seven - Active citizenship as civil commitment: cultural considerations

Summary

Introduction

This chapter further investigates manifestations of active citizenship as civil commitment in the third sector. It draws on empirical studies in non-OECD countries with different historical and cultural backgrounds. However, before exploring these empirical studies, it is important to consider a concern that arises periodically in discussions of the global ramifications of the romance with civil society and its affiliated concepts. This concern, which Chapter Three touched on, revolves around the question of the applicability of civil society concepts to non-Western settings. The ‘Westernisation thesis’, as it is often called in these discussions, holds that economic, political and social development are dominated, both intellectually and in practice, by Western assumptions (see Latouche, 1993; Escobar, 1995; Schuurman, 2000; Ziai, 2004; Rist, 2008). Westernisation can be seen as positive or negative for a country, depending on the perspective and values of the perceiver. For example, where democratic processes are held in high regard and ‘the West’ is equated with democratic values, then Westernisation is perceived to be a good thing. However, over the past decade, Western ideas of democracy have received a bad press from some quarters, based on revelations of corruption in Western democracies as well as the perceived hypocritical legitimation of interventions in other countries which have been championed as ‘bringing democracy’ to the people (by force and/or to facilitate neoliberal forms of economic development; Hanieh, 2013). Commentators have also pointed to the apparently failed experiments of democracy in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region.

Criticisms of attempts to ‘democratise the world’, of course, go back decades. By the 1990s there was a chorus of voices arguing that Western concepts of democracy and civil society were part of a crusade to ‘Westernise’ the whole world (Latouche, 1993; Escobar, 1995). From this perspective, civil society concepts are seen as part of the hegemonic armoury of the West. Other commentaries, such as on the global reach of civil society today, simply assume the universality of civil society concepts, without any explicit judgement of their value, although often implicitly accepting the positive contribution of civil society to all societies.

The ascendancy of commitment to human rights over the past 20 years has been of particular relevance to the study of citizenship internationally.