Levels of NGO cooperation and their empirical importance

Levels of NGO cooperation and their empirical importance

In sociology, civil society is often understood in terms of what it is not: it is not the world of political power, and it is not the economy. In more positive terms, it is the sphere of 'uncoerced human association', or voluntary cooperation. In capitalist society the economy is about competition for economic capital. In liberal democracies political life is the sphere of competition for power and influence. But civil society is the sphere of cooperation for social capital. The concept of social capital is contested for the conceptualisations that are most commonly contrasted), but it commonly refers, like economic capital, to something that reproduces itself, and it implies 'the development of trust, civic spirit, goodwill, reciprocity, mutuality, shared commitment, solidarity and cooperation'. This paper emphasises the importance of trust to NGO cooperation, especially small-scale local cooperation, and to civil society more generally.