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Uneven development and civil society in Western and Eastern Europe
Geoforum, Vol. 20, No. 2, pp. I%-159,1989 Printed in Great Britain
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0016-7185/89 $3.00+0.00 1989 Pergamon Press plc
Uneven Development and Civil Society in Western and Eastern Europe
MARK
GOODWIN,*
London,
U.K.
Abstract: This paper examines the concept civil society to see if it can help us to understand those social processes lying outside the realms of economy and state. It suggests that, despite increasing popularity, the use of the concept is hampered by conflicting and ambiguous meanings. This paper attempts to straighten these out, by looking at both analytical and political uses of the term. The analytical is examined with reference to recent developments in urban and regional studies in Britain, where the term has been increasingly, but rather unsuccessfully, used to conceptualise processes usually categorised under the labels of ‘community’, ‘culture’ or ‘consumption’. The political use of the term is examined with reference to recent events in Poland, where the concept has been applied to the emergence of independent self-governing social organisations lying outside the traditional state apparatus. Finally this paper attempts to move towards a synthesis between the two uses, by examining the ways in which each can inform the other.
After more than a century of neglect, the old topic of civil society and the state is again becoming a vital theme in European politics and social theory (KEANE, 1988, p. 1).
1. Introduction
Since the end of the 1970s the concept ‘civil society’ has been increasingly employed within urban and regional studies [see, for example, COOKE (1983a, 1985), SHAPIRO (1985), URRY (1981, 1985a, b) and WARDE (1985)]. A parallel renaissance has taken place within political theory, which has in turn informed political activity, especially in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately these developments have remained separate, and urban and regional research seems largely ignorant of the concept’s political use. Such ignorance has meant that, despite the increasing recognition of the importance of the concept civil society, its use is hampered by “a plethora of confused
* Department of Geography, Goldsmith’s College, University of London, Lewisham Way, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, U.K.
meanings and conflicting usages” (KEANE, 13).
1988, p.
Part of this confusion stems from two distinct uses in the work of GRAMSCI (1971), who revitalised and transformed the concept in the early twentieth century. These separate uses are not always recognised, but need to be made explicit. They are: (a) analytical (where civil society is used conceptually to interpret and explain existing relations between social processes), and (b) political (where the term is used as a central plank in formulating a practical political strategy). Both current interpretations stem from this distinction. Its current vogue in urban and regional research owes much to the work of John Urry, and in particular to his book The Anatomy of CapitalistSocieties, where he draws heavily on the analytical usage of the concept by Gramsci. Its current political usage also relies on Gramsci, whose reformulation of the relationship between the state and civil society has been used by theorists in Eastern Europe to promote an alternative vision of a civil society. This vision directly opposes the current situation where civil society is closely controlled by the state. Part of the confusion also stems from the long history
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152 of the concept, and even within each of these two uses there exist multiple ambiguities as “few social and political concepts have travelled so far in their life and changed their meaning so much” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 363). This paper will attempt to straighten out some of these ambiguities by exploring both of these main uses-the analytical with reference to recent developments in urban and regional studies in Britain, and the political with reference to events in Eastern Europe and especially Poland over the past decade. In sorting out some of the confusion surrounding the concept, this paper will also explore whether the analytical and political uses of the term can help inform each other, and whether the two together can be woven into a social theory which incorporates the notion of uneven development.
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‘new historical triangle’, this time conceptualised as capitalist profit, state power and human experience (CASTELLS, 1983, p. 311). DICKENS (1985, p. 7) reviewing the use of place-specific studies in urban and regional research, chooses to divide these into three categories-those of economic, political and cultural relations. John Short also divides his study of The Urban Arena (1984) into three separate sections, and John on capital, state and community; Mollenkopf uses a similar description of the ‘third realm’, when arguing for an understanding of urban development based around the three concepts of and community accumulation, government (MOLLENKOPF, 1981).
URRY (1981, p. 31) characterises civil society “as that set of social practices outside the state and outside the relations and forces of production”, and thus follows the crucial insight of GRAMSCI (1971, p. 208) that “between the economic structure and the state . . . stands civil society”. Although URRY (1981, p. 154) admits that his largely theoretical work provides only “the barest outline of an approach which enables us to theorise the role of class and popular struggle within capitalist relations”, the idea of civil society has been enthusiastically taken up in urban and regional studies. The obvious danger is that this abstract concept will be applied in all manner of different ways, and will thus lose its critical edge in a diffusion of meanings.
Unfortunately, this confusion over terminology parallels a much greater confusion concerning the actual study of the practices and relations of what Urry calls ‘civil society’. It easy to agree with COOKE’s (1987, pp. 73-74) claim that research on uneven urban and regional development is itself unevenly developed, “tending for the moment to be more advanced with respect to production, than say, cultural issues”. Indeed, Marxist informed studies of production and industrial restructuring now form a reasonably coherent body of work, which has greatly enhanced our understanding of uneven economic development [see, for example, MARTIN and ROWTHORN (1986), MASSEY (1984) MORGAN and SAYER (1988) and SCOTT and STORPER (1986)]. This coherence does not come from overall agreement about particular issues, but from a common acceptance of key conceptual notions derived from the legacy of Marxian political economy.
A key reason for the swift application of Urry’s ‘bare outline’ lies in the paucity and confusion of existing conceptualisations of this real of social practice. For although a three-fold conceptualisation of society is now commonplace, its constituent elements may be characterised as ‘economy’, ‘state’ and ‘something else’. This third realm, lying outside the economic relations of production and the political relations of the state has been variously labelled ‘ideology’, ‘experience’, ‘culture’ and ‘community’. Civil society thus represents only the latest concept in a long line of attempts to understand this ‘diverse realm’.
Studies of social or cultural relations, rather than of production, have no such coherence and, importantly, no such legacy. This has meant that, although social theory has increasingly recognised the centrality of a focus which looks at the connections between social relations and spatial structures [see GREGORY and URRY (1985)], these new studies have concentrated on the uneven development of social relations within the economy and the state [see Duncan (this volume) for a review]. The uneven development of civil society has received far less attention,
CASTELLS (1977)) following Althusser, helped mark the boundaries of the ‘new urban sociology’ by analytically separating society into three ‘theoretical levels’-the economic, the political and the ideological. More recently, however, he has written of a
To rectify this is more than a matter of simply correcting an omission. It is also to point out that the uneven development of societies cannot be understood as a matter of capitalist production and state intervention alone-however central these two
2. Spatial Divisions of Civil Society
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processes might be. Some concept of civil society is vital to an adequate analysis of geographical variations in social structures and practice. Thus, recent research on the geography of manufacturing in Britain has pointed to the importance of female labour reserves in accounting for the dramatic locational changes that have occurred since the 1950s (MASSEY, 1984). But the uneven development of these reserves was not simply a matter of the level and nature of pre-existing economic activity, or the distribution of government grants. It was also a result of the uneven and changing nature of gender roles within the family, as constituted in civil society. Our own work on the development of specific forms of local politics confirms the importance of recognising the uneven development of civil society as a central cause of social change (DUNCAN and GOODWIN, 1988). When trying to account for the existence of exceptional forms of local politics it is tempting to see the local economy as a crucial factor, for it is apparent that work plays a crucial role in constructing and defining local political attitudes, while the spatial division of labour has allocated both work and workers in a particular way. The Left has been especially ready to link radicalism at work to radicalism in local politics. One instructive example is SKINNER and LANGDON’s (1974) account of Clay Cross Council’s now episodic refusal to implement the Conservative Government’s 1971 Housing Finance Act. They initially state that: “as the history of Clay Cross is tied up so inextricably with the mining industry, it is not so surprising to find that the development of political awareness there came through the growth of trade union militancy in the pits” (SKINNER and LANGDON, 1974, p. 13). But later they are forced to admit that the matter is not quite so simple. Spatially distinct patterns of production will always be combined with, and mediated through, spatially distinct social practices arising in civil society. Thus Skinner and Langdon themselves point out that it was not until the 1950s that industrial militancy was channelled into life outside the pits. Only in 1948 had nationalisation of the coal industry ended the industrial and political control of the town by the paternalistic Jackson family, and “also brought to an end the feelings of a ‘family’ community which the Jacksons had striven so hard to foster” (SKINNER and LANGDON, 1974, p. 15). The moribund local Labour Party was revived in the late 1950s and neatly filled the political space vacated by the decline of the Jackson family. From 1959 until local government
reorganisation in 1974 it won every seat it contested on Clay Cross Council, a political dominance that provided the base for implementing radical policies. But as Skinner and Langdon’s account makes clear it was a base built on the social relations of the community as well as on those of the work-force. Only when the former were changed could those generated in the latter be transformed into political control and action. In other coal-mining villages different cultural and political relations had different effects. In many Nottinghamshire pit communities for instance, paternalism was replicated successfully after nationalisation in 1948, helping to create a ‘moderate’ political culture in both workplace and council chamber [see REES (1986)]. The importance of an analysis which combines consideration of the spatial divisions of labour, civil society and the state, is no less evident today. In Britain, many of the local government challenges to the Conservative central administration of 1979-1987 came from places where manufacturing employment had collapsed, and where the labour organisations of the male working class have been in decline. This has been especially marked in London, where the radicalism of the ‘new urban left’ [see GYFORD (1985)] has been based on a coalition between whitecollar unions and ‘civil’ organisations built up outside work to represent various social groupings within civil society. Other detailed research confirms the importance of civil society in mediating the actions and effects of both the local economy and the local structures of the state [see DUNCAN and GOODWIN (1988, pp. 83-89) for examples]. Urban and regional research thus needs to remember that spatial divisions of labour, and of the state, combine with spatial divisions of civil society to produce particular outcomes in particular places. The concept of civil society helps us to understand the development of these particular social structures and practices, and helps avoid a simple slide into economism where economic relations determine other sets of social practices. Some of those working in the urban and regional field have recognised this, and it is to a consideration of their work that we now turn.
