Abstract
The Civil Sphere in Latin America presents a number of original case studies applying Jeffrey Alexander’s civil sphere theory (CST) to eight Latin American countries. This publication has to be seen in the context of a larger scholarly enterprise, namely, the theoretical and empirical advancement of CST beyond its traditional focus on North America and Europe.
A very short explanation of CST’s major tenets is required. The civil sphere conveys notions of morality, of what is honorable, pure, and just as opposed to dishonorable, impure, and unjust. It emerges in the tensions between solidarities, feelings of belonging, and universalism on the one hand, and exclusions, othering, and particularism on the other hand. The civil sphere is not to be mistaken for the concept of civil society, as the latter has a more restricted definition that often puts it in the space between the economy and politics. The civil sphere conveys utopian meanings that are at the foundation of democracy. These ideals can be advanced by individuals or groups engaged in other spheres, including those who perform roles in political institutions and the economy; they are not exclusive to the civil society. The civil sphere is evident through communicative and regulative institutions, and especially in the battles of meaning that take place in those fields, but it is also instantiated in institutions such as electoral systems and the judiciary, among others. The civil sphere is constituted in conflictual interaction with the anticivil—that is, particularistic, irrational ideas that deny the solidarities promised by the ideas of civility. It originates in long-term historical trends that accelerated particularly after the nineteenth century but finds its roots in movements started much earlier. Clearly, Alexander puts forward a normative concept.
In eleven chapters that include an introduction of CST to the Latin American context, eight case studies, a critical commentary, and a conclusion, editors Alexander and Carlo Tognato present a remarkable book that, beyond its focus on CST, engages with current debates on democratization, social movements, political participation, and civil society. The case studies show how civil society organizations, journalists, universities, members of political parties, and overall, ordinary citizens advance civil ideals that challenge prevailing political, cultural, and discursive arrangements. Although the issues, contexts, policy domains, and actors involved in each of the episodes studied differ greatly, common to all of them is the analysis of controversies that show the shifting boundaries between the civil and the uncivil.
Two authors pay attention to episodes of corruption and conflicts of interest involving private companies and high-ranked public officials that recently occurred in Mexico and Chile. In these countries, investigations conducted by independent journalists and the judiciary had significant effects in challenging traditional understandings linked to the exercise of power, as well as the role of public authorities in dealing with large economic interests. María Angélica Thumala Olave analyzes the public debate regarding two major cases of collusion and cartelization in Chile, after the public regulator initiated investigations for price fixing against the largest pharmacy chains and two forestry companies. In turn, Nelson Arteaga Botello and Javier Arzuaga Magnoni study the Mexican debates triggered by the controversial acquisition of a new residential house by Mexico’s first lady. These cases call into question traditional boundaries between public and private in both countries. While they expose the fragility of public institutions, they also allow society to participate in a redefinition of those boundaries, making elites more accountable to civil ideals.
Other authors show that tensions between civil and uncivil are also present within institutions that are central to the exercise of power, or whose foundations rely on anti-civil values. Liliana Martínez Pérez describes the emergence of civil ideals within members of the Cuban Communist Party, looking at the trajectory of a blog founded by party members. Although the blog’s declared purpose was to defend the revolution from external attacks, it provided space for criticizing the government and the party. Drawing on ideas of civility, those responsible for the blog developed a narrative of justification for such an opening. In a similar vein, Mayumi Shimizu explores the meaning of being the police force in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. From a CST approach, police “defend the civil sphere by excluding anticivility through their daily policing” (p. 179). To achieve their goal, police must rely on anticivil means. This puts police officers in a delicate situation in which it is difficult to strike a balance.
In Argentina, María Luengo documents the ways in which the movement against femicide #NiUnaMenos (2015) was the result of a process of coalition and frame building among a variety of actors. By drawing heavily on a human rights discourse, movement organizers successfully persuaded the public that violence against women was not only a human rights violation but an uncivil attack against the country as a whole. The tensions between civil and uncivil also shape university life and its functions, as Tognato shows in the case of Colombia. In a similar vein, Celso M. Villegas documents the ways in which political struggles have shaped the definitions of the middle class in Venezuela over the last decades. In turn, Trevor Stack inquires into the meanings of citizenship for the inhabitants of a small Mexican city, showing that ideas of universalism, civility, and participation located beyond the state have significantly informed their understandings of the concept.
With parallels to Habermas’s concept of public sphere, and reminiscent of Hegel’s theory of history, Alexander’s CST provides a framework to investigate the meanings of belonging and civility as they materialize in society. As pointed out by Isabel Jijón, “The civil sphere is an incomplete project that can never be fully achieved or, for that matter, suppressed” (p. 232), which touches upon the normative component of his theory. As sociologists, we live in times in which moral ideals of justice or goodness have been removed from our theoretical frameworks in the name of objectivity. For the positive social sciences, the lack of normativity has become a benchmark secured by methods that have become ever more sophisticated. Alexander’s CST departs from this empiricist aspiration by claiming an unequivocal moral stance, by taking sides in favor of universalism, solidarity, and cooperation. This unequivocal stance should be welcomed.
In the book’s conclusion, Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino note that the dualities of the CST (pure/impure; civil/uncivil) are not new in social theory and can be identified in other influential theoretical corpuses such as modernization and democratization theories. But they believe that CST goes beyond their limitations and does not adopt western liberalism as a benchmark (p. 243). However, several contributors to this book tend to align the civil sphere with something very akin to liberal, centrist political ideas. Thus, populism is equated with demagogy, polarization is bad, and liberal institutions represent desirable standards. In the Latin American context, and starting from the independence wars, revolutions and populist leaders have often conveyed meanings of civil repair and belonging. And while these might have failed to deliver on their promises, whether such events and leaders are to be put on the side of the anticivil remains as a debatable issue. The extent to which CST distances itself from western-centered approaches, in my view, requires further development, perhaps bringing CST closer to the debates on multiple (or varieties of) modernities, or postcolonialism.