'Global Civil Society': Non-state Agents and Space of Interaction in Political Society

This article aims at understanding the concept of global civil society, from a dialogue between constructivism in International Relations and the French thinker Michel Foucault. Divided in three sections, followed by a conclusion, the text intends to insert itself in an academic space of a profound...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Contexto internacional 2012-01, Vol.34 (1), p.151-188
Main Author: Lage, Victor Coutinho
Format: Article
Language:Portuguese
Subjects:
Boundaries
Civil Society
Foucault, Michel
France
Interaction
International Relations
Political Opposition
Social Constructionism
Social Sciences
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:This article aims at understanding the concept of global civil society, from a dialogue between constructivism in International Relations and the French thinker Michel Foucault. Divided in three sections, followed by a conclusion, the text intends to insert itself in an academic space of a profound contestation concerning the philosophical basis of the conventional theories in the social sciences and, specially, in International Relations. The first section is dedicated to the discussion about global civil society as a space of agent-structure interaction; the next section treats the concept as a heterogeneous set of non-state agents of global scope. The third section fuses the two parts of the definition. This way, two defining dimensions of global civil society are proposed: in the first one, a political space; in the second, a set of agents with specific characteristics. Lastly, a brief conclusion ends the text - but not the polemics involved in the discussion. It's concluded that the contemporary context is marked by a huge complexity, so that it becomes urgent an approach that precludes binary oppositions, and naturalized and reified ontological boundaries, thus being able to interpret in a more adequate way the actual social and political relations. Adapted from the source document.
ISSN:0102-8529