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Transnational AssociationsAssociations transnationales

Law and language at the beginning of the new milleniumby Joseph-G. Turipage 3

Littératures nationales et problématique de l’État-nation enAfrique francophone postcolonialepar Samba Dioppage 9

A world fellowship: the founding of the International Lyceum Clubfor Women Artists and Writersby Grace Brockingtonpage 15

What happened to the Brandt Report?by Mohammed Mesbahipage 23

Territoires intelligents et esprit d’entreprisepar Marc Luyckxpage 29

Civil society and the uncivil state: land tenure reform in Egyptby Ray Bushpage 45

*******Association NewsVie associativepage 69

Contents 1/2005 Sommaire

Introduction

ajor language legislation in the area of lan-guage policy is evidence, within certainpolitical contexts, of contacts, conflicts

and inequalities among languages used within thesame territory. Objectively or apparently, theselanguages co-exist uneasily in a dominant-domi-nated relationship, thereby leading to a situationof conflicting linguistic majorities and minorities.

The fundamental goal of all linguistic legisla-tion is to resolve, in one way or another, the lin-guistic problems arising from those linguisticcontacts, conflicts and inequalities, by legallydetermining and establishing the status and useof the languages in question. Absolute or rela-tive preference is therefore given to the protec-tion, defence or promotion of one or several des-ignated languages through legal language oblig-ations and language rights drawn up to that end.

The Canadian linguistic legislation (theOfficial Languages Act) is an example of officiallegislation that applies language obligations andlanguage rights to two designated languages,English and French. Quebec’s linguistic legisla-tion (the Charter of the French Language) is anexample of exhaustive legislation that applies, ina different way, language obligations and lan-guage rights to French, to a few more or less des-ignated languages and to other languages to theextent that they are not designated.

Increasing legal intervention in language policygave birth, or recognition, to a new legal science,comparative linguistic law. Comparative linguis-tic law is the study of language law throughout theworld (as well as the language of law and the rela-tion between law and language). To the extentthat language, which is the main tool of the law,becomes both the object and the subject of law,linguistic law becomes “metajuridical” law. To theextent that comparative linguistic law recognizesand enshrines linguistic rights, albeit sometimesrather timidly and implicitly, it becomes futuristiclaw, since it builds on deep historical roots. Thisin itself is remarkable, since the growing recogni-tion or historical enshrinement, in time and space,of linguistic rights promotes the cultural right tobe different, which is a promise of creativity forindividuals and families, as well as for societies,nations and the international community.

The intervention of States and Authorities (atall levels, national, regional, local, municipal,etc...) is relatively recent due especially to tworelatively recent social phenomena and prob-lems, the democratization of education and theglobalization of communications.

Types of linguistic legislation

Linguistic legislation is divided into two cate-gories, depending on its field of application : leg-islation which deals with the official usage oflanguages and that which deals with their non-official usage. Needless to say, there are greyareas in this classification.

Linguistic legislation can be divided into fourcategories, depending on its function; it can beofficial, institutionalizing, standardizing or lib-eral. Legislation that fills all these functions isexhaustive linguistic legislation, while other lin-guistic legislation is non-exhaustive.

“Official linguistic legislation” is legislationintended to make one or more designated, ormore or less identifiable, or national languages,official in the domains of legislation, justice,public administration and education, totally orpartially, symmetrically or asymmetrically.Depending on the circumstances, one of twoprinciples is applied : linguistic territoriality(basically, the obligation or right to use one ormore designated languages within a given terri-tory) or linguistic personality (basically, theobligation or the right to use one’s own languageor any language). As such, making one or moredesignated languages official does not necessari-ly or automatically entail major legal conse-quences. By the way, an official language of aState is not necessarily the most spoken lan-guage of the country. We have some examples inmany countries of Africa and Asia, where thelanguage(s) of the ancient colonizers are still theofficial(s) languages while they are not the mostspoken languages; in other respects, an interest-ing case in Indonesia, where the official lan-guage is Indonesian-Malay while the most spo-ken language is Javanese.

The legal sense and scope of officializing a lan-guage depends on the effective legal treatmentaccorded to that language (for instance, whenthe law states that only official texts, or only cer-

*Professor and Lawyer,Secretary-General of theInternational Academy ofLinguistic Law (HeadOffice: Montreal, Quebec,Canada).

Associations transnationales1/2005, 3-8

Law and language at the beginning ofthe new millenniumby Joseph-G. Turi*

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tain official texts, are “authentic” so that theyprevail, legally, over texts in one or more otherlanguages).

“Institutionalizing linguistic legislation” is leg-islation which seeks to make one or more desig-nated languages the normal, usual or commonlanguages, in the unofficial domains of labour,communications, culture, commerce and busi-ness.

“Standardizing linguistic legislation” is legisla-tion designed to make one or more designatedlanguages respect certain language standards invery specific and clearly defined domains, usual-ly official or highly technical.

“Liberal linguistic legislation” is legislationdesigned to enshrine legal recognition of lan-guage rights implicitly or explicitly, in one wayor another. But linguistic law, viewed objective-ly (as legal rules on language), makes a distinc-tion in linguistic rights, which are subjective sothat they belong to any person, between theright to “a” language (the historical right to useone or more designated languages, belonging tomajorities or some specific minorities, in variousdomains, especially in official domains) and theright to “the” language (the universal right touse any language in various domains, particular-ly in unofficial domains). These linguisticrights, based respectively on the principle of ter-ritoriality and the principle of personality, allow-ing for specific exceptions, are particularly indi-vidual, especially for linguistic minorities, aboutstrict legal point of view, but naturally individ-ual and collective about cultural point of view.They are also individual rights for political rea-sons, since the States are afraid of possible coin-cidence with the right to self-determination.The linguistic rights of Aboriginal people, onthe contrary, are generally collective ones.

The important but unofficial BarcelonaUniversal Declaration of Linguistic Rights, ofJuly 1996, states that linguistic rights are histor-ical and both individual and collective.

Canadian and comparativelinguistic law

Linguistic legislation never obliges anyone touse one or more languages in absolute terms.The obligation stands only to the extent that a

legal act of fact covered by language legislation isor must be accomplished. For example, theobligation to use one or more languages onproduct labels stands only if there is, in non-lin-guistic legislation, an obligation to put labels onproducts.

Moreover, it is the written form (the languageas medium) and not the written linguistic con-tent (the language as message) that is usually tar-geted by legal rules dealing explicitly with lan-guage. Both linguistic content and linguisticform can be the object of legislation that gener-ally is not explicitly linguistic, such as theQuebec Civil Code, the Charter of HumanRights, or the Consumer Protection Act.

Generally speaking, linguistic terms andexpressions or linguistic concepts (mothertongue, for instance) are the focus of languagelegislation only to the extent that they are for-mally understandable, intelligible, translatable,or identifiable, in one way or another, or havesome meaning in a given language.

For example, Section 58 of Quebec’s Charterof the French Language stated that, allowing forexceptions, non-official public signs in the mustbe solely in French (the practical target of thisprohibition was the English language).Therefore, if a word is posted and it is under-standable in French, it is legally a French word.In this case, the public sign is legal (for instance,“ouvert”). In other respects, if a word is postedand it is not understandable in French, it is notlegally a French word only if it has some mean-ing in another specific language and it is trans-latable into French. In this case, the public signis illegal (for instance, “open”). However, thisSection has been largely repealed, after theSupreme Court of Canada, in 1988, and theHuman Rights Committee of the UnitedNations, in 1993, declared that it was incom-patible with the freedom of expression.

In principle, linguistic legislation is aimed atthe speakers of a language (as consumers orusers) rather than at the language itself (as anintegral part of the cultural heritage of a nation)unless that legislation states the contrary or isclearly a public policy law. In this case, theapplication of linguistic norms is sometimesflexible (like in the European Peeters Case, ofJune 18, 1991). A public policy law, on the con-

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trary, is any law comprising legal standards sofundamental and essential, individually and col-lectively, in the interests of the community, thatthey become imperative or prohibitive inabsolute terms so that they cannot be avoided inany way.

Quebec’s Court of Appeal in the Miriam Case(March 22, 1984), Quebec’s High Court in theGagnon Case (December 15, 1986) and theFrench courts, in a great many decisions, includ-ing the Steiner Case (Paris Court of Appeal,November 27, 1985), all confirm the essentialpoints in the above. Thus, anything that is lin-guistically “neutral” is not generally targeted bylanguage legislation, as can be seen, among oth-ers, with Section 20 of the Quebec’s Regulationrespecting the language of commerce and busi-ness.

While the presence of a language or the“quantity” of its usage can be the object ofexhaustive language legislation, language “quali-ty” or correct usage belongs to the realm ofexample and persuasion where language usage isunofficial, and to the schools and governmentwhere language usage is official.

Legal rules in linguistic matters are less severethan grammatical rules. There are four funda-mental reasons for this : firstly, the best laws arethose that legislate the least, particularly in theunofficial usage of languages; secondly, lan-guage, as an individual and collective way ofexpression and communication, is an essentialcultural phenomenon, in principle difficult toappropriate and define legally; thirdly, legalrules, like socio-linguistic rules, are only appliedand applicable if they respect local custom andusage and the behaviour of reasonable people(who are not necessarily linguistic paragons)while grammatical rules are based on theteacher-pupil relationship; fourthly, on theother hand, legal sanctions, criminal sanctions(fines or imprisonment) and civil sanctions(damages, partial or total illegality), being gen-erally harsher than possible language sanctions(low marks, loss of social prestige or loss ofclients), legal sanctions in the language field areusually limited to low and symbolic fines ordamages.

Since the legal sanctions of a public policy laware formidable (partial or total illegality, for

instance), it is preferable not to think of lan-guage laws as being exclusively public policylaws, except when their legal context is clearly infavour of such an interpretation, as it could bein the official usage of languages. True, theFrench Cour de cassation declared implicitly, inthe France Quick Case (October 20, 1986) thatFrench Language legislation was a public policylaw. But that did not prevent the Cour d’appelde Versailles, in the France Quick Case (June 24,1987) from considering terms such as “spaghet-tis” and “plum-pudding” to be, for all practicalpurposes, French terms that is to say to be inkeeping with such legislation, because they were“known to the general public”.

The fundamental goal of this legislation, then,is to protect both francophones and the Frenchlanguage. A francophone is anyone whose lan-guage of use is French, that is to say, from legalpoint of view, any person who can speak andunderstand French, in an ordinary and relative-ly intelligible manner.

