them. For example, Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol’s careful analysis of the US Tea Party found that much of this movement was an authentic expression of disaffection among conservatives, especially white rural Americans who began to mobilize against what they saw as the domination of politics and culture by disdainful liberal elites in the cities.4 Other research uncovered a consistent pattern of resentment that was making its way into politics as the Republican Party moved rightwards,5 though the “culture wars” that divide “red” and “blue” America stretch back much further in time, through President Bill Clinton’s battles with House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the 1990s to the rupture that emerged around Roe v. Wade in 1973. These divisions have since grown to seemingly unbridgeable levels, morphing into the rise of right-wing hate groups and networks of white nationalists on the right and the arrival of sometimes violent counter-protests on the left.

      Traditionally, civil society theorists have seen polarization


Скачать книгу