On Civil Society

Author(s): J. P. S. Uberoi
Source: Sociological Bulletin , MARCH - SEPTEMBER 1999, Vol. 48, No. 1/2 (MARCH -
SEPTEMBER 1999), pp. 19-39
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23619927

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 On Civil Society

J. P. S. Uberoi

God, Man and Nature

The question of civil society can be approached from either of two

opposed aspects, the question of culture and the question of power, on
both of which sociology as well as social anthropology have something
to say. One may approach the question first from the one side and then
from the other in order to arrive at a better definition of the field in terms
of the possible mediation as well as opposition of the two perspectives,
although it may not amount to a synthesis. This definition will enable us
to explain the history of civil society, its origin, meaning and effect in
Europe as well as India, specially in the modern period. Finally, we shall
propose an hypothesis to the effect that civil society, since it is often
established on the life and death of the martyr rather than of the hero (or
the victim), also requires new forms and concepts of pluralism,
mediation of the one and the many, and of the common usage or custom
of the people (vernacularism) to sustain it, whether in general amity or
enmity, solidarity and reciprocity, conformity or transgression. In this
sense, civil society is here supposed a category of universal human
society, or of historical civilisation as against pre-history, and not only a
category of bourgeois society or of modern capitalism, for example, as in
the tradition from Hegel to Habermas.
From the one side, civil society is a natural and universal
development of intermediary institutions between the priest and the
prince or between the household and the state. If we divide the history of
mankind into five periods, (a) pre-historic, (b) ancient, (c) medieval, (d)
modern and (e) post-modern, one can say that the history of civil society
begins only when the institution of the sacred or the divine kingship
begins to dissolve into two differentiated institutions at the dawn of the
ancient, or at the very latest the medieval, period out of the past. It was
Frazer of Britain who placed the fascinating institution of the divine
kingship, in which the king is also simultaneously the 'chief priest of the
state', at the centre of social anthropology, where it threatens to remain even
now. Its modern secular version continues to exercise an implicit baneful

J. P. S. Uberoi is Professor, Department of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics,

University of Delhi, Delhi 110 007

SOCIOLOGICAL BULLETIN, 48 (1 & 2), March-September 1999

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 20 Sociological Bulletin

influence, for example, on

varieties, Oriental despotism,
Frazer believed himself to ha
a mass of evidence that the
power, of which Graeco-Itali
actually existed in many places
of God, king and country, but
did see that later in 'some' cou
civil and the religious aspect o
committed to one man and th
is that only so would the love
own and establish the instituti

This division of power betwe

met with wherever the true
but where the Negro form
Dahomey and Ashanti, ther
powers in a single [priestly] k

Thus by implication here the

religions, instead of being th
religion and politics or betwee
Frazer to a mere monstrous diversion and dead end in the National
evolution of human civil society. This implication is at once both the
secret force and the fault of his great anthropological work; and it is still
widely influential subconsciously.

We have seen that in savage or barbarous society there are often

found men to whom the superstition of their fellows ascribes a
controlling influence over the general course of nature. Such men
are accordingly adored and treated as gods ... [and] they are kings as
well as gods .... Their supposed divinity is the essential [cultural] fact
with which we have to deal. In virtue of it they are a pledge and
guarantee to their worshippers of the continuance and orderly
succession of those physical phenomena upon which mankind
depends for subsistence. Naturally, therefore, the life and health of
such a god-man are matters of anxious concern to the people whose
welfare and even existence are bound up with his; naturally he is
constrained by them to conform to such rules [of royal and priestly
taboos and other magic] as the wit of early man has devised for
averting the ills to which flesh is heir, including the last ill, death....
But while in the case of ordinary men the observance of the rules is

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 On Civil Society 21

left to the choice of th

[socially] enforced und
or even of death.

[Far from being a desp

them exists only for h
he discharges the dut
nature for his people's
414fl).