In the Macdonald Case (May 1, 1986) and theFord Case (December 15, 1988), the SupremeCourt of Canada recognized and enshrined, toall intents and purposes, the distinction betweenthe right to “a” language (principal right, fore-seen as such in the Canadian Constitution,explicitly historical owing to the historic back-ground of the country, in the domains of theofficial usage of languages) and the right to “the”language (accessory right, not explicitly foreseenas such in the Canadian Constitution, beingimplicitly an integral part of the human rights andfundamental freedoms category, in the domains ofthe unofficial usage of languages). The Courtrecognized and enshrined then the main differ-ences between the official and the unofficialusage of languages.

According to the Supreme Court of Canada,the right to “the” language is therefore implicit-ly an integral part of the explicit fundamentalright of freedom of speech. Moreover, in theIrving Toy Case (April 27, 1989), the SupremeCourt of Canada confirmed that artificial per-sons also held certain language rights.

A relatively complete study carried for theUnited Nations in 1979, the Capotorti Report,indicates that, although the use of languagesother than the official language(s) in the

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domains of official usage is restricted or forbid-den in various parts of the world, the use of lan-guages in the domains of unofficial usage is gen-erally not restricted or forbidden. We arrived atthe same conclusion, in 1977, when we made ananalysis of the constitutional clauses of 147States in the field of languages. Since then,many States, among others Algeria, Malaysiaand especially the ones that are born from theformer USSR and the former Yugoslavia, havemade important and often drastic linguistic leg-islation. There is at present an inflation of mod-ern linguistic legislation all over the word!

France has made French the official languageof Republic. For this reason, the ConstitutionalCouncil of France declared on the 15th of Juneof 1999 that the European Charter for Regionalor Minority Languages is incompatible with theFrench Constitution! It must be noted that thisCharter applies only to historical and individuallinguistic rights.

It must be pointed out that for the momentthere are not important prohibitive linguisticlegislations in the world. We had some badexamples of important prohibitory linguisticlegislation in the past in Italy and in Spain, andmore recently in Quebec and in Turkey (andalso indirectly in Indonesia by permitting onlylatin characters in the public signs, thereforeprohibiting implicitly Chinese language) espe-cially in the field of unofficial usage of lan-guages, but this kind of linguistic legislation hasbeen totally or partially revoked. Turkey prohib-ited, in some cases, the use of some languages,languages other than the first official language ofeach country which recognizes the Republic ofTurkey, practically the use of the Kurdish lan-guage. The prohibitive measures contravened,prima facie, Section 27 of the InternationalCovenant on Civil and Political Rights, of 1966,which recognizes to members of linguisticminorities the right to use their own language.This Turkish law has been therefore revoked.The International Covenant applies, moreover,to individual linguistic rights, no matter if theyare historical or not.

In other respects, we have some good exam-ples of legal linguistic tolerance and freedom inmany countries like Finland (with 2 official lan-guages and where the Swedish minority is very

well protected), South Africa (with eleven offi-cial languages and where the right to “the” lan-guage is specifically recognized), Canada andAustralia (for their policy of multiculturalismfor example). It makes us relatively optimisticand still absolutely vigilant about the future oflinguistic law.

Conclusion

The right to “the” language will become aneffective fundamental right, like other humanrights, only to the extent that it is explicitlyenshrined not simply in higher legal norms, butalso in norms with “mandatory” provisions thatidentify as precisely as possible the holders andthe beneficiaries of language rights and languageobligations, as well as the legal sanctions thataccompany them. Otherwise, the right to “the”language will be but a theoretical fundamentalright, like several human rights, proclaimed innorms with “directive” provisions that cover lan-guage rights but have no real correspondingsanctions and obligations.

While the law inhabits a grey zone, the rightto “the” language (and therefore the right to beculturally different) will only have meaning,legally speaking, if it is enshrined (especially forlinguistic minorities), in one way or another(particularly, in the official usage of languages),in norms with mandatory provisions, as theright to “a” language generally is.

As an historical right (that takes into accountthe historic background of each country), theright to “a” language deserves special treatment incertain political contexts, even if it is not in itself afundamental right. As a fundamental right (rightand freedom to which every person is entitled),the right to “the” language, even if it enshrines thedignity of all languages, cannot be considered anabsolute right under all circumstances. A hierar-chy exists that must take into account, in wayswhich are different but not legally discriminatory,the historical and fundamental linguistic impera-tive of the nations and individuals concerned,including the imperative of re-establishing anacceptable equality between several languagescoexisting in a given political context.

It is clear that the States (at all levels) musttake into account in an equitable way the lan-

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guages spoken by their citizens and inhabitants.But it is also clear that citizens and inhabitantsmust take into account in an equitable way theofficial language(s) of their States (at all levels).Equity is the key word to find acceptable solu-tions in this field.

There are more than 6000 thousands lan-guages and dialects in our world, according tothe UNESCO. But 75% of the word popula-tion speak 23 “great” languages and each onthese languages is spoken by a least 1% of thepopulation, that is 60 millions of persons (byorder of quantitative importance, Chinese,Hindi-Urdu, English, Spanish, Arab, Bengali,Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, German, French,Malay, Javanese, Telugu, Tamil, Korean,Vietnamese, Marathi, Turkish, Italian, Thai,Iranian and Goudgerati). Moreover, more than3000 languages are spoken by only 4% of theword population. The Bible has been translatedin more than 2000 thousands languages anddialects. Windows has been translated in morethan fifty languages and will be translated inmany other languages. There are international,national, regional and local languages anddialects. All languages and dialects are equallydignified. But they are not all equal amongthem. A natural and sometimes artificial hierar-chy is setting up among languages. This is thecultural reality of our world.

Lingua francas (in the past, Latin and French,now English-American, and tomorrowPortuguese-Brazilian maybe)are necessary forminimal international communications, not fordeep cultural expression. The most spoken lan-guages in the word are Chinese and Hindi-Urdu, but they are not international languages.More than the 90% of the word populationdoes not speak English, but English is still themost important international language in theword. Actually, the only real “danger” we canindeed see from the lingua francas whose lin-guistic quality, as lingua francas, is often verypoor or strictly technical, especially when theyare popular, is that a strong lingua franca couldprevent a good teaching and a good learning orthird strong languages, as foreign languages. Thereal danger is not coming from “globalization”but from “localization” as far as localizationbecomes “ultra-nationalization”.

The recent political trend in favour of linguis-tic and cultural diversity is interesting if it pro-motes the right to “the” language. It is not sointeresting if it is in favour of the right to “a”language. It is really embarrassing that for themoment some trends of this recent culturalmovement want to defend strong languages like,for example, French, German, Italian, Spanish,Portuguese Arab and Russian. In reality, the lan-guages that should be protected and promotedabove all are the ones that are lesser used (lessthat a million speakers and in some cases somewith a few million speakers) or the ones that arein a real and vulnerable linguistic minority situ-ation.

By ruling, in Section 89 for instance, that“Where this act does not require the use of theofficial language (French) exclusively, the officiallanguage and another language may be usedtogether”, Quebec’s Charter of the French lan-guage recognizes and enshrines the right to “a”language and the right to “the” language, by cre-ating an interesting hierarchical solutionbetween them in the field of language policy.The problem was that the “exclusive” use ofFrench was to much important at the enactmentof the Charter. It is not any more totally the casenow.

The importance of linguistic law, that is theheavy legal intervention of States in the field oflanguages, shows that the globalization of com-munications seems so dramatic that it must becontrolled by promoting and defending nation-al, regional and local languages and identities, inother words the linguistic and cultural diversityof the world. In this respect, linguistic law is thetriumph of “linguistic localization”, that is therealm of linguistic freedom and tolerance.

Let us hope that it will not become the tri-umph of “linguistic ultra-nationalization”, whennationalisation means in some public territoriesboth the right to “a” language and the realm oflinguistic fundamentalism. In this respect, it willcreate new walls and boundaries and thereforemajor and new conflicts among nations. Toparaphrase Clausewitz, is language becoming anew way to wage war? Let us hope not.Language must not become the new religion ofthe new Millennium and will not, if we remainvigilant on this matter.

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For all these reasons and others, we are rela-tively satisfied that the natural Tower of Babel isstronger than the artificial and technical global-ization of communications. A world without

frontiers is still a dream. However, we are rela-tively worried that the Tower of Babel is notnecessarily stronger than the possible and dan-gerous ultra-nationalisation of languages.

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Genèse et manifestation du conceptde nation

ette étude portera sur l’articulation du conceptde ‘nation’ par rapport à la littérature africainefrancophone. Il y aura donc deux parties :

1.- la première sera axée sur la définition duconcept de nation mais surtout sur la portée, laprévalence et le fonctionnement de ce concepten Afrique contemporaine. Il s’agira donc deretracer les origines de ce concept ainsi que soncaractère colonial. Ensuite, il est important devoir en profondeur les différentes phases demétamorphose du concept de nation.

2.- Quand à la deuxième partie de ce paper, jevais faire une analyse textuelle portant sur uncertain nombre de récits et voir dans quellemesure leurs auteurs transposent ou re-créent leconcept de nation en se servant de la fiction etde l’imaginaire littéraire.

En commençant avec la définition du conceptde nation, dans son ouvrage intitulé ImaginedCommunities, Benedict Anderson1 trouve que‘‘les concepts de nation, de nationalité et denationalisme sont très difficiles à définir, sansparler de les analyser.’’ Mais on peut d’ores et

déjà se rendre compte qu’il y a plusieursvariantes du concept national et les plussaillantes étant les versions locale et universelle.Dans le contexte africain, l’adaptation localesera particulièrement intéressante à prendre encompte. Le philisophe allemand Kant2 met l’ac-cent sur la continuité du genre humain et de sesinstitutions sociétales ; selon Kant, ‘‘le genrehumain est constamment en progrès en ce quiconcerne la culture, en tant qu’elle est sa finnaturelle ; on le considère comme progressantégalement vers le mieux en ce qui concerne la finmorale de son existence, et que cette progressionest sans doute interrompue parfois, mais jamaisrompue’’. Dans le même ordre d’idées, malgréles variétés raciales, linguistiques, ethniques etd’origines le groupe humain procède d’unemême racine et c’est plus tard avec l’évolutiondes idéologies et le développement technique etscientifique prodigieux que les divergences entreles groupes humains vont s’accentuer et que l’ac-cent sera de plus en plus mis sur ce qui divise leshommes plutôt que sur ce qui les unit ;d’ailleurs Herder3 a bien saisi le sens de cettesolidarité humaine en disant, notamment, que

* Harvard University

1. Benedict Anderson,Imagined Communities,London, New York: Verso,1991. P. 3.2. Emmanuel Kant,Oeuvres philosophiques,tome 3. Paris: Gallimard,1986. P. 294.3. Johann GottfriedHerder, Une autre philoso-phie de l’histoire. Paris:Éditions Montaigne,1943. P. 115.

