There are some terms in the social impact space that are frequently used in different contexts. A few of them are foundational keywords that point to directions and contours of social change. ‘Civil society’ and ‘social sector’ are two examples.

While one might be habituated to them, it is worth taking a pause to think on these terms. Terminology shapes how we view and act in the world—understanding its influence and power helps us understand its workings with a fresh perspective.

‘Civil Society’

‘Civil society’ is used so often that it risks becoming a tiring concept. But its power lies in being a concept that can be used in multiple ways by different actors. As an omnibus concept i.e., a concept imbued with several meanings, there are three ways of looking at ‘civil society’ in particular that demand attention:

• civil society as civilised (a normative meaning),
• civil society as democratising (a functional meaning) and
• civil society as third sector (A structural meaning) ^[1]Viterna, J., E. Clough, and K. Clarke, Reclaiming the “Third Sector” from “Civil Society” A New Agenda for Development Studies. Sociology of Development, 2015. 1(1): p. 173-207

The normative roots of this concept can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome: to explore what it meant to be a civilised society, the phrase used by the Greeks to refer to the concept was politike koinonia (political society/community), translated as societas civilas in Latin . The Aristotelian idea of civil society ‘was a public ethical-political community of free and equal citizens under the rule of law’.

In 17th and 18th century Europe, different thinkers set out to understand civil society; while Locke saw civil society as a separate, apolitical sphere of association, Montesquieu attributed to this sphere the political function of safeguarding society from an oppressive monarchy. Tocqueville advanced the functional understanding of civil society through his ideas and theoretical links between associational life and democracy.

Hegel built on their work to develop a more structural understanding of the concept—he devised a theory that distinguished between civil society and the state and also defined it as an intermediary power between the individual and the state ^[2]Arato, A., A Reconstruction of Hegel’s Theory of Civil Society. Cardozo L. Rev., 1988. 10: p. 1363. Marx made the same structural distinction but equated this space with the ‘economic realm of bourgeois society in which individuals pursued their class interests’. Antonio Gramsci distinguished civil society from the economic realm and saw it as a temporary third sphere between the market and the state. More importantly, Gramsci saw civil society as a site for hegemony, a space ‘wherein the ruling class extends and reinforces its power by non-violent means’^[3]Buttigieg, J.A., Gramsci on civil society. boundary 2, 1995. 22(3): p. 1-32.

The tensions inherent to the concept of ‘civil society’ today can be better understood by looking at the challenges of the participatory project originating in Latin American civil society since the 1970s.

A Confluence of Projects

In the 1970s and 1980s, widespread action by diverse civil society actors across Latin America—from labour unions, peasant associations and student movements to rebel groups and human rights organisations—overthrew dictatorships ^[4]Dagnino, E., Challenges to participation, citizenship and democracy: perverse confluence and displacement of meanings. Can NGOs make a difference, 2008: p. 55-70. In Brazil by the 1990s, the reestablishment of formal democratic processes saw many of these actors occupy a place in the political realm. While such collaboration with the state became a feature of the participatory project^[5]Dagnino (2008) uses the term ‘political project’ in a Gramscian sense to designate those sets of beliefs, interests, conceptions of the world, and representations of what life in society should … Continue reading, the state’s adoption of the neoliberal policies of structural adjustment led to a withdrawal of the state from social responsibilities, transferring those responsibilities to civil society. Dagnino contends that this led to a ‘perverse confluence’ between the neoliberal project and the participatory project—the allusion to common terminologies like ‘citizenship’, ‘participation’ and ‘civil society’ obscures how these projects diverge and make them look similar by hiding their conflict between these two projects ^[6]Dagnino, E., Challenges to participation, citizenship and democracy: perverse confluence and displacement of meanings. Can NGOs make a difference, 2008: p. 55-70.

Under the neoliberal project, NGOs not only displaced social movements, but ‘civil society’ was also increasingly identified with NGOs and the concept of the ‘third sector’ ^[7]Dagnino, E., Challenges to participation, citizenship and democracy: perverse confluence and displacement of meanings. Can NGOs make a difference, 2008: p. 55-70.

Understanding civil society through the ‘third sector’

What if the third sector had a definition stripped of any normative or functional role? Some scholars propose a definition that does exactly that:

a sector of organized human action composed of collective actors beyond the family and distinct from the state and the market.^[8]Viterna, J., E. Clough, and K. Clarke, Reclaiming the “Third Sector” from “Civil Society” A New Agenda for Development Studies. Sociology of Development, 2015. 1(1): p. 173-207

The argument that non-governmental organisations (NGOs) will facilitate democracy because they strengthen civil society requires us to equate NGOs and SSOs ^[9]Social Sector Organisation with civil society ^[10]Mercer, C., NGOs, civil society and democra tization: a critical review of the literature. Progress in development studies, 2002. 2(1): p. 5-22. The ‘third sector’ concept can be easily systemised to analyse the organisations within it by stripping away any normative or functional assumptions and its many influences on development.

Secondly, organisations that may be structurally similar can then be analysed or studied based on how they normatively and functionally vary, thus avoiding assumptions just because they may be part of civil society.

Thirdly, key issues of how power dynamics shape interactions and outcomes of organisations and other actors in the third sector become difficult to unravel with the normative and functional disposition of the term ‘civil society’. Building and sharing an awareness of divergences within the third sector might help in fostering effective communication among actors within the space.

‘Social sector’

Since we have covered the concepts of ‘civil society’ and ‘third sector’, how should one interpret the ‘social sector’?

The term ‘social sector’ hints at both a structure and a function. At its simplest interpretation, it is a space committed to doing social good or a space that has a social mandate. SSOs, therefore, are organisations with social missions.

Things get muddled the moment we think about how social missions of organisations or social mandates for the space are arrived at. Who decides social good? Which are the voices heard and valued, ignored or silenced? The setting of agendas across the social sector becomes a contentious political question; addressing it is seen to be beyond its scope. How workers/professionals in the sector negotiate the tensions these questions present is something that deserves a closer look.

Conclusion

Civil society is neither naturally virtuous, nor is it impervious to forces exerted by the state and the market. The same holds true for the social sector—while it locates itself within civil society, it is also occupied by contesting ideas, interests and powers.

A tacit agreement on what terms like ‘social sector’ and ‘civil society’ mean, despite the varying or opposing positions of many civil society actors, raises questions on the credibility of these terms ^[11]Chandhoke, N., A critique of the notion of civil society as the ‘third sphere’. Does civil society matter, 2003: p. 27-58. Challenging one’s commonsensical understanding of such terms and viewing these spaces in new light touch the abilities of actors to share and nurture collective visions and capacities.