Redefining our understanding of civil society

The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Thu, 12/30/2004 9:00 AM  |  Opinion

B. Herry-Priyono

Remember the Buyat Bay tragedy, which, despite its grave importance, seems to have received increasingly less public attention? Momentarily missing from our mental landscape, this case is about pollution that has brought havoc to the life of the local community around Buyat Bay in North Sulawesi.

Causality is of course a high order, but the fact is that for decades the area has been the site of mining activities, the biggest of which by PT Newmont Minahasa Raya.

The case involves many disputing parties: families of the victims, concerned NGOs, Newmont managers, local and provincial governments, environmental officials, university-based medical doctors and scientists, etc.

It just so happened that at the height of the public debate about this case, a concerned friend of mine asked me: ""What is civil society in the Buyat case, then?""

The question may sound too academic, but it struck me to the bone. Suddenly I realized that something is lacking in the way we understand ""civil society"".

The term ""civil society"", which is so much used and abused these days, has of course a long pedigree. In its classical sense, the term is more or less a direct translation of what Aristotle meant as koinnia politik and Cicero's societas civilis, both of which refer to a political community in contrast to the uncivilized condition of life under nature. The antithetical notion of civil society vis--vis the state only developed with the gradual rise of modern nation-states in the 18th century.

However, this is not the place to trace the genealogy of the term. What is important is that the meaning of civil society as we use it today is derived from the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe. The term was used as an antithesis to the only form of socially consequential power in existence in Eastern European societies in those days, i.e., the politburo and its apparatus; in brief, the state. The reason is plain. Between the politburo state apparatus and individual families, there were hardly any independent organizations or associations with independent voices, be they business, religious or media organizations.

Given this situation, movements to make any socially consequential exercise of power publicly accountable -- which is the essence of civil society -- could not but be waged against the politburo state.

However, it is clear that the opposition between civil society and the state is a matter of historical contingency, not of logical necessity. Civil society is viewed in terms of its opposition to the state not because it is necessarily so, but because in the Eastern European context prior to the 1989 upheavals the politburo state was conceived as the ultimate power holder in society, the concentration of which posed a constant threat to various aspects of life.

What seems to be logical is that ""civil society"" is a societal network of democratic energies aimed at making the socially consequential exercise of power publicly accountable, be it state or business powers, religious or media powers.

What is ""socially consequential exercise of power""? It is any type of power whose working has a far-reaching impact on the life of society. In the Buyat Bay case, for instance, this consequential power is exercised not only by the local or provincial governments (politico-administrative power), but also by Newmont (business-financial power).

For, indeed, Newmont's business operation has a de facto enormous impact on the ecological, social, cultural and economic conditions of locals. The fact that the ecological condition sustaining the life of the Buyat community has been devastated indicates that the very power in the hands of Newmont or other mining companies in the area has not been exercised in a publicly accountable manner.

What has this to do with the issue of civil society? It is simply forlorn to conceive of civil society as an antithesis to the state. Of course, the local or provincial governments and the environmental ministry are vested with legal-formal authority.

But what if they are toothless precisely because they have been captured by the mining companies through bribes or the sheer purchase of laws, a practice that is endemic in Indonesia? Indeed, equating law with actual power is mistaking the normative for the factual. Targeting only the conduct of government apparatuses would empty civil society of its raison d'etre. This also applies to business corruption, which currently involves Bank Global and other corporate scandals.

This new vista has a wide-ranging applicability. Take the communal conflicts now besieging the Ciledug community in West Java as another example. Of course, the facts are more complex than a sketch. It is clear, however, that the ongoing conflicts involve a majority group imposing its religious-based worldview on a minority group of a different religious orientation.

The ban on the religious worship practiced by the latter (in this case, Catholic) is a symptom of the publicly unaccountable power exercised by the religious-based majority group. It shatters the sense of community, it paralyzes the working of non-discriminatory laws (right to religious worship), and perhaps also frustrates the healthy working of the market in the economic realm.

The Ciledug case is not unusual. It simply reflects the increasing wave of religious extremism tearing down the social fabric of Indonesian society. It is often claimed that the will of such religious-based majority groups is part of civil society.

The truth, however, is plain: no, it is not part of civil society! Such religious extremism is an enemy of civil society. It is the task of movements worthy of the name ""civil society"" to confront this form of tribal-communalism. Some may argue that many such tribal-communal conflicts are a result of a divide-and-rule tactic used by the government to perpetuate its rule.

