CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

A worldwide wave of processes for the (re)organization of so called "civil societies" has taken place since the struggles of Solidarity and other Eastern European movements in the late 1970s. Although significant differences may be found between processes at both region and country levels, at least two significant commonalities may be identified. The first of these commonalities is the very use of the expression "civil society;" which is itself a significant factor because as we know this expression is not a "natural element," but a socially produced symbolic representation of social experiences. This is not a new expression, but it has become very much in currency only in recent years, and beyond differences in the attributed meaning, this expression has acquired a certain status as if it represent a universal feature of human societies. Given these circumstances, the impressive current worldwide diffusion of the expression "civil society" should at least stimulate our analytical curiosity. In this regard the second commonality becomes particularly significant. This second common factor is the participation of certain kinds of organizations in almost all these processes, I name these organizations "global agents." Based on the discussion of some examples, this paper explores how "global agents" play important roles in promoting the growing political status of the idea of "civil society," and in stimulating the development of transnational working relations between "domestic" organizations, as well as between these latter and themselves. I name "global" those organizations that actually or tendentially develop their practices at a worldwide scale, or at least at a continental scale, which contrast with the cases of "domestic agents" that develop their practices mainly at local, or sometimes national scales. Although domestic agents increasingly engage transnationally, this is not their main purpose

enviar mensaje