From Awkwardness to Action Christian Voluntarism in Denmark Beyond the Sector Model of Civil Society
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From Awkwardness to Action Christian Voluntarism in Denmark Beyond the Sector Model of Civil Society Anders Sevelsted 1,2 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract
The article challenges the theoretical “sectoral model” of civil society through a historical case study and offers an alternative actor-centered approach inspired by American pragmatism. First, three separate strands of research are identified that each conceptualize civil society as a sector with institutional independence, a single normative logic, and fixed roles. Building on archival material on the Danish temperance organization the Blue Cross, the article then compares the theory to the empirical case. It is argued that the CSO exposes three types of “awkwardness” in the sector model, as the Blue Cross (1) dedifferentiated and became part of the public system of treatment for alcoholism, (2) applied multiple logics depending on the audience it addressed, and (3) acted in the role of “interpreter” rather than “antenna”—and specifically interpreted the needs of alcoholics in mutual understanding with state authorities. Finally, an alternative approach to the study of CSOs is proposed: a historically sensitive approach that differently from an ahistorical model analyzes collective actors historically, affirmatively, and situationally through their application of contentious and non-contentious repertoires of civic action. Keywords Civil society . Voluntarism . Collective action . Temperance movement . American pragmatism
Introduction A common conceptualization of civil society builds on the sector model: Civil society is a separate sector “between” other sectors—typically the state, market, and/or family—governed by a specific communicative or altruistic logic that is in opposition to the logics of power, money, and intimacy (Anheier and Knapp 1990; Kocka 2004b; Salamon 1987; Smith 1972;
* Anders Sevelsted [email protected]
1
Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Porcelaenshaven 18a, 2000 Frederiksberg, Denmark
2
School of Social Work, Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Sevelsted
Somers 1993). While this model has been criticized for neglecting the way civil society and nonprofit has actively been “invented” by the state (Hall 1992), for operating with a too diffuse notion of what the “sector” is (Lichterman and Eliasoph 2014), as well as ignoring questions of inequality and power in the economy (Wright 2011), it remains a prominent way of understanding civil society. Thinking beyond the sector model is important mainly for two reasons: Civil society scholars tend to “select on the dependent variable” both empirically and normatively. Empirically, scholars tend to focus on civil society organizations (CSOs) either as “contentious” or “non-contentious”—either as part of social movements that make claims on the state or as voluntary associations that solve problems and contribute to social coherence and trust. In fact, many organizations do both. Normatively, scholars tend
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