Varieties of Mediation

This was an approach from what we may call the problem of the
solidarity of God, man and nature, the foundation of faith, morals and a
way of life, and of its representation and embodiment in institutions and
custom or culture. The opposite approach is from the problem of power,
authority or hierarchy and sovereignty, and the concomitant legitimate
use of force in a given society and its territory. This aspect of the
question of civil society has been best formulated by Hobbes and his
followers who argue that the human species could not have emerged out
of its supposed pre-social state of nature, where life was generally
'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short', without the surrender of liberty
by self and the other to the law and the sovereign, Leviathan or the state
and its organs. This single sovereignty, whether set up by the 'social
contract' or otherwise, is indivisible in its power and scope; and it alone
has brought mankind out of the primitive state of nature into the state of
grace, where good order and progress are possible for all. 'The state of
nature is the state of men without government. In the state of nature,
men's [equal] rights [to life and liberty] are perfect, and they have no
duties'(Jaffa 1968: 87).
The remedy for the state of nature, according to Locke and Hobbes,
is the state of civil society, which is the same as the state of grace and
good government, although not in the sense of Oriental despotism. It is
established by the social contract, the twin premises of which are (a) to
suppose that the many are in fact/value one, and (b) to let a part stand for
the whole and be its sovereign. This liberal democratic tradition thus
places civil society, like the concept of the nation or of the state,
somewhere between the concrete reality of the single individual and the
abstract reality of the human species. Such appears to be also the
impression formed of the institutions of democracy other than the state
that de Tocqueville (1835-) discovered in America, most recently
updated under the name of civility, for example, by Shils (1997).

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 22 Sociological Bulletin

After the two modern revolu

democracy in France, the conce
general will and the common
with social democratic thoug
democracy, economic federa
representation or functiona
example, Durkheim's lectures
Professional ethics and civic m
state, private property or th
independent professions which

So that our political malaise

malaise: that is, to the lack of
the individual and the State
groups are essential if the Sta
are also necessary if the St
individual. ... There is therefore no reason to believe that it is this
professional life that is destined to form the basis of our political
structure ... [e.g.] the true electoral unit (Durkheim 1957: 96, 103).

It was left to the Marxist tradition, however, to elaborate what is in

effect a critique as well as a defence of civil society-when it is not
simply reduced to political economy or the market-as the arena of the
class struggle, the project of hegemony and other conflicts, including the
institutional conflict of the state and civil society itself. This last question
has again come to the fore in order to help explain the fall of
Communism in Russia and eastern Europe, c. 1990, where the
institutions of civil society are believed to have been underdeveloped
and/or had atrophied as compared to the Leviathan of the state.
Ever since Hegel, who first attributed religion to the human heart as
well as the state to the agency of reason, European writers, whether
liberal or Marxist by persuasion, have not had one good word to say
about the relation of religion and civil society, with the single possible
exception of Weber, although this has been a matter of the greatest
practical concern throughout the modern period in Europe, America and
Russia. The same absence is unfortunately true also of the concept of the
nation as against the state, although it is clearly required as the empirical
as well as the theoretical point of reference for that 'whole' society
which includes family, civil society and the state or even simply the two
powers of the prince and the priest. Although it is not the received view
just now, both sentiments of religion and the nation may be important to
support the life of institutions in a civil as against an uncivil society, for

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 On Civil Society 23

example, as when post-wa

and the welfare state owed more to Methodism than to Marxism.
Similarly, in Gandhi's explanation, 'Violent nationalism, otherwise
known as imperialism, is the curse. Non-violent nationalism is a
necessary condition of corporate or civilized life' (Young India,
27.xi.1924).
It is to his credit on the other hand that Hegel's Philosophy of right
(1821) includes in relation to the study of civil society the world of work,
business, public authority and civil law-as against military or
ecclesiastical law-'but also morality, ethical life and world-history'. His
English translator Knox has commented that what we watch in studying
civil society is a process of mediation: 1 gain my ends first by your
means and then by means of a generalised organisation (e.g. the
corporation). Hegel himself writes that 'the whole sphere of civil society
is the territory of mediation', we may say of the particular and the
universal, self and other, and so on.
Hegel explained the trinity of family, civil society and the state as
arranged in chronological as well as logical order, but he was mindful of
the difference.

