NGOs, Civil Society and Structural Changes

This book suggests that our notions of civil society have undergone radical changesincluding structural changes in the nature of Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). Such massive structural changes greatly problematize the older liberal view of a simple split between state and civil society actors which nonetheless remains dominant in much of social and political sciences. The author argues that the naturalist and behaviorist approaches to civil society occlude the fact that citizens increasingly live within a particular and highly contestable way of imagining and constructing civil society. The book shows that changes in how civil society is conceptualized and organized around new practices, might mark radically new conceptions of the state that are ideologically neo-liberal and subtle in the ways they disempower ordinary citizens.

Reviews naturalist and modernist approaches to civil society and NGOs Unpacks different narratives over civil society in order to explain how those narratives influence the actions of social actors Examines how new patterns of rule and neoliberalism organize civil society

Autorentext

Acar Kutay Department of Political Science and Public Administration, IstanbulKent University, Istanbul, Turkey.

Inhalt
Introduction.- Chapter 1. Interpreting civil society.- Chapter 2. Interpreting with Foucault.- Chapter 3. Defining and constituting NGOs.- Chapter 4. Civil society, NGOs and Governance.- Chapter 5. Governing through civil society.- Chapter 6. Management, managerialism, and NGOs.- Chapter 7. Global governance, public sphere and CSOs.- Chapter 8. Civil Society in European Governance: A Case Study.- Conclusion.