Associations transnationales1/2005, 9-14

Littératures nationales et problématiquede l’État-nationen Afrique francophone postcolonialepar Samba Diop*

De ses débuts dans les années 1920 jusque vers la fin du siècle dernier, la littérature africaine d’expres-sion française a connu plusieurs appellations; mais, surtout, les romans, récits et poésie produits par desauteurs comme Bakary Diallo, Amadou Mapaté Diagne, Durand Valentin, Paul Hazoumé, René Maran,Leopold Senghor, Birago Diop, Amadou Kourouma, Bernard Dadié, Ousmane Sembène, CheikhHamidou Kane (pour ne citer que quelques uns) entraient tous dans une nébuleuse et une entité génériqueet totalisante, englobant tout le continent africain sans tenir compte de ses diversités régionale, ethnique,tribale et linguistique. S’il est vrai que tous ces auteurs ont en commun l’usage de la langue française, il estautant vrai qu’ils sont issus de pays dont les frontières ont été délimitées par la puissance colonisatrice fran-çaise; ces entités étatiques survivent jusqu’à présent. Dans le cadre de cette étude, les romanciers OusmaneSembène et Cheikh Hamidou Kane feront l’objet d’un attention particulier.

Le but de cet essai est de voir s’il y a convergence entre, d’un côté, les littératures produites individuelle-ment par les pays africains francophones et l’idée de nation, de l’autre. Ainsi, tiendra-t-on compte des tra-vaux de Renan, de Herder en passant par la ‘communauté imaginare’ de B. Anderson. En fin de compte,il s’agit de vérifier le poids de l’idée de nation en Afrique noire, telle qu’héritée de la colonisation françai-se et, ensuite, les difficultés auxquelles doit faire face la problématique de la construction d’un État moder-ne si l’on tient compte des allégiances ethniques, tribales et linguistiques. Le but ultime est de montrer lafaçon dont cette complexité est re-créée à travers l’imaginaire littéraire. En me servant de récits d’écrivainscomme Sembène et Kane, une grille de lecture sera établie qui sera à même de rendre plus visibles laconfluence et les différences posées par l’idée de nation ainsi que sa manifestation en Afrique postcoloniale; nous verrons enfin l’articulation du concept de littérature nationale par rapport aux nouvelles entités éta-tiques découlant de la décolonisation, à la fin des années 1950.

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‘‘plus les recherches font la lumière sur lespériodes les plus reculées de l’histoire universel-le, ses migrations, ses langues, ses mœurs, sesdécouvertes et ses traditions, plus chaque nou-velle découverte rend vraisemblable du mêmecoup l’origine unique de l’espère humaine entiè-re’’. Enfin, Ernest Renan4, dans son discours deLa Sorbonne de 1882 intitulé Qu’est-ce qu’unenation ? met face à face les concepts de race etde nation lorsqu’il avance l’idée ‘‘ qu’autant leprincipe des nations est juste et légitime, autantcelui du droit primpordial des races est étroit etplein de danger pour le véritable progrès’’. Ilfaut noter ici l’accent mis sur le concept denation de la part de l’auteur mais, plus impor-tant encore, vers la fin du 19ème siècle, quel-qu’un comme Renan se rendait compte de l’ob-solescence du concept racial, bien que des pen-seurs comme Lévy-Bruhl aient tenté de donnerà ce concept, cette construction, une certainerespectabilité scientifique.

Concernant l’Afrique noire, c’est surtout laquestion ethnique et tribale (plutôt que leconcept de nation) qui jouit d’une actualité par-ticulière ; comme le concept national, l’ethnieest très complexe et selon Léopold Senghor5,‘‘l’ethnie est une symbiose de l’histoire et de lagéographie, de la race et de la culture’’. Je revien-drais plus loin sur le concept ethnique dans lecadre de l’analyse d’un certain nombre deromans francophones.

Pour revenir sur le concept de nation, la pre-mière évidence qui s’impose est qu’il est d’origi-ne européenne.6 C’est donc par le truchementde la colonisation européenne que ce concept vafaire son apparition en Afrique ; d’ailleurs, àpropos du Sénégal l’une des plus anciennes colo-nies françaises d’ Afrique, Christian Valantin7

soutient que la nation sénégalaise existait bienavant l’indépendance en 1960, car selon lemême auteur, dès 1920, les conditions psycho-logiques, économiques et politiques étaientréunies pour que le Sénégal accédât à l’indépen-dance. La remarque de Valantin est intéressanteà plus d’un titre car impliquant que sous le régi-me colonial, l’idée de nation était déjà ancréedans le corps social sénégalais ; mais là où le bâtblesse est qu’il faut un certain nombre de condi-tions pour que l’idée de nation existe ; cette idéerepose donc sur un tryptique : race, territoire et

langue unifiée (Hippolyte Taine a développécette thèse dan son ouvrage Histoire de la littéra-ture anglaise) ; d’ailleurs au 19ème siècle, despays comme l’Allemagne et la France seconstruisaient sur la base de ce tryptique, laquel-le situation a mené à des guerres meurtrières(1914-1918 et 1939-1945 par exemple) entrenations européennes, ce qui fait dire à plus d’unspécialiste que l’idée de nation est le chemin leplus rapide qui mène au nationalisme et qu’enfait elle ne trouve son épanouissement, sa justi-fication et sa concrétisation que sur la haine etl’exclusion de l’Autre. Dans le cadre de l’Étatcolonial, le Sénégal constitue un cas d’étudeintéressant et il est nécessaire de citer en lon-gueur Jean-Pierre Dozon8 qui, dans son ouvrageFrères et sujets, fait la remarque suivante à proposde ce pays :

Le Sénégal faisait figure d’anomalie où s’en-tremêlaient, en un étonnant imbroglio, les filsde trois histoires.

Celle, assez longue, de la cité créole [Saint-Louis] qui avait finalement débouché sur l’assi-milation entraînant dans son sillage les Africainsdes Quatre Communes ; celle, plus récente, dela colonisation du Sénégal par Faidherbe dontavaient notamment résulté le développement del’arachide et l’implantation de nouveaux intérêtsprivés, en même temps qu’un système de souve-raineté qui distinguait les territoires côtiers sousadministration directe de ceux de l’intérieur oùs’appliquait en principe un régime de protecto-rat [indigénat]; enfin, une histoire, en quelquesorte immédiate, qui venait de faire du Sénégalle haut lieu de la pénétration française enAfrique et du recrutement d’indigènes dans l’ad-ministration et les troupes coloniales, et quientérina cette antériorité en y instaurant le gou-vernement général de l’AOF et Dakar en capita-le de la Fédération.

Ces remarques de Dozon résument, s’il le fal-lait, toute la complexité qui est liée à l’implanta-tion de structures étatiques et juridiques en pro-venance de la Métropole dans les colonies. Ainsi,cette nation sénégalaise (dans l’acception françai-se du terme) à laquelle Valantin fait allusion nepouvait exister si l’on tient compte de la genèseeuropéenne du concept de nation mais, surtout,on se rend compte que les conditions d’existencede l’idée de nation ne pouvaient nullement se

4. Ernest Renan, ‘‘Qu’est-ce qu’une nation?’’ InPages françaises, 7ème edi-tion. Paris, Clamann-Lévy,1925.5. Léopold Sédar Senghor,Liberté 5. Le dialogue descultures. Paris: Seuil, 1993.P. 101.6. Voir à ce propos LiahGreenfeld, Nationalism:Five Roads to Modernity.Cambridge, Mass.:Harvard University Press,1992. 7. Christian Valantin, “Laformation de la nationsénégalaise’ Revue françaised’études africaines, 145(1978): 21-50.8. Jean-Pierre Dozon,Frères et sujets: la France etl’Afrique en perspective.Paris, Flammarion, 2003.Pp. 144-45.

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concrétiser dans le contexte colonial car, concer-nant la race, il y a une multitude d’ethnies enAfrique ; pour le territoire, un pays comme leSénégal était une colonie française (pas indépen-dante et ne jouissant pas de l’intégrité territoria-le qui est propre à un pays souverain) et, enfin,pour la langue, il n’y avait pas de langue unifica-trice tels que le français, l’allemand ou l’anglaiscomme cela s’est passé en Europe ; en Afrique,on est plutôt en présence d’un florilège delangues et de dialectes à base ethnique. Ce qui estcurieux quand même est que pendant l’époqueprécoloniale, avant l’arrivée des Européens, ilexistait des nations en Afrique (Yoruba,Mandingue, Wolof, Ibo, Hausa, etc.) mais passelon le modèle européen de race, territoire et delangue unifiée bien que ces nations africainesavaient une langue commune et occupaient desrégions bien délimitées ; cependant, le conceptde race, comme nous le savons tous, est très obs-cur et ne repose sur aucune vérité scientifique ;c’est plutôt une construction, une utopie, unevue de l’esprit ; il faut tenir compte desmélanges et métissages entre tous les humains engénéral et les tribus et ethnies africaines pour serendre compte que la notion de race ne peut nul-lement s’appliquer dans la définition du conceptde nation.9 À propos, la ville de Saint-Louis duSénégal était un creuset de métissage, ce quiexcluait automatiquement l’idée e l’uniformité etde l’homogéneité.

Avant d’aborder l’époque postcoloniale, il y aune certaine péculiarité qu’il faut relever : pen-dant la phase de colonisation, les Françaisavaient mis en place deux fédérations (AfriqueOccidentale Française et Afrique ÉquatorialeFrançaise, AOF et AEF, respectivement). Cesensembles constituaient des sortes de parapluiessous lesquels étaient fédérés les territoires(Sénégal, Dahomey, Mauritanie, Guinée, Côted’Ivoire, Haute Volta, Niger, Togo dans le cas del’AOF). Un ensemble comme l’AOF était mode-lé sur l’exemple français métropolitain d’unifica-tion en essayant de minimiser autant que pos-sible l’ethnie et la langue (africaines considéréescomme source de régression) tout en mettantl’accent sur l’assimilation et l’acquisition forcéede la langue française, la langue du maître, lalangue de la modernité. À l’inverse, avec lesindépendances des années 1960, la fédération de

l’AOF éclate et apparaissent à sa place les nou-velles nations et républiques. Ainsi, naît progres-sivement le concept de littérature nationale eton assiste graduellement à la lente mais sûreconsolidation des littératures congolaise, sénéga-laise, ivoirienne, béninoise, malienne, nigérien-ne, mauritanienne, camerounaise, guinéenne.D’ailleurs, l’articulation de l’idée de nation pen-dant l’époque postcoloniale se fait par le truche-ment de la littérature nationale ; allant dans lemême sens, Timothy Brennan10 estime que ‘‘lesnations sont des constructions imaginaires dontleur existence s’adosse sur un ensemble de fic-tions culturelles dans lesquelles la littérature defiction joue un rôle décisif ’’. Dans la section quiva suivre, je vais justement analyser le rôle del’imaginaire littéraire dans la construction natio-nale et dans le processus de consolidation del’ideé de nation.

