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Catalysts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 January 2010

John Keane
Affiliation:
University of Westminster
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Summary

Traditions: the call of God

Both the idea and the concrete dynamics of global civil society can be better grasped by dwelling for a moment upon its historical origins. Intellectual proponents and activist champions of the idea of a global civil society have a bad habit of supposing that its institutions were born yesterday. By disregarding traditions – the gift of the dead to the living – the fans of global civil society fail to spot the deep roots of this globalising civil society. These run deep and have an entangled and branched – rhizomatous – quality about them. The social ties bound up with these traditions that feed present-day global civil society can be clarified by examining two separate but overlapping examples – taken from the worlds of Islam and Europe, respectively. They are arbitrarily chosen, but each illustrates two points that are of fundamental interest: that global civil society was formed by the horizon-stretching effects of previous social formations; and that these world-defining effects made possible the ‘action and reaction at a distance’ effects that are an intrinsic feature of global civil society.

Religious civilisations certainly developed world-views and world-girdling institutions that feed the streams of social life that are today global. Consider the new world religion of Islam, which was born in the early seventh century AD, in a region of the Arabian desert blanketed with crescent-shaped dunes and spotted with palm-fringed oases and teeming market towns populated by wandering tribes of Arab pagans and Jewish and Christian traders and travellers.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2003

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  • Catalysts
  • John Keane, University of Westminster
  • Book: Global Civil Society?
  • Online publication: 14 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615023.003
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  • Catalysts
  • John Keane, University of Westminster
  • Book: Global Civil Society?
  • Online publication: 14 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615023.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Catalysts
  • John Keane, University of Westminster
  • Book: Global Civil Society?
  • Online publication: 14 January 2010
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615023.003
Available formats
×