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Homo sapiens, our own species, are distinct from other mammals: great apes such as chimpanzees, gorillas and orangutans and from early hominids. At some point between 8 and 4 million years ago gorillas and then chimpanzees split off from the evolutionary line that would lead to humans. As Michael H. Hart explains in his fine book Understanding Human History, Australopithecus afarensis, our likely hominid forefather, lived in East Africa about 3.5 million years ago. The Australian anthropologist Raymond Dart (1893-1988) discovered the first fossil of an Australopithecus Africans, a slightly more evolved version of A. aphaeresis, in 1924 in southern Africa. It was neither ape nor human and caused a stir at the time. Prior to this find, most Western scholars had believed that humans evolved in Eurasia. Louis Leakey (1903-1972), the son of British missionaries, was an archaeologist and naturalist working in British-ruled East Africa. He went to school at Cambridge University in England, majoring in anthropology and graduating in 1926. From the very start Louis felt that our species arose in Africa, a concept which is now widely held but was controversial at that time. Through their tireless exploration and research, Louis and his English wife, the archaeologist and anthropologist Mary Leakey (1913-1996), made the Olduvai Gorge in the Serengeti region in northern Tanzania, famous for its wildlife, their domain. They made a series of spectacular pale anthropological and archaeological discoveries in East Africa and founded a Leakey family dynasty of leading scientists that is currently in its third generation. Lucy, the skeleton of an Australopithecus aphaeresis that lived 3.2 million years ago, was discovered in Ethiopia in 1974 by the American pale anthropologist Donald Johnson (born 1943) along with the French anthropologist Yves Coppens (born 1934). The genus Homo diverged from Australopithecines more than two million years ago with Homo habilis, which made very crude stone tools called Oldowan after the Olduvai Gorge. About 1.8 million years ago a new species, Homo erectus, arose in East Africa, the first hominid to spread out of Africa. The earliest fossil of Homo erectus (“human that stands upright”), the Java man, was discovered by Dutch physician and pale anthropologist Eugene Dubois (1858-1940) in 1891 on the island of Java, then under Dutch colonial rule. H. erectus existed not just in Africa but in parts of Eurasia as far as Java in Southeast Asia, but apparently never settled in Australia or the Americas; this was achieved by early modern Homo sapiens during the past 40,000 years.

Differences in individual personalities are caused because (i) the possibilities within it are different, and (ii) the provision of raw materials and appropriate conditions of stimulation by the environment vary widely. Guilford, for example charted the magnitude of similarity of pairs of children with respects of intelligence (IQ). Similarity in heredity varied from the same child (tested twice), to identical twins to only chance similarity in a pair of unrelated children. The difference in commonality between the second and third pairs stated above demonstrates the role of the environment (rearing-practice) while the trend from pair one to pair seven shows the role of heredity
Technically, environmental factors start exerting their influence through the uterine Environment during the prenatal stage. The dietary habits, the health of the mother, etc., may Cause prevail “insult” or damage to the developing organism. Some disabilities are inflicted upon the child by uterine environmental factors. During the first month or so, varying cultural patterns can be seen to shape the physical appearance of the child. For example, tough-shaping by a strong massage of the infant’s body in the northern states of India and tender-shaping of the nose of the girl-child by strong processing in the southern states of India. As the child grows, he faces and deals with several environment factors. The child gradually Grows in complexity, supporting or contracting various factors as the environment may be varying kinds. Let us discuss some of he environmental factors to see how they affect the growing personality o f an individual. Rearing patterns: Interactions between the infant and mother for satisfaction of biological needs play a significant role in personality development. Care and affection develop a sense of Security. Over-indulgence or under-indulgence of the mother in breast-feeding would determine the “oral” personality and severity in toilet-training is the “anal” personality.
Regularity in feeding practices would develop in the child “basic trust” in the world,
Irregularity would yield “mistrust”. Similarly, toilet-mining severity may cause the child to I grow into a doubting and shameful person, training “at ease” develops autonomy.
Parent-child interaction: Once the child grows free of the needs of the mother, permanent-child Interactions assume social dimensions. Through the interactions, both the individual psyche
And the social psyche are communicated to the child and the child develops in him/her
“Individuals”.

