The Dialectic of Civil and Uncivil Society—Fragility, Fault Lines, and Countervailing Forces

In light of the experience of the past three decades—1989 to 2020—the civil society appears as a fragile institution that seems capable of giving rise to the overthrow of dictators as well as to their ready installation; to engender movements of solidarity and inclusion as well as of hatred and violence. To understand what allows these different tendencies to arise from within the civil society requires that we move past a pre-occupation with the structural and socio-economic dimension of the civil society and recover a conception of the civil society as an inherently moral institution. In this regard, the tradition of social analysis pioneered by Alexis de Tocqueville remains singularly instructive. The cultivation of civility, we can learn, is not an automatic by-product of tamed markets, limited government, and vibrant associational life—necessary and important though these are. The dispositions needed to maintain the civil society do not arise with causal necessity even where associations flourish, markets are tamed, and institutions are well-designed. By facing more squarely the deep moral fault-lines of the civil society we can develop a keener sense of the countervailing forces needed to keep the project of the civil society on track.

Solidarity and Fragmentation in Libya’s Associational Life.

This article is a sociohistorical analysis of two regions of Libya, Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, following independence in 1951. Building on Pierson (2004), it focuses on path dependent trends in solidarity and the fragmentation of Libya’s associative space. It argues that associational life has played a twofold role in Libya’s political and social history. First, it actively contributed to the strengthening of resistance against colonialism and tyranny, the development of state institutions and the domestication of state power. Second, it contributed to processes of bonding within groups that compromised the development of a Libyan state, which was a factor in the onset of the Libyan civil war (2014–2020). This dual nature of the associative space is an important point of inquiry for Libyan historiography and something that is important for policymakers presiding over the country’s state, nation building and economic development to understand.

Explaining the Weakness of Associational Life in Oil Palm Growing Communities in Southwestern Ghana

As the second most important industrial crop in Ghana, oil palm holds the potential of improving farmers’ livelihoods and alleviating rural poverty. For smallholder farmers, collective action through farmer-based organisations (FBOs) could provide a pathway to inclusive participation in agricultural commercialisation. There is ample evidence in the literature that collective action can help smallholders gain access to credit, improved inputs, or even networks of social support. Thus, collective action is widely recognised as a viable pathway out of poverty for the agrarian poor. However, our findings show that FBOs were either weak or non-existent. Indeed, we find that economic relations between farmers tend to be more individualised than one would expect to find in rural communities. This paper presents these findings, and explores why this is the case.

Smoking Clubs in Graphic Satire and the Anglicizing of Tobacco in Eighteenth-Century Britain

Focusing on A smoking club (1793/7) by James Gillray, this essay presents satiric representations of smoking clubs in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century British prints, arguing that they reflect and mediate contemporary understandings of tobacco as an intoxicant in British associational life. The breadth of potential cultural connotations – from political and social parody to light-hearted humour – is traced through the content and imagery of selected prints. These prints rely on the familiarity of contemporary audiences with political and social knowledge, as well as a visual iconography iconically realized in William Hogarth's A midnight modern conversation (1732).

Rebel Retirement in the South through Harmonic Exit Networks

This chapter shows how grassroots civic associations that grew in the gray zone of state-insurgency interface in the South became sites of incubation of informal exit networks, which facilitate safe passage of Maoists from insurgency to democracy in Telangana. Based on the rebels’ account of the protracted process of retirement, this chapter also highlights, both empirically and theoretically, the various actors and processes in rebel retirement, including the operation of the two mechanisms of trust and side payment that help resolve the problem of credible commitment locally. This chapter shows that the militant mass mobilization by the Maoists in the South created conditions for vibrant associational life in the gray zones of the South, which allowed various actors and processes of rebel retirement to function and proliferate.