3. Civil Society and Urban Regional Research in Britain
As we noted earlier, URRY (1981, 1985a, b) was amongst the first to apply the concept of civil society
154 to urban and regional research, using Gramsci’s notion that civil society stands between the economy and the state. According to Urry within this sphere individual subjects are constituted through a whole plethora of social practices. These range “from family relations to commodity markets, from trade union organisations to religious bodies”-but are crucially always outside the capitalist relations of production and of the state (URRY, 1981, p. 31). According to Urry this constitution presupposes the actions of individual subjects in three realms-in the sphere of circulation directly; in the biological, cultural and economic reproduction of labour-power; and in the social struggles which necessarily result. Having delineated civil society “as a realm of practices where . . . individual subjectivities are constituted and reproduced” (URRY, 1981, p. 69)) he goes on to examine the main ways in which this realm is structured. Initially he gives five “main dimensions of structuration”. These are, in descending order of importance, the spatial organisation of labour and residence; the sexual division of labour; religious/ ethnic/racial allocation of subjects; differentiation of subjects into various organisations, associations, parties and institutions; and the generational allocation of subjects (URRY, 1981, p. 70). In a later work these are refined and extended into the seven “relevant dimensions” through which “civil societies can be characterised” (URRY, 1985, p. 39). These are:
(1) the
degree to which the existing built environment can be transformed; (2) the degree to which the social relations of civil society are integrated into the wider capitalist economy; (3) the degree to which these social relations are more generally based on the ‘local’ community, rather than on commodity relations or the state; (4) the degree to which there is a heterogeneity of class experiences; (5) the degree of spatial concentration of different classes or other social forces; (6) the. degree to which civil society is vertically organised, where the diverse groupings are classspecific; (7) the degree to which civil societies are long established. We have here a very detailed delineation of civil society, and of the main ‘dimensions’ which constitute it. It is a delineation which combines fundamental
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insights from both Marx and Gramsci, without slavishly following either. Theoretically it forms one part of a conceptualisation of capitalist society which, because it allows a central role to struggle and agency, and to the plethora of non-workplace relations, is a significant improvement on the rather functionalist and reductionist interpretations of society that Marxism had hitherto specialised in producing. Our key question is whether these abstract theoretical insights can be of use in guiding, helping and interpreting the much more messy process of empirical research. Somewhat surprisingly, given this theoretical detail, Urry himself is far from successful at transferring the concept from abstract to empirical research. In fact in the attempt he only succeeds in confusing the issue. In his study of the effects of deindustrialisation on social struggles, he initially follows his own guidelines when he writes that “the analysis of the formal economy cannot provide an adequate understanding of the likely patterns of contemporary politics” (URRY, 1985b, p. 22). However, he then goes on to claim that this is because it lacks a study of “an absolutely central dimension, namely, the characteristic social relations within and between households (what elsewhere I term ‘civil society’)” (ibid.). Although the article is concerned to examine the effects of deindustrialisation on the household, this seems no good reason to reduce the multifarious activities of civil society to those of the household. Indeed, Urry spends a major part of the article discussing the changing nature of local social struggles, but, although these are a key aspect of civil society in his theoretical work, the concept is conspicuous by its absence-aside from the reference to households. Urry proceeds to make the same reduction elsewhere, only this time in a discussion of urban change-“The important linkages within the city are those which pass through the household, through civil society, not through the private or public enterprises located within that area” (URRY, 1985a, p. 35). He goes on to speak of the home as the “cell-form of civil society” (ibid., p. 40). All this seems to overemphasise the role of households within civil society-which is after all characterised by its diversity and the heterogeneity of its social bases. At best Urry is “misleading in suggesting that all forms of civil society are built up from combinations of these units” (SHAPIRO, 1985, p. 83). At worst, the conflation between households and civil society leads to more serious difficulties. After point-
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ing out how the important urban linkages are those between households, Urry goes on to say that because economic linkages extend across urban boundaries, “cities are to be viewed as relatively independent labour pools, each comprised of a large number of separately producing households” (URRY, 1985a, p. 35). This reasoning is then extended, and justified, through recourse to his abstract theoretical arguments. Hence, urban areas “are now integrated not within the production process of capital but of wagelabour within the spheres of civil society” (ibid.). The city thus becomes reduced to the site of labour’s reproduction. As GOTTDIENER (1987, p. 414) remarks: “This reduction wraps urban political economy back into the conceptual straightjacket of collective consumption theory”. Not only is this an “unoriginal and obsolete view of contemporary sociospatial change”, but it also repeats one of the very mistakes of previous urban and regional research which the concept of civil society should help us avoid-that of reducing very complex social processes to a rigid and confusing abstraction. After criticising Urry for his ‘overidentification’ of civil society with household, SHAPIRO (1985, p. 85) goes on to try and use Urry’s “model” to cast light on studies of peripheral development in North Scotland. He follows Urry to the extent of stating that “At a minimum, principal entities (of study) should include forms of division of labour, civil society, and the state” (SHAPIRO, 1985, p. 88). But then in his own ‘schema’ for understanding development in the North of Scotland he immediately extends this minimum by considering the historical and current division of labour, local capital, local state, gender relations in the division of labour and in reproduction, civil society and agencies of reproduction, and civil society, household and locality (SHAPIRO, 1985, pp. 88-95). As with Urry, immediately empirical research begins the three conceptual spheres are swapped for more manageable categories which can be empirically handled and studied ‘on the ground’as can ‘household’, for instance. In Shapiro’s case the three spheres become eight entities. A third recent attempt to use the concept of civil society has been made by WARDE (1985). In his effort to understand the rise and fall of spatially concentrated political practices, he correctly argues that we need to extend Massey’s analysis of the spatial division of labour to include aspects of social and political relations. As he notes: . , . even those who consider reproduction important take
155 almost no notice of variations among social institutions of civil society which produce labour power . . . Yet there are considerable temporal and spatial variations in the conditions under which labour power is produced, and different sets of social arrangements appear to have pertinent political effects (WARDE, 1985, p. 199). So far so good. He then goes on to extend the analysis using “four mechanisms . . . which have been employed to explain excessive spatial effects: class struggle over the labour process, labour markets, collective consumption and reproductive practices in civil society” (WARDE, 1985, p. 201). Whilst these may look reasonable concepts to employ at first sight, on closer inspection they are quite muddled and only serve to confuse conceptu~isation. For a start, when discussing them in more detail WARDE (1985, p. 207) employs the first three terms as originally set out, but changes the latter to ‘civil society and household organisation”. The reason why reproductive practices are suddenly equated with household organisation is never made clear, and of course there are many reproductive practices within civil society which take place outside the home. Secondly Warde only mentions civil society in the context of reproductive practices/household organisation, yet as URRY (1985b, p. 409) is at pains to point out, social struggles and consumption are two of the key practices of civil society, and as COOKE (1983a, p. 192) notes the local labour market is one of the most important bases of collective identification within civil society. It would be better to conceptualize all four processes as part of civil society, which would enable the links between them, and production, and the state to be more easily traced. Such slippage would not be so important if the concept was not already so confused and unsure in its usage. WARDE (1985, p. 209) himself makes the vital point that “How the struggles over production and consumption mesh together remains problematic: the ‘combination rules’ are still unwritten”. They are likely to remain so, however, as long as high-order concepts such as civil society are equated with terms such as labour process struggles, labour markets, collective consumption, household organisation and reproductive practices. Civil society, as conceptualised by Urry, actually contains all of these processes, and should not only by invoked in a rather confused discussion of the latter two. This only serves to confuse instead of clarify, and begs the question of why the concept is used at all. COOKE (1983a) appears to have taken up the ideas of Urry and Gramsci with most clarity, especially in
