Civil Society PDF

CiŠil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept Neocleous M 1996 Administering CiŠil Society: Towards a The Greek conception of the polis, for example, Theory of State Power. MacMillan, London usually referred to both, but when a distinction was Offe C 198...

CiŠil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept Neocleous M 1996 Administering CiŠil Society: Towards a The Greek conception of the polis, for example, Theory of State Power. MacMillan, London usually referred to both, but when a distinction was Offe C 1987 Challenging the boundaries of institutional politics: made, it clearly favored the state. Social movements since the 1960s. In: Maier C (ed.) Changing Roman law contributed the idea of ciŠitas and a Boundaries of the Political: Essays on the EŠolŠing Balance Between State and Society, Public and PriŠate in Europe. stronger sense of relations among persons that were Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK neither narrowly familial nor specifically about consti- Pasquino P 1981 Introduction to Lorenz von Stein. Economy and tuting the political society through the state. Medieval Society 10(1): 1–6 political and legal theory developed this theme, es- Reidel M 1984 Between Tradition and EŠolution: The Hegelian pecially in relation to the freedoms claimed by medi- Transformation of Political Philosophy. Cambridge University eval cities but also in relation to the Church. Some Press, Cambridge, UK strands juxtaposed the notion of legitimacy ascending Richter M 1998 Montesquieu and the concept of civil society. from ‘the people’ to the eventually dominant idea of The European Legacy 3(66): 33–41 divine right of kings, with its notion of legitimacy Rosanvallon P 1988 The decline of social visibility. In: Keane J (ed.) CiŠil Society and the State: New European PerspectiŠes. descending from God. Also influential was the dis- Verso, London tinction of civil from criminal law (in which the former Smith A 1974 The Wealth of Nations. Penguin, Harmondsworth, governs relations formed voluntarily among indivi- UK duals and the latter the claims of the whole society Trentmann F (ed.) 2000 Paradoxes of CiŠil Society: New against malefactors). Nonetheless, it was only in the PerspectiŠes on Modern German and British History. Bergham, course of early modern reflection on the sources of New York social order that civil society came to be seen as a Tribe K 1988 GoŠerning Economy: The Reformation of German distinct sphere. Economic Discourse, 1750–1840. Cambridge University Press, A crucial step in this process was the ‘affirmation of Cambridge, UK ordinary life’ (Taylor 1989). Whereas the Greek H. Islamoglu philosophers had treated the private realm—including economic activity—as clearly inferior to the public realm associated with affairs of state, many moderns placed a new positive value on family and economic Civil Society/Public Sphere: History of the pursuits. They argued that both privacy and civil society needed to be defended against encroachments Concept by the state. In this context, it was also possible to conceive of a public sphere that was not coterminous The closely related concepts of civil society and public with the state but rather located in civil society and sphere developed in the early modern era to refer to based on its voluntary relations. In this communicative capacities for social self-organization and influence space citizens could address each other openly, and in over the state. Civil society usually refers to the ways that both established common notions of the institutions and relationships that organize social life public good and influenced the state. at a level between the state and the family. Public Social contract and natural law theories—especially sphere is one of several linked terms (including ‘public as joined in the work of John Locke—contributed to space,’ simply ‘public,’ and the German Oq ffentlichkeit, this shift by suggesting ways in which the creation of or publicness) that denote an institutional setting society conceptually preceded the creation of govern- distinguished by openness of communication and a ment. From this it was only a short step to say that the focus on the public good rather than simply compro- legitimacy of government depended on its serving the mises among private goods. Located in civil society, needs of civil society (or of ‘the people’). Thomas communication in the public sphere may address the Paine and other advocates of freedom from unjust rule state or may seek to influence civil society and even advanced an image of the freedoms of Englishmen private life directly. Key questions concern the extent which was influential not only in England and Ameri- to which it will be guided by critical reason, and how ca, but in France, notably in Montesqueiu’s account boundaries between public and private are mediated. of the ‘spirit’ of laws which combined an appreciation of English division of powers with an older tradition of 1. CiŠil Society and Self-organization republican (and aristocratic) virtue. From