Il est donc aisé de se rendre compte qu’à par-tir des années 1960, avec l’avènement des indé-pendances africaines, la problématique de l’État-nation se pose avec acuité ; rappelons que ceconcept est hérité de la colonisation française etil est juste de dire que c’est en fait le décalque dumodèle français que vont adopter les nouveauxÉtats africains. Une dernière mise au point : Ona souvent tendance à regrouper ensemble lesconcepts de nation, de nationalité et de nationa-lisme. J’ai cerné ci-dessus les contours duconcept de nation en insistant sur ses originescoloniales. Concernant l’Afrique, je dirais que cesont plutôt les concepts de tribalisme et d’ethni-cisme qui sont à l’honneur (je citerai commeexemples la tragédie rwandaise entre Hutus etTutsis et la tragédie qui se déroule en ce momentmême en Côte d’Ivoire, facilitée en cela par leconcept d’ivoirité, un concept xénophone et fac-tice crée de toutes pièces afin d’exclure une par-tie de la population du pays de la gestion dupouvoir économique et politique). Cependant,le concept de nationalité est prévalent enAfrique comme d’ailleurs dans toutes les régionsdu monde ; il est quand même utile de préciserqu’à l’instar du concept de nation, la nationalitétire sa substance de ses origines coloniales. End’autres termes, c’est le colonisateur français quia crée les nouvelles nationalités africaines grâceau découpage arbitraire des frontières des paysau cours de la Conférence de Berlin de 1884. Il

9. Et pourtant les philo-sophes et poètes de laNégritudes que sontCésaire, Senghor et Damasont célébré la race noiredans leur poésie mais ilsont surtout mis l’accentsur l’aspect culturel .10. Voir TimothyBrennan, In H. Bhaha, ed.Nation and Narration.New York: Routledge,1990.

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va sans dire que le concept de nationalité estsujet à controverse, car comme on le sait, cesfrontières coupent dans la chair vive des ethniesafricaines. Je donnerai un exemple rapide :entre les deux pays que sont le Sénégal et laGambie, il y a une division très arbitraire causéepar les Anglais et les Français car des deux côtésde la frontière les populations entretiennent desliens de parenté et de consanguinité, en plus deslangues qu’elles partagent en commun, sansoublier que les deux républiques n’existent quelà où il y a la route goudronnée, surtout auxpostes frontières où on peut voir les drapeauxdes pays, symboles de leur existence (il faut y

ajouter les forces de police et les agents desdouanes en uniforme des deux pays) ; en dehorsde ces poste-frontières, dans la vaste campagne,la frontière n’existe pas ; les populations et lestroupeaux de vaches, de moutons et de chèvresse déplacent comme ils le veulent et en fait sesont déplacés ainsi pendant des millénaires, bienavant l’avènement de la colonisation européen-ne.

Dans la partie qui va suivre, je vais prendre unexemple précis celui du Sénégal et voir dansquelle mesure les concepts de nation et de natio-nalité sont transposés ou réinventés à travers lalittérature et le roman.

11. Ousmane Sembène, Ledernier de l’empire: romansénégalais. Paris,L’Harmattan, 1981.

Étant donné que le sujet que j’ai choisi de trai-ter est vaste et qu’il est impossible dans le cadrede ce paper de tout traiter en profondeur, jelimiterai mon propos au Sénégal et choisirai lesrécits et romans qui vont servir à illustrer mesdéveloppements portant sur les concepts d’État-nation, de nation et de nationalité par rapport àla littérature. Mes remarques vont porter princi-palement sur deux écrivains : OusmaneSembène et Cheikh Hamidou Kane.

Tout d’abord, il faut préciser que les littéra-tures africaines ont connu plusieurs phasesd’évolution concernant la nomenclature et l’ap-pellation. On a eu l’expression ‘littératures afri-caines d’expression française’, ‘littératures afri-caines en langues européennes’, ainsi que leterme ‘littérature africaine’ tout court.Concernant ce dernier terme, lorsqu’on l’utilise,on fait surtout allusion aux productions litté-raires écrites dans les languages européennestout en ignorant l’abondante production litté-raire exprimée dans les langues africaines. Toutesces appellations sont nées pendant l’époquecoloniale et on a continué à les utiliser après lapériode des indépendances. La nouveauté estdonc l’avènement du concept de littératurenationale, un concept qui épouse les contoursdes nouveaux pays nés après 1960. Cependant,

comme nous le verrons plus loin, certainsromanciers ne respectent pas la séquence chro-nologique colonialisme-postcolonialisme et c’estle cas de Sembène. Dans certains de ses romansdatant de l’ère postcoloniale, Sembène traite dethèmes et sujets qui s’ancrent dans l’époquecoloniale.

Ainsi, certaines œuvres littéraires brouillent lafrontière entre époques coloniales et postcolo-niales ; Dans Le dernier de l’empire (1981)d’Ousmane Sembène11, l’auteur montre avecbeaucoup de doigté les effets de l’héritage colo-nial dans un pays comme le Sénégal. Dans leroman, nous sommes en présence d’une éliteintellectuelle et politique qui a en charge lalourde responsabilité de diriger un pays africainimaginaire mais qui ressemble somme toute auSénégal. Ils ont aussi la charge de créer et depiloter l’État-nation, ce dernier englobant enson sein toutes les institutions et symboles quirendent possible l’existence d’un pays souve-rain, libre, indépendant et autonome. Le pou-voir ici est considéré comme un gâteau qu’il fautse partager et chacun se positionne pour mieuxmanœuvrer ; les dirigeants intriguent et se bat-tent entre eux au lieu de s’unir pour mieuxconstruire la nouvelle nation. Cependant, lacause et la nature même du problème se trou-

Littératures francophones, littératures nationaleset concept de nation : l’exemple du Sénégal

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vent dans l’héritage colonial, il est vrai un héri-tage mal géré ; mieux, Sembène en fait veutfaire voir au lecteur que la rupture épistémolo-gique qui devait s’opérer au début des indépen-dances, cette rupture n’a pas eu lieu ; nul n’estdonc étonné de voir que ce sont les mêmesréflexes et les mêmes actions qui avaient courspendant la période coloniale qui se perpétuentdans la nouvelle nation, la seule différence étantque l’homme blanc est parti et maintenant c’estle Noir, l’Africain qui est confortablement ins-tallé dans le fauteuil laissé vacant.

Cependant, dans Le dernier de l’empire, l’auteurinsiste sur la nationalité et en faisant cela, il sedémarque un peu de son action panafricaniste ;ainsi, tout au début du roman, nous avons ensous-titre le mot ‘roman sénégalais’, faisant ainsiallusion au pays, à la république qu’est le Sénégal.À l’inverse, son autre roman L’Harmattan (1980)12

se passe plutôt vers la fin des années 1950, àl’époque du reférendum organisé en vue de l’indé-pendance ou non des territoires coloniaux françaisd’Afrique. Comme je l’ai indiqué plus haut à pro-pos de l’AOF, dans L’Harmattan Sembène parle dela solidarité entre les ressortissants et originairesdes territoires de l’AOF, suivant en cela l’idéemême de fédérer les Africains avec comme basephilosophique et utopique le panafricanisme ;ainsi, dans L’Harmattan, on se rend compte que leconcept panafricaniste est utilisé comme unmoyen fédérateur, comme un encouragement àpréserver l’union des Africains (en se servantd’ailleurs d’une structure comme l’ex-AOF maistout en s’assurant de ne pas la laisser intacte, sousson habit colonial ; il s’agit donc de créer unesorte de nouvelle AOF mais avec un nouvelhabillage, plus africaine, plus patriotique et plussentimentale) ; nous sommes donc en présenced’une nouvelle campagne en vue de la mise surpied d’un vrai panafricanisme, d’une fédérationentre Africains libres, laquelle mettrait l’accent surce qui les unit et non pas sur ce qui les divise.Ensuite, sur le plan purement chronologique,aussi bien les événements narrés dans L’Harmattanque la date d’apparition du roman lui-même neconcordent pas car le roman est publié à l’époquepostcoloniale alors que les événements ont lieupendant l’époque coloniale. Est-ce qu’en fait ladichotomie et l’opposition du colonialisme et dupostcolonialisne ne sont-elles pas arbitraires ? Est-

ce que ces deux concepts (du moins tels qu’ils sontarticulés dans les deux romans de l’écrivain séné-galais) sont-ils vérifiables ?

En gros, les deux romans de Sembène que sontL’Harmattan et Le dernier de l’empire constitu-tent des œuvres importantes en vue de la com-préhension des concepts de nation, de nationa-lité et d’État-nation. Mais, surtout si le premierroman (L’Harmattan) développe des argumentsà connotation continentale, au contraire ledeuxième (Le dernier de l’empire) se penche plu-tôt sur un pays spécifique, une entité républicai-ne nouvelle mais héritée de la colonisation.

L’autre romancier Cheikh Hamidou Kane13

dans Les gardiens du temple (1995) met enexergue la complexité et les rapports étroitsqu’entretiennent entre eux les concepts denation et d’ethnicité. Un des personnages de ceroman (un officier de l’armée), nommé Sinali,fait la déclaration suivante : ‘‘Pour le moment,en fait d’armée, ce que je vois de plus solide c’estnotre oasis, et en fait de nation je vois ma tribu’’.Le problème de l’allégiance du nouvel hommeafricain (né avec et après les indépendances) sepose ici : est-on obligé d’abord vis-à-vis de satribu (donc de sa langue) et ensuite envers lanation ? La vérité est que la majorité desAfricains construisent leur identité, de façonsconsciente et inconsciente, d’abord à partird’une base ethno-linguistique car, si nous sui-vons l’argument de Kane tel qu’il est développédans Les gardiens du temple, il est de propos derappeler que la majorité des Africains ont beau-coup de mal à s’identifier dans la nouvellenation car c’est une nation des élites occidenta-lisées, corrompues, privilégiées et prédatrices ;ce n’est pas la nation du et pour le peuple. Ainsi,C.H. Kane est en train de dire que l’individus’identifie d’abord à sa réalité immédiate, celledans laquelle il est né, c’est-à-dire son ethnie etsa langue, avant de s’ouvrir plus tard à desconstructions plus vastes mais aussi plus abs-traites que sont L’État, la nation et l’État-nation.

