ABSTRACT
The claim that civil society is of universal application is controversial because for many scholars and activists alike the concept is seen as a product of Western political thought with little explanatory power in non-Western contexts. Thus, studies on civil society ‘arrived’ late in the Arab world because it was believed that such concepts simply did not apply to the region, which had a historical, political and social development vastly different from the Western European one. This problem, however, can be resolved in terms of three important and connected developments. First of all, if one examines the Arab world in historical perspective, it emerges that, for instance, the period of state formation presented the opportunity for civil society actors to be influential in the region (Pratt, 2007). While no one questions that Western countries and the Arab world experienced very different modes of development, this should not obscure the fact that there are also a number of shared experiences which make the application of the concept less controversial; the colonial experience being a crucial one. Second, a closer examination of both Arab political thinking and history reveals that ‘Arabs have a long tradition of associative life that both is non-state and transcends Western notions of the family’ (Browers, 2006: 19). Thus, the concept of civil society has been taken up with a certain degree of gusto by a number of Arab thinkers and political activists, who, over time, have argued, from different points of view, that civil society, properly translated, is not and has never been an alien concept either in Arab political thinking or Arab social reality. Finally, the concept has, by now, fully entered the political landscape and is widely used to defend and promote different political projects, including the Islamist one. The entry of civil society (al-mujtama al-madani) into everyday political language is a phenomenon that further reinforces its applicability to the region, particularly because it has shifted the ‘focus in discussions of democratization from the state to society’ (Browers, 2006: 19). However, the argument that the category of civil society has, in some way, been ‘exported’ to the Arab world might suggest that there is no corresponding concept in Arab political thinking. This, in the view of some Arab scholars, at least, might not be true. In any case, what is most significant is that, whether indigenous or imported through translation, the concept is very much part of Arab reality. This does not mean
that Arab scholars and political activists have reached a consensus on the meaning of civil society and its normative significance. The concept is as essentially contested as it is in the West and can serve the purposes of ideological projects that are not only different, but contradictory. Therefore, it is inevitable that there exist very different approaches to the study of civil society in the Arab world. This has led to the publication of a number of recent studies, both general and country-specific, that contributed to renewing interest for the topic.