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relation to the links between civil society and other spheres of social activity. In a substantial contribution to urban and regional theory Cooke argues persuasively for the analytical separation of state, economy and civil society. Following Gramsci and Urry, he situates civil society between the state and the economy, and stresses its importance as the sphere of a whole multitude of diverse strugglesover class issues, over reproduction demands and over popular protest (COOKE, 1983a, pp. 180-205). He goes on to make the important point that it is the very heterogeneity of civil society, and the plurality of struggles which result, which is crucial in specifying the distinctiveness of the local, as opposed to the central state. He then uses this distinction to help understand the local state’s role in planning, a process deeply affected by the nature of civil society in each of its three realms+irculation, reproduction and struggle. Cooke therefore uses Urry’s analytical framework to interpret the variety of struggles and conflicts which occur throughout the planning and development process, especially at the local level. But although Cooke tracesthis interpretation, his analysis tends to stay at a fairly general level. Details of the actual connections between the three spheres still remain very murky. In effect Cooke has switched the threefold conceptualisation from social theory as a whole, to ‘Theories of Planning and Spatial Development’ (the title of his book). The subject matter of the analysis may have changed, but the theoretical level remains largely unaltered. It is thus especially notable that in his own empirical work Cooke largely resists using this conceptualisation. It is present in a general manner in his earlier work on regional restructuring in South Wales (COOKE, 1983b), but in his more detailed research on radical regions (COOKE, 1983c, 1985) it is conspicuous by its absence. His “analytical framework for studying and comparing the geography of class relations” (COOKE, 1985, p. 222) is not one of three spheres, but instead consists of “five threads”-a region’s productive base, labour process, ownership of capital, specific social relations and institutional specificities. Even though his task here is a very specific one, “explaining distinctive socio-spatial formations” (ibid.), it seems significant that he should move away from his more general conceptualisation of social practices when examining particular events. It is obviously necessary to use some intermediate concepts which help translate the more abstract theory into an understanding of empirical events. Perhaps it is correct to split an analysis of the economy
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into research on the productive base, the labour process and the ownership of capital, but why mix the whole of civil society and the state up into just two “threads”specific social relations and institutional specificities (whatever they may be!)? Like Shapiro and Warde, Cooke uses an arbitrary set of concepts which bear no relationship to Urry’s framework. Are we to infer from this that civil society is a useful concept for analysing planning and development, but of no use when looking at the formation of “sociospatial diversity” (ibid.)? Moreover, when interpreting empirical events how do we choose between the salience of Urry’s seven ‘dimensions’ of civil society (plus six ‘forms’ of the spatial division of labour), Cooke’s five ‘threads’, or Shapiro’s eight ‘entities’? Can the concept be of use in urban and regional research, when its application is so muddled? Should we instead struggle on with concepts such as collective consumption, culture, ideology, community, housing class and urban manager? The problem is partly one of trying to sort out the relationship between general theoretical concepts and specific objects of study, and the relative importance of different ‘explanans’ is dependent on what the ‘explanandum’ is [see SAYER (1984)]. But as we shall see, it is also one of finding the most helpful general concepts in the first place. We will now examine the recent ‘political’ uses of the concept civil society, to see if these can help our search for a suitable analytical framework.
4. Civil Society and Political Practice in Eastern Europe
The concept of civil society has been most applied in its political sense in Eastern Europe, and the strategy of ‘restructuring a civil society’ has been the main issue in Hungarian, Czech and Polish politics since the 1970s (MORGAN, 1988). Although intellectual discusion of its political use is perhaps most advanced in Hungary (ibid.), it is in Poland that the concept has had its most direct practical application. Indeed events in that country since the mid 1970s have been characterised as “the rebirth of civil society”, and diverse opposition groups share a common perspective in viewing their struggles as “civil society against the state” (ARATO, 1981, pp. 23-24). This political separation of ‘civil society against the state’ was initially posited by Gramsci, to distinguish two spheres of society lying outside the economy. In opposition to the simple dichotomy between
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economic society (production) and political society (state), he distinguished a third realm lying between the two which he labelled civil society. This was crucial in a political sense, for his analysis pointed to two forms of political struggle within Western democracies. In the first, the bourgeoisie held full domination, through their control of both the means of production and the apparatus of the state, making revolutionary success difficult. But the second form of struggle, that within civil society, offered the chance of promoting socialism through a slow ‘war of position’-in which the working class could gradually undermine the bourgeoisie’s position in the social practices of civil society through promoting alternatives in realms such as culture, values, education and ideology. Gramsci described this struggle for moral, intellectual and cultural influence as a battle for ‘hegemony’. Somewhat ironically, within Europe this schema has not provided a viable course of political action in the West, although the Scandinavian social democracies may be a partial exception. Instead, it is in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, that Gramsci’s model seems most relevant. Here the all-embracing organisations of the state have controlled both political and economic life, making the promotion of alternatives all but impossible. As ARATO (1982, p. 23) points out, “In Poland neither a non-existent independent economy nor the state could generate social independence.” Hence oppositional movements have had to be developed outside the institutions of the totalitarian state, within civil society. Moreover their very existence has led to the creation of a new realm of civil society, based on social and institutional innovations (in the practice of Polish society) such as freedom of assembly, press and speech; right to association; right to strike; and the formation of a plurality of interest groups. However, these “individual rights and freedoms were seen as necessary presuppositions of collective rights rather than, as in the West, being tied to private property” (ibid.). Thus, instead of expressing interests between competing individuals, Polish demands for civil society were based on volbntary solidarity within a plurality of organisations and institutions. These new social groupings gradually challenged the hegenomy of the Party, and a “sort of non-Marxist socialist ideology or popular political culture . . . became dominant in Poland in the 1970s” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 367). Thus by the beginning of the 198Os, whilst the Communist Party’s domination of the state and economy was still intact, its
157 hegemony in the realm of culture and ideology was seriously undermined. However, the existence of an alternative civil society was not yet complete, since the: score of intellectual groups organising petitions, bibiishing samizdat leaflets, periodicals and books, holding academic seminars and occasional discussions with the workers, and producing reports on ‘the state of the republic’ owed their existence to the laxity of party control, the relative toleration of the security police apparatus and a degree of judicial independence, not to an infrastructure of genuinely autonomous social regulations (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 368).
