The concept of civil society has lately become fashionable in political as well as scientificcontexts. This article critically discusses the 'politics of truth' in A Persistent Democracy!, thefinal report of the Swedish Commission on Democracy. The argument in the article is that thereport over-stresses the importance of civil society and the role of individual responsibilitiesand initiatives against public arrangements and interventions, referred to in the report as statepaternalism. The report is making specific 'technologies of government' visible, as it is creatingcitizens as primarily 'moral human beings'. The problem with strategies to 'roll back theState' for the benefit of a civil society of this kind, is that they necessarily open up for inequalitiesand conflicts in-built in civil society. To deepen democracy presupposes a continuouslong-term struggle for changing predominant power structures and unequal distributionsof vital resources, material and non-material. In this perspective, the report of the Swedish Commission on Democracy does not offer an adequate answer to challenging questions forthe future of a vitalized Swedish democracy. ; Reprint ur Statsvetenskaplig Tidskrift 2000 (http://www.statsvetenskapligtidskrift.se/section.asp?id=552)
The organization of civil society The three societal spheres state, market and civil society are compared from an organizational perspective. A state is a certain kind of organization with compulsory affiliation. The state is an empirical category that is fairly easy to describe. A market is made up of the interaction of several organizations in exchange. Most actors on a market are people acting on behalf of organizations. Also states are present in markets buying arms for example, or as employers on the labour market. There are several kinds of organization mentioned in connection with civil society such as voluntary associations, social movements and networks. It is concluded that the organizations of civil society are not very persistent. Moreover the notion of civil society is not more incompatible with the state than with other organizational arrangements. As a conclusion it is argued that it is more relevant to understand social processes in terms of types of organization that in terms of states, markets and civil society. ; Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv
[The late-Soviet social mobilization: the neformaly movement during the perestroika]The late-Soviet social mobilization was characterized by a mass grassroots organization of groups with numerous ideological orientations and political preferences. One of the significant influences came in the form of the informal or neformaly movement. Since 1987 the term is usually associated with socially oriented and political groups (from democrats to anarchists, from monarchists to social-democrats) that cooperated with each other in a broad spectrum of (often apolitical) initiatives in education, culture, environmental protection, sports, etc. They distanced themselves from the state and state-affiliated structures as well as from the new "democratic leaders" emerging from the old party elites. They relied upon horizontal organizational processes and aimed to saturate existing political structures with a new democratic content. Aleksandr Šubin's article describes the process of how the neformaly movement became a driving force for the establishment of political pluralism and the foundation of civil society in Russia.Publication history: Published original.(Published 8 February 2017)Citation: Šubin, Aleksandr V. (2017) "Den sensovjetiska sociala mobiliseringen: neformaly-rörelsen under perestrojkan", in Från perestrojka till Bolotnaja. Utvecklingen av ett ryskt civilsamhälle, special issue of Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, issue 7, pp. 27–55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.7.1 ; Den sensovjetiska sociala mobiliseringen karakteriserades av omfattande gräsrotsorganisering av grupper med olika ideologiska inriktningar och politiska preferenser. En av de mest inflytelserika miljöerna var den informella rörelsen, eller neformaly-rörelsen, som bestod av sociala och politiska grupper (med allt från demokrater till anarkister, monarkister till socialdemokrater) som samarbetade med varandra inom ett brett spektrum av initiativ inom utbildning, kultur, miljöskydd, idrott etc. De distanserade sig både från staten och andra officiella sammanhang, och från de nya "demokratiska ledarna" som kom från de gamla partieliterna. De skapade horisontella organisationsprocesser och syftade till att mätta de existerande politiska strukturerna med ett nytt demokratiskt innehåll. Aleksandr Šubins artikel beskriver hur den informella rörelsen etablerades som en drivande kraft för utvecklingen av politisk pluralism och lade grunden för det civila samhället i Ryssland.Publiceringshistorik: Originalpublicering.(Publicerad 8 februari 2017)Förslag på källangivelse: Šubin, Aleksandr V. (2017) "Den sensovjetiska sociala mobiliseringen: neformaly-rörelsen under perestrojkan", i Från perestrojka till Bolotnaja. Utvecklingen av ett ryskt civilsamhälle, specialnummer av Arkiv. Tidskrift för samhällsanalys, nr 7, s. 27–55. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.7.1
