We need to discover what civil society means for social policy futures. Does it mean a new and more democratic welfare future based on citizen participation in the shaping and delivery of social services? Or does it envisage the liberalization of welfare in which the state is displaced by a resurgent market? Does this downsizing mean the end of the welfare state? Did it ever exist? Was it a metaphor for a virtuous society based on a welfare compromise? Is virtue being redefined in terms of individual agency in a world where welfare has become once again a matter of personal responsibility? Or can the Zeitgeist of the welfare state be reinvented by a Social Left on the basis of utopian socialist principles? Is Colas contention that the State is the opium of civil society correct?
F. Powell
The book apparently continues to pose greater and deeper questions, we must definitely get it if we are to understand where we are standing today. I will certainly try to get it so that we can further this discussion.
It is wonderful and strange for me to be understanding how democratic I am when I couldn't even really understand the word or cared for it just last year! Or to think of myself as indulging in the realm of politics which seemed too big an arena to pretend a role.
In the cult all those interests had been numbed behind the pathologic practice of trying to be present to nothing while life fell out of my existence. That is perhaps why today it is so clear to me that "life" is "life giving". It is a great thing that nothing happens in vain and that what doesn't kill us, makes us stronger!
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