Culture is shared, by which we mean that every culture is shared by a group of people. Depending on the region they live in, the climatic conditions they thrive in and their historical heritage, they form a set of values and beliefs. Culture is used in two senses, a general and a specific sense. In general sense, it implied the some total of those characteristics which are unique to mankind and which have no parallel in the animal kingdom. In a specific sense, it refers to the totality of the life ways and behavior patterns of a community or a group. There are so many relations between culture and health. Some sickness comes from someone cultural habit. Cultural factors significantly influence health and sickness in society. Certain types of ailments are significantly correlated with such factors as class occupation, ethnicity and food habits. Diabetes, ulcer, hypertension may be regarded as urban disease, generally connected with sedentary occupations. Environmental pollution brought about by technological advancement, is now identified as one of the major causes for the growing incidence of cancer. Consumption of fatty foods and high salt intake habits are significantly correlated with cardiovascular diseases. In several tribal communities in the south pacific islands, the kirghis of turkey, certain African tribes, the Australian aborigines, and Eskimos use no salt in their diet. So high blood pressure is rare among them. But one-fourth of the diet of Eastern Finland are consists of animal fat, consequently they are most prone to heart attacks. Generally a culture defines what diseases are to be considered as illness, and therefore requiring treatment. Intestinal worms are regarded as necessary for digestion for the Thonga of Africa and the Yap islanders. In most primitive societies, diagnosis and treatment of diseases are invariable associated with magical beliefs and rites and shamanistic practices. In some cultures diseases are associated with the violation of taboos. Among the Ojibwa Indians, a person who is guilty of violating food taboos invites sickness on himself and his family members. And religion is sometimes used interchangeably with faith or belief system, but more socially defined than personal convictions and it entails specific behaviors. Culture defines what types of food are worthy of consumption by a given people or a community, and what food items are to be avoided. Consequently, a given food item, which is relished by one people may be abhorred by another. The aphorism a short sentence packed with meaning, ‘one man’s food is another man’s poison’ is very true in a culture sense. Pork which is forbidden to Jews and Muslims is eaten with relish by the Christians. Milk and milk products are regarded as luxury food by the Baganda of east Africa, and the people of West Africa and Chinese consider them as inedible and nauseating. The Navahos and the apaches of New Guinea and Arizona consider fish nauseating and unfit for human consumption. Dog meat, which will be nauseating to most modern people, is eaten with relish by the Mexican Indians and some Naga tribal in India. The American Indians, until recently, considered tomatoes poisonous and refused to eat them. Certain types of fish are considered a delicacy and eaten raw in Japan. Eating raw meat is widely prevalent in several part of Africa. Various shades of vegetarianism And non-vegetarianism exist side by side in the Indian society. There are Strict vegetarians in south India and Gujarat who consider meat, egg and fish as taboo.

