Civil Society Watch

The words "civil society" name the space of uncoerced human association and also the set of relational networks-formed for the sake of family, faith, interest, and ideology--that fill this space. Central and East European dissidence flourished within a highly restricted version of civil society, and the first task of the new democracies created by the dissidents, so we are told, is to rebuild the networks: unions, churches, political par ties and movements, cooperatives, neighborhoods, schools of thought, societies for promoting or preventing this and that. In the West, by contrast, we have lived in civil society for many years without knowing it. Or, better, since the Scottish Enlightenment, or since Hegel, the words have been known to the knowers of such things but they have rarely served to focus anyone else's attention. Now writers in Hungary, the former Czechoslovakia, and Poland invite us to think about how this social formation is secured and invigorated.