Rousseau through Tocqueville, Comte, and Durkheim, this The distinction of ‘civil society’ from the state took its French tradition developed an ever-stronger account modern form in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- of the autonomy of the social (resisting not only the turies. Prior to this separation, political and social claims of the state but the Cartesian postulate of the realms were seldom clearly distinguished. When they primacy of the individual subject). were, the social was exemplified by the family and A crucial innovation was to understand society as at often subordinated as the realm of necessity or mere least potentially self-organizing rather than organized reproduction to the broader public character and only by rulers. If there was a single pivotal intellectual possibilities for active creation that lay in the state. source for this, it lay with the Scottish moralists. In 1897 CiŠil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept Adam Smith’s (1776) notion of the invisible hand, the Kant, like many eighteenth-century philosophers, market exemplified this self-organizing capacity but lacked a strong notion of the social. This Hegel (1821) did not exhaust it. In his Essay on the History of CiŠil supplied, rejecting social contract theory because even Society (1767), Adam Ferguson presented human in Rousseau’s notion of a general will it suggested that history as a series of social transformations leading to the union achieved in the state depended not on its modern society. This prompted Hegel (1821) to treat own absolute universality but on a development out of civil society as a field in which the universal and individual wills. Nationalism also shaped ideas of particular contended; their reconciliation depended society and political community in holistic ways well on the state. The idea of civil society also shaped matched to unitary states (Calhoun 1999). Marx’s classical political economy and ideas of social evol- (1843, 1927) critique of politics based on bourgeois ution, and informed Marx’s account of the stages of individual rights further challenged the adequacy of historical development as combinations of productive civil society as a realm of freedom and unity. Where capacity and (conflict-ridden) social relations. Marx Hegel thought that the state in itself might overcome also challenged the notion that markets were neutrally the tension between necessity and freedom and the self-organizing, emphasizing the role of historical clash of particular wills, Marx held that only a accumulations of power. transformation of material conditions including the Though the actual analyses differed, what had been abolition of private property could make this possible. established was the notion of society as a distinct As a result, theories stressing stronger ideas of the object of analysis, not reducible to either state or social were apt to offer weaker notions of public life. individual. People formed society impersonally as The Marxist tradition denigrated ‘mere democracy’ as actors in markets, more personally as parties to an inadequate means of achieving either freedom or contracts. The idea of civil society hearkened back to unity. the sort of social life that emerged among the free The ideas of public sphere and civil society de- citizens of medieval cities because this was largely self- veloped primarily in liberal theory. These were not regulated—as distinct from direct rule by ecclesiastical always seen in the manner of Hegel as merely ‘edu- or military authorities. It also suggested ‘civility’ in cative’ on the way to a more perfect latter unity. Nor interpersonal relations. This meant not just good was political unity necessarily left to the workings of manners, but a normative order facilitating amicable an invisible hand or other unchosen system, but or at least reliable and nonthreatening relationships freedom was treated commonly as a matter of in- among strangers and in general all those who were not dividual rather than collective action. This accom- bound together by deep private relations like kinship. panied the rise of relatively asocial understandings of Equally important, the idea of civil society included— the market (Polanyi 1944). In addition, the emerging in some versions—the notion that communication notion of the public sphere was not clearly distinct among members might be the basis for self-conscious from other usages of ‘public.’ State activity, for decisions about how to pursue the common good. This example, was sometimes described as public without notion is basic to the modern idea of public sphere. regard to its relationship to democracy or its openness to the gaze or participation of citizens. This usage 2. The Idea of a Public Sphere survives in reference to state-owned firms as ‘public’ regardless of the kind of state or the specifics of their Rousseau (1762) famously sought to understand how operation. social unity could result from free will rather than More important was the overlapping concept of external constraint. This depended, he argued, on ‘public opinion’ (see Public Opinion: Political Aspects). transcending the particular wills of many people with The dominant eighteenth-century usage emphasized a general will that was universal. Kant admired open expression and debate, contrasting free public Rousseau’s pursuit of unity in freedom as distinct opinion to absolutist repression. At the same time, it from mere social instinct (as in Aristotle’s notion of a generally treated public opinion as a consensus formed political animal) or imposition of divine authority. He on the basis of reasoned judgment. ‘Opinion’ was relied implicitly on the idea of a collective conversation something less than knowledge, but especially where it through which individual citizens reach common had been tested in public discourse, it was not simply understandings. Likewise the development of rep- sentiment and it gained truth-value from reflexive resentative institutions in eighteenth century England examination. Various euphemisms like ‘informed informed and anchored a public discourse directed at opinion’ and ‘responsible opinion,’ however, reflected bringing the will and wisdom of citizens to bear on both a bias in favor of the opinions of elites and an affairs of state. Finally, the idea of the people as acting anxiety about the possibly disruptive opinions of the subject came to the fore in the American and French masses. During the nineteenth century, this anxiety revolutions. The idea of a public sphere anchored came increasingly to the fore. Tocqueville (1840) and democratic and republican thought in the capacity of Mill (1859), thus, both contrasted public opinion to citizens in civil society to achieve unity and freedom reasoned knowledge; Mill especially worried about through their discourse with each other. ‘collective mediocrity’ in which the opinion of debased 1898  CiŠil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept masses would triumph over scientific reason. While emancipatory potential of a collective discourse about advocates of the public sphere saw rational-critical the nature of the public good and the directions of discourse producing unity, critics saw mass opinion state action. This could be free insofar as it was reflecting psychosocial pressures for conformity. Im- rational—based on the success of argument and plicitly, they associated reason with individuals rather critique rather than the force of either status or than any collective process. The distinction between coercion—and could achieve unity by disregarding ‘public’ and ‘crowd’ or ‘mass’ was lost in such views particular interests—like particular statuses—in favor (Splichal 2000). Early positivist research into public of the general good. The best version of the public opinion approached it as explicable on the basis of sphere was based on ‘a kind of social intercourse that, social psychology rather than as a species of reasoned far from presupposing the equality of status, disre- argument. Toennies (1922) sought a way to discern garded status altogether.’ It worked by a ‘mutual when each approach ought to apply. willingness to accept the given roles and simultan- Conversely, in the late nineteenth and twentieth eously to suspend their reality’ (Habermas 1962, p. centuries, a new field of public opinion research 131). developed that approached public opinion as an The basic question guiding Habermas’ exploration aggregation of individual opinions. The shift was of the public sphere was: to what extent can the wills or based largely on the development of empirical polling opinions guiding political action be formed on the methods. It brought a renewal of attention to differ- basis of rational-critical discourse? This is a salient ences within public opinion, and thus to the distinction issue primarily where economic and other differences between public and crowd (Blumer 1948, Key 1961). It give actors discordant identities and conflicting inter- also focused attention on patterns of communication ests. For the most part, Habermas took it as given that among members of the public rather than the more the crucial differences among actors were those of class generalized notions of imitation or emotional con- and largely political-economic status; in any case, he tagion. New media—first newspapers, and then broad- treated them as rooted in private life and brought from cast—figured prominently in efforts to understand there to the public. He focused on how the nature, public communication. While Lippman (1960) and a organization, and opportunities for discourse on variety of social psychologists worried that the new politically significant topics might be structured so media would produce the descent to a lowest common that class and status inequalities were not an in- denominator of public opinion that liberals had long superable barrier to political participation. The first feared, Dewey (1927) and other pragmatists defended issue, of course, was access to the discourse. This was the capacity for reason in large-scale communication. not so simple as the mere willingness to listen to In this, they hearkened back to the eighteenth-century another’s speech, but also involved matters like the hopes of Kant and Rousseau. distribution of the sorts of education that empowered Even before the apotheosis of the opinion poll, speakers to present recognizably ‘good’ arguments. Cooley (1909) had argued emphatically that public Beyond this, there was the importance of an ideo- opinion ought to be conceived as ‘no mere aggregate logical commitment to setting aside status differences of individual opinions, but a genuine social product, a in the temporary egalitarianism of an intellectual result of communication and reciprocal influence.’ A argument. key question was whether this communication and The public sphere joined civil society to the state by reciprocal influence amounted to the exercise of focusing on a notion of public good as distinct from reason. Peirce (1878) had argued that among scientists private interest. It was however clearly rooted in civil the formation of consensus on the basis of openness society and indeed in the distinctive kind of privacy it and debate was the best guarantee of truth. Could this allowed and valued. view be extended into less specialized domains of The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived public discourse? This has been an enduring focus for above all as the sphere of private people coming Jurgen Habermas, the most influential theorist of the together as a public; they soon claimed the public public sphere. sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the 3. Habermas basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor. The medium of In the context of some cynicism about democratic this political confrontation was peculiar and without institutions, Habermas (1962) set out to show the historical precedent: people’s public use of their reason unrealized potential of the public sphere as a category (Habermas 1962, p. 27). of bourgeois society. He challenged most directly the This public use of reason depended on civil society. tendencies in Marxism and critical theory to belittle Businesses from newspapers to coffee shops, for democratic institutions—and also the collapsing of example, provided settings for public debate. Social public into state characteristic not only of Hegel but of institutions (like private property) empowered indivi- actually existing socialism. Habermas celebrated the duals to participate independently in the public sphere; 1899 CiŠil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept forms of private life (notably that of the family) from the natural world, of appearance and memory, prepared individuals to act as autonomous, rational- and of talk and recognition. Such action both requires critical subjects in the public sphere. But the and helps to constitute public spaces—spaces held eighteenth-century public sphere was also distin- in common among people within which they may guished by its normative emphases on openness and present themselves in speech and recognize others. rational political discourse. Habermas’ concern focus- Public action is thus a realm of freedom from the ed on the way later social change brought these two necessity—notably of material reproduction—that dimensions into conflict with each other. dominates private life. The idea of publicness as openness underwrote a Arendt’s usual term, ‘public space,’ leaves the progressive expansion of access to the public sphere. ‘shape’ of public life more open than the phrase public Property and other qualifications were eliminated and sphere. Public action can create institutions, as in the more and more people participated. The result was a founding of the American Republic, but as action it is decline in the quality of rational-critical discourse. As unpredictable. Its publicness comes from its perform- Habermas later summed up: ance in a space between people, a space of appearances, but it is in the nature of public action to be always Kant still counted on the transparency of a surveyable public forming and reforming that space and arguably the sphere shaped by literary means and open to arguments and which is sustained by a public composed of a relatively small people themselves. This conceptualization offers clear stratum of educated citizens. He could not foresee the advantages for thinking about the place of plurality in structural transformation of this bourgeois public sphere into the public sphere. As Arendt wrote of America, ‘since a semantically degenerated public sphere dominated by the the country is too big for all of us to come together and electronic mass media and pervaded by images and virtual determine our fate, we need a number of public spaces realities (Habermas 1998, p. 176). within it’ (1972, p. 232). Arendt saw this plurality threatened not just by While Habermas’ account of the continuing value mass conformity but by the reduction of public of the category of public sphere evoked by the concerns to material matters. A focus on sex as much eighteenth-century ideal set him apart from Hork- as on the