ABSTRACT

In anticipation of my imminent retirement from UCLA in 1996, my colleagues generously offered to organize a major conference on the theme of civil society. Though much debated by philosophers and political scientists, civil society was still a relatively unfamiliar term in the planning lexicon. As planners, we were more comfortable with references to “community,” and some critics were wondering why it was necessary to replace a familiar vocabulary with a faddish new expression. Of course, in the sense of associational life, civil society was not a particularly new idea, having been noted already by de Tocqueville (1969) as a unique feature of American life in the early 19th century. Had it been merely a code word for civic associations of this kind, such as the Rotary Club or the Community Chest, perhaps a new vocabulary would not have been needed. What was distinctive in the contemporary use of civil society was a shift from a sociological terminology already assimilated into the language of planning to a term in political economy. For in its newly coined meaning, civil society referred primarily to the social mobilization of citizens for political ends.