En mettant en relief l’ethnicité africaine, l’au-teur de Les gardiens du temple ne fait nullementl’éloge de l’ethnocentrisme qui est synonyme dehaine de l’Autre et d’exclusion ; Kane ne faitque constater une réalité qui est là , présente etla toucher du doigt ; il faut donc différencierentre ethnicité et ethnocentrisme. Kane parle de

12. Ousmane Sembène,L’Harmattan: Référendum.Paris, Présence Africaine,1980.13. Cheikh HamidouKane, Les gardiens dutemple. Paris, Stock, 1995.

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la tribu des Diallobé, un thème qui est présentdans son roman antérieur L’aventure ambiguë.Kane s’intéresse toujours à la tension entrel’Occident et l’Afrique. À travers les dialoguesentre trois personnages (Farba, Salif et Thierno)du roman Les gardiens du temple, le narrateurprojette une vision du monde et une cosmogo-nie qui sont très différentes selon qu’on est enprésence du monde africain ou du monde euro-péen. Au cours de ces entretiens tripartites, sontmises en exergue la violence et l’agressivité quiaccompagnent l’œuvre de domestication de lanature intentée par l’homme blanc, donc lerationalisme et la quête scientifique qui sontintrinsèques à la vision européenne du monde.À l’opposé, on a la quête métaphysique, reli-gieuse, spirituelle et mystique des Diallobé et,selon leur weltanschauung, la nature est l’alliéede l’homme, elle rend la vie possible sur terre,aussi bien la vie humaine, végétale, qu’animale ;il n’est donc pas question de domestiquer cettenature mais plutôt de vivre en symbiose et enharmonie avec elle. Il va sans dire que ces visionsdu monde différenciées influent sur les institu-tions sociales, politiques et économiques et, defaçon plus générale, sur la construction d’unÉtat moderne. En sous-texte, Kane met en avantl’idée que la nation et l’État-nation que veulentconstruire les Africains de son roman sont faus-sés au départ à cause de l’héritage colonial et dutribalisme ; en cela il rejoint la thèse deSembène dans Le dernier de l’empire.

Si on compare les romans de Sembène et deKane du point de vue esthétique, on se rendcompte que la relation que ces auteurs entre-tiennent avec la langue française n’est pas lamême. Dans les romans de Sembène, on y trou-ve beaucoup d’expressions tirées de la languewolof ; l’auteur s’adonne énormément à la jux-

taposition, mettant côte à côte les deux langueset créant par ce biais un certain bilinguisme ; enplus il s’adonne à la traduction directe et littéra-le, en donnant l’équivalent en français du mottiré de la langue africaine. À l’inverse, Kane nejuxtapose pas les langues française et africaine ;il s’exerce plutôt à traduire une certaine sensibil-té africaine mais en restant dans le cadre strict dela langue française ; Kane s’évertue aussi àrendre à la fois un esprit et un état d’esprit sanspour autant faire appel à la juxtaposition, à latraduction directe ou à la translittération. Defaçon schématique, on peut dire que si Kane tirela substance de sa pensée à partir de la langueafricaine (qui constitue le socle de la culture del’auteur), il tient quand même cette dernière àdistance et ainsi privilégie la langue française.

En conclusion, on peut dire sans risque de setromper qu’il n’y a pas adéquation entre, d’uncôté, le concept de nation et l’imaginaire litté-raire comme on l’a démontré plus haut. Il fauttrouver les raisons de cet état de fait dans l’hé-riatge colonial, c’est-à-dire que nous sommes enprésence d’un concept chargé d’histoire et d’am-biguité. Ensuite, un auteur comme Sembène atenté de faire coincider la nationalité et la litté-rature par le biais de la fiction. Quant à CheikhHamidou Kane, dans son roman Les gardiens dutemple, il met l’accent sur l’ethnicité. En fin decompte, les deux romanciers tentent de mettreen évidence les processus d’établissement d’uneidentité, laquelle prend en compte toutes lesvicissitudes du passé mais aussi les enjeux duprésent où il est question de bâtir une nouvellenation, une nouvelle entité (après la longue nuitcoloniale) dans laquelle l’homme africain peuts’épanouir librement et être à même de posséderune identité qui lui est propre mais qui tientcompte aussi des apports universels.

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n 20 June 1904, an alien invasion disrupt-ed the complacent fraternity of London’sclubland. Bus passengers passing the for-

mer building of the British Imperial ServiceClub in central London craned their heads atthe spectacle of women on the Club’s balconies,and in its great bow windows. All the leadingnewspapers reported this remarkable event; notonly had the women infiltrated the sanctuary ofa male club, they had actually taken the premis-es, and established their own exclusive society.1

The International Lyceum Club, as they calledthemselves, flourished over the next few years. Itearned a prestigious reputation, and set up sisterClubs throughout Europe and the BritishDominions. It became a social and cultural cen-tre for women all over the world, and the cen-tennial conference, which took place in Basel,Switzerland, in May 2004, bears witness to itssuccess.2

The first Lyceum was situated at 128Piccadilly, opposite London’s Green Park. Thebuilding still stands (it is currently used by theRoyal Air Force Club), and looking at its mag-nificent façade, it is easy to imagine the excite-ment and ceremony surrounding the Club’sinauguration. One hundred years later, it alsomakes us wonder what gigantic purpose couldhave motivated the Lyceum to acquire it. Whowas behind the venture, and in what circum-stances did the Club first operate?

The Lyceum was not the only women’s club inBritain at that time – far from it. From about1880, women’s clubs began to proliferate. In1882, there were two advertised in London. In1900, that number had risen to twenty one, and

in 1906, it peaked at thirty six. They catered forall interests and social classes, from aristocrats toactresses, university lecturers to city clerks.3

Their sudden popularity bore witness towomen’s changing aspirations, and their willing-ness, if not to challenge, at least to match, theVictorian institution of the gentleman’s club.4

How did the Lyceum compete in this expandingmarket? What did it have to offer that was dif-ferent, and how did it manage to fill the impos-ing halls of its London home?

The Lyceum was remarkable because it com-bined the gravitas of a respectable institutionwith the reforming zeal of a political pressuregroup. It conducted a campaign for women’srights and international cooperation that threat-ened to disrupt the British Establishment, yetitself became a feature of the Establishment. Noone can dispute its success as an institution. Iwould like here to emphasise its progressivevision.

An advertisement placed in TheEnglishwoman’s Year-book of 1910 highlights thefeatures which were meant to distinguish theLyceum from all other women’s clubs. TheYearbook was an annual publication listing allthe professional and recreational resources avail-able to women. It was here that the Lyceumcompeted for their attention. It was, the noticeclaimed, no ordinary social club, for it provideda unique information bureau to advise womenabout their careers, a permanent art gallery and,pre-eminently, an international network of club-houses across Europe.5 The Club offered anattractive synthesis of women’s emancipation,culture and cosmopolitan contact. The idea of

*Clare Hall, Herschel Rd,Cambridge CB3 9AL,UK. Tel: 44+ (0) 1223332 360Fax: 44+ (0) 1223 332333.grace.brockington@wolf-son.ox.ac.ukDr Grace Brockington isBritish Academy Post-doc-toral Fellow at Clare Hall,Cambridge. Her researchexplores internationalismand the arts c.1870-1920. This article was first deliv-ered as a lecture at thecentenary conference ofthe InternationalAssociation of LyceumClubs (Basel, Switzerland,May 2004). An earlier,illustrated version, avail-able in English, Frenchand German, can befound on the Lyceumwebsitehttp://www.lyceumclub.org

1. Smedley Constance,Crusaders: TheReminiscences of ConstanceSmedley (London:Duckworth, 1929), p. 68.2. To date, there are seven-ty-four Lyceum Clubs,spread among eighteencountries in Europe,America, Russia, theNetherlands and theAntipodes. See the websiteof the InternationalAssociation of LyceumClubs http://www.lyceum-club.org

Transnational Associations1/2005, 15-22

‘A world fellowship’: the founding of theinternational Lyceum club by Grace Ellen Brockington*

In May 2004, the International Association of Lyceum Clubs celebrated their centenary with a confer-ence held in Basel, Switzerland, where they discussed the future of their organisation and reviewed itsbeginnings. A world-wide network, the Lyceum caters for professional women with an interest in lifelonglearning and international exchange. This article examines its early purposes in the context of the con-temporary growth in women’s organisations, debate about women’s rights and employment, controversy sur-rounding imperial expansion, and the rise of a secular peace movement. Drawing on the memoirs, novelsand unpublished letters of Constance Smedley, the Lyceum’s foundress, it demonstrates the epic scale of herambition to create a global sisterhood, and explores the radical feminist and pacifist ideals that motivatedher. Though not the first women’s club, the Lyceum was pioneering in its aspirations. It offered womenartists, writers and professionals the opportunity to meet in luxurious and prestigious surroundings, to com-pete equally with men, and to forge links with like-minded women across the world. It also insisted on theautonomy and equality of its different branches, and, through a programme of cultural cooperationbetween countries, contributed to international diplomacy before the First World War.

O

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Miss Constance Smedley, the Club’s founder,was (I quote from the advertisement) ‘to estab-lish centres of intellectual and artistic life’throughout the world, and thereby to ‘promoteinterchange and thought between the culturedwomen of all nations’.

That emphasis on Smedley’s personal visiondraws our attention to the character of thewoman who began it all. Constance Smedleywas born in 1876 in the industrial city ofBirmingham, in the British midlands. Herfather was a wealthy businessman, her mother acultured woman who was decorated by theFrench government for her services to Anglo-French relations. Smedley grew up in a homethat encouraged women to take an active inter-est in the Continent. She herself showed earlytalent as an artist, becoming a star student atBirmingham School of Art. However, her inter-ests soon shifted toward the theatre, where sheagain achieved rapid success as a playwright.When she was in her early twenties, her familymoved to London, where she embarked on apromising career as journalist and novelist. Hersevere physical handicap, probably caused bychildhood polio, rarely prevented her from pur-suing her ambitions, or attracting admiringattention. In her prime, she impressed herfriends as ‘a radiant personality’ who ‘never sawany reason why one should not attempt thebiggest project his [sic] mind could hold’.6

Smedley’s early publications analysed thedilemmas of modern womanhood with wit andperception. I recommend in particular herextravagant feminist polemic Woman: A FewShrieks! Setting forth the necessity of Shrieking tillthe Shrieks be heard (1907); also the lively jour-nalistic dialogues collected in The Boudoir Critic(1903); and An April Princess (1903) togetherwith its sequel The June Princess (1909).7 AnApril Princess was her first and most successfulnovel. Its exuberant intelligence marked her outas a rising talent on the British literary scene,and critics applauded it as ‘new wine in a newbottle! The champagne of youth, originality,cleverness and self-confidence.’8 The story, inpart autobiographical, concerns a young womanwho lives a fantasy life as a princess. She rulesover her own private kingdom of friends, whiletreating with charming disrespect the rules of

society. The book’s publication in 1903 coincid-ed with the founding of the Lyceum. Six yearslater, A June Princess appeared just as Smedleywas preparing to leave the Club. The two vol-umes serve as stage-posts along the route of hercareer, the first proclaiming the literary ambi-tions of a young author, the second meditating,more soberly, on her experience of public life.

