Civil society is romanticized as the reservoir of democratic possibility

Evidence

Civil society, then, is to be understood as the particular ways in which disputes and conflicts are fashioned (“constructed”), approached (“managed”), licensed (“legitimated”), and dissipated (“resolved”). It is the sphere – the mode and manner, the style, the rules and regulations – in, for, and through which “civil” conflict and contrast, dispute and distinction emerge, are classified and conceptualized, comprehended and controlled, massaged and managed. Such a sphere requires a set of emergent or already existing institutional arrangements, premises, modes of thinking and interacting, associations and established forms of engagement filling “the space” – the gap or chasm, field or terrain – at least conceptually, modally, between state and individual, family and economy. The arrangements that became identified as civil society emerged to manage and legitimate the otherwise bald, antagonizing, and often resisting relations of domination – economic, political, legal, cultural – between those occupying differentiated social (class, caste, ethnic, racial) positions. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 229 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Althusser then shares with Gramsci a classical concern for the manner in which the “hegemony” of a ruling class alliance is secured, at these other levels, through a formative and educative class leadership or authority over the social formation as a whole. Both of them argue that this enlarged or expanded hegemony is specific to the institutions, apparatuses, and relations of the so-called “superstructures” of the state and civil society. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 628 (#complicates, via linked claim)

In the (anyway superficial) polemic over the functions of the State (which here means the State as a politico-juridical organisation in the narrow sense), the expression “the State as veilleur de nuit ” corresponds to the Italian expression “the State as policeman” 327 and means a State whose functions are limited to the safeguarding of public order and of respect for the laws. The fact is glossed over that in this form of regime (which anyway has never existed except on paper, as a limiting hypothesis) hegemony over its historical development belongs to private forces, to civil society— which is “State” too, indeed is the State itself. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 972 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Civil society functions as a management apparatus for social domination — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 229; Ruling class hegemony is secured through cultural and ideological leadership across civil society — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 628; Civil society itself exercises hegemony and thus is the State proper — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 972 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• Civil society functions as a management apparatus for social domination #complicates (0.88) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 229
• Ruling class hegemony is secured through cultural and ideological leadership across civil society #complicates (0.85) — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 628
• Civil society itself exercises hegemony and thus is the State proper #complicates (0.84) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 972
• Civil-society institutions function as the trenches where hegemony is actually fought #complicates (0.84)
• Civil society is a racially inscribed accommodation to social domination #complicates (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 231