The development of a realm of independent social organisation activity and pressure came with the rise of the Solidarity movement in 1980, and “with its
amazing popularity and rapid growth, the Gramscian framework began to make better sense” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 369). There was now a powerful, organised and self-governing social movement, whose “aims and activities reflected the wishes and interests of its members, not those of the party leaders” (ibid.). As Jacek Kuron, the most radical intellectual organiser of Poland’s opposition put it “Solidarity has brought about a new level of independence of civil society” (ARATO, 1981, p. 34). Gramsci’s abstract opposition of ‘state versus civil society’ was captured in Poland by the emergence of a new ‘historic bloc’, that of Solidarity within civil society, to challenge the Communist party ‘bloc’ entrenched within the economic political and military apparatus of the country. For a variety of reasons, mainly military and economic, this “independent civil society could not be stabilised under Polish conditions” (ARATO, 1982, p. 26). Its development was effectively halted by a military coup, the introduction of martial law and the imprisonment of thousands of Solidarity members in December 1981 [see ARATO (1981, 1982) and PELCZYNSKI (1988) for detailed analyses of the rise and fall of Solidarity with regard to the concept of civil society]. Despite this defeat, ARATO (1982, p. 23) contends that in Poland “civil society began to re-invent itself in forms extremely relevant for the democratisation of Western social life”. By this he means that Solidarity’s rise as an autonomous, selforganising social movement offers an example to those advocating democratic self-management in the West. The differences between, and relevance of, political movements in East and West Europe has exercised political theorists since the events of 1917 in Russia and need not concern us here. But what we do
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5. Concluding
Comments
Despite the problems of application referred to in Section 3, the approach to the concept civil society should be one of development rather than rejection. In theoretical terms the notion is more useful than the tangled mixture of unconnected concepts that urban and regional research has usually relied upon. The task is to apply the concept correctly through carefully constructing a ‘framework for understanding’. In the words of HARVEY (1982, pp. 45w51), “We cannot, by (theory), hope to explain everything there is, nor even procure a full understanding of singular events. These are not the task which theory should address. The aim is, rather, to create frameworks for understanding, an elaborated conceptual apparatus, with which to grasp the most significant relationships at work within the intricate dynamics of social transformation”. Can the political use of the concept society help this aim? We noted earlier that we can, and indeed must, use the idea of a ‘spatial division of civil society’ in order to analyse how complex social relations interact at the local level. But we need, like Cooke, Shapiro and Warde, to extend Urry’s abstract conceptualisation through the use of some intermediate levels of analysis. Thus we cannot jump straight from economy, or even spatial divisions of labour, to empirical research. We need notions such as the labour process, the concentration of capital, Fordism, flexible accumulation, technological transfers etc. to help us make sense of how the ‘economy’, or ‘accumulation’ is actually constituted spatially. Likewise we need this intermediate level of analysis to help apply the concept of civil society. Of course, the range of concepts and notions used will depend upon the specific object of study. Research on gender will need different concepts from that on race, and studies of the geography of religion will proceed differently from those on the geography of educational opportunity. The point is not to lay down any particular concepts that necessarily must be used, but to recognise that the abstract concept of civil society allows the integration of a whole range of studies into a wider ‘framework of understanding’. The main importance of the political use of the concept is that it shows how in practice civil society must be understood above all else as a sphere of various
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autonomous (from the state and from the economy) organisations and activities. It must be seen as more than just the site where individual subjectivities are reproduced (as Urry postulates), for this happens equally in the state and the economy. And crucially, it shows that civil society must be viewed as more than a collection of households. (Even if this does make empirical research harder!) Thus, we must resist the trend for civil society to be reduced in concrete research to the ‘household’-in practice any spatially constituted civil society includes a whole range of social structures and processes. Household relations may be more or less important in any particular place (this is a matter for concrete research), but they will always be tempered by other social structures, groupings and relations. Certainly in Poland, household relations were far less important in governing the development of civil society than those operating elsewhere. Social relations emerging through local Solidarity groups, local strike committees, the institutions of the Catholic Church, and a myriad of discussion groups were much more crucial than those of the ‘household’ or ‘family’. Similarly, we also need to resist the temptation to follow Urry (and Marx) too closely in reducing civil society to the individual end of the circuit of capital. Again, although the circulation of capital is important it is economic to derive civil society wholly from this-as it will be affected by various modes of kinship, gender, ethnicity and religion, and shaped by different forms of struggle aside from those concerning wage and market relations. Thus in Poland Solidarity found its strength mainly as a moraYreligious crusade, and often its “members and leaders . . . thought primarily . . . of the struggle of good against evil” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 372). The importance of this independent growth of an alternative ideology and culture cannot be denied, and shows that civil society is often held together by shared values just as much as by shared experiences. This if civil society is seen as a diverse realm of activity and “independent social organisation, pressure” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 368) rather than as a collection of households, it does offer a framework for understanding that elusive ‘third realm’ of social relations and activities which are not structured primarily by the economy or the state. Moreover the concept is essential for analytically separating this diverse realm of social practices from those of production, and for preventing urban and regional studies being stranded somewhere between economism and spatial determinism. As such, use of
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the term not only helps to analyse and understand a whole range of social activity, but also helps to counter the current, lopsided anatomy of urban and regional research. The next stage, however, is to generate intermediate concepts which can link the directional concept civil society to concrete empirical research.
GOTTDIENER,
M. (1987) Space as a force of production,
Znt. J. urban Reg. Res. 405-416. GYFORD, J. (1985) The Politics of Local Socialism.
