ABSTRACT
We have, since the 1980s, witnessed alongside the resurgence of civil society, a somewhat uncritical celebration of the concept to such an extent that it has become a consensual concept. But when concepts become consensual they become problematic. Indeed, if a variety of dissimilar groups such as international funding agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and institutions of the state on the one hand, and left-leaning liberals, trade unions, and social movements on the other, subscribe equally to the validity of the concept, it is time to worry. It is time to worry for if groups who should otherwise be disagreeing on the concept come to agree on it, the concept must have been flattened out to such an alarming extent that it loses its credibility. In other words, the concept of civil society may have, through consensus, become slack.
