Civil Society and the Civilizing Mission

This chapter starts with the liberal conception of a "global civil society". The globalization of the concept of civil society is one aspect of the emergent global civil society, for it shows how civil society ideas and languages and institutions are spreading beyond their place of origin into new contexts. There are two problems in the predominantly liberal conception of global civil society, arising from its emphasis on rule and space. The chapter argues for a critical approach to (global) civil society that reveals how the concept is used as a justificatory discourse in making new political spaces and distributing power. It focuses on dominant international legal thinkers and the entangled history of sovereignty-property. In particular, the chapter traces the entangled history of sovereignty/property in the context of European colonial expansion, when the idea of civil society gained traction as ideology and apology for European colonial expansion and occupation.