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Ayhan Akman
Assistant Professor of Political Science
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences
Sabanci University
Orhanli, Tuzla, Istanbul, 34956 Turkey
http://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/ayhan/
First Presentation:
Beyond the Objectivist Conception of Civil Society: Social Actors, Civility and SelfLimitation
9:30-10:50, J2080
Academics and non-academics alike frequently employ a certain conception of civil
society that causes more problems for our understanding of democratization than it helps
to improve it. This commonly held view regards civil society as an ontologically given
entity with its various strengths and weaknesses. In other words, civil society is
understood as the totality of given, non-state organizational resources and capacities. I
refer to this conception as the ontological conception of civil society.
My interest in this paper is to explore whether we can develop an alternative conception
of civil society that is based on the value of civility and self-limitation. What I term the
social orientation perspective regards civil society not as a given stock of organizational
capacities for social and political action, but understands it as a particular way of
interaction among social actors. The focus of the social orientation perspective is not on
the relationship between civil society and the state, but on the character of the
interrelations between various social actors; specifically on the way they imagine and
realize their cultural models, material interests and identity practices. In other words, the
social orientation perspective does not regard civil society as a given, ontological entity:
Instead, it focuses on the elements of civility and self-limitation that various social actors
may incorporate as part of their value systems and action repertoires. I define civility as
the substantive (i.e. value) component of social conduct which requires toleration of
difference and self-limitation as the formal (i.e. procedural) component of conduct which
demands respect for the rules of the game. Because civility requires commitment to the
idea that not all means to achieve ends are justified, self-limitation is an indispensable
companion to civility; its “practical” side, as it were. At the heart of civil society lies the
challenge of finding a modus vivendi that allows various social actors with conflicting
identities and agendas to coexist. In other words, civil society is a modality of social
relationship that may or may not be endorsed by non-state actors.
The ontological perspective defines civil society independent of historically and spatially
specific forms of social valuation and action. The social orientation perspective, by
contrast, regards civil society as the contingent and performative network of civil and
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self-limiting practices that is generated and sustained by multiple social actors. These
social actors not only have different cultural priorities, identity projects and material
interests but also different ways of pursuing them. The presence of different social
imagineries and action repertoires explains why the “progression of civil society” (even
in those cases in Eastern Europe where the repressive state retreated or indeed collapsed)
is neither a linear nor an irreversible one.
Second Presentation:
Politics, Religion and Civil Society in Greece
11.00-12.20, J3015
There seems to be two diametrically opposed, incompatible views regarding religion and
civil society in Greece: One assumes that religion (and particularly the Orthodox Church)
has nothing to do with civil society and leaves any consideration of its place, activity and
influence outside the discussion. The opposing view (which one perhaps hears less often
in public) not only sees the Church directly relevant and significant for civil society but
sometimes goes even so far as to claim that it is the original, authentic civil society. In
this view, the question is raised whether there is really a need for all the various
associations and foundations to exist and work independently of the Church. In this
paper, I try to understand and investigate these conflicting views of religion and civil
society in Greece.
Throughout the paper’s discussion of the Greek case, the overarching aim will be to try to
see what it can teach us about the intersection of religious activism and civil society in
general. The Greek experience not only has potential to illuminate challenges faced by
other Orthodox countries (Greece being until very recently the only Orthodox country
with a liberal democratic political regime and a free market economy) but it can also
provide a much needed corrective to the literature on religion/civil society nexus which,
on the whole has been dominated by the experience of the Protestant and Catholic
churches.
One of the leading questions of this paper is whether the overall trajectory of Orthodox
Church of Greece’s view of civil society can be characterized as arch that stretches from
outright hostility to suspicious aversion to ambivalent engagement and possibly positive
articulation. Specifically, the paper will ask whether during the last decade and a half,
Orthodox Church of Greece has initiated an era of ambivalent engagement with civil
society in general and with the pluralism displayed by civil society in particular.
While the overall focus of the paper will be on the Greek case, I will try to supply
occasional comparisons to the state of civil society and religious activism in Turkey. I
hope that highlighting the similarities and differences between these two countries
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regarding their state traditions, strength and structure of their civil societies and the role
that organized religion plays in them will be insightful and informative.
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