George Allen & Unwin, London. HARVEY, D. (1982) The Limits to Capital. Blackwell, Oxford. KEANE, J. (1988) Introduction, In: Civil Society and the State, J. Keane (Ed.). MASSEY, D. (1984) Spatial Division of Labour. Macmillan, London. MARTIN, R. and ROWTHORN, B. (1986) The Geography of Deindustrialisation. Macmillan, London. References MOLLENKOPF, J. (1981) Community and accumulation, In: Urbanisation and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society, M. Dear and A. Scott (Eds). Methuen, London. ARATO, A. (1981) Civil society against the state: Poland MORGAN, K. and SAYER, A. (1988) Microcircuits of 1980-81, Telos, 47. Capital. Polity Press, London. ARATO, A. (1982) Empire vs civil society: Poland 1981- MORGAN, R. (1988) Echoes of empire, Times Higher 82, Telos, 50. Educ. Suppl., 24 June. CASTELLS, M. (1977) The Urban Question. Arnold, PELCZYNSKI, Z. (1988) Solidarity and the rebirth of civil London. society, In: Civil Society and the State, J. Keane (Ed.), CASTELLS, M. (1983) The City and the Grassroots. pp. 361-380. Verso, London. Arnold, London. REES, G. (1986) “Coalfield & culture” and the 1984-5 COOKE, P. (1983a) Theories of Planning and Spatial miners strike; a reply to Sunley, Sot. Space, 4,469-476. Development. Hutchinson. SAYER, A. (1984) Method in Social Science; a Realistic COOKE, P. (1983b:) Regional restructuring, class politics Approach. Hutchinson, London. and popular protest in South Wales, Sot. Space, 1, SCOTT, A. and STORPER, M. (1986) Production, Work 265-280. and Territory. Allen & Unwin, London. COOKE, P. (1983~) Radical regions? Space, time and SHAPIRO, D. (1985) Explaining peripheral change, In: gender relations in Emililia, Provence and South Wales, Localities, Class and Gender, L. Murgatroyd et al. (Eds). BSA Conference Paper. Pion, London. COOKE, P. (1985) Class practices as regional markers; a SHORT, J. (1984) The Urban Arena. Macmillan, London. contribution to labour geography, In: Social Relations SKINNER, D. and LANGDON, J. (1984) The Story of and Spatial Structures, D. Gregory and J. Urry (Eds). Clay Cross. Spokesman Books, Nottingham. Macmillan, London. URRY, J. (1981) The Anatomy of Capitalist Societies. COOKE, P. (1987) Clinical inference and geographic Macmillan, London. theory, Antipode, 19,69-78. URRY, J. (1982) Some themes in the analysis of the DICKENS, P. (1985) Industrial restructuring, social anatomy of contemporary society, Acta sociologica, 25, change and “locale”; a review and a research-agenda, 405418. ISA Conference Paper. URRY, J. (1985a) Social relations, space and time, In: DUNCAN, S. (1988) What is locality? In: New Models in Social Relations and Spatial Structures, D. Gregory and J. Geography, R. Peet and N. Thrift (Eds). Allen & Unwin. Urry (Eds). Macmillan, London. DUNCAN, S. and GOODWIN, M. (1988) TheLocalStute URRY, J. (1985b) Deindustrialisation, households and and Uneven Development. Polity Press, London. politics, In: Localities, Class and Gender, L. Murgatroyd GRAMSCI, A. (1971) Selections from the Prison et al. (Eds). Pion, London. Notebooks. Lawrence & Wishart, London. WARDE, A. (1985) Spatial changes, politics and the diviGREGORY, D. and URRY, J. (Eds) (1985) Social Relasion of labour, In: Social Relations and Spatial Structures, tions and Spatial Structures. Macmillan, London. D. Gregory and J. Urry (Eds). Macmillan, London.
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0016-7185/89 $3.00+0.00 1989 Pergamon Press plc
Uneven Development and Civil Society in Western and Eastern Europe
MARK
GOODWIN,*
London,
U.K.
Abstract: This paper examines the concept civil society to see if it can help us to understand those social processes lying outside the realms of economy and state. It suggests that, despite increasing popularity, the use of the concept is hampered by conflicting and ambiguous meanings. This paper attempts to straighten these out, by looking at both analytical and political uses of the term. The analytical is examined with reference to recent developments in urban and regional studies in Britain, where the term has been increasingly, but rather unsuccessfully, used to conceptualise processes usually categorised under the labels of ‘community’, ‘culture’ or ‘consumption’. The political use of the term is examined with reference to recent events in Poland, where the concept has been applied to the emergence of independent self-governing social organisations lying outside the traditional state apparatus. Finally this paper attempts to move towards a synthesis between the two uses, by examining the ways in which each can inform the other.
After more than a century of neglect, the old topic of civil society and the state is again becoming a vital theme in European politics and social theory (KEANE, 1988, p. 1).
1. Introduction
Since the end of the 1970s the concept ‘civil society’ has been increasingly employed within urban and regional studies [see, for example, COOKE (1983a, 1985), SHAPIRO (1985), URRY (1981, 1985a, b) and WARDE (1985)]. A parallel renaissance has taken place within political theory, which has in turn informed political activity, especially in Eastern Europe. Unfortunately these developments have remained separate, and urban and regional research seems largely ignorant of the concept’s political use. Such ignorance has meant that, despite the increasing recognition of the importance of the concept civil society, its use is hampered by “a plethora of confused
* Department of Geography, Goldsmith’s College, University of London, Lewisham Way, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, U.K.
meanings and conflicting usages” (KEANE, 13).
1988, p.
Part of this confusion stems from two distinct uses in the work of GRAMSCI (1971), who revitalised and transformed the concept in the early twentieth century. These separate uses are not always recognised, but need to be made explicit. They are: (a) analytical (where civil society is used conceptually to interpret and explain existing relations between social processes), and (b) political (where the term is used as a central plank in formulating a practical political strategy). Both current interpretations stem from this distinction. Its current vogue in urban and regional research owes much to the work of John Urry, and in particular to his book The Anatomy of CapitalistSocieties, where he draws heavily on the analytical usage of the concept by Gramsci. Its current political usage also relies on Gramsci, whose reformulation of the relationship between the state and civil society has been used by theorists in Eastern Europe to promote an alternative vision of a civil society. This vision directly opposes the current situation where civil society is closely controlled by the state. Part of the confusion also stems from the long history
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152 of the concept, and even within each of these two uses there exist multiple ambiguities as “few social and political concepts have travelled so far in their life and changed their meaning so much” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 363). This paper will attempt to straighten out some of these ambiguities by exploring both of these main uses-the analytical with reference to recent developments in urban and regional studies in Britain, and the political with reference to events in Eastern Europe and especially Poland over the past decade. In sorting out some of the confusion surrounding the concept, this paper will also explore whether the analytical and political uses of the term can help inform each other, and whether the two together can be woven into a social theory which incorporates the notion of uneven development.
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‘new historical triangle’, this time conceptualised as capitalist profit, state power and human experience (CASTELLS, 1983, p. 311). DICKENS (1985, p. 7) reviewing the use of place-specific studies in urban and regional research, chooses to divide these into three categories-those of economic, political and cultural relations. John Short also divides his study of The Urban Arena (1984) into three separate sections, and John on capital, state and community; Mollenkopf uses a similar description of the ‘third realm’, when arguing for an understanding of urban development based around the three concepts of and community accumulation, government (MOLLENKOPF, 1981).
URRY (1981, p. 31) characterises civil society “as that set of social practices outside the state and outside the relations and forces of production”, and thus follows the crucial insight of GRAMSCI (1971, p. 208) that “between the economic structure and the state . . . stands civil society”. Although URRY (1981, p. 154) admits that his largely theoretical work provides only “the barest outline of an approach which enables us to theorise the role of class and popular struggle within capitalist relations”, the idea of civil society has been enthusiastically taken up in urban and regional studies. The obvious danger is that this abstract concept will be applied in all manner of different ways, and will thus lose its critical edge in a diffusion of meanings.
Unfortunately, this confusion over terminology parallels a much greater confusion concerning the actual study of the practices and relations of what Urry calls ‘civil society’. It easy to agree with COOKE’s (1987, pp. 73-74) claim that research on uneven urban and regional development is itself unevenly developed, “tending for the moment to be more advanced with respect to production, than say, cultural issues”. Indeed, Marxist informed studies of production and industrial restructuring now form a reasonably coherent body of work, which has greatly enhanced our understanding of uneven economic development [see, for example, MARTIN and ROWTHORN (1986), MASSEY (1984) MORGAN and SAYER (1988) and SCOTT and STORPER (1986)]. This coherence does not come from overall agreement about particular issues, but from a common acceptance of key conceptual notions derived from the legacy of Marxian political economy.
A key reason for the swift application of Urry’s ‘bare outline’ lies in the paucity and confusion of existing conceptualisations of this real of social practice. For although a three-fold conceptualisation of society is now commonplace, its constituent elements may be characterised as ‘economy’, ‘state’ and ‘something else’. This third realm, lying outside the economic relations of production and the political relations of the state has been variously labelled ‘ideology’, ‘experience’, ‘culture’ and ‘community’. Civil society thus represents only the latest concept in a long line of attempts to understand this ‘diverse realm’.