Societal spheres in the light of history A division of society into statecraft, economy, and civil society is found in Plato's Republic. Its theoretical base is the differentiated and sometimes contradictory norms for these spheres. The mainstream of European structuration is traced from the 'two swords' - state and church - that structured western European society in the Middle Ages to the six societal spheres (or cardinal institutions) of society - the economy, government, science, religion, ethics, and art - that are visible today. Each maintain a large measure of independence (Weber's Eigengesetzlichkeit). Each is dependent on a special type of freedom: civic liberties, free trade, academic freedom, religious toleration, the right to follow one's conscience, artistic license. The paper pauses in this differentiation process at special junctures: the English revolution, the emergence of the Latin American and North American societies, the evolution of modem society as an underpinning of democracy, the emergence of the European Union, and the post-Communist Central and Eastern Europe. ; Sociologisk Forsknings digitala arkiv
The aim of the study is twofold. First, to provide a picture of what happens when groups of citizens cooperate with municipalities and administrations to produce services essential to the community, i.e., elderly care or road maintenance. Second, to compare this picture with the picture of citizens' involvement that the civil society theories describe. This is done by comparing four different cooperation projects. The empirical material has been gathered through four qualitative case studies – two elderly care cases and two road maintenance cases – and the analytical frame has been drawn mostly from organization theory, especially the resource dependence and the institutional perspectives. In the dissertation it is shown that in the projects with less complications the processes developed in a way that balanced, to some extent, the asymmetry in the dependence relation, i.e., the resources controlled by the groups became more interesting for the administrations and municipalities. These processes did also develop in a way that made it possible for the actors to come to an agreement of what problem the project was supposed to solve. These findings covariates with how interested the municipalities and the Road Administration organizations were to participate in the cooperation projects. It also covariates with the use of institutionalized cooperation forms. The short cut of an already defined and legitimated cooperation form implied that less transaction resources had to be invested in the cooperation itself – but as a result the actors did not communicate sufficiently and therefore did not develop a mutual understanding and trust. Another finding is that both the groups and the municipalities and administrations had pragmatic motives for their involvement in the cooperation projects, which led to an organizational form that was effective for the purpose of solving the identified problem with the elderly care/road maintenance, but not for the unintended consequences described by the civil society theories. As the group of citizens really involved was small, the consequences – greater solidarity and responsibility, and a decentralized democratic process, only comprised a few, mostly resourceful, citizens. Finally, the study shows that the groups' contributions to the democratic process were limited by their involvement in actually solving the problem in question, i.e., to build and run an elderly home or to work with the improvement of the roads. The findings suggests that the picture of citizens' involvement often put forward in the political debate in Sweden – as both a complement to the service provided by the public sector and a way to improve the democratic process – ought to be the subject of further research.
It may be challenging to see how illegal hunting, a crime that ostensibly proceeds as shoot, shovel and shut up in remote rural communities, at all communicates with the regime. Examining the socio-legal interplay between hunters and state regulation, however, clarifies illegal hunting to be part of a politically motivated pattern of dissent that signals hunters' disenfranchisement from the polity. While few contemporary illegal hunters cut conscientious figures like Robin Hood, their violation of illegitimate law may likewise testify to a profound disjuncture between legality and legitimacy. This is the premise taken in the following research. Here it is observed contemporary Swedish hunters experience the deliberative system pertaining to wildlife and wolf conservation to be systematically stacked against them and unable to serve as a site for critical law-making that provides equal uptake of all voices. One manifestation of their growing disenfranchisement is the establishment of a counterpublic mobilised on the basis of shared semantics for the sorts of deliberative deficits they argue befall them in the present. Within the remit of their counterpublic, hunters undertake and justify illegal hunting along with other forms of disengaging dissent like abstentions, non-compliance, boycotts and conscientious refusals with state agencies. The research captures hunters' dissent in Smith's deliberative disobedience, a deliberative and Habermasian grounded reinterpretation of the more familiar classical theory of civil disobedience. On this perspective, illegal hunting signals a deficit in the deliberative system, which hunters both bypass by taking an alternative conduit for contestation, and draw attention to when they undertake dissent. The dissent in this case study is deconstructed in terms of its grammar—as simultaneously engaging and disengaging with the premises of power—and in terms of its communicative content. Set within the field of Environmental Communication, the dissertation is intended as an empirical and theoretical contribution to a discussion on the boundaries of political dialogue in the context of civic disenfranchisement: it asks whether some of hunters' dissent may be parsed as a call for a more inclusive debate, or as dialogic acts in themselves. Finally, it presents ways toward short-term and longer-term reconciliation of hunters with the deliberative system, drawing on the work of contestatory citizen mini-publics from the third wave of deliberative democracy.