Civil society is the [stage or phase of] difference which intervenes

between the family and the state, even if its formation follows later
in time than that of the state. ... The creation of civil society is the
achievement of the modern world.

The organisation of civil society, the state and the modern world had of
course its problems too:

Against nature man can claim no right, but once society is

established, poverty immediately takes the form of a wrong done to
one class by another. The important question of how poverty is to be
abolished is one of the most disturbing problems which agitate
modern society (Hegel 1967: 233, 266f, 277, 354).

Definition by Opposition

Though initially civil society was used with imprecision, the

properties of the concept became clearer over time as a series of
conceptual oppositions developed between what came to be seen as
civil society and something else, [a] It was regarded as an attribute of
'polished' advanced nations as opposed to primitive and barbaric

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 24 Sociological Bulletin

societies as in Adam Fergus

society (1767). Later Hegel,
earlier societies did not pos
contractarians, Hobbes and L
state of nature, [c] To Hegel, c
household or the state. It is in
to acquire specific connotati
was a property of modern
society is burgerliche Gesell
society is bourgeois society.
means merely a literal transla
society that comes into prom
To Marx, civil society is
exchanges which is dominat
distinct from earlier forms w
collapsed, [e] To Gramsci it
state constructed a project
sophisticated opaque states
coercive states. ... I have argu
flanked by the domain of par
and ethnic or caste and tribe
113,251).

This is the summary of a rece

by a political scientist, who
power. She says nothing abo
society is the public sphere wh
purposes both for their self-int
called society.' 'Society consi
[customs] both public and priv
may surely call the national so
It is then possible to accept bo
level between the private an
expressed polities'; and (b) that
between those practices which
family?], and those which cont
In the dialectical logic of Heg
family, civil society and the st
to each other and at the same time each of them is a 'moment' that
mediates the opposition of the other two. So Hegel writes (a) that 'as the
family was the first, so the Corporation is the second ethical root of the
state, the one planted in civil society', like the voluntary association,

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 On Civil Society 25

independent professions
also (b) that the state is
supporting the sanctity
atomicity. Moreover,
further progressive trans
the second into the third.

The expansion of the f

[from right to moralit
peaceful expansion un
thus has a common nat
scattered groups of f
power or [c] as a result
of needs and the recipr

Hegel's civil society mi

must properly give way
'the rational state', 'the
actualizing itself as will'

Civil society is the sp

universal.... In other w
He differs from the su
as a member of society
must work in with ot
particularity is mediat
becomes so socially co
the institutions of civi
willing universal ends
state (Hegel 1967: 122f

Europe

If this civil society was the 'child of the modern world', even then it is
the Christian society and its early modern reform that we may also have
to consider and not only the bourgeois society of modern capitalism. By
this definition, modern civil society was established or revived in Britain
at any rate by the struggle of the Nonconformists, the new Christians,
who together severed connection with the established Church of England
when it accepted royal supremacy at the time of the Reformation. The
Puritans and the dissenters, the Baptists, Independents, Presbyterians and
Methodists, were all opposed to the union of the church and the state at

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 26 Sociological Bulletin

the national level as initiated b

modern period into the sovere
'the absolute power on ear
Christians wanted what we ma
instead, with pluralist freedom
project was wide, deep and str
on the battlefield, leading to t
the restoration of the monarc
The subsequent Conventicle A
to enforce public worship
standardised Book of common
severe penalties on all those
'unauthorized' congregational w
or more.

This was the picture of religion, civil society and the state in
at the height of what is known as the Scientific Revolution, c.
the struggle had already begun when the Reformation
Renaissance came together in western Europe, c. 1500. Neve
another century and a half later, one can show that all the intelle
Industrial Revolution, 1760 to 1840, was produced by the m
institutes and the so-called dissenting academies of the Nonconf
that is, outside the two universities of England, Oxford and Cam
which had remained loyal to the church and the state in combina
leaving aside what Cromwell had tried to start at Durham. The
death struggle between the posited unity of the state and the church
supreme national level versus the plurality of free religion-in-so
principle of motion of history, which continues throughout the
period in Europe and even in America and Russia, is made quite
the following dramatic scene, a narration from Foxe's book of m
Incidentally the majority of English households have probably p
copies of this popular book since it was first published four and
centuries ago. Here then is the story of the martyrdom of John
the place is London and the time is 1538; 'the authority and nam
bishop of Rome being utterly abolished', the monasteries a
suppressed and dissolved; and Henry VIII is all set to represent th
of the state, the church and the nation or of God, king and coun
himself.

