CHAPTER 4
CIVIL SOCIETY: AGENTS OF CHANGE IN
GLOBAL INTERACTIONS
transnational advocacy networks (TANs).
global civil society: civil society actors
working to influence global society.
2 COMPETING
SOCIETY
Who Cares About Cecil the Lion?
July 2015, an American big-game
hunter on safari in Hwange National Park,
Zimbabwe, illegally killed and beheaded a
protected lion named Cecil. That killing
sparked international outrage, and within
a month of the killing, several hundred
thousand people had signed petitions
protesting the killing, and thousands more,
acting within civil society groups, joined
forces to act on the issue.

International
Nongovernmental
Organizations (INGOs)
Civil society actors are nongovernmental
actors because they do not seek control of
any government. Although civil society
actors have no political or economic
power, they nonetheless have an effect on
our world.


THEORIES
OF
CIVIL
Tocquevillian
Gramscian
Tocqueville’s Civil Society: Nonpolitical
Actions Lead to Political Effects


Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville
(1805–1859). He wrote Democracy
in America, which was published in
two volumes in 1835 and 1840.
Said “all stations of life and all types
of disposition are forever forming
associations.”
Gramsci’s Civil Society: Contests for
Political Power



Italian Antonio Gramsci (1891–1937).
Wrote about the concept of hegemony
(domination) and ruling class ideology.
To have political power.
ADDED INFO:
Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs):
voluntary associations, operating at local,
national, or regional levels, organized in
pursuit of shared interests, but not seeking
profit or public office. Example: Doctors
Without
Borders.
Civil
society
organizations
(CSOs):
often
used
interchangeably with nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs), but they can also
mean NGOs as well as community-based
organizations (CBOs).
civil society: voluntary association of
people outside of families, firms
(companies), and states (governments).
Includes nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs),
social
movements,
and
International
nongovernmental
organization (INGO): nongovernmental
organization (NGO) that has members in
more than one country, typically meaning
a physical office with employees.
What is Civil Society?
 Voluntary association outside the
family, the firm, and the state. It is
all of the organizations, networks,
and movements formed by citizens
to help define and pursue their own
interests.
 Nonpolitical organizations.
1
Social movements: collective action for
social change involving very loosely
organized individuals, networks, and
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs).
Example: Black Lives Matter.
TRANSNATIONAL ADVOCACY NETWORKS
(TANs)





Networks
of
activists,
distinguishable largely by the
centrality of principled ideas or
values
in
motivating
their
formation.
“Transnational. multicounty and
usually multiregional. “
“Advocacy”. purpose of the activity
is to advocate for some issue. It is
not to make money or win office,
but it is simply to advocate for some
specific cause.
“Network”. means they are loose
networks of activists all over the
world who come together on issues
that matter to them, like human
rights, women’s health, child labor,
or land mines.
Include think tanks, which are
research
organizations,
often
composed of academics, who
publish highly specific policy
research 202 that is intended to
inform (or sway) opinion on an
international issue.
Transnational advocacy network (TAN):
coalition or network of people—but not a
formal organization— working for change,
typically narrowly focused on a specific
issue.
LGBT RIGHTS AND TRANSNATIONAL
ACTIVISM
The International Gay and Lesbian Human
Rights Commission (IGLHRC) is a U.S.based LGBT rights NGO (now called Out
Right Action International). Its staff
documents rights abuses, trains activists,
and lobbies national and international
governments.
Anthropologist
Ryan
Thoreson studied how IGLHRC engaged
with worldwide partners.
Social Movements. ongoing, organized,
collective action oriented toward social
change. Social movements are informal
networks of people who share an identity.
Global markets. have increased the impact
that societies make on one another, but
they have also increased people’s ability to
see this impact and to do something about
it.
Global governance.
arrangement
is a patchwork
Three prominent theories that try to
explain why IGOs have opened up to NGOs:



Legitimacy
Norms
Functionalism
HOW DOES CIVIL SOCIETY HAVE AN
IMPACT?
Norm Entrepreneurs: any actor that tries
to create or change a norm. Many civil
society actors are, or aim to be, norm
entrepreneurs.
FOUR TYPES OF ACTION




Information Politics
Symbolic Politics
Leverage Politics
Accountability Politics
2
Chapter 5 SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND
CULTURE: SHAPING INTERACTIONS AT
THE INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETAL LEVELS

What are Social Identities and Culture?




When they talk about culture,
social scientists typically mean
the shared meanings, expected
behaviors, ways of doing things,
and customs in a particular
society.
culture: traditions, customs, and
meanings that shape behavior
and understanding
To emphasize culture in how we
look at the world is to recognize
that
ideas,
norms,
and
expectations
influence
how
people experience the world and
how they behave.
“Cultures are traditions and
customs, transmitted through
learning, that govern the beliefs
and behavior of the people
exposed to them.
Social identity: understanding one’s self
in relation to a group.




