State and civil society mutually constitute each other’s form

Evidence

The institutional shapes the horizons of possibility for the individual, while individual interventions license and limit the possible reaches of the institutional. This renders such normative distinctions less easily sustainable as reified contrasts. The state articulates a civil society; civil society extends definition to the state representing it. Civil society and the quality and range of civilities it embodies impart to the state its peculiar personality, its apparently cohering character, just as the state shapes and massages civil society to “speak” – to state itself – in its institutionalizing terms. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 286

Categorization

• DEFINE: A lucid definition of the relational, non-reified distinction between institutionalized politics and informal social life.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 286
• XREF: connects to: Morocco’s liberalization coexisted with continuing state licensing of civil society — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 508