Skip to content
BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter March 20, 2012

The “revival” of civil society in Central Eastern Europe: New environmental and political movements

  • Davide Torsello EMAIL logo
From the journal Human Affairs

Abstract

The idea of civil society is one of the oldest and most contested in Western political and sociological thought. Among the social sciences, anthropology has been the discipline that has prompted the boldest critiques of the concept. This paper argues that the “revival” of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe in one particular field—that of environmental activism—has been contingent with the outcomes of EU enlargement policies. I introduce the case study of one of the most complex and contested transport development projects in Central Eastern Europe: the Budapest Ring Road. I maintain that within the EU enlargement project alternative forms of political power have been built from below and that they eventually come to compete with the state (and local governments) to influence decision-making processes. These forms, to be individuated in the emergence of environmental activism, take shape at local, state and transnational levels and aim, although often contradictorily, at restituting political agency under the condition of lowering public participation in decision-making processes.

[1] Anheier, H. K., Priller, E., Zimmer, A. (2000). Civil Society in Transition: The East German Sector after Unification. East European Politics and Society 15(1), 139–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/088832540101500100810.1177/0888325401015001008Search in Google Scholar

[2] Badescu, G., Sum, P., Uslaner, E. M. (2004). Civil Society and Democratic Values in Romania and Moldova. East European Politics and Societies 18, 316–41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/088832540325991510.1177/0888325403259915Search in Google Scholar

[3] Comaroff, J. L., Comaroff, J. (1999). Civil Society and the Political Imagination in Africa: Critical Perspectives. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Search in Google Scholar

[4] Gellner, E. (1994). The Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals. Allen Lane: Penguin Press. Search in Google Scholar

[5] Goody, J. (2001). Civil Society in an Extra-European Perspective. In S. Kaviraj, S. Khilnani (Eds.). Civil Society: History and Possibilities, pp. 149–64. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Search in Google Scholar

[6] Hann, C. M, Dunn, E. (Eds.). (1996). Civil Society. Challenging Western Models. London: Routledge. Search in Google Scholar

[7] Hardt, M. (1995). The Withering of Civil Society. Social Text 45, 27–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/46667310.2307/466673Search in Google Scholar

[8] Hearn, J. (2001). Taking Liberties: Contesting Visions of the Civil Society Project. Critique of Anthropology 21(40), 339–60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308275X010210040110.1177/0308275X0102100401Search in Google Scholar

[9] Howard, M. M. (2003). The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-communist Europe. Cambridge: CUP. 10.1017/CBO9780511840012Search in Google Scholar

[10] Junghans, T. (2001). Marketing Selves: Constructing Civil Society and Selfhood in Post-socialist Hungary. Critique of Anthropology 21, 383–400. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0308275X010210040310.1177/0308275X0102100403Search in Google Scholar

[11] Kaneff, D. (2004). Who Own the Past? The Politics of Time in a ‘Model’ Bulgarian Village. Oxford: Berghahn. Search in Google Scholar

[12] Katz, S. N. (2002). Constitutionalism, Contestation and Civil Society. Common Knowledge 8, 287–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/0961754X-8-2-28710.1215/0961754X-8-2-287Search in Google Scholar

[13] Keane, J. (1998). Civil Society: Old Images, New Visions. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Search in Google Scholar

[14] Keane, J. (2003). Global Civil Society? Cambridge: CUP. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO978051161502310.1017/CBO9780511615023Search in Google Scholar

[15] Peters, D. (2005). How Different Spatial Contexts Result in Different Sustainability Discourses—A Discursive Analysis of the Budapest Ring Road. European Spatial Research and Policy 12, 69–88. Search in Google Scholar

[16] Pine, F. (2002). Retreat to the Household? Gendered Domains in Postsocialist Poland. In C. M. Hann (Ed.). Postsocialism. Ideas, Ideologies and Practices in Eurasia, pp. 95–113. London and New York: Routledge. Search in Google Scholar

[17] Tarrow, S., Petrova, T. (2006). Transactional and Participatory Activism in the Emerging European Polity. The Puzzle of East-Central Europe. Comparative Political Studies 20, 1–21. Search in Google Scholar

[18] Torsello, D. (2008). Trust, Kinship and Civil Society in a Slovakian Village. Sociologia — Slovak Review of Sociology 40, 514–29. Search in Google Scholar

[19] Torsello, D. (2012). The New Environmentalism? Civil Society and Corruption in the Enlarged EU. Farnham, UK: Ashgate. Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2012-3-20
Published in Print: 2012-4-1

© 2012 Institute for Research in Social Communication, Slovak Academy of Sciences

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Downloaded on 28.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.2478/s13374-012-0016-1/html
Scroll to top button