Studies of social or cultural relations, rather than of production, have no such coherence and, importantly, no such legacy. This has meant that, although social theory has increasingly recognised the centrality of a focus which looks at the connections between social relations and spatial structures [see GREGORY and URRY (1985)], these new studies have concentrated on the uneven development of social relations within the economy and the state [see Duncan (this volume) for a review]. The uneven development of civil society has received far less attention,
CASTELLS (1977)) following Althusser, helped mark the boundaries of the ‘new urban sociology’ by analytically separating society into three ‘theoretical levels’-the economic, the political and the ideological. More recently, however, he has written of a
To rectify this is more than a matter of simply correcting an omission. It is also to point out that the uneven development of societies cannot be understood as a matter of capitalist production and state intervention alone-however central these two
2. Spatial Divisions of Civil Society
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processes might be. Some concept of civil society is vital to an adequate analysis of geographical variations in social structures and practice. Thus, recent research on the geography of manufacturing in Britain has pointed to the importance of female labour reserves in accounting for the dramatic locational changes that have occurred since the 1950s (MASSEY, 1984). But the uneven development of these reserves was not simply a matter of the level and nature of pre-existing economic activity, or the distribution of government grants. It was also a result of the uneven and changing nature of gender roles within the family, as constituted in civil society. Our own work on the development of specific forms of local politics confirms the importance of recognising the uneven development of civil society as a central cause of social change (DUNCAN and GOODWIN, 1988). When trying to account for the existence of exceptional forms of local politics it is tempting to see the local economy as a crucial factor, for it is apparent that work plays a crucial role in constructing and defining local political attitudes, while the spatial division of labour has allocated both work and workers in a particular way. The Left has been especially ready to link radicalism at work to radicalism in local politics. One instructive example is SKINNER and LANGDON’s (1974) account of Clay Cross Council’s now episodic refusal to implement the Conservative Government’s 1971 Housing Finance Act. They initially state that: “as the history of Clay Cross is tied up so inextricably with the mining industry, it is not so surprising to find that the development of political awareness there came through the growth of trade union militancy in the pits” (SKINNER and LANGDON, 1974, p. 13). But later they are forced to admit that the matter is not quite so simple. Spatially distinct patterns of production will always be combined with, and mediated through, spatially distinct social practices arising in civil society. Thus Skinner and Langdon themselves point out that it was not until the 1950s that industrial militancy was channelled into life outside the pits. Only in 1948 had nationalisation of the coal industry ended the industrial and political control of the town by the paternalistic Jackson family, and “also brought to an end the feelings of a ‘family’ community which the Jacksons had striven so hard to foster” (SKINNER and LANGDON, 1974, p. 15). The moribund local Labour Party was revived in the late 1950s and neatly filled the political space vacated by the decline of the Jackson family. From 1959 until local government
reorganisation in 1974 it won every seat it contested on Clay Cross Council, a political dominance that provided the base for implementing radical policies. But as Skinner and Langdon’s account makes clear it was a base built on the social relations of the community as well as on those of the work-force. Only when the former were changed could those generated in the latter be transformed into political control and action. In other coal-mining villages different cultural and political relations had different effects. In many Nottinghamshire pit communities for instance, paternalism was replicated successfully after nationalisation in 1948, helping to create a ‘moderate’ political culture in both workplace and council chamber [see REES (1986)]. The importance of an analysis which combines consideration of the spatial divisions of labour, civil society and the state, is no less evident today. In Britain, many of the local government challenges to the Conservative central administration of 1979-1987 came from places where manufacturing employment had collapsed, and where the labour organisations of the male working class have been in decline. This has been especially marked in London, where the radicalism of the ‘new urban left’ [see GYFORD (1985)] has been based on a coalition between whitecollar unions and ‘civil’ organisations built up outside work to represent various social groupings within civil society. Other detailed research confirms the importance of civil society in mediating the actions and effects of both the local economy and the local structures of the state [see DUNCAN and GOODWIN (1988, pp. 83-89) for examples]. Urban and regional research thus needs to remember that spatial divisions of labour, and of the state, combine with spatial divisions of civil society to produce particular outcomes in particular places. The concept of civil society helps us to understand the development of these particular social structures and practices, and helps avoid a simple slide into economism where economic relations determine other sets of social practices. Some of those working in the urban and regional field have recognised this, and it is to a consideration of their work that we now turn.
3. Civil Society and Urban Regional Research in Britain
As we noted earlier, URRY (1981, 1985a, b) was amongst the first to apply the concept of civil society
154 to urban and regional research, using Gramsci’s notion that civil society stands between the economy and the state. According to Urry within this sphere individual subjects are constituted through a whole plethora of social practices. These range “from family relations to commodity markets, from trade union organisations to religious bodies”-but are crucially always outside the capitalist relations of production and of the state (URRY, 1981, p. 31). According to Urry this constitution presupposes the actions of individual subjects in three realms-in the sphere of circulation directly; in the biological, cultural and economic reproduction of labour-power; and in the social struggles which necessarily result. Having delineated civil society “as a realm of practices where . . . individual subjectivities are constituted and reproduced” (URRY, 1981, p. 69)) he goes on to examine the main ways in which this realm is structured. Initially he gives five “main dimensions of structuration”. These are, in descending order of importance, the spatial organisation of labour and residence; the sexual division of labour; religious/ ethnic/racial allocation of subjects; differentiation of subjects into various organisations, associations, parties and institutions; and the generational allocation of subjects (URRY, 1981, p. 70). In a later work these are refined and extended into the seven “relevant dimensions” through which “civil societies can be characterised” (URRY, 1985, p. 39). These are:
(1) the
degree to which the existing built environment can be transformed; (2) the degree to which the social relations of civil society are integrated into the wider capitalist economy; (3) the degree to which these social relations are more generally based on the ‘local’ community, rather than on commodity relations or the state; (4) the degree to which there is a heterogeneity of class experiences; (5) the degree of spatial concentration of different classes or other social forces; (6) the. degree to which civil society is vertically organised, where the diverse groupings are classspecific; (7) the degree to which civil societies are long established. We have here a very detailed delineation of civil society, and of the main ‘dimensions’ which constitute it. It is a delineation which combines fundamental
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insights from both Marx and Gramsci, without slavishly following either. Theoretically it forms one part of a conceptualisation of capitalist society which, because it allows a central role to struggle and agency, and to the plethora of non-workplace relations, is a significant improvement on the rather functionalist and reductionist interpretations of society that Marxism had hitherto specialised in producing. Our key question is whether these abstract theoretical insights can be of use in guiding, helping and interpreting the much more messy process of empirical research. Somewhat surprisingly, given this theoretical detail, Urry himself is far from successful at transferring the concept from abstract to empirical research. In fact in the attempt he only succeeds in confusing the issue. In his study of the effects of deindustrialisation on social struggles, he initially follows his own guidelines when he writes that “the analysis of the formal economy cannot provide an adequate understanding of the likely patterns of contemporary politics” (URRY, 1985b, p. 22). However, he then goes on to claim that this is because it lacks a study of “an absolutely central dimension, namely, the characteristic social relations within and between households (what elsewhere I term ‘civil society’)” (ibid.). Although the article is concerned to examine the effects of deindustrialisation on the household, this seems no good reason to reduce the multifarious activities of civil society to those of the household. Indeed, Urry spends a major part of the article discussing the changing nature of local social struggles, but, although these are a key aspect of civil society in his theoretical work, the concept is conspicuous by its absence-aside from the reference to households. Urry proceeds to make the same reduction elsewhere, only this time in a discussion of urban change-“The important linkages within the city are those which pass through the household, through civil society, not through the private or public enterprises located within that area” (URRY, 1985a, p. 35). He goes on to speak of the home as the “cell-form of civil society” (ibid., p. 40). All this seems to overemphasise the role of households within civil society-which is after all characterised by its diversity and the heterogeneity of its social bases. At best Urry is “misleading in suggesting that all forms of civil society are built up from combinations of these units” (SHAPIRO, 1985, p. 83). At worst, the conflation between households and civil society leads to more serious difficulties. After point-