It was her unhappy experience at a Londonclub for women writers that motivated Smedleyto begin the Lyceum. Many of the women whobelonged to the Writers’ Club were poor, strug-gling to maintain a show of respectability whilemaking a professional impact. The Club offeredthem a bare minimum of hospitality whichSmedley, demonstrating the vision and audacitythat would take her far, demanded it increase.When the governors scorned her proposals for amore lavish service, she set about founding theLyceum as a rival intellectual institution.

The problem, as she saw it, was that profes-sional women stood at a disadvantage to theirmale colleagues, who could entertain men andwomen in style at their club or at home. Athome, single women risked compromising theirreputation. At the Writers’ Club, the food wasan embarrassment.9 The Lyceum therefore pro-vided a meeting place which allowed women tocompete equally with men in their workinglives. As Smedley put it in her memoirs, theClub ‘was intended to be a corporate socialhome for educated women, wherein women ofsmall or large incomes could feel part of the aris-tocracy of intellect, and come into free and help-ful contact with men and women from all overthe world’.10

The Lyceum’s solid, institutional presenceallowed it to negotiate controversial feministdebate with tact and decorum. It was able to rec-oncile traditional models of womanhood withradical new ideas about women’s liberation, giv-ing professional women a passport torespectability at a time when many objected totheir working outside the home at all.Contemporary argument centred on the notionof ‘separate spheres’, the public sphere of paidwork and government belonging to men, andthe private sphere of home and family, towomen. Increasingly, women challenged thisdichotomy, asserting their right to work, and

3. Hubbard Louisa (ed.),The Englishwoman’s Year-book (London: Hatchards,1882), p. 213. Janes Emily(ed.), The Englishwoman’sYear-book and Directory(London: Adam &Charles Black, 1900), pp.167-169. Janes Emily(ed.), The Englishwoman’sYear-book and Directory(London: Adam &Charles Black, 1906), pp.202-205. See also BraineSheila E., “London’s Clubsfor Women”, in Sims G.R. (ed.), Living London(London: Cassell & Co.,1906), pp. 114, 118; andDoughan David andGordon Peter (eds.),Dictionary of BritishWomen’s Organisations1825-1960 (London:Woburn Press, 2001), p. 54. For a history of men’sclubs, see Reid Wemyss,“In London Club-Land”,in Sims (ed.), LivingLondon; Clark Peter,British Clubs and Societies1580-1800: The Origins ofan Associational World(Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2000);Lejeune Anthony, TheGentlemen’s Clubs ofLondon (London: ParkgateBooks, 1984); andTremlett George,Clubmen: The History ofthe Working Men’s Cluband Institute Union(London: Secker andWarburg, 1987). I wouldlike to thank DavidDoughan for his biblio-graphic recommendations.5. Mitton G.E. (ed.), TheEnglishwomans’ Year-bookand Directory (London:Adam & Charles Black,1910), p. 224. See also[Anon.], “The LyceumClub”, The Times, 18 June1904, p. 12.6. St Denis Ruth, AnUnfinished Life: AnAutobiography (London:George G. Harrap & Co.,1939), p. 92. For furtherbiographical details seeBrockington Grace,“Annie Constance

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forming organisations, such as clubs, which gavethem a public presence. However, the Lyceumavoided any accusation of impropriety by pre-senting itself as an extension of the domesticsphere. On the occasion of the London Club’sfirst birthday its Chairwoman, Lady Balfour,declared that ‘we would have this Club, made bywomen […] what we have always been proudthat our British homes should be, as made byour women – places of good repute, places fullof purity and high ideals’.11 Here, she disarmsher critics by appropriating the language ofhome and morality. A woman’s club, she sug-gests, poses no threat to the status quo of femaledomesticity.

However, Smedley’s writing indicates that herown agenda was more daring. She fully intend-ed the Club to promote women’s suffrage, andshe wanted to do away with the notion of sepa-rate spheres altogether.12 Women, she believed,should compete with men, not as women, but asprofessionals. As she put it wittily, ‘we cheerful-ly admit that we are just as human as men […]and are universally deciding to come down tothe level of his comrades and his equals’.13 Shesought not only to support women, but to freethem from the limitations imposed by the cate-gory of femininity. Although the Lyceum gavesanctuary to women artists, it refused to protecttheir art within the critical arena. Smedleycounted herself successful when she couldrecord in the Club journal of 1905 that theywere ‘beginning to drop the fatal catchword“women,” and to talk of “excellent work” ratherthan “excellent women’s work” ’14.

Her novel On the Fighting Line (1915)explores the problems of gender stereotype thatthe Lyceum sought to transcend.15 MinnieBlunt, Smedley’s heroine, embodies the contra-dictions, disadvantages and illusions againstwhich modern women had to battle. She scrapesa menial living as a secretary, but dedicates her-self to work with passionate idealism. She livesin a dingy garret, but papers the walls with pin-ups of male heroes. Her idolization of what sheterms ‘real men’,16 epitomised by Mr Richard,her manly young employer, redeems an other-wise dreary existence. Minnie and Mr Richardbegin an office romance but the affair, fuelled byromantic delusions, turns sour. The couple’s

expectations of one another are impracticable,and Minnie discovers that her aspirations as amodern, working woman are incompatible withher conventional ideal of men and relationships.Her desire to follow in the footsteps of herheroes unnerves Mr Richard. As she records inher diary, after their first kiss, ‘he hates womento be unwomanly and he will have to kiss all thehardness in me away’.17 Although herself a sin-gle, self-sufficient woman, she clings to the prin-ciple that, as she puts it, ‘true men give womeneverything and work for them’,18 but when MrRichard offers to support her, she feelsdemeaned. As the stab of reality punctures herfantasies, Minnie discovers that happiness hadawaited her all along in her next-door neighbourJack, an unmanly writer who attends Suffragetterallies. His contempt for the traditional roles ofmen and women alike makes him, in Minnie’swords, ‘the one man for whom marriage would-n’t be a perpetual strain, but just a happy, inter-esting companionship’.19

The reality of the domestic sphere, arguedSmedley, was for the most part one of exploita-tion without protection. As Minnie puts it,‘men aren’t to be trusted with so much power. Itisn’t good for them. They can use it to makethings comfortable for themselves, not to pro-tect the weak’.20 Women should be allowed towork, not as did most out of bare necessity, butfor the dignity and satisfaction it could givethem. Smedley proclaimed that ‘a remarkablething is happening […. Woman] is not onlylearning to earn her living, but she is learning toenjoy work.’21 Here, she added her voice to agrowing body of opinion which demandedrespect for working women. The Englishwoman’sYear-book of 1882, for instance, prefaced its cat-alogue of professional resources available towomen with a polemic defending their right tomake full use of them. A woman’s employment,it claimed, could ‘give a zest and dignity to life,unknown to the idle and the pleasure-seeking’.22

The Lyceum advertised itself as a uniqueresource for women whose work had becometheir vocation, yet it also made strategicallowances for the pursuit of pleasure. Its mag-nificent premises lent it an aristocratic aura.Although it insisted that it was not just anotherluxurious social club, it courted high society

Smedley”, in The NewDictionary of NationalBiography (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2004).7. Smedley Constance,Woman: A Few Shrieks!Setting forth the necessity ofShrieking till the Shrieks beheard (Letchworth, Herts.:Garden City Press, 1907);The Boudoir Critic(London & New York:Harper & Brothers,1903); An April Princess(London: Cassell & Co.,1903); The June Princess,(London: Chatto &Windus, 1909).8. [Anon.], “Caviare forthe General?”, The PallMall Gazette, 13 April1903, p. 7.9. Smedley, Crusaders, pp.57-58.10. Ibid., p. 94.11. Ibid., p. 72.12. On the subject ofvotes for women, Smedleywrote ‘I feel it will be sodifficult for the Club tomove in the Suffrage mat-ter while a man [herfather] has the entireresponsibility’ for financ-ing the London Lyceum.Constance Smedley toWilliam Thomas Smedley(3 May 1908, private col-lection of papers belong-ing to Nicola GordonBowe. I would like tothank Dr Bowe for allow-ing me to read Smedley’sunpublished letters).William ThomasSmedley’s role as principlebenefactor of the LondonClub put it at a disadvan-tage to the Europeanbranches, which werefinanced by the lady mem-bers themselves. 13. Smedley, Woman: AFew Shrieks!, p. 48.14. Quoted in Smedley,Crusaders, p. 92.15. Smedley Constance,On the Fighting Line(London & New York:G.P. Putnam’s Sons,1915).16. Ibid., p. 105.17. Ibid., p. 107.18. Ibid., p. 142.

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patronage, making use of existing social struc-tures in order to build a better habitat for thenew class of women professionals. The partici-pation of the social élite was necessary becausethey had the time and resources to devote toclub work, while lending the Lyceum valuableprestige. Those who qualified for membershipincluded not only women artists, writers anddoctors, but also ‘the wives and daughters of dis-tinguished men’.23

These mixed criteria might seem to bring intoconflict the values of women’s professional inde-pendence, and their dependence on men. Itseems that in the early days, the Clubs workedhard to satisfy disparate expectations. Smedley’sletters home from Germany, written in 1904when she was helping to establish a clubhouse inBerlin, comment revealingly on the juncture ofupper and professional classes. ‘We are gettingthe court circle to take up the Club’, she report-ed, and wrote enthusiastically about herencounters with women such as the CountessVon Buhlow, Baroness von Sutton, and thePrincess de Rohan, whom she described as ‘themost beautiful looking woman in a lovely paleblue frock, very young with snow white hair andcovered with wonderful diamonds’.24 She wasoverjoyed when the Countess von Gröber tookcharge of the social committee and made it hermission to eradicate any tension between whatSmedley called ‘the working members and societymembers’. Gröber was determined, explainedSmedley, to ‘fuse the elements’ and ‘make themfeel all one sisterhood’.25

That desire to fuse and unify the Lyceum’s var-ious factions was central to Smedley’s cos-mopolitan vision. Her joyful belief in the unityof human nature fired her ambition to create aglobal network of sister-clubs, united by theircommon idealism. Perhaps the original Writers’Club was only prudent when it dismissed whatshe described as her ‘simple scheme of a worldClub with Clubhouses in the world’s chief capi-tals’, for her intentions were, from the begin-ning, epic.26 As well as demolishing the ghetto ofsexual discrimination, she aspired to create aninternational, cultural organisation to promoteworld peace and democracy. Even before theLyceum acquired its first premises in 1904, shehad begun negotiating the formation of

European centres, and she spent much of thenext six years helping to set up Clubs across thecontinent.

