Past Imperfect
VOLUME 6
1997
Editors: Douglas Bailie, Tracy Pelland, Siobhan McNaught
A Conceptual History of Civil Society:
From Greek Beginnings
to the End of Marx
Boris DeWiel
The idea of civil society has undergone a renaissance in
recent years, but missing from this literature is an explanation for its
historical transformation in meaning. Originally civil society was synonymous
with political society, but the common modern meaning emphasizes autonomy
from the state. This paper traces this historical transformation within
the context of the history of ideas, and suggests that the critical event
was an eighteenth-century reaction against the rationalistic universalism
associated with the French Enlightenment. The continued significance of
the question of universalism is suggested by the fact that universalistic
Marxist-Leninist theories provided the ideological underpinnings for the
destruction of civil society in Eastern European nations. The paper concludes
that three elements are essential to the modern understanding of civil
society: its autonomy from the state, its interdependence with the state,
and the pluralism of values, ideals and ways of life embodied in its institutions.
Parliamentary Speeches of the Fin de Siècle
German Political Antisemites
Robert Stack
Historians have used materialist and idealist arguments to attempt to explain
the nature of antisemitism in Imperial Germany. An analysis of parliamentary
debates from 1887 to 1898 shows antisemitic politicians’ concerns reflected
those of agrarian populists in other countries, such as the United States.
This argues against German particularism as an explanation for Imperial
antisemitism, and further suggests that the politicians’ specifically anti-Jewish
aims were secondary to their Mittelstand economic interests.
Offspring as Enemy? How Canada’s National Magazine
Confronted Youth and Youth Culture in the 1960s
Jaymie Heilman
The idea of a “generation-gap” is one of the principal features in the
mythology of the 1960s. The construct implies that the response of parents
to the social and cultural activism of their teenage baby-boomers, those
born in the period 1946-1962, was systematically hostile and decidedly
unsympathetic. An examination of the contents of the Canadian periodical
Maclean’s between the years 1959 and 1973, however, reveals a very different
reaction towards youth. Attitudes in the magazine regarding youth-culture
were generally positive and frequently laudatory, thus calling into question
the reality of the generation-gap.
Public Attitudes in Canada Toward Unmarried
Mothers, 1950-1996
Susan Crawford
Has the social stigma and shame once attached to unwed motherhood disappeared?
A review of the Canadian popular press from 1950 to the present suggests
that the stigma is now an economic one. This paper traces public attitudes
toward unmarried mothers as viewed primarily through the pages of Maclean’s
and Chatelaine and concludes that, while the stigma now is mainly an economic
one, the sense of shame surrounding unwed motherhood has not disappeared
completely.
Power, Arabism and Islam in the Writings of
Muhib al-Din al-Khatib in al-Fath
Amal N. Ghazal
The writings of Muhib al-Din al-Khatib reveal a deep concern over Muslim
weakness in the face of European domination in the interwar period. In
his weekly newspaper al-Fath, al-Khatib confronted the issues which threatened
to increase Muslim division following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire.
He considered Islam the common bond by which all Muslims could unite to
resist the West. While Arabism could fit into and uphold this unity, separatist
nationalisms threatened it and caused further divisions inspired by the
West. In his editorial writing, al-Khatib suggested various reforms aimed
at reviving Muslim control of their own lands.