Empowerment is today a widely used term in development policies and programs but the concept empowerment covers a wide range of definitions. In this part we will focus on some of the key definitions mostly used in development studies and intervention strategies. Key words mostly refered to be options, choice, control and power. Common to these definitions are the ideas of process or change, and the ideas of human agency and choice. A process by which disempowered individuals and groups gain the power to control their life and the ability to make strategic life choices. According to Naila Kabeer there are three important factors included in the empowerment process: Resources, agency and achievements. Resources can be seen as the enabling factors for empowerment, such as education and employment. Agency is the essence of women’s empowerment. It includes the abilities to make strategic choices and decisions that affect important life outcomes. It is important that women themselves are active agents rather than recipients of development assistance. By this is not meant that women alone are responsible for their empowerment. International and national institutions play important roles in the process of the provision and implementation of resources, by which women can empower themselves. The last element in the process Kabeer refer to as achievements (Boender et. Al 2002; 5-9). For women to become active agents of change, consciousness of their conditions and the causes for their subordination must be raised and reflected upon. Awareness and understanding of ones life conditions can be viewed as a cognitive element of empowerment (ibid;11). Other important elements of empowement are psychological elements which means increased self-esteem and self-reliance which/and are thereby motivating factors that contribute to women’s actions. An economic element of empowerment refers to the capability of earning a living. Political elements relate to women´s abilities to mobilize for social change and participate in social organizations. Thus empowerment is a multidimensional process which works at various levels (Monkman 1998:499). We believe that attention paid to all dimensions is important in order to change existing structural inequalities. Empowerment is important both as an individual and collective process. Individual actions can challenge and affect existing gender norms. Outcome of individual actions can start a chain reaction by influencing and motivating other peoples` desires and choices, thereby creating collective actions, which provide an even greater challenge to structural inequalities, improving conditions not only for the women involved but also for their families and the community (Boender et. Al. 2002;16). Empowerment in development discourses often refers to Molyneux’s (1985) distinction between strategic and practical gender needs. Practical gender needs, refer to the basic immediate needs such as water, food, health-care and employment. Many development programmes have been focusing on women’s practical gender needs. This approach does not challenge existing traditional roles and structures in society. Strategic gender needs differ from practical gender needs by addressing women’s subordinate position to men. It seeks to change unequal power relations in society. This can be done through means such as fix. The abolition of the gender division of labor, the guarantee of equal wages and the alleviation of the burden of domestic labor and access to child care (Moser 1993; 37-41). Grassroots movements have typically sought to empower women through addressing the strategic gender needs via bottom-up actions. But often they have started with a focus on practical gender needs. In 1979 a feminist group in India was organized in order to prevent bride burning and rape. But the group soon realized that the problem of housing was of a much greater concern to the local women. As a result, focus shifted to organizing housing for homeless women. Initially they focused on homelessness and thereby they raised issues about the patriarchal structures concerning inheritance matters. From being mainly a concern for local women the issue was raised to national level and was placed on the political agenda (ibid; 74-77). The role of grassroots movements in mobilizing and attempting to empower women will be discussed in a later section. Before this we will look on the different constraints that girls and women face in terms of entering and participating in the educational system.

The persistence of widespread illiteracy is one of the serious problems that many developing countries are struggling with in the year 2003. As the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 stated: “more than 113 million children have no access to primary education, 880 million adults are illiterate, gender discrimination continues to permeate education systems, and the quality of learning and the acquisition of human values and skills fall far short of the aspirations and needs of individuals and societies” (The Dakar Framework for Action 2000). The illiteracy and low educational achievement of girls and women in many countries is a problem of particular urgency. In the developing countries there are 66 % more adult women than men that are illiterate, and the female school enrolment rate at primary level is 13 % lower than that of males. Since the 1970’s the education of girls and women in developing countries have been on the agenda of scholars of education and of international development agencies. Multiple policies and programmes have since then been implemented by NGO’s, national governments and international development agencies with the aim of increasing girls’ participation in education. But despite these efforts to expand girls’ access to and attainment in education, low female enrolment in schooling and illiteracy of women were still widespread in 1990 when the World Education Forum was held in Jomtien, Thailand. The conference resulted in two important documents on education: the World Declaration on Education for All and A Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs. Besides emphasizing the goal of basic education for all, the documents underlined the importance of ensuring better access to basic education for girls, while giving less special attention to the literacy needs of adult women (Sutton 1998; 382 & Dighe 1998; 421). The conference made it a condition to achieve the goal of Education for All (EFA) by the year 2000 and listed the strategies by which to achieve it (Buchert 1996; 73-74). But by the year 2000 the educational goals had not been achieved. The World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, was held which culminated in the Dakar Framework for Action. The framework was seen as a renewed commitment to achieve EFA by 2015. Furthermore did the Dakar declaration place particular emphasis on the goal of reaching gender equality in education and focused on ensuring both girls’ and women’s full and equal access to and achievement in basic and continuing education of good quality (The Dakar Framework for Action 2000). It also emphasized the need to reform the school curriculum so that it is more gender sensitive and more conducive to gender equality. Important issues of good quality and gender equality in educational concerns the need for change in values and practices that reproduce patterns of gender discrimination. In recent years studies have been examining how the traditional patriarchal gender roles and values are reproduced in the curriculum of educational institutions. Low expectations of girls by girls themselves, and by female and male teachers, parents, students and the society in general are main reasons why gender stereotypes is being reproduced in the educational system. The special attention paid on the education of women and girls in development policies, activities and projects arise out of the knowledge that ensuring basic education for all, especially the education of women and girls and achieving gender equality are important elements in promoting development and advancement in people’s life quality as well as a means to empowering women themselves. Empowerment as the expansion of freedom of choice and action is identified by the World Bank as one of the key elements of poverty reduction and a primary development goal. The promotion of women’s empowerment as a development goal is based on a dual argument: that gender equality is a crucial aspect of human welfare and intrinsically worth pursuing and a means to other ends such as the promotion of growth, reduction of poverty and promotion of better governance.

