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Imagining Civil Society in Zimbabwe and ‘Most of the World’

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The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa

Part of the book series: Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies ((NCSS,volume 20))

Abstract

This chapter re-visits the notion of civil society in what Partha Chatterjee (The Politics of the Governed, 2004) calls ‘most of the world’ (beyond the capitalist metropoles) and, in doing so, uses Zimbabwe (and Africa more broadly) as an entry point into the literature on civil society. This chapter consists of four main sections. First, I discuss literature on civil society in Africa which, in the main, dichotomises civil society and the state empirically without any sustained theoretical reflections. Second, I provide an overview of Zimbabwean society and politics over the past decade and the ensuing debate, which in many ways produces a Manichean dualism whereby civil society is equated with progression and the state with regression. Third, I locate this conceptualisation of civil society within the broader international literature on civil society. These three sections, as a whole, highlight slippages in defining and understanding civil society: between civil society as a set of empirically identifiable organisational formations and civil society as a social space marked by civil liberties and voluntary arrangements in bourgeois society. Finally, I reimagine civil society in relation to ‘most of the world’.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa

    Dr. Kirk Helliker

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  1. Dr. Kirk Helliker
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Correspondence to Kirk Helliker .

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  1. University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, USA

    Ebenezer Obadare

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Helliker, K. (2014). Imagining Civil Society in Zimbabwe and ‘Most of the World’. In: Obadare, E. (eds) The Handbook of Civil Society in Africa. Nonprofit and Civil Society Studies, vol 20. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8262-8_11

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