economy threatens the public–private dis- heimer and Adorno (1944) and their pessimistic turn tinction. It not only intrudes on intimacy and private in critical theory, he largely incorporated their critique life but impoverishes public discourse. Arendt (1951) of ‘mass society’ as ‘administered society’ into his saw this problem as basic to totalitarianism, which survey of twentieth-century developments and with it could allow citizens neither privacy nor free public many of the fears of nineteenth-century liberals. He discourse. Totalitarianism is distinguished from mere held that the public sphere was transformed not only tyranny by the fact that it works directly on private life by simple increase of numbers but by the success of as well as limiting public life. This is not just a matter various new powers at re-establishing in new form the of contrasting intentions, but of distinctively modern power to ‘manage’ public opinion or steer it from capacity. Modern sociological conditions offer rulers above. Public relations agents and public opinion polls the possibility to reach deeply into the family in replaced rational-critical debate; electronic media particular and personal life in general, to engineer allowed openness but not the give and take con- human life in ways never before imagined. versation of the eighteenth-century coffee houses. At This potential for collapsing the public and private the same time, rising corporate power and state realms is linked to Arendt’s unusually negative view of penetration of civil society undermined the distinction civil society. ‘Society,’ she writes, is ‘that curious and of public and private, producing a ‘refeudalization’ of somewhat hybrid realm which the modern age inter- society. jected between the older and more genuine realms of the public or political on one side and the private on 4. Arendt the other’ (1990, p. 122). Civil society is first and foremost a realm of freedom from politics. But public Hannah Arendt also focused on the problem of freedom is freedom in politics. This calls for action collapsing distinctions between public and private. that creates new forms of life, rather than merely Arendt emphasized the capacity of action in public to attempting to advance interests or accommodate to create the world that citizens share in common. The existing conditions. This distinguishes Arendt’s view, term ‘public,’ she wrote, ‘signifies two closely inter- and republicanism generally, from much liberal related but not altogether identical phenomena: It thought: ‘Thus it has become almost axiomatic even in means, first, that everything that appears in public can political theory to understand by political freedom not be seen and heard by everybody and has the widest a political phenomenon, but on the contrary, the more possible publicity. … Second, the term ‘‘public’’ signi- or less free range of nonpolitical activities which a fies the world itself, in so far as it is common to all of given body politic will permit and guarantee to those us and distinguished from our privately owned place who constitute it’ (1990, p. 30). in it’ (Arendt 1958, pp. 50, 52). Public action, moreover, The founding of the United States was a favorite is the crucial terrain of the humanly created as distinct example of such action for Arendt. The American 1900  CiŠil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept Founders imagined and created a new kind of society, sought to stress. This has sometimes been a source of a new set of institutions. This relied on citizens’ public confusion in use of the public sphere concept to commitments to each other rather than assumptions analyze distinctive institutional developments in di- about human nature or mere external application of verse political and cultural settings (Calhoun 1993). law. The Founders ‘knew that whatever men might be Civil society has been important to defenders of free in their singularity, they could bind themselves into a market economics because it suggests the virtues of an community which, even though it was composed of economy in which participants’ choices are regulated ‘‘sinners,’’ need not necessarily reflect this ‘‘sinful’’ side by their interests rather than their official statuses. In of human nature’ (1990, p. 174). Arendt’s vision of principle, such an economy is able to effectively public life as central to a moral community shares produce and circulate goods on the basis of prices much with a republican tradition that deplores the rather than government direction. Civil society has modern decline of the public sphere—generally as- been equally important to advocates of democracy sociated with the rise of particular interests at the because it signifies the capacity of citizens to create expense of concern for the general good, the de- amongst themselves the associations necessary to terioration of rational public discourse about public bring new issues to the public agenda, to defend both affairs, or outright disengagement of citizens from civil and human rights, and to provide for an effective politics (see Public Sphere: Nineteenth- and Twentieth- collective voice in the political process. This involves century History). Republican accounts of the both a free press and political mobilization on the public sphere place a strong emphasis on the moral basis of parties and interest groups (see Cohen and obligations of the good citizen; recent scholarship has Arato 1992 for the most detailed review; also Chand- often questioned whether citizens lived up to signifi- hoke 1995, Seligman 1992, Alexander 1998, Keane cantly higher standards in earlier eras (Schudson 1999). Habermas (1992, p. 367) summarizes the recent 1998). usage: ‘civil society is composed of those more or less spontaneously emergent associations, organizations, and movements that, attuned to how societal problems 5. Differentiation in the Public Sphere and CiŠil resonate in the private life spheres, distill and transmit Society such reactions in amplified form to the public sphere. The core of civil society comprises a network of Habermas’ account of the public sphere has been associations that institutionalizes problem-solving dis- enduringly influential (see Calhoun 1992). Its delayed courses on questions of general interest inside the translation into English in 1989 ironically contributed framework of organized public spheres.’ Habermas’ to an invigorating new reading shaped by both the fall work more generally, however, reveals this to be a of communism and widespread projects of privatiza- minimally theorized as well as optimistic usage. It tion in the West. Critics within communist societies highlights one aspect of civil society but does not make had revived the notion of civil society (as distinct from clear the most basic issue. simply ‘society’) in order to speak of the realm outside While part of the heritage of the idea of civil society state control and its relative absence in communist has been the effort to organize society through public societies. Likewise, transitions away from right-wing discourse, an equally influential part has been the dictatorships were often treated in terms of a ‘return of claim to privacy, the right to be left alone, the civil society’ (Perez-Diaz 1993). In the US, the idea of opportunity to enter into social relations free from civil society was linked not only to democracy but to governance by the state or even the public. The idea of reliance on voluntary organizations and philanthropy business corporations as autonomous creatures of (Powell and Clemens 1998, Putnam 2000). private contract and private property thus reflects the What civil society signifies in contemporary political heritage of civil society arguments as much as the idea analysis is the organization of social life on the basis of of a public sphere in which citizens joined in rational- interpersonal relationships, group formation, and critical argument to determine the nature of their lives systems of exchange linking people beyond the range together. Civil society refers to the domains in which of intimate family relations and without reliance on social life is self-organizing, that is, in which it is not direction by the government. As a number of scholars subject to direction by the state. But this self-organiza- of Africa have noted, it incorporates an unfortunate tion can be a matter of system function or of conscious understanding of family privacy that underestimates collective choice through the public sphere (Calhoun the positive and supraprivate social roles that African 2001). kin organizations can play (see essays in Harbeson et Habermas’ account of the public sphere drew a al. 1994). Even more basically, references to civil variety of important critical responses. One of the first society often fail to distinguish adequately between focused on the extent to which he focused on the systemic capitalist economic organization and much bourgeois public sphere and correspondingly neglect- more voluntary creation of social organization ed nonbourgeois public life and failed to clarify some through the formation of civic associations, interest of the conditions built into the bourgeois ideal. Negt groups, and the like—a distinction Habermas has and Kluge (1972) responded with an account of the 1901 CiŠil Society\Public Sphere: History of the Concept proletarian public sphere. Clearly, workers have at See also: Citizenship and Public Policy; Civil Society, many points built their own institutions, media, and Concept and History of; Democracy; Individual\ networks of communication, and entered into con- Society: History of the Concept; Public Good, The: tention with bourgeois elites and other groups over the Cultural Concerns; Public Sphere: Nineteenth- and collective good. But if this is a discursive competi- Twentieth-century History; State, History of tion—that is, if workers and bourgeois argue over what constitutes the collective good rather than only fighting about it—then this implies an encompassing Bibliography public sphere, albeit an internally differentiated one. Alexander J C 1998 Real CiŠil Societies: Dilemmas of Institu- Nancy Fraser (1992) has influentially emphasized tionalization. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA the importance of ‘subaltern counterpublics’ such as Arendt H 1951 The Origins of Totalitarianism. Harcourt Brace, those framed by race, class, or gender. Some pub- New York lics—even very partial ones—may claim to represent Arendt H 1958 The Human Condition. University of Chicago the whole; others oppose dominant discursive patterns Press, Chicago and still others are neutral. Not all publics that are Arendt H 1972 Crises of the Republic. Harcourt Brace distinguished from the putative whole are subaltern. Jovanovich, New York As Michael Warner (2001) has suggested, the de- Arendt H 1990 On ReŠolution. Penguin, New York Blumer H 1948 Public opinion and public opinion polling. ployment of claims on an unmarked public as the American Sociological ReŠiew 13: 542–54 public sphere is also a strategy, generally a strategy of Calhoun C (ed.) 1992 Habermas and the Public Sphere. MIT the powerful. Yet, it is important to keep in mind both Press, Cambridge, MA that the existence of counterpublics as such presup- Calhoun C 1993 Civil society and public sphere. Public Culture poses a mutual engagement in some larger public 5: 267–80 sphere and that the segmentation of a distinct public Calhoun C 1999 Nationalism, political community, and the from the unmarked larger public may be a result of representation of society: Or, why feeling at home is not a exclusion, not choice. Feminist scholars especially have substitute for public space. 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Ohio State University the state and usually beyond the realm of family. The Press, Columbus, OH basic question posed by theories of the public sphere is Elshtain J B 1993 PriŠate Man, Public Woman. Princeton to what extent collective discourse can determine the University Press, Princeton, NJ conditions of this social life. Contemporary research Ferguson A 1767 Essay on the History of CiŠil Society. on civil society and the public sphere turns on the Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, NJ breadth of political participation, the extent to which Fraser N 1992 Rethinking the public sphere: a contribution to capitalist markets limit other dimensions of self- the critique of actually existing democracy. In: Calhoun C organization in civil society, the existence of multiple (ed.) Habermas and the Public Sphere. 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Harvard University Press, salvation-historical perspective of monotheistic re- Cambridge, MA ligious discourse, in which successive events are taken Tocqueville A de 1840\1844\1961 Democracy in America. Scho- for prefigurations and accomplishments of each other; cken, New York, Vol. 2 (b) in terms of the regnal succession of world-empires; Toennies F 1922\2000 Kritik der oW ffentlichen Meinung; selections (c) in the genre of regnal succession, which started with translated. In: Hardt H, Splichal S (eds.) Ferdinand Toennies the Babylonian king-lists and the earliest stages of on Public Opinion. Rowman and Littlefield, London, pp. Chinese historical writing, and culminated in medieval 117–210 Arabic historical writing. Not even the schema of state Warner M 2001 Public and Counterpublics. Zone Books, cycles evolved by the celebrated Ibn Khaldun Cambridge, MA Young I M 2000 Inclusion and Democracy. Oxford University (d. 1406), where civilization (‘umraV n) was quasi- Press, Oxford, UK sociologically identified with various organizational forms of human habitation and sociality, could mean- C. Calhoun ingfully escape from this finite repertoire of possible historical conceptions. In the perspective of typology, the continuity of historical phenomena was expressed in the repetition Civilization, Concept and History of of prophecies successively reaffirming divine intent and inaugurating a final form of order whose telos The concept of civilization is inextricably connected would be the end of time. Thus the Jewish prophets with the conditions of its emergence, most notably repeat each other and are all figures for Abraham; with the rise of historical consciousness in Europe in Jesus is at once the repetition and termination of this the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as the unique cycle of terrestrial time and is prefigured in globalisation of this form of historical understanding Jewish prophecies; Muhammad is the final accom- and correlative forms of intellectual practice. The plishment and the consummation of earlier prophetic concept is complex and imprecise in its definition, but revelations, prefigured in Jewish and Christian scrip- ubiquitous in its uses, and inextricably imbricated with tures; his era inaugurates the consummation of time other categories by which historical materials are with the Apocalypse. The structure of time in the organized, such as culture, nation, and race. Apart Talmud, in the Christian writings of Eusebius (d. 339), 1903 Copyright # 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences ISBN: 0-08-043076-7