Social research refers to research conducted by social scientists, primarily within sociology, but also within other disciplines such as cultural/social anthropology, social policy, communication studies, human geography, political science, and social psychology. Sociologists and other social scientists study diverse objects: from census data derived from hundreds of thousands of human beings, to the in-depth analysis of one individual social life; from monitoring what is happening on a street today, to the historical analysis of what was happening hundreds of years ago.

The use of positivism as a research method in the social sciences dates back to August Comte, who wanted to institute a methodology based on facts rather than speculation. For Comte, the social sciences should deal with scientific laws instead of contemplation.

The problem with social research is that it is not easy to get solid and repeatable results, as we are such a complex and variable species. In the history of social understanding, Positivism originated out of the French Enlightenment, with French philosopher Auguste Comte, who sought to the replace the ‘brainpower approach’ of Rationalism by leveraging the principles of the natural sciences (such as Physics, Chemistry and Biology).

At the time of Comte, science was having a huge impact and was steadily replacing religion as the key authority for knowledge about what was true or false. Even today, when something is pronounced ‘scientific’ then it is generally held to be irrefutable.

Comte’s three stages of scientific knowledge:

The roots of Positivism lie particularly with Empiricism, which works only with observable facts, seeing that beyond this is the realm of logic and mathematics.

The basic principle of Positivism is that all factual knowledge is based on the “positive” information gained from observable experience, and that any ideas beyond this realm of demonstrable fact are metaphysical.

Only analytic statements are allowed to be known as true through reason alone. Thus ‘Roses are flowers’ is analytic, whilst ‘Roses are fragrant’ is synthetic and requires evidence.

The six tenets of Positivism are:

smallest parts (and the whole is the sum of the parts).

The  goal  of  science  is  to  create  generalised  laws

Scientific laws

(which are useful for such as prediction).

_{Facts and values} Facts are to sought. Values have no meaning for science.

Positivism seeks empirical regularities, which are correlations between two variables. This does not need to be causal in nature, but it does allow laws to be defined and predictions made.

It has been used to justify inequality (eg. Herbert Spencer in industrial revolution and general empire) and support racialism (e.g. John Knox’s skull-size measurements and Hans Eysenck’s IQ assessments).

Forms of Positivism include:

Social Positivism – of Comte, which showed people as evolving?

Critical Positivism – of Ernst Mach, who focused on immediate experience?

Logical Positivism – of Von Misses and the Vienna circle, which took a harder line?