Her novel The June Princess makes explicit theideals which drove her to promote the Club sorelentlessly. The Princess is Smedley’s alter ego,and in the opening scene we find her slavingaway at the business of a fictional Club throughthe heat of a summer’s morning. A friend asksher how she can bear to work so hard for otherpeople. ‘It isn’t for other people; it’s forInternationalism’, she blithely replies. The Club,she explains, is really bringing the women of thedifferent countries together, and making themunderstand how much they can do for oneanother [….] You see, it is such a sensible andbeautiful idea to bind the world together.27

She made this seemingly optimistic statementin 1909, five years before the outbreak of WorldWar I. With hindsight, the shadow of that warlies across the founding of the Lyceum, placingit in the context of wider debates about war andpeace, patriotism and internationalism. Theearly twentieth century was an age of empire-building and imperial unrest, national consoli-dation and insecurity. It was during the firstdecade of the last century that Britain first antic-ipated its long decline as a world power. TheBoer War (1899-1902) exposed the weaknessand unpopularity of the British Empire, whileGermany’s increasing unity and strength leftBritain vulnerable to attack. DefensiveEuropean treaties, battles in the Balkans and anescalating arms race generated a warlike mood.From the 1880s, British women became increas-ingly involved in supporting the Empire, settingup women’s imperialist organisations such as theLadies’ Imperial Club and the Victoria League.28

At the same time, however, a counter-currentof internationalist sentiment challenged themodel of the war-like nation-state. From the latenineteenth century, international organisationsbegan to proliferate, aiming towards the cre-ation of a global community. The peace move-ment underwent a renaissance, becomingincreasingly involved with progressive, secularcauses such as socialism and feminism, andorganising international peace congresses inresponse to the rising European hostilities.29

Their high-profile endeavours, though ultimate-

19. Ibid., p. 399.20. Ibid., p. 320.21. Smedley, Woman: AFew Shrieks!, p. 25.22. Hubbard (ed.), TheEnglishwoman’s Year-book,p. vi.23. Mitton (ed.), TheEnglishwoman’s Year-book,p. 224.24. Constance Smedley to‘Dearest People’ (9 June1904, Gordon Bowe).25. Constance Smedley toWilliam Thomas Smedley(7 November 1906,Gordon Bowe).26. Smedley, Crusaders, p.58.27. Smedley, The JunePrincess, p. 2.28. See Bush Julia,Edwardian Ladies andImperial Power (London:Leicester University Press,2000), pp. 2-3. 29. For example, UniversalPeace Congresses tookplace in London (1908)and the Hague (1913).For a history of modernpacifism, see CeadelMartin, Semi-detachedIdealists: The British PeaceMovement andInternational Relations,1854-1945 (Oxford:Oxford University Press,2000); Laity Paul, TheBritish Peace Movement,1870-1914 (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 2001);and Cooper Sandi E.,Patriotic Pacifism: WagingWar on Europe, 1851-1914(New York; Oxford:Oxford University Press,1991).

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ly futile, helped to create the impression thatwar was not inevitable, that Europe couldprogress toward peace. Several of these neworganisations focused specifically on culturalcooperation. They included the French societyConcordia (established 1895), the BritishInternational Society of Sculptors, Painters andGravers (1897), the Italian SocietàInternazionale degl’ Intellettuali (1909), and in1911 a German group called die Brücke. TheLyceum contributed to a growing movementtowards cultural internationalism. Though sofar neglected, its endeavour to enhance worldpeace by facilitating cooperation betweenwomen artists, writers and intellectuals deservesmore prominence.30

The early twentieth century was an era of star-tling artistic experiment, as well as politicalunrest. Smedley’s travels across Europe on behalfof the Lyceum gave her access to modernistideas, ideas which fed her vision of art as a vehi-cle for social change. Her friendship with CountHarry Kessler, the German patron of modernart, encouraged her to forge a connectionbetween modern theories of aesthetic unity, andthe politics of international relations.31 WithKessler, she debated the idea that all the arts areessentially one, which provided a metaphor forthe ideal of international unity. In Kessler’s com-pany, remembered Smedley, ‘a unified worldwhere mutual understanding and love of beautyreigned, seemed natural and inevitable’.32

Artistic cooperation was key to the Lyceum’scampaign for better international relations. Thedifferent Clubs held exhibitions of each other’swork, and at one show of British art in Berlin,Smedley arranged for a symbolic display ofGerman books, bound by British binders.33 In1906, the Lyceum was instrumental in organis-ing an exhibition of modern German art inLondon. The idea was first suggested at aLyceum dinner, and the Club hosted its openingreception.34 The organisers, who includedSmedley, were fully aware of the show’s diplo-matic importance. The exhibition cataloguedeclared it a symbol of Britain’s friendship withGermany, and advocated art as ‘one of the bestguarantees of international amity’.35 In thedecade preceding the First World War, theLyceum coordinated its members to offer just

such a guarantee. As Smedley remarked in hercharacter as the June Princess, ‘the differentforms of Arts must be the surest links to bindthe world together, because Art holds universalunderstanding’.36

Any international organisation runs the risk ofempowering one nation at the expense of others.It must be observed that the Lyceum, with itsbases in Europe and the Anglo-Saxon world, wasnot international in a post-colonial understand-ing of the word.37 However, Smedley’s determi-nation that the various Lyceum Clubs shouldrelate to one another as independent equalschallenged the imperial model of a hierarchy ofClubs, with London at its apex. At the openingof the Berlin clubhouse, she offered instead themodel of a circle, a unified shape with no begin-ning.38 She insisted that the European Clubsshould manage their own affairs, declaring that‘the greatest obstacle in the path of the Lyceumtowards International Fellowship would havebeen British domination’. Her antipathy to hier-archy was from the outset explicit, based on herunderstanding that ‘the initial Club did notoccupy a commensurate position to the foreignLyceums similar to that which the MotherCountry holds to the Dominions’.39 In 1911,the imperialist, women’s Victoria League ran achildren’s drawing competition. The winningentry, entitled ‘Britannia Welcoming herDaughters’, demonstrates the sort of languageand imagery against which Smedley was react-ing.40 The metaphor of the family, particularly ofmother and child, was widespread in imperialistrhetoric.41 Smedley chose instead to talk of sisterclubs, which would operate amicably, but withcomplete autonomy and equality. Thus, whenthe founding committee of the Florence club-house refused to accept English money or man-agement, and the Paris Lyceum designed its ownadministrative system, she approved their showof independence.42 We should therefore takecare not to confuse her version of international-ism with the corporate globalism which seemsto threaten national democracies today. Rather,she advocated a balance between global cooper-ation and national diversity. In The JunePrincess, she puts the Club at the service ofnational cultures, describing it as ‘a clearing-house in every country for all that is best in that

30. For further discussion,see Brockington Grace, ‘“Above the Battlefield”:Art for Art’s Sake andPacifism in the First WorldWar’, D.Phil., Oxford,2003, pp. 170-191.31. Count Harry Kessler(1868-1937) took a partic-ular interest in Britishartists such as Eric Gill(sculptor) and EdwardGordon Craig (theatredesigner). See EastonMcLeod L., The RedCount: The Life and Timesof Harry Kessler (Berkeley:University of CaliforniaPress, 2002).32. Smedley, Crusaders, p.133.33. Constance Smedley toWilliam Thomas Smedley(7 November 1906,Gordon Bowe); and to‘Dear People’ (13 June1904, Gordon Bowe).34. Crane Walter, Prefaceto A Catalogue of the Worksof Contemporary GermanArtists in London (Exh.cat., London: Prince’sGallery, 1906), p. 7.[Anon.], “InauguralDinner”, The Times, 23May 1906, p. 5.35. Crane, A Catalogue ofthe Works of ContemporaryGerman Artists in London,p. 8.36. Smedley, The JunePrincess, p. 169.37. For a critique of theEuropean bias of women’sinternational organisa-tions, see BerkovitchNitza, From Motherhood toCitizenship: Women’s Rightsand InternationalOrganizations (Baltimore& London: The JohnHopkins University Press,1999), p. 19; and RuppLeila J., Worlds of Women:The Making of anInternational Women’sMovement (Princeton:Princeton University Press,1997), pp. 48, 51, 123,228.38. Smedley, Crusaders, p.123.39. Ibid., p. 172.Contemporary women’s

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country’.43 As one fictional character remarks,‘we become forgetful of our duties to our coun-try if we don’t think in countries sometimes; andso it’s splendid to get up dinners in honour ofother nations and understand their point ofview. It widens one.’44

The business of setting up the internationalnetwork was a strenuous yet delicate operation.Smedley’s letters home from Europe convey itsexcitement and complexity. In Berlin in June1904, she described a big reception at the PalastHotel where she worked till midnight promot-ing the Club (it was splendid, she exclaimed,except for the fact that there was nothing to eatexcept chocolates and lemonade). Two eminentwomen, the Princess de Rohan and Countess deBrazza both honoured her with their company,but then began fighting over who was to organ-ise the Club’s publicity (Smedley had to inter-vene with a tactful compromise).45 She involvedherself in all the Clubs’ business negotiations,calculating rent and running costs, member-ships and fees. She established good relationswith the national press of the various countries,and delegated tasks on all sides.46 As she con-fessed in a letter to her family, ‘I leave everyoneI see, making lists, going to see people for meand generally being busy’.47 She loved the glam-our and gaiety of foreign Club receptions,describing in detail the crush of people, andtheir elegant outfits. After one successfulevening in Berlin, she noted how there had been‘every sort of evening dress to morning dress,some very smart and some very pretty women,and everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves.I think it is nice having all kinds of dress’, sheremarked.48 In Italy in 1908, she exerted herselfto attract the country’s ‘strongest and bestwomen’, then watched in admiration as they setabout establishing their own clubhouse, inde-pendent of London. As she observed to herfather, ‘the intelligence of these women here is ofa very high order. It is wonderful to see how theItalian men have suddenly taken their hats off –before their womenkind.’49

