Civil Society at the Millennium

By Marcus Akuhata-Brown

This book is key to developing a clearer understanding of the role of civil society as a legitimate actor in public life. It examines civil society's role in the context of: governance, youth... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1565491017
• ISBN13: 9781565491014
• Release Date: September 1999
• Publisher: Kumarian Press
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 6.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.5" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

An important contribution to the literature on civil society

This book makes two important fresh contributions to the current debates on the role of civil society. Firstly, it makes the important distinction between the universe of all associational life and civil society. Put differently, all civil society organisations are part of associational life but not all associations are necessarily part of the civil society family. The authors suggest that organisations that are "uncivil" such as those that espouse racism, ethnic intolerance and religious intolerance while enjoying the identity of associations in terms of national laws, they exclude themselves from the family of civil society organisations, by virtue of pursuing interests that are against the public good. The second new contribution this book makes is to celebrate the distinctive location of the citizen (used in a non-legalistic manner) as the basic building block of civil society. Most of the current literature focuses mainly on organisations and do not explore the contribution of informal social networks and the actions of citizens who are not within organisations.Furthermore the wide-ranging themes of the book, help give the introductory reader to the subject a good overall sense to the achievements of civil society organisations over the last millennium and anticipate some of the challenges that await in the forthcoming millennium.I loved it!!!