Then came the king himself as judge of the [Eucharistie]

controversy, with his body-guard clothed all in white. On his right
hand sat the bishops, and behind them the celebrated lawyers,
clothed in purple, according to the manner. On the left sat the peers

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On Civil Society 27

of the realm, justices,

were the gentlemen of
his throne, he beheld L
turning himself to h
Chichester, and comma
the present assembly an
The oration being con
cushion of white cloth
his brow bent and ...
touching the sacrament o
the body of Christ, or w
Lambert said -- '1 answ
of Christ, after a certa
neither of St. Aug out
man; but tell me plainly
or no?' Then Lambert m
Christ.' The king on th
condemned even by Ch
is my body].' He then
refute his assertion; wh
began his disputation w
Lambert answered, Th
Christ doth at any tim
body: and moreover, th
But this is a figurative
when as the name and
unto the sign. [In his e
said strictly in the sty
was only present in the
meant only -- 'This sig
circumcision is called t
six hundred such inst
'Now it remaineth to
after the [priestly or li
changed into another n
At last when the day
the king desiring to b
Lambert, 'What sayest
thou hast taken upon
these learned men? Art
What sayest thou? Tho
yield and submit mys

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 28 Sociological Bulletin

'Then,' said the king, 'commi

unto mine.' To which he p
unto the hands of God, but m
your clemency.' Then said th
my judgment, you must die,
Then sternly ... [was] her
Lambert by no other min
themselves, namely, Tayl
Cromwell, who afterwards in
suffered the like for the gosp
Upon the day appointed for
was brought out of the prison
house of the lord Cromwell,
shewing no manner of sadne
he was carried straight to th
manner of his death was dr
consumed and burned, and th
of God had withdrawn the f
each side with their halberds
the chain would reach; whi
cried unto the people in thes
Christ!' He was soon after le
into the fire, and there ende
350ff).

India

The nature and pursuit of the national civil society in power and culture
can be put in the form of four propositions, (a) Civil society is truly the
locus of God-realisation or self-realisation as well as of the common
usage or custom of the people, and not only of tradition and authority or
what is handed down, (b) It is the sovereign arbiter of custom as against
the priest, custodian of tradition, and the prince, maker and executor of
the state and its law. (c) Inspired in the modern world by new religion,
secularism or pluralism, civil society alone has the inherent power to find
a people's principle of history and so to change the common usage, the
'custom of the country', as well as itself, as in the Gandhian view of self
rule and self-reform, the one being the condition of the other, (d) The
prince and the priest, whenever the two rule together, either through a
state-established religion or a religion-established state, are the enemies
of civil society, its national autonomy, self-expression, political
economy, customs and morality.

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On Civil Society 29

The struggle of civil soc

parallel to the rise and re
everywhere in language, l
and politics proceeding fr
political culmination, if
linguistic reorganisation o
against the previous po
provinces and the sta
established in the Indian
priest and the prince, t
introduction of a system
social space so opened for
Gandhi wrote down his g
society in the form of a
the Hindu nation-state, o
in 1908. Savarkar scratch
walls of his prison cell
already as a student met
that the strength, cohesi
resort upon the sense and
questions of social reform
Whether or not he was
Savarkar brought all hi
expressed by the slogan th
all politics and militari
hero of the national free
constituted 'the foundatio
state'(1923: 119-28).
Gandhi, on the other ha
was the martyr of swa
disobedience he was the s
social reform, Hindu-Mus
of swadeshi (home-grown
her labour, putting the tr
the transfer of power a
shastras. Gandhi wanted t
the foundation of modern
politically organised as o
consistently refused to
either for himself and hi
Needless to say, his met
violence, Savarkar rejecte