While the claim is not unfounded, the fact that the government is then so helpless simply shows that socially consequential power does not exclusively reside in the hands of the state. The examples could be extended further. All show that the existing conception of civil society as we widely know it today can no longer be sustained. Not because it is wrong, but because it stands on the flawed premise about a state-centered conception of power and politics.

Fine! But this new vista conceives civil society more in terms of negation rather than affirmation. That is, it is understood as a movement against any publicly unaccountable exercise of power.

Is there any conception that is affirmative, that is, what agenda does civil society fight for?

Here we come to what seems to be the most crucial point. In the existing conception, the agenda of civil society is supposed to make state power publicly accountable by empowering non-state independent networks and associations. Again, what if all the data show that the type of power consequentially detrimental to our lives is precisely not that of state power but of non-state powers (in the Buyat case it is business power; in the Ciledug case it is religious-based majority power)?

Any scrutiny is, of course, hypothetical in nature, but it shows how deficient the present conception of civil society is in logical terms. This forces us to conceive of civil society through a different route.

Any healthy, civilized and modern society is founded upon the balance of three societal axes: public agency, market and community. The term ""agency"" refers to a network of public bodies vested with regulative authority to make a shared life possible.

A public body that has legitimate authority to prohibit and enforce the rules on logging activities is the face of a public agency. In short, it is government.

The term ""market"" refers to the working of spontaneous, non-commanded, transactions for the provision of our economic well being.

The term ""community"" refers to spontaneous social relations that are non-administrative and non-transactional in character. The spontaneous decision by a community to plant trees in their area -- neither because it is demanded by the mayor nor because they are paid -- is the face of community.

We are all involved in the working of these three axes. When I buy a piece of land, I step into an arena whose logic is driven by ""market"". I need to secure its certificate, which is administered by an ""agency"" called a National Land Authority. When I am at a gathering of neighbors to discuss a plan to widen many narrow streets in the area, a plan that certainly affects my land, I am in the realm of ""community"".

This, however, must not conceal the fact that each axis is driven by some specific actors; some are more dominant than others. A city mayor is the dominant representative of public agencies. Investor or corporate CEOs are the dominant actors in the market axis, whereas grassroots leaders may be seen as the central actors in the community. These three distinct axes together sustain the life of a society.

The problem is, the working of each axis is driven by its own distinctive logic, and each often runs in opposition to the other. The axis of ""public agency"", for instance, is primarily driven by regulative logic, that of ""market"" by profits or economic efficiency. Whereas the main motive of ""community"" is social cohesion. The imposition of one axis' distinctive logic on the working of the other axes is bound to create tensions in the fabric of society.

The Buyat tragedy, for example, is an imposition of market logic on the life of a community, whereas the Ciledug case involves the imposition of the majority's tribal-communal logic on the minority group, paralyzing the working of non-discriminatory rules administered by government. In other cases, such an imposition is often done by the government on the working of both the market and community axes.

What has this to do with civil society? At this point, the answer can be made plain. Civil society is not a movement of independent networks against the state, or independent associations between the state and family as popularly understood. Rather, civil society is a movement to create a balance between those three societal axes.

Civil society cannot but confront government if the exercise of state power is detrimental to community or market. Civil society cannot but struggle to correct the exercise of business power if the activities of businesses are detrimental to community and public agency.

By the same token, civil society cannot but strive to confront tribal-communal tendencies if such tendencies paralyze the working of the market and public agency.

Of course, in practice the nexus between these three axes is often collusive. Based on its immense financial power, business is often colluding with government, which then destroys the life of a community. In other cases, some religious-based communal groups hijack government apparatus to impose their whims on other groups.

This new vista is suggested to show that the complexity of our problems in Indonesia can no longer be sufficiently addressed by using the presently popular conception of civil society based on the state-centered political philosophy and state-vs-society paradigm.

Indeed, this conceptual vista is likely to be more fruitful when we take into account the reality of globalization. To talk about globalization without taking into account the exercise of power by non-state actors (say, business, religion or media powers) is futile, to say the least.

Indeed, if civil society is concerned only with the conduct of state power, it should be laid to rest after we have achieved the democratization of state power. This, of course, is a remote possibility. Nonetheless, it shows how we can have a new calendar, but our minds remain ossified by an outdated idea that is struggling to stay hidden.

B. Herry-Priyono, a graduate of the London School of Economics, is a lecturer and head of Postgraduate Academic Programs at the Driyarkara School of Philosophy in Jakarta.

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