ABSTRACT
A growing discontent with civil society theory is evident among scholars: discontent with the ideas and underlying assumptions about what constitutes civil society, what structures should be considered parts of it, and what roles it should play in society and politics. Some scholars focus on “resistance” as the salient characteristic of civil society and credit it, for instance, with an important role in the fall of Eastern European authoritarian regimes.2 Others focus on its ability to build community and even tout it as a panacea for failures of development policy at institutions like the World Bank. Perhaps this dissatisfaction is most evident in scholarship on non-Western areas, particularly Third World countries in Asia and elsewhere. For many scholars of such places, the Western liberal foundations of civil society theory are less attractive, and are less likely to be supported by empirical observation, than might be the case for those studying Europe or the United States. They have therefore undertaken attempts to rework and extend this theory. In response to my own similar discontent with the status of civil society thought, I argue in this chapter for new ways both to theorize and to conduct research on this topic, taking into account the shortcomings of the Western-centric approaches in use today. In such approaches, civil society is commonly seen as comprising independent associations, autonomous from the state. In the next section of this chapter I argue that this theorization fails to capture the richness of civil society activity, particularly in non-Western societies under authoritarian regimes. Therefore I argue that we must base this concept not on social structures such as voluntary groups and independent associations, but rather on particular roles and relationships that constitute a behavioral realm; in other words, defining civil society activities. The consequence of this reconceptualization is to broaden the range of empirical phenomena under consideration. It opens the possibility of finding civil society activity within organizations that are closely connected to – or are even a part of – the state itself. This approach accepts the inherent messiness of the world, and the difficulty in drawing clear boundaries between “state” and “society,” or between “dependent” and “autonomous” entities. The third section describes how Vietnam is an inhospitable legal and political setting for the formation of autonomous organizations, and highlights why the
functional approach is more useful in this case. It presents three examples from my research on local NGOs in Vietnam (VNGOs), showing how they are colonized by the state, which itself is colonized by the personnel and ideas from these organizations. Though autonomy can be an important factor in relations with the state, civil society may still have a voice through entities with comparatively little autonomy, as these examples demonstrate. As mentioned above, my argument flows from my fieldwork among local Vietnamese NGOs in 2003-2004, and particularly from two contradictory facts that confronted me at every turn. The first was the insistence of standard theories that organizations must be independent of the state if they are to carry out advocacy and resistance. The second was that virtually no organization in Vietnam can legally exist without some form of state sanction and oversight. At the very least, they must go through a registration procedure to operate legally. This contradiction has led many in the international aid and diplomatic communities to hold the opinion (which I heard frequently expressed) that there simply is no civil society in Vietnam. However, that conclusion fails to explain the kinds of advocacy, social commentary, social services, and even the rare, quiet demonstrations that take place outside of the state sphere in Vietnam. I characterize all of these activities as things that civil society undertakes. In researching VNGOs, I therefore came to the conclusion that even without structural or legal autonomy, these groups can nonetheless engage in civil society activity.
