The Desire Called Civil Society: A Contribution to the Critique of a Bourgeois Category

Kanishka Goonewardena · Katharine N. Rankin

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Urban Planning and Governance Political Theory and Democracy Globalization and political ideologies

Abstract

How does ‘civil society’ serve the Washington Consensus while also attracting the aspirations of left political activists and progressive planners? We address this troubling question by interrogating the concept of civil society, with due respect to the actual role played by civil society in the development of capitalism. Based on close readings of Hegel, Marx and planning theory dealing with it, we also argue that the discourse of civil society now serves neoliberalism quite well, but provides dubious support for ‘radical’ or ‘insurgent’ planning. As an ideal for the latter, we propose instead the radical democratization of both the economy and the state.

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References

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2009Critical development studies and the praxis of planning 2010Development geography: Politics and ‘the state’ under crisis 2014Big Society? Disabled people with the label of learning disabilities and the queer(y)ing of civil society 2013Progressive planning, biased discourse, and critique: An agentic perspective 2019Evil Insurgency. A Comment on the Interface ‘Strengthening Planning’s Effectiveness in A Hyper-Polarized World’2008Deservedness, development, and the state: Geographic categorization in the US Agency for International Development’s Foreign Assistance Framework

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