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 30 Sociological Bulletin

In Gandhi's civil society the

eye as its second self, and off
without fear of the possible c
movement of swaraj meant es
civil society; and Ram Rajya
society, a 'kingdom of Heaven
the institutions of civil society
British as well as Tagore that '
ourselves' (1921), he in fact pro
customs of the country, a mo
India could come into its own in the world with a reformed tradition of
pluralism and what I call vernacular democracy. In this way the path of
national salvation in history was transformed from dharmayuddha, the
classical just war of priests and princes, into the new satyagraha, the
struggle for truth in any and every field by the methods of martyrdom,
self-control and non-violence, whether it was for the achievement of
independence, ending foreign domination and exploitation or for the
regulation of relations among the different communities at home.

Pluralism and Civil Society

If it is to represent the principles of solidarity as well as reciprocity and

not be only the arena of the struggle for power or profit, civil society
must next address the problem of pluralism defined as the mediation of
the one and the many and not only as a synonym for diversity. Indeed
one may go futher and suggest that, apart from or along with the hardy
perennials of domination and exploitation, death and destitution,
affliction and alienation, the problem for the (post-modern) world today
is perhaps the reconciliation of difference with equality in civil society.
This surely cannot be achieved within a framework (a) of the permanent
majority and the minority, hierarchy, superordination and subordination
or the centre versus the periphery and the margin, or alternatively (b) of a
falsely imagined unity brought about by uniformity, homogeneity and
centralisation. In this sense the Gandhian 'equality of all religions'
means that all of them are equally true and truly equal as well as equally
humanly imperfect, and therefore each of them is capable of self-rule and
self-reform (swaraj) in the common light of God's truth and non
violence.
It is necessary to add that to this Gandhian attitude in religion there
would correspond a true federalism in the state, even if imperfectly under
the Mughals and the British, and real tolerance and purity in civil society,
labour and the economy. This has been the modern Indian way of

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On Civil Society 31

knowing when to combine

a modern pluralist society
for example, is then ideal
of a secular civil society,
for the self-fulfilment o
legitimate meaning of uni
We may now explain the
analogy of language, wh
common usage that is far
and the prince, tradition
trinity of God, king and co

Linguistic diversity is an
in fact, one aspect of c
country develop ways of
own language and sti
languages; they becom
not employed parallelly
use of languages in a [
complementary.
All languages are equal, b
in society, and have diff
That each speaker has [r
Hindi or Urdu) and al
underscores the integrat
The assertion and acce
mutual. In this way, d
separateness on the one
other. The face-to-face c
of] negotiation than any
[Pluralist] integration i
on the one hand and [b]
results into complete ass
of identity. Segregation
the tensions thereof.
Hindi and Urdu, in the
set of correlation; it i
explained in the context
of the same coin: if you
.... Urdu identity [for ex
context of Hindi rather th
Though the institutiona

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 32 Sociological Bulletin

literary tradition and that of H

Hindi and Urdu literature
population in the same regi
contributed to both these var
creative arts, music, painting
there has been a remarkabl
flourished alongside the trad
time in the Northern courts ...
Indian languages, a common l
language of the court, admin
[and varied] over a vast terri
are recent [alternative] stan
modern] lingua franca.
Our linguistic issues are not
variation and varieties, but of
vernacular] and the [elite] lite
50, 56, 60).

The logic of national pluralism, therefore, makes the common usage

of civil society prevail over or along with the authority of inherited
tradition, and perhaps this is the normal and the proper condition of
modernity. Multilingualism is thus inclined to keep its distribution of
differences generally functional, contextual and domain-specific as well
as group-specific, for example, in relation to the family, neighbourhood,
bazar, formal education, including the laboratory, work, administration,
worship and play, although there will be also degrees of overlap and
competition. Several independent studies confirm that spoken and
written languages live and develop, not by seeking purity or insulation or
officially-sponsored standardisation, but by free on-going contact,
interaction and exchange with other languages in a plural setting,
national and international.
The European writers who could be quoted on the subject, e.g. Levi
Strauss and Lotman, have duly recognised but two tendencies at work in
history and society, the centripetal and the centrifugal or homogeneity
and heterogeneity, whereas the Indian experiment will show us a field of
four possibilities to make up the logic of pluralism. The Europeans
imagine any two things to be either (a) similar and together (equality or
homogeneity) or (b) separate and different (inequality or heterogeneity).
But this opposition completely ignores and excludes the other pair of
possibilities that two things could be in the relation of competition,
equivalence or correspondence, that is (c) separate but similar, or else of
complementarity, that is (d) together but different; and all four empirical