In particular:

Logical Positivism places particular emphasis on sense experience and observation and attempted to eradiate metaphysics and synthetic statements. Promoted by the ‘Vienna Circle’. For each object, a definitive ‘mimetic’ statement can be made to accurately reflect the object. They used inductive approaches, collecting data and building theories on this.

Logical Positivists include early Wittgenstein, Bertrand Russell and Alfred Whitehead (Principia Mathematica) and Rudolph Carnap.

In Standard Positivism Carl Hempel countered Logical Positivist use of inductive methods with using deduction to first identify possible laws which are then proven or otherwise in experiments. (Behaviorism used this). It also sought to pull free of value statements of scientists.

Although Positivism has since been shown to be inadequate to study the full range of human experience, it has been hugely influential and still affects the significant use of experiments and statistics in social research.

Sociology is the science or study of the origin, development, organization, and functioning of human society; the science of the fundamental laws of social relationships, institutions, etc. It generally concerns itself with the social rules and processes that bind and separate people not only as individuals, but as members of associations, groups, and institutions, and includes the examination of the organization and development of human social life. The sociological field of interest ranges from the analysis of short contacts between anonymous individuals on the street to the study of global social processes. Most sociologists work in one or more specialties or sub fields. In the early 20th century, sociologists and psychologists who conducted research in industrial societies contributed to the development of anthropology. Anthropologists also conducted research in industrial societies. Today sociology and anthropology are better contrasted according to different theoretical concerns and methods rather than objects of study.

While sociocultural evolutionists agree that an evolution-like process leads to social progress, classical social evolutionists have developed many different theories, known

as theories of uni lineal evolution. Sociocultural evolutionism was the prevailing theory of early sociocultural anthropology and social commentary, and is associated with scholars like Auguste Comte, Edward Burnett Taylor, Lewis Henry Morgan, Benjamin Kidd, L.T. Hobhouse and Herbert Spencer. Sociocultural evolutionism represented an attempt to formalize social thinking along scientific lines, later influenced by the biological theory of evolution.

Anthropologists and sociologists often assume that human beings have natural social tendencies and that particular human social behaviors have non-genetic causes and dynamics (i.e. they are learned in a social environment and through social interaction). Societies exist in complex social (i.e. with natural resources and constraints) environments, and adapt themselves to these environments. It is thus inevitable that all societies change.

Specific theories of social or cultural evolution are usually meant to explain differences between coeval societies, by positing that different societies are at different stages of development. Although such theories typically provide models for understanding the relationship between technologies, social structure, or values of a society, they vary as to the extent to which they describe specific mechanisms of variation and change.

Early sociocultural evolution theories—the theories of Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan—developed simultaneously but independently of Charles Darwin’s works and were popular from the late 19th century to the end of World War I. These 19th-century uni lineal evolution theories claimed that societies start out in a primitive state and gradually become more civilized over time, and equated the culture and technology of Western civilization with progress. Some forms of early sociocultural evolution theories (mainly uni lineal ones) have led to much criticized theories like social Darwinism, and scientific racism, used in the past to justify existing policies of colonialism and slavery, and to justify new policies such as eugenics.

Most 19th-century and some 20th-century approaches aimed to provide models for the evolution of humankind as a single entity. Most 20th-century approaches, such as multilingual evolution, however, focused on changes specific to individual societies. Moreover, they rejected directional change (i.e. orthogenetic, teleological or progressive change). Most archaeologists work within the framework of multilineal evolution. Other contemporary approaches to social change include neoevolutionism, sociobiology, dual inheritance theory, theory of modernisation and theory of postindustrial society.

Citizenship

Citizenship is one of the most commonly used terms in a democracy. It is used at all levels of politics; in formal legal documents, in laws, in constitutions, in party manifestoes and in speeches. But what is citizenship? Or, who is a citizen? A citizen is not anyone who lives in a nation-state. Among those who live in a nation-state, there are citizens and aliens. A citizen is not just an inhabitant. He or she does not merely live in the territory of a state. A citizen is one who participates in the process of government. In a democratic society, there must be a two-way traffic between the citizens and the government. All governments demand certain duties from the citizens. But, in return, the state must also admit some demands on itself. These are called rights. A citizen must have political rights. A person who is ruled by laws but who has no political rights is not a citizen.

