Defining and Constituting NGOs (original) (raw)

This chapter claims that contemporary civil society is an effect of discursive practices and speech acts. Involving CSOs to governance settings can be understood as performative practices. These practices, speech acts, and performative actions are contextualized within scientific theories and the new governance reforms. When scholars and practitioners talk about civil society, they do not use an objective meaning of civil society existing independently of their perceptions or beliefs. Nor can they create a meaning of civil society only by merely pointing out some organizations and say, “These are civil society organizations.” In contrast to objective (natural) and purely subjective meanings of civil society, interpretive theories claim that any concept of civil society does not have a meaning outside of the discursive practice or discursive field within which it is situated and mobilized. Civil society discourse entails social scientific theories and is embedded in political program...