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ing out how the important urban linkages are those between households, Urry goes on to say that because economic linkages extend across urban boundaries, “cities are to be viewed as relatively independent labour pools, each comprised of a large number of separately producing households” (URRY, 1985a, p. 35). This reasoning is then extended, and justified, through recourse to his abstract theoretical arguments. Hence, urban areas “are now integrated not within the production process of capital but of wagelabour within the spheres of civil society” (ibid.). The city thus becomes reduced to the site of labour’s reproduction. As GOTTDIENER (1987, p. 414) remarks: “This reduction wraps urban political economy back into the conceptual straightjacket of collective consumption theory”. Not only is this an “unoriginal and obsolete view of contemporary sociospatial change”, but it also repeats one of the very mistakes of previous urban and regional research which the concept of civil society should help us avoid-that of reducing very complex social processes to a rigid and confusing abstraction. After criticising Urry for his ‘overidentification’ of civil society with household, SHAPIRO (1985, p. 85) goes on to try and use Urry’s “model” to cast light on studies of peripheral development in North Scotland. He follows Urry to the extent of stating that “At a minimum, principal entities (of study) should include forms of division of labour, civil society, and the state” (SHAPIRO, 1985, p. 88). But then in his own ‘schema’ for understanding development in the North of Scotland he immediately extends this minimum by considering the historical and current division of labour, local capital, local state, gender relations in the division of labour and in reproduction, civil society and agencies of reproduction, and civil society, household and locality (SHAPIRO, 1985, pp. 88-95). As with Urry, immediately empirical research begins the three conceptual spheres are swapped for more manageable categories which can be empirically handled and studied ‘on the ground’as can ‘household’, for instance. In Shapiro’s case the three spheres become eight entities. A third recent attempt to use the concept of civil society has been made by WARDE (1985). In his effort to understand the rise and fall of spatially concentrated political practices, he correctly argues that we need to extend Massey’s analysis of the spatial division of labour to include aspects of social and political relations. As he notes: . , . even those who consider reproduction important take
155 almost no notice of variations among social institutions of civil society which produce labour power . . . Yet there are considerable temporal and spatial variations in the conditions under which labour power is produced, and different sets of social arrangements appear to have pertinent political effects (WARDE, 1985, p. 199). So far so good. He then goes on to extend the analysis using “four mechanisms . . . which have been employed to explain excessive spatial effects: class struggle over the labour process, labour markets, collective consumption and reproductive practices in civil society” (WARDE, 1985, p. 201). Whilst these may look reasonable concepts to employ at first sight, on closer inspection they are quite muddled and only serve to confuse conceptu~isation. For a start, when discussing them in more detail WARDE (1985, p. 207) employs the first three terms as originally set out, but changes the latter to ‘civil society and household organisation”. The reason why reproductive practices are suddenly equated with household organisation is never made clear, and of course there are many reproductive practices within civil society which take place outside the home. Secondly Warde only mentions civil society in the context of reproductive practices/household organisation, yet as URRY (1985b, p. 409) is at pains to point out, social struggles and consumption are two of the key practices of civil society, and as COOKE (1983a, p. 192) notes the local labour market is one of the most important bases of collective identification within civil society. It would be better to conceptualize all four processes as part of civil society, which would enable the links between them, and production, and the state to be more easily traced. Such slippage would not be so important if the concept was not already so confused and unsure in its usage. WARDE (1985, p. 209) himself makes the vital point that “How the struggles over production and consumption mesh together remains problematic: the ‘combination rules’ are still unwritten”. They are likely to remain so, however, as long as high-order concepts such as civil society are equated with terms such as labour process struggles, labour markets, collective consumption, household organisation and reproductive practices. Civil society, as conceptualised by Urry, actually contains all of these processes, and should not only by invoked in a rather confused discussion of the latter two. This only serves to confuse instead of clarify, and begs the question of why the concept is used at all. COOKE (1983a) appears to have taken up the ideas of Urry and Gramsci with most clarity, especially in
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relation to the links between civil society and other spheres of social activity. In a substantial contribution to urban and regional theory Cooke argues persuasively for the analytical separation of state, economy and civil society. Following Gramsci and Urry, he situates civil society between the state and the economy, and stresses its importance as the sphere of a whole multitude of diverse strugglesover class issues, over reproduction demands and over popular protest (COOKE, 1983a, pp. 180-205). He goes on to make the important point that it is the very heterogeneity of civil society, and the plurality of struggles which result, which is crucial in specifying the distinctiveness of the local, as opposed to the central state. He then uses this distinction to help understand the local state’s role in planning, a process deeply affected by the nature of civil society in each of its three realms+irculation, reproduction and struggle. Cooke therefore uses Urry’s analytical framework to interpret the variety of struggles and conflicts which occur throughout the planning and development process, especially at the local level. But although Cooke tracesthis interpretation, his analysis tends to stay at a fairly general level. Details of the actual connections between the three spheres still remain very murky. In effect Cooke has switched the threefold conceptualisation from social theory as a whole, to ‘Theories of Planning and Spatial Development’ (the title of his book). The subject matter of the analysis may have changed, but the theoretical level remains largely unaltered. It is thus especially notable that in his own empirical work Cooke largely resists using this conceptualisation. It is present in a general manner in his earlier work on regional restructuring in South Wales (COOKE, 1983b), but in his more detailed research on radical regions (COOKE, 1983c, 1985) it is conspicuous by its absence. His “analytical framework for studying and comparing the geography of class relations” (COOKE, 1985, p. 222) is not one of three spheres, but instead consists of “five threads”-a region’s productive base, labour process, ownership of capital, specific social relations and institutional specificities. Even though his task here is a very specific one, “explaining distinctive socio-spatial formations” (ibid.), it seems significant that he should move away from his more general conceptualisation of social practices when examining particular events. It is obviously necessary to use some intermediate concepts which help translate the more abstract theory into an understanding of empirical events. Perhaps it is correct to split an analysis of the economy
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into research on the productive base, the labour process and the ownership of capital, but why mix the whole of civil society and the state up into just two “threads”specific social relations and institutional specificities (whatever they may be!)? Like Shapiro and Warde, Cooke uses an arbitrary set of concepts which bear no relationship to Urry’s framework. Are we to infer from this that civil society is a useful concept for analysing planning and development, but of no use when looking at the formation of “sociospatial diversity” (ibid.)? Moreover, when interpreting empirical events how do we choose between the salience of Urry’s seven ‘dimensions’ of civil society (plus six ‘forms’ of the spatial division of labour), Cooke’s five ‘threads’, or Shapiro’s eight ‘entities’? Can the concept be of use in urban and regional research, when its application is so muddled? Should we instead struggle on with concepts such as collective consumption, culture, ideology, community, housing class and urban manager? The problem is partly one of trying to sort out the relationship between general theoretical concepts and specific objects of study, and the relative importance of different ‘explanans’ is dependent on what the ‘explanandum’ is [see SAYER (1984)]. But as we shall see, it is also one of finding the most helpful general concepts in the first place. We will now examine the recent ‘political’ uses of the concept civil society, to see if these can help our search for a suitable analytical framework.
