Society Abbreviations

A society is a group of people who share certain characteristics and who have common goals. Civil, in turn, is what is associated with a citizen or that is not part of the religious or military scope.

The idea of civil society, therefore, concerns the grouping of individuals who develop activities in the private sphere. The concept, however, can be understood in different ways.

For the social sciences, civil society is the group of subjects who, assuming their role as citizens, develop certain actions to affect the public sphere. Civil society, in this sense, can act in politics without being part of the government or even without belonging to a political party or other type of organization.

It can be said that civil society functions autonomously from the State, organizing itself independently and voluntarily. If a group of neighbors decides to gather in a square to protest because of a wave of robberies, demanding the resignation of the Chief of Police and demanding more officers on the street , it can be said that it is a protest of civil society. . The complaint may or may not be taken by the government or by some political sector that somehow channel it to the structures where State decisions are made.

In this way, a group of people who unite for a purpose in order to benefit everyone is seen as being a civil society. It should also be said that the institutional forms of a civil society differ from those of the State or even the family or the market.

Scholars such as the historian, writer and political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville define civil society as an important role in a democratic order.

There are those who believe that civil society benefits from globalization (in this case, bringing benefits to those who support liberalism), while others act through civil society in order to fight against this globalization.

In the context of law, civil society is the contract that two or more individuals establish, assuming the obligation to put certain resources in common for the creation of a legal entity that does not have an exclusively commercial character, even if it intends to create some profit/income. which, if obtained, is shared between the parties.

Friedrich Engels and Marx harshly criticized the concept of civil society and the State, because, for them, the State was only concerned with the issues of the dominant social class in order to ensure the reproduction of its domination. They conclude that this would be a way for the dominant social classes to impose themselves on the others, either using violence, ideology or even convincing them.

On the other hand , there is the political society that is composed of the national community, the family and where the State has great influence on the way of life of the human being, regulating this way of living. Therefore , this political society is constituted by the institutions that are part of the State. It is governed by imperatives such as safety, life, defense, order, among others.

Thus, it can be summarized that political society would be the relationship between population and State and how these two benefit from this relationship.

List of Acronyms Related to Society