ABSTRACT
It is easy to dismiss without much ado the idea of civil society under an authoritarian regime such as China, or to suggest that the concept of civil society is so deeply entrenched in Western political thought and historical experience that it can have no place in analyses of Asian or African societies. On the first count, such a glib dismissal would fail to reveal or explain the gradual opening up of spaces for more autonomous organizing and expression in reform since the 1980s, despite the fact that the Chinese polity remains essentially authoritarian, albeit somewhat liberalized. The second dismissal would be to give way to a cultural and historical essentialism that impedes the investigation of multiple forms of organizing in pursuit of shared values, norms and meanings. The concepts of civil society, state, society and economy are never fixed and static; indeed, it is their fluidity, their complex layers of meaning, and the politics of their appropriation or otherwise that make them interesting. As abstract ideal-types that do not pretend to correspond neatly to reality, they offer vital analytic tools for critical enquiry into processes of social and political change.
