Ein Konzept auf Reisen: Zivilgesellschaft im postkolonialen und entwicklungspolitischen Kontext

The term „civil society“ has been used in various contexts and is part and parcel of political vocabulary. Civil society traditionally occupies a position between the market, the state and the private life of individuals; these three spheres, however, tend to fluctuate and can be variously interpreted in their relationship to each other, as an analysis from a liberal and a Marxist perspective indicates. A postcolonial critique shows that in the Global South civil societies are constituted differently from those in the bourgeois capitalist societies of the North. From the perspective of a critical development policy, the preferential treatment of NGOs by international financial sponsors is questionable, on the grounds that it continues the neoliberal reinforcement of the dominant economic institutions and the marginalisation of the lower social strata. This means that the plurality and relativity, but above all the political power dynamics within the field of civil societies must be taken seriously; according to Antonio Gramsci, civil society is to be viewed as a space for critical engagement with relationships of domination.