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On Civil Society 33

and theoretical relatio

perpendicular axes of sim
or contiguity/separatenes
Such a system of nation
multiculturism, classical a
effective and integrated
tendencies or principl
complementary, and no
situation; and (b) the conv
divergence, through t
example, the Saurashtri
Tamil Nadu from c. 1
similarities between Tam
framework of compari
certain significant differ
features with Tamil and
linguistic structures of
related to each other-inde
is to the original parent G
The first principle is
differentiation within th
control on variation or di
evolution (diachrony). We
of pluralism all differenc
truth or reality falsifies
negotiation, whether in ha
effect neither homogenei
but a new non-dualist a
difference.

The Concept of C

We may finally ask wh

whether or not its 'count
foundation of what we h
relation to the emergence
primeval state of nature.
The recent review by an
best documented summa
second nature (altera na
European life and thoug
underlies the history o

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34 Sociological Bulletin

ancient Greek distinction betw

law and conventions (nomos),
from 'custom is king' (Pin
Britain's constitution as both f
(1867). Custom, in the sense
(magister) of human speech an
(the common usage) and indivi
During the Christian middle
state took a dim view of cu
supreme legislative authority o
exclusive monopoloy of the so
(which was already not inclu
law); but some French and Ital
society that on the contrary '
debate referred to natural law
and to the law of nations (custo
office of the people. The fathe
Jerome, laying down the cano
the corruption rather than the
law, thus regarding it as aliena
ecclesiastical law. Isidore of Se
sort of general law [jus] establ
as a legal rule [lex] when legal
are lacking'. The more generou
'the power of custom is three-fo
of law and the abrogator of la
the will of the people and it als
In early modern Europe, the
practising jurists, as Kelley says,
natural instinct or universal re
(Connan), thus reinvoking the
simultaneous evolution of the com
in France was wholly a matter of
Roman church; and 'use', as Ham
stamp of nature'. The official or
Calvin, however, continued to
corrupted than the first (after
gospel to the effect that Christ th
and not as habit or custom (John
radical Reformation, as we hav
up for a plural civil society in th
in the history of the Protestant m

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On Civil Society 35

Habit and custom, indi

philosophy under the
naturalism on the other
the true monuments of
nations as a body'. 'We e
the Leviathan of the s
customs', as we shall als
At the point of matur
1789 onwards attempted
replacing it some fifteen
state and its citizens.
modern social science,
sociology and anthropolo
nationality and identity
the Channel, the Indust
the representation of th
well as conscience into
merely tradition, habit
does not discuss (1990:

Society without t

The question of the orde

the first emergence of
system of sovereign
centralisation and strati
state of'ordered anarchy
and solidarities ruled
prevailed the war of ea
theoretical and empi
anthropology beginning
Fortes and Evans-Pritcha
in tribal society by Glu
Balandier's Political
contribution to theory
Hobbes and his follow
communities living
sovereignty, which wa
many may continue to
sovereignties' (pluralis
positive aspect of order
example, in the theory o

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 36 Sociological Bulletin

In many tribal societies wit

found a simultaneous distribut
common law and general rul
systems of self-help, solidarit
which may number tens of th
territory are divided into two
communities or segments at a
such that the two systems are
ordering of segments is oft
unitary genealogy of genera
unusually in the female line
invoked by the corresponding
sub-section. All local com
segmentation are reckoned as
or more teams in a game of sp
such that internal conflict
arbitration and conciliation in the first as well as the last instance-as
against the supposed tribal law of an eye for an 'eye and a tooth for a
tooth'.