Since antiquity, citizenship has been defined as the legal status of membership in a political community. Under Roman jurisprudence, citizenship came to mean someone free to act by law, free to ask and expect the law’s protection. This legal status signified a special attachment between the individual and the political community. In general, it entitled the citizenship to whatever prerogatives and responsibilities that were attached to membership. With the creation of the modern state, citizenship came to signify certain equality with regard to the rights and duties of membership in the community. The modern state began to administer citizenship; it determines who gets citizenship, what the associated benefits are, and what rights and privileges it entails. As a legal status, citizenship has come to imply a unique, reciprocal, and unmediated relationship between the individual and the political community. Citizenship, in short, is nothing less than the right to have rights.

Class Struggle

Competition, strife, conflict, and struggle are inherent among classes in society. Marx propounded that inherent in the structure of classes was the identification of a common ‘class enemy’ as an entity against which all the members of a class would unite. If there was no class enemy, the people of a class would compete with each

other fiercely and there would be no class solidarity or class cohesion. Marx maintained that when a large-scale industry is set up, scores of people come together in the search of avenues for subsistence. Naturally, they compete with each other on several counts. But, their common wages, common interest against their superiors and other similar conditions keep them united and curtail competition among themselves. The capitalists on the other hand unite in the idea of repression. In the event of united capital, the working class forms associations. The interests that they define are class interests but the struggle of a class against another class is a political struggle. It may be appreciated that the conflict between classes is restricted to the race for economic rewards and resources. It also develops because of psychological suffering that accompanies alienation of labor.

Weber, on the other hand believed that relative control over goods and services (that constitute the groundwork for the conception of class), produces income, opens up the possibility of procuring other goods, provides social position, and provisions a certain style of life. Those in common class situation are often led to similar sentiments and ideas but not necessarily to concerted action (Bendix, 1974). Class organization emerges when there is an economic opponent. Weber (1968) proposed that it becomes important to curtail the competition when the number of competitors increases with respect to the profit span. For doing this, one group of competitors adopts some characteristics of its actual or potential group of competitors. The characteristics are externally identifiable such as language, religion, descent, residence and others. Sometimes associations are formed with rational regulations.

Some contributors to the theory of ethnicity trace back its origins to the early works of Max Weber. Weber in one of his important contributions namely Economy and Society first published in 1922 and reprinted in 1968 regards an ethnic group to be a group whose members share a belief that they have a common ancestor or to put it differently ‘they are of common descent’. He qualifies his statement by suggesting that: Ethnic membership does not constitute a group; it only facilitates group formation of any kind, particularly in the political sphere. On the other hand, it is primarily the political community, no matter how artificially organized that inspires the belief in common ethnicity (1968:389).

It is apparent from Weber’s statement that biology had little role to play in cultivating ‘sense of belonging’. Weber perceived Ethnic group as a status group. A status group may be rooted in perceptions of shared religion, language or culture.

Members of the group on the basis of shared communality tend to form ‘monopolistic social closure’—that is they refuse to let others enter their exclusive domain. Every member of the group knows what is expected of him in situations of collective participation. They also function together to protect each other’s honour and dignity. It is on these perceptions that ‘suicide squads’ operate in political struggles. Weber also argues that ‘since the possibilities for collective action rooted in ethnicity are ‘indefinite’, the ethnic group, and its close relative nation, cannot easily be precisely defined for sociological purposes’. (for details refer to Jenkins, 1997:10). This profound statement by Weber enables us to understand how political acts of subversion under one regime are celebrated as heroic and patriotic by those who are seeking political sovereignty; and are condemned as acts of treason by those governing the nation states. You must be reading articles in Newspapers about ongoing struggle between Israel and Palestine and various other so called insurgent groups and the nation states. Ethnicity forms complex equations and simple cultural or ethnological explanations are not enough to unfold its mysteries.