Social identities are about who we
are, about how we define our
primary
communities
of
belonging, and about defining
who we are not.
“Social identity is any social
category in which an individual is
eligible to be a member.”
A social category is a collection of
people who share some kind of
characteristic.
in-groups: people of the same
group. (Worldview, family choices,
value systems, food preferences)
out-groups: people of a different
group
(global
spread
of
information,
importation
of
international tv, cinema, and social
media, cheap food, global sports).
GLOBAL INTERACTIONS AND FORCES
IMPACT IDENTITY AND CULTURE

Social identities and culture
shape, and are shaped by, global
interactions in myriad ways.
FIFA (Fédération International de
Football Association)
THE UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL,
SCIENTIFIC, AND CULTURAL COUNCIL
(UNESCO)


It is an important world body
that aims to shape and promote
culture globally
UNESCO tries to set agendas on
culture globally.
INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS
TECHNOLOGY (ICT).



is a giant conduit for information,
and culture and information are
intricately linked?
Because of advances in ICT,
people all over the world can
access information, ideas, songs,
television shows, YouTube clips,
and books at their fingertips.
That
intensifies
cultural
interactions in all kinds of ways
whose effects are hard to foresee.
Which Social Identities Matter?

sports teams claim a strong pull
3
on people’s social identities
around the world.
RELIGIOUS IDENTITY
 Religious identity is also highly
consequential.
National Identity

A nation is a large community of
people who, believing they hold a
common bond, make a claim to
have a sovereign state of their
own.

national identity: social identity
constituted by membership in a
national group.
GENDER IDENTITY
 Gender identity plays a critical
role in international affairs.
 gender identity: social identity in
which belonging is determined by
gender difference
Class Identity

Nationalism



Nationalism has two main
meanings.
Nationalism refers to the
attitudes
emotions
that
individuals
experience
in
reference to their national
identity.
Nationalism:
attitudes
and
emotions
that
individuals
experience in reference to their
national identity, or the desire
for
self-determination, the
desire for a state of one’s own.


A common way to refer to people is
as “lower” class or as “upper” class,
referring to the professions that they
have and their overall wealth.
Ethnic Identity
 Ethnicity is one of the most
significant
social
categories
within countries.
 John Hutchinson and Anthony
Smith define an ethnic group as a
named human population with
myths of common ancestry,
shared historical memories, one
or more elements of common
culture, a link with a homeland,
and a sense of solidarity among at
least some of its members.
socio-economic, is a critical
category for action.
Socio-economic class refers to a
grouping based primarily on
economic status.
Class identity helps locate
individuals on the basis of how
they would situate themselves, or
how they could be objectively
situated, in relationship to the
economic system.
Class identity: social identity in
which belonging is determined by
social class.
WHY DO SOME SOCIAL
IDENTITIES MATTER MORE
THAN OTHERS?



First, those identities that are
“sticky” matter.
Second, identities that are visible are
particularly powerful.
Third, those identities that have
symbolic and emotional power are
the ones that exercise the strongest
4
pull on people.
SOCIAL IDENTITIES AND GLOBAL
CHALLENGES

Social identities are enormously
consequential for how people act in
the world and for how they see the
world. Social identities shape how
people imagine community; how
they imagine community in turn
shapes how they see their interests;
and how they see their interests in
turn shapes how people act in
several important social and
political ways. As a result, social
identities are often critical for
understanding the global challenges
that this book underlines.
Understanding Culture
1. Culture as a Worldview
 culture encompasses two main
ideas in an international studies
context. The first is an analytical
concept that denotes, in general, a
“worldview” within a society,
organization, or social category. One
of the most influential definitions in
this
tradition
is from the
anthropologist Clifford Geert.
 Geertz wrote that culture is “an
historically transmitted pattern
of meaning embodied in
symbols.
 For Geertz, as for many others,
culture connotes the idea of a
system of meaning by which
people make sense of their
world.

Culture shapes how people
communicate, perpetuate, and
develop
knowledge
and
attitudes. In short, culture is like
a prism, or mental map, that
filters how people see and
understand the world around
them.
2. Culture and Stereotypes
 People’s values and opinions vary
considerably in every society, and
they change: That is to say, culture
is neither deterministic nor static,
nor does it operate only at a
national level.
3. Culture as the Product of Human
Intellectual and Artistic Activity
 The second broad concept of
culture treats it as a catchall
category to describe the
intellectual and artistic activity
in a society; this usage is
arguably the most common.
 Culture here refers to that which
humans make— that which
distinguishes humans from
other animals.
4. Culture and Global Challenges
Culture and the Challenge of
Globalization: Clash, Convergence, or
Localization?
1. Clash of Cultures
 The first is the idea of a “clash”
of civilizations or cultures. In
this model, cultures are
somewhat static; they
represent distinctive blocs of
values and beliefs that are, or
potentially are, in conflict with
each other. In an era of
intensified global interactions,
one prediction is that as
different cultures come
5
together more frequently, so
too will the collisions and
confrontations be greater.
2. Convergence or Homogenization
 A second model of culture and
international interactions is the
idea of convergence or
homogenization. The concept
here is that globalization will
flatten difference; one culture
will
dominate.
In
most
applications of this model, the
idea is that the most powerful
cultures of the world will
export their values, beliefs, and
practices through their power
in the media, business, and
politics, and will extinguish
other cultures in their path.
3. Localization
 they observe a much more
nuanced process of cultural
interaction and “localization,”
the idea of adapting to local
conditions and tastes. This is
the third model of culture and
international interactions.
 Scholars
have
developed
numerous concepts to capture
this process of global and local
cultural interaction. One is the
concept of “glocalization,”
which suggests that globalized
processes become localized.
6