The series of unilineal descent groups that are homologous and are in
a system of solidarity and opposition are also, by the rule of exogamy,
interrelated by marriage, forming a network of affinal alliances as well as
of matrilateral links called complementary filiation, which acts as a
further brake on public delict and the spread of disorder. This does not
apply of course to the Arabs whose lineages are non-exogamous and
without cross-cutting ties, but their lineage system is nevertheless
coordinated with their territorial system to form the segmentary political
system. Apart from these two principles, descent/ kinship and territory,
there are usually found also decentralised but uniform systems of age
sets or of rituals, including systems of the ceremonial exchange of gifts
like the kula of Melanesia, which require or assume alternate competition
and cooperation among the local communities at each level of
segmentation, that s, by their situational aggregation/segregation. It is not
necessary that such varied sub-systems within a tribal society should all
correspond to each other, point by point, but there must exist some
method of their correlation in order to call it one society and polity,
though being without central government, the state or a single chief.
By the situational aggregation/segregation jointly called
segmentation is meant primarily the social process of 'balanced
opposition' of one tribe against its neighbouring tribes; of one primary
section of a tribe against its other primary sections; of one secondary
section against other secondary sections of the same primary section; and

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 On Civil Society 37

of one tertiary section

secondary section, thi
before the single family h
The principle of relati
definition, so that the p
upon its context of situ
or a dispute over land m
occurs between men of
between the remote agn
tribe; (c) to a long feud
agnatic cousins of two
vengeance or payment
adjacent tertiary secti
single tertiary section
brother to kill a brother
simply denied or blam
patricide, if it is at all c
punishment of suicide o
Such principles of com
society to its sacred or p
of segmentary stateles
somewhat muted by
administration, nation
concept of custom and t
well as conscience or its
the mainstay of huma
language and territory.
nations can be then re
collective subjectivity
within itself, with or w
problems of inequality
segmentation, which are

Bibliographical N

The references cited here ar

theoretical and ideological. T
approaches.
Although there is found no article or index entry under the heading of civil
society, several key terms, definitions and articles relevant to issues of civil society can
be readily located in a previous standard work of reference, International
encyclopaedia of the social sciences, but they will need to be updated, interrelated and
critically applied. Jaffa 1968 on the concept of natural rights is a case in point On the

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38 Sociological Bulletin

other hand, Hegel 1967, first publis

the German of 1821 which also bo
science, is the single definitive clas
ethics of the state and civil society, if
Frazer 1950, first published in 1
politico-religious kingship, its assoc
room for a civil society.
Balandier 1970 is an excellent com
English and French sources. It bears
and civil society in emerging from
law and ritual in tribal society, a
dimensions of social anthropological
society, well-illustrated with det
Pritchard 194Ü comprises eight mon
Radclifle-Brown and the editors tha
systems based on descent/kinship
principles of civil society even witho
Kelley 1990 is an excellent review
medieval and early modern period
civilisation
with church and state t
society. Milner and Cobbin's edit
complete and accurate account of th
primitive and Protestant martyrs,
modem Britain that explains best h
make, open and reopen a free space
First published 1835-, de Tocquev
defence, with intermediary institutio
civil society. In the same tradition
liberalism, tradition and civil societ
sense. On the other hand, Durkh
1890-1900, and in Paris, 1904,1912,
institutions of civil society and the e
Chandhoke 1995 is a review fro
reference on the Hegel, Marx and
plural society, is an important de
sociolinguistic point of view. Oom
protest and change, show a consiste
with good Indian empirical referen
terms (nation, state, society).
Savarkar 1923 is evidently the o
Hindu nationalism (cf Gandhi's H
concerns of the state prevailing ove
evidences the martyrology of Shia
concern of salvation-in-society as
tradition us a principle of motion of

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 On Civil Society 39

Note

This paper is an edited versio

Professor J.P.S. Uberoi at the
University, Aligarh, 19 Decem

References

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Press.
Chandhoke, Neera. 1995. State and civil society. New Delhi: Sage.
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Durkheim, Emile. 1957. Professional ethics and civic morals. London: Routledge and
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Fortes, M. and E. E. Evans-Pritchard (eds). 1940. African political systems. London:
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