Ethnicity as a theoretical tool for understanding complex questions of social interaction and political formations holds equal interest not only for sociologists but also for anthropologists and political scientists. In a broad sense, three approaches to the understanding of ethnicity can be considered, namely Primordialist,

Instrumentalist and constructivist.

In general ethnicity is defined as a comprehensive form of natural selection and kinship connections, a primordial instinctive impulse. Which continues to be present even in the most industrialized mass societies of today.(1981:35)

Socio-biological interpretations of ethnicity assume that there are tangible explanations for ethnicity. Some of the followers of this school are convinced that genetic linkages by itself are responsible for accentuating ethnic ties. Another group within the same school thinks that biological and kinship ties evolve and are furthered by cultural influences. The explanations offered by various scholars suggest that this school of though is primarily rooted in evolutionary construction of human societies. Shaw and Wong (1989) argue that ‘recognition of group affiliation is genetically encoded, being a product of early human evolution, when the ability to recognize the members of one’s family group was necessary for survival’.

The term ‘civil society’ was used by writers such as Locke and Rousseau to describe civil government as differentiated from natural society or the state of nature. The Marxist concept derives from Hegel. In Hegel, civil or bourgeois society, as the realm of individuals who have left the unity of the family to enter into economic competition, is contrasted with the state, or political society. For Hegel it is only through the state that the universal interest can prevail, since he disagrees with Locke, Rousseau or

Adam Smith that there is any innate rationality in civil society, which will lead to the general good. Marx uses the concept of civil society in his critique of Hegel. Marx uses civil society in his early writing as a yardstick of the change from feudal to bourgeois society. Civil society arose, Marx insists, from the destruction of medieval society. Previously individuals were part of many different societies, such as guilds or estates each of which had a political role, so that there was no separate civil realm. As these partial societies broke down, civil society arose in which the individual became all-important. The old bonds of privilege were replaced by the selfish needs of atomistic individuals separated from each other and from the community. The only links between them are provided by the law, which is not the product of their will and does not conform to their nature but dominates human relationships because of the threat of punishment. The fragmented, conflictual nature of civil society with its property relations necessitates a type of politics, which does not reflect this conflict but is abstracted and removed from it. The modern state is made necessary and at the same time limited by the characteristics of civil society. The fragmentation and misery of civil society escape the control of the state, which is limited to formal, negative activities and is rendered impotent by the conflict, which is the essence of economic life. The political identity of individuals as citizens in modern society is severed from their civil identity and from their function in the productive sphere as tradesman, day-laborer, or landowner.

Although Gramsci continues to use the term to refer to the private or non state sphere, including the economy, his picture of civil society is very different from that of Marx. It is not simply a sphere of individual needs but of organizations, and has the potential of rational self-regulation and freedom. Gramsci insists on its complex organization, as the ‘ensemble of organisms commonly called ‘private’ where ‘hegemony’ and ‘spontaneous consent’ are organized. He argues that any distinction between civil society and the state is only methodological, since even a policy of non-intervention like laissez-faire is established by the state itself. The metaphors he uses to describe the precise relationship between the state and civil society vary. A fully developed civil society is presented as a trench system able to resist the incursions of economic crises and to protect the state. Whereas Marx insists on the separation between the state and civil society, Gramsci emphasizes the inter-relationship between the two. The state narrowly conceived as government is protected by hegemony organized in civil society while the coercive state apparatus fortifies the hegemony of the dominant class. Yet the state also has an ethical function as it tries to educate public opinion and to influence the economic sphere. In turn, the very concept of law must be extended, Gramsci suggests, since elements of custom and habit can exert a collective pressure to conform in civil society without coercion or sanctions.