Bergslagen in south-central Sweden is an informal region with a long history of intensive land use. The legacies of than 2000 years of integrated use of ore, forests and water major national and international economic importance now involve several challenges for the maintenance of landscapes. This includes sustainability of rural and urban communities, of green infrastructures for natural capital and human well-being as well as of forests, river basins and mining. In response to this cross-sectoral integration necessary at multiple levels of public, private and civil as well as academia and schools. Landscapes need thus to be viewed as integrated socio-ecological systems. Collaboration and continuous learning among actors and stakeholders are needed for sustainable use and management of landscapes' goods, services and values. To support this requires (1) data, monitoring and assessment of different aspects of sustainability, (2) continuous knowledge production about material and immaterial landscape values relevant for the management of ecological, economic, social and cultural dimensions, (3) information and communication using both traditional media, as well as (4) through art and culture. the vision to contribute to satisfying these requirements Sustainable Bergslagen initiative emerged gradually since 2004 as a multi-level partnership for sustainable landscapes (www.bergslagen.org). By joining the International Model Forest Network (IMFN), and the network for Long Term Socio-Economic and Ecological Research (LTSER), actors and stakeholders can learn from other regions' sustainable development processes, and make Bergslagen more visible internationally.
At the centre of this study lies one of the critical questions faced by (late-)modern society, namely that of taking care of the long-lived radioactive waste from nuclear power production. The problems of nuclear waste management are pictured as embracing a complex web of essential issues for society today, in terms of both its capacities and its shortcomings – so called core issues. The principal aim of the thesis is to examine the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, Västerbotten, from a critical discourse analytical perspective, through applying the approach developed by Michel Foucault in The Order of Discourse. During the 1990s, the municipality of Malå played a prominent role as a candidate site for the geological disposal of Sweden's spent nuclear fuel. A five-year process culminated in a local referendum on whether detailed site investigations should be permitted within the community. Following the result no further investigations have been undertaken. The discourse analysis is carried out through a study of opinion formation in the municipality during the period October 1992 to October 1997. Two main types of empirical material have been collected: interviews with opinion leaders (politicians, activists, journalists, information professionals, etc.) and contemporaneous mass media content (the local newspaper and regional television news). In the empirical analysis, a review is made of the workings of the external and internal control mechanisms within the discourse; that is to say, how they serve to set limits on the content and form of the sense-making process concerning nuclear waste management. Important themes in the opinion forming process in Malå include information and expertise, opposition and legitimacy, the centre/periphery relationship and the themes of mistrust, partitioning and rejection. Among other themes identified as being marginalised or absent, one example is the Samish citizens' views on the nuclear question. Four actors play a prominent role as authors of the discourse, namely the nuclear industry, the experts, Greenpeace and the mass media. The voices of resistance groups are also significant. Representatives from authorities and civil servants were most likely to take the commentary role in the discourse, along with journalists. In the concluding analysis of the nuclear waste discourse in Malå, two main types of desire for truth, which form the discourse's main order, are identified. The stronger concerns the will to know, which places the expert with a scientific background as the principal truth-teller. The other is 'ordinary' people's desire, which influences the content and form of the opinion formation. It is also concluded that the mass media institutions play a significant role in this context, not least as mediators. Reflections on contemporary 'core issues' to which the analysis bears witness, such as the crisis of democracy, are also included. In addition, the implications of applying the Foucaultian research programme to a study of the nuclear question have been considered.
