October 15, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Civil Society, Second Edition
by Michael Edwards
Michael Edwards, a senior fellow at Demos, a public-policy think tank, examines the role of nongovernmental organizations in promoting democracy and ending poverty, and attempts to provide a more cohesive definition of what civil society is, from political, economic, and social perspectives.
He discusses the explosion of voluntary organizations all around the world in the last twenty years, especially in Africa and the Middle East, and argues that the groups are more fluid than those in the West and have more agency than is usually thought. Mr. Edwards writes, “Far from being a problem, the development of different varieties (such as grass-roots groups, membership associations, and formally registered charities) of civil society is a cause for celebration, because it means that the associations that emerge — hybrid, fluid and maybe surprising to commentators in the West — might be able to avoid some of the problems encountered by their Western counterparts, answering in the process the charge that they are simply pawns of foreign powers.”
Publisher: Polity Press, 65 Bridge Street, Cambridge England CB2 1UR; http://www.polity.co.uk; 171 pages; $22.95; ISBN 978-0-7456-4586-5.