4. Civil Society and Political Practice in Eastern Europe
The concept of civil society has been most applied in its political sense in Eastern Europe, and the strategy of ‘restructuring a civil society’ has been the main issue in Hungarian, Czech and Polish politics since the 1970s (MORGAN, 1988). Although intellectual discusion of its political use is perhaps most advanced in Hungary (ibid.), it is in Poland that the concept has had its most direct practical application. Indeed events in that country since the mid 1970s have been characterised as “the rebirth of civil society”, and diverse opposition groups share a common perspective in viewing their struggles as “civil society against the state” (ARATO, 1981, pp. 23-24). This political separation of ‘civil society against the state’ was initially posited by Gramsci, to distinguish two spheres of society lying outside the economy. In opposition to the simple dichotomy between
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economic society (production) and political society (state), he distinguished a third realm lying between the two which he labelled civil society. This was crucial in a political sense, for his analysis pointed to two forms of political struggle within Western democracies. In the first, the bourgeoisie held full domination, through their control of both the means of production and the apparatus of the state, making revolutionary success difficult. But the second form of struggle, that within civil society, offered the chance of promoting socialism through a slow ‘war of position’-in which the working class could gradually undermine the bourgeoisie’s position in the social practices of civil society through promoting alternatives in realms such as culture, values, education and ideology. Gramsci described this struggle for moral, intellectual and cultural influence as a battle for ‘hegemony’. Somewhat ironically, within Europe this schema has not provided a viable course of political action in the West, although the Scandinavian social democracies may be a partial exception. Instead, it is in Eastern Europe, especially in Poland, that Gramsci’s model seems most relevant. Here the all-embracing organisations of the state have controlled both political and economic life, making the promotion of alternatives all but impossible. As ARATO (1982, p. 23) points out, “In Poland neither a non-existent independent economy nor the state could generate social independence.” Hence oppositional movements have had to be developed outside the institutions of the totalitarian state, within civil society. Moreover their very existence has led to the creation of a new realm of civil society, based on social and institutional innovations (in the practice of Polish society) such as freedom of assembly, press and speech; right to association; right to strike; and the formation of a plurality of interest groups. However, these “individual rights and freedoms were seen as necessary presuppositions of collective rights rather than, as in the West, being tied to private property” (ibid.). Thus, instead of expressing interests between competing individuals, Polish demands for civil society were based on volbntary solidarity within a plurality of organisations and institutions. These new social groupings gradually challenged the hegenomy of the Party, and a “sort of non-Marxist socialist ideology or popular political culture . . . became dominant in Poland in the 1970s” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 367). Thus by the beginning of the 198Os, whilst the Communist Party’s domination of the state and economy was still intact, its
157 hegemony in the realm of culture and ideology was seriously undermined. However, the existence of an alternative civil society was not yet complete, since the: score of intellectual groups organising petitions, bibiishing samizdat leaflets, periodicals and books, holding academic seminars and occasional discussions with the workers, and producing reports on ‘the state of the republic’ owed their existence to the laxity of party control, the relative toleration of the security police apparatus and a degree of judicial independence, not to an infrastructure of genuinely autonomous social regulations (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 368).
The development of a realm of independent social organisation activity and pressure came with the rise of the Solidarity movement in 1980, and “with its
amazing popularity and rapid growth, the Gramscian framework began to make better sense” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 369). There was now a powerful, organised and self-governing social movement, whose “aims and activities reflected the wishes and interests of its members, not those of the party leaders” (ibid.). As Jacek Kuron, the most radical intellectual organiser of Poland’s opposition put it “Solidarity has brought about a new level of independence of civil society” (ARATO, 1981, p. 34). Gramsci’s abstract opposition of ‘state versus civil society’ was captured in Poland by the emergence of a new ‘historic bloc’, that of Solidarity within civil society, to challenge the Communist party ‘bloc’ entrenched within the economic political and military apparatus of the country. For a variety of reasons, mainly military and economic, this “independent civil society could not be stabilised under Polish conditions” (ARATO, 1982, p. 26). Its development was effectively halted by a military coup, the introduction of martial law and the imprisonment of thousands of Solidarity members in December 1981 [see ARATO (1981, 1982) and PELCZYNSKI (1988) for detailed analyses of the rise and fall of Solidarity with regard to the concept of civil society]. Despite this defeat, ARATO (1982, p. 23) contends that in Poland “civil society began to re-invent itself in forms extremely relevant for the democratisation of Western social life”. By this he means that Solidarity’s rise as an autonomous, selforganising social movement offers an example to those advocating democratic self-management in the West. The differences between, and relevance of, political movements in East and West Europe has exercised political theorists since the events of 1917 in Russia and need not concern us here. But what we do
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5. Concluding
Comments
Despite the problems of application referred to in Section 3, the approach to the concept civil society should be one of development rather than rejection. In theoretical terms the notion is more useful than the tangled mixture of unconnected concepts that urban and regional research has usually relied upon. The task is to apply the concept correctly through carefully constructing a ‘framework for understanding’. In the words of HARVEY (1982, pp. 45w51), “We cannot, by (theory), hope to explain everything there is, nor even procure a full understanding of singular events. These are not the task which theory should address. The aim is, rather, to create frameworks for understanding, an elaborated conceptual apparatus, with which to grasp the most significant relationships at work within the intricate dynamics of social transformation”. Can the political use of the concept society help this aim? We noted earlier that we can, and indeed must, use the idea of a ‘spatial division of civil society’ in order to analyse how complex social relations interact at the local level. But we need, like Cooke, Shapiro and Warde, to extend Urry’s abstract conceptualisation through the use of some intermediate levels of analysis. Thus we cannot jump straight from economy, or even spatial divisions of labour, to empirical research. We need notions such as the labour process, the concentration of capital, Fordism, flexible accumulation, technological transfers etc. to help us make sense of how the ‘economy’, or ‘accumulation’ is actually constituted spatially. Likewise we need this intermediate level of analysis to help apply the concept of civil society. Of course, the range of concepts and notions used will depend upon the specific object of study. Research on gender will need different concepts from that on race, and studies of the geography of religion will proceed differently from those on the geography of educational opportunity. The point is not to lay down any particular concepts that necessarily must be used, but to recognise that the abstract concept of civil society allows the integration of a whole range of studies into a wider ‘framework of understanding’. The main importance of the political use of the concept is that it shows how in practice civil society must be understood above all else as a sphere of various
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autonomous (from the state and from the economy) organisations and activities. It must be seen as more than just the site where individual subjectivities are reproduced (as Urry postulates), for this happens equally in the state and the economy. And crucially, it shows that civil society must be viewed as more than a collection of households. (Even if this does make empirical research harder!) Thus, we must resist the trend for civil society to be reduced in concrete research to the ‘household’-in practice any spatially constituted civil society includes a whole range of social structures and processes. Household relations may be more or less important in any particular place (this is a matter for concrete research), but they will always be tempered by other social structures, groupings and relations. Certainly in Poland, household relations were far less important in governing the development of civil society than those operating elsewhere. Social relations emerging through local Solidarity groups, local strike committees, the institutions of the Catholic Church, and a myriad of discussion groups were much more crucial than those of the ‘household’ or ‘family’. Similarly, we also need to resist the temptation to follow Urry (and Marx) too closely in reducing civil society to the individual end of the circuit of capital. Again, although the circulation of capital is important it is economic to derive civil society wholly from this-as it will be affected by various modes of kinship, gender, ethnicity and religion, and shaped by different forms of struggle aside from those concerning wage and market relations. Thus in Poland Solidarity found its strength mainly as a moraYreligious crusade, and often its “members and leaders . . . thought primarily . . . of the struggle of good against evil” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 372). The importance of this independent growth of an alternative ideology and culture cannot be denied, and shows that civil society is often held together by shared values just as much as by shared experiences. This if civil society is seen as a diverse realm of activity and “independent social organisation, pressure” (PELCZYNSKI, 1988, p. 368) rather than as a collection of households, it does offer a framework for understanding that elusive ‘third realm’ of social relations and activities which are not structured primarily by the economy or the state. Moreover the concept is essential for analytically separating this diverse realm of social practices from those of production, and for preventing urban and regional studies being stranded somewhere between economism and spatial determinism. As such, use of
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the term not only helps to analyse and understand a whole range of social activity, but also helps to counter the current, lopsided anatomy of urban and regional research. The next stage, however, is to generate intermediate concepts which can link the directional concept civil society to concrete empirical research.
GOTTDIENER,
M. (1987) Space as a force of production,
Znt. J. urban Reg. Res. 405-416. GYFORD, J. (1985) The Politics of Local Socialism.
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