Civic Action as Temporal Process-in-relations: Towards an Events-based Approach

This chapter cross-fertilizes the civic action approach (Lichterman & Eliasoph, 2014) with an events-based temporal approach to better account for the dynamic processes that enact, maintain, and transform civic action and understandings of civil society. According to this reconceptualization, civil society is an ever-changing relational setting, structured by intertwined past and anticipated events, which are defined and redefined by civic actors on an ongoing basis. The civic action approach and its temporal elaboration are illustrated with examples drawn from a case study of private sector partnerships held by one of the biggest NGOs in Denmark. By conceptualizing civic action as a temporally embedded process of social engagement that is continuously informed by the interplay between ongoing interpretations of past events and the capacity to imagine futures of civic action, the chapter contributes with new conceptual tools that can uncover how and why civic styles emerge, persist, and change over time.