Comparing Western and Middle Eastern Experiences
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Professor Clement M. Henry invites you to discuss "civil society" as it developed in the West and as it is being reinterpreted in the Middle East and in some of the virtual transnational communities of cyberspace.
What do we mean by this term "civil society?" May it work in all cultures or must a culture be thoroughly "westernized" for the society to acquire a "civil" component? How may global communications be affecting it today? If civil society emerged in the West with the development of modern capitalism, how may the globalization of economic life be reshaping it? If mass participation is virtual and vicarious in much of the "real" world, may virtual participation become the reality of contemporary civil society?