Towards a Civil Society Conception of African Unity/Integration

Abstract

Background: The term civil society enjoys a degree of conceptual elasticity, which is both helpful and unhelpful. Because the term refers to a wide range of social phenomena, which vary in constitution and societal expression, looseness is in this respect advantageous since it permits the accommodation of variation. On the ocher hand, it's shifting conceptual borders makes the notion sometimes inchoate and terminologically indeterminate. Some may say that it is neither fish nor fowl. Another way of fathoming this problem is to realize that defmitions of "civil society" are seriously manifold and the conceptual divergences are ultimately based on contrastive philosophical positions, which cannor be easily unified.