That sense of feminist triumph draws atten-tion to the intimate connection betweenSmedley’s internationalism, and her campaignfor women’s emancipation. In her mind, the twoideals were entwined as one. Indeed, she sug-

gested with a dash of chauvinism, women are farbetter equipped than men to achieve worldpeace. In Germany, for instance, the idealism ofthe women she had met through the Lyceumcontrasted painfully with what she called ‘thearrogance and rudeness of a certain section ofthe male community’, not just in Germany, butall over the world.50

Two of her novels pursue this theme with par-ticular eloquence. In On the Fighting Line,Minnie Blunt works for a company called theImperial Alliance Trust. Minnie’s misguidedfaith in the company’s imperialist credentialsgoes hand in hand with her deluded admirationfor masculine chivalry. She idolizes the heroes ofempire, yet her discovery that the ImperialAlliance Trust has perpetrated a fraud triggersher disillusionment with men, empire, and themilitaristic values they embody. She decides thatthe conventional distinctions between men andwomen, as between one nation and another, arequite artificial, mere excuses for waging war.51

The second of Smedley’s novels exploring therelationship between war and gender is JusticeWalk, published in 1922, but written sevenyears earlier, in the midst of the European con-flict.52 The story centres on Johanna Hervey, arebellious woman artist who dies alone and inpoverty, because society cannot stomach her rev-olutionary art and uncompromising moral prin-ciples. She leaves a Will that consists not of alegal document, but of a letter condemning hercritics. In it, she makes a direct connectionbetween the subordination of women, and thevicious psychology of war. Her letter compares aconventional woman’s mind to a sewing box fullof sentimental trinkets, which seduce men intoaccepting the treacherous sentimentality of war.The trinkets, warns Hervey, flood the battle-fields. They entangle the soldiers [….] They sti-fle them with knowledge of the women’s grati-tude. They warm the hand that slays the Fellow-men.

She urges women to discard feminine senti-ment, and to remodel themselves as peace-makers, who sew ‘the clothes of the worldtogether with firm and beautiful stitches of lovefor Humanity’.53

In 1909, Smedley resigned as Secretary of theLyceum Clubs, after six years of intensive cam-

organisations which aimedto promote international-ism, rather than empire,adopted similar policies.For example, theInternational Council ofWomen (founded 1888)agreed that its centralbody should have nopower over membergroups, while theInternational Alliance ofWomen (1904) undertooknot to interfere in nationalconcerns (Rupp, Worlds ofWomen, pp. 111-112).40. “Britannia Welcomingher Daughters”, VictoriaLeague Notes, October1911, reproduced in Bush,Edwardian Ladies, p. 140. 41. Ibid., p. 101. 42. Smedley, Crusaders,pp. 77, 172.43. Smedley, The JunePrincess, p. 79.44. Ibid., pp. 93-94.45. Constance Smedley to‘Dearest Di’ (12 June1904, Gordon Bowe).46. Constance Smedley to‘Dearest People’ (9 June1904, Gordon Bowe);‘Dearest Di’ (12 June1904, Gordon Bowe); and‘Dear People’ (13 June1904, Gordon Bowe).47. Constance Smedley to‘Dearest People’ (9 June1904, Gordon Bowe).48. Constance Smedley toWilliam Thomas Smedley(n.d., Gordon Bowe).49. Constance Smedley toWilliam Thomas Smedley(3 May 1908, GordonBowe).50. Smedley, Crusaders, p.122.51. Smedley, On theFighting Line, pp. 483-486.52. Smedley Constance,Justice Walk (London: G.Allen & Unwin, 1924).Smedley blamed the delayon her publisher’s timidity.‘The advanced views, thepassionate chastising ofpuritanism, the portrayalof its inherent dishonesty,and, above all, the ruthlessanalysis of war’, sheclaims, deterred them

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paigning and administration. Her reasons weremanifold. In the first place, she had married theartist Maxwell Armfield and felt she could nolonger give the Club her full attention.54 Then,she had her own career as a writer to pursue, andhoped that the Clubs were sufficiently estab-lished to manage without her. As she wrote toher mother in 1912: ‘the International basis hasbecome established now, and I am perfectly con-fident that I shall not be missed in the slightest,just as I know that the Club work is no longerin my line’.55 She had worked phenomenallyhard to establish the project. A letter writtenfrom Berlin in June 1904 gives a taste of theenergy with which she promoted it. ‘I have awhole day of engagements’, she explained, fol-lowed by a reception at the Philharmonie, thenat 10pm an appointment with an editor whichwould last for at least two hours, and a seveno’clock start the next morning. ‘I have an awfulcold and headache today’, she complained, ‘butif I were dying I feel I should go on – I’m sokeen – there’s so much to be done [….] Excuseall this awful Club talk. I dream of nothingelse.’56

I sense, however, that the institutional com-promises the Club demanded had begun tograte on her. Herself provocative, radical, out-spoken, revolutionary even, she found it diffi-

cult to submit to the rule of respectability whichthe Club demanded. The Lyceum had provideda conventional cover for her reforming ambi-tions. Now, she felt she could operate outside it.The character the June Princess speaks for her,when she voices ambivalence towards the novel’sfictional Club. ‘I’ve loved the ideals’, sheexclaims, ‘I’ve loved the world, and it’s beensplendid to see the beginnings really grow; butsometimes I feel in prison [….] I don’t likeresponsibility. I’d like to be a private person. Oh!Freedom has always been the carrot.’57

Smedley’s rediscovery of herself as a privateperson brings my story to a close. Thereafter, sheand her husband devoted themselves to the the-atre, setting up their own drama companywhich they took to the English provinces,London and across America.58 Yet although shenever again played a public role at the Lyceum,she continued publicly to promote the princi-ples of international cooperation, women’sequality and professional achievement whichhave made it such a remarkable and enduringorganisation. When the Lyceum was founded,those principles inspired women across theworld, and one hundred years later, they contin-ue to inspire. I would like to offer theInternational Lyceum Clubs my warmest con-gratulations on achieving their centenary!

(Crusaders, p. 225). 53. Smedley, Justice Walk,pp. 105-109.54. As she told her moth-er, ‘I promised Max togive up the Club when Imarried him’. ConstanceSmedley to AnnieElizabeth Smedley (3 July1912, Gordon Bowe).Maxwell Armfield (1881-1972) was an artist in thepre-Raphaelite tradition, alife-long exponent of tem-pera painting, and a the-atre designer. LikeSmedley, he was a pacifistand Christian Scientist,but after her death, aban-doned Christian Science,looking instead to Easternmysticism for his moraland artistic inspiration.55. Constance Smedley toAnnie Elizabeth Smedley(13 July 1912, GordonBowe). 56. Constance Smedley to‘Dearest Di’ (12 June1904, Gordon Bowe).57. Smedley, The JunePrincess, p. 2.58. Calling themselves‘The Greenleaf Players’,they set out to implementEdward Gordon Craig’sconcept of synthetic the-atre, in which every ele-ment of the performance,from words to stage-design, are equally expres-sive of a unifying idea. SeeArmfield Maxwell, theMinstrel [c.1915](London: Duckworth,1922-25); Bowe NicolaGordon, “Constance andMaxwell Armfield: AnAmerican Interlude, 1915-1922”, The Journal ofDecorative and PropagandaArts, Fall 1989, pp. 6-27;and Brockington, ‘ “Abovethe Battlefield”: Art forArt’s Sake and Pacifism inthe First World War’, pp.187-237.

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Smedley, Constance, Crusaders: The Reminiscencesof Constance Smedley (London: Duckworth,1929).

Smedley, Constance, Woman: A Few Shrieks! Settingforth the necessity of Shrieking till the Shrieks be

22

heard (Letchworth, Herts.: Garden City Press,1907).

Smedley, Constance, The Boudoir Critic (London &New York: Harper & Brothers, 1903).

Smedley, Constance, An April Princess (London:Cassell & Co., 1903).

Smedley, Constance, The June Princess, (London:Chatto & Windus, 1909).

Smedley, Constance, Justice Walk (London: G. Allen& Unwin, 1924).

Smedley, Constance, On the Fighting Line (London& New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1915).

Secondary sourcesAssociation Internationale des Lyceum Clubs,

Lyceum Club, privately published, 1986.Berkovitch, Nitza, From Motherhood to Citizenship:

Women’s Rights and International Organizations(Baltimore & London: The John HopkinsUniversity Press, 1999).

Bowe, Nicola Gordon, “Constance and MaxwellArmfield: An American Interlude, 1915-1922”,The Journal of Decorative and Propaganda Arts,Fall 1989, pp.6-27.

Brockington, Grace, ‘ “Above the Battlefield”: Artfor Art’s Sake and Pacifism in the First WorldWar’, D.Phil., Oxford, 2003.

Brockington, Grace, “Annie Constance Smedley”, inThe New Dictionary of National Biography(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

Bush, Julia, Edwardian Ladies and Imperial Power(London: Leicester University Press, 2000).

Ceadel, Martin, Semi-detached Idealists: TheBritish Peace Movement and International

Relations, 1854-1945 (Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 2000).

Clark, Peter, British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800:The Origins of an Associational World (Oxford:Oxford University Press, 2000).

Cooper, Sandi E., Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War onEurope, 1851-1914 (New York; Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1991).

Doughan, David, and Peter Gordon (eds.),Dictionary of British Women’s Organisations 1825-1960 (London: Woburn Press, 2001).

Easton, McLeod L., The Red Count: The Life andTimes of Harry Kessler (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 2002).

Evans, Richard J., Comrades and Sisters: Feminism,Socialism and Pacifism in Europe 1870-1945(Sussex: Wheatsheaf Books, 1987).

http://www.lyceumclub.org (the website of theInternational Association of Lyceum Clubs).

Laity, Paul, The British Peace Movement, 1870-1914(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001).

Lejeune, Anthony, The Gentlemen’s Clubs of London(London: Macdonald & Jane’s,

1979).Rupp, Leila J., Worlds of Women: The Making of an

International Women’s Movement (Princeton:Princeton University Press, 1997).

Stienstra, Deborah, Women’s Movements andInternational Organizations (New York: StMartin’s Press, 1994).

Tremlett, George, Clubmen: The History of theWorking Men’s Club and Institute Union (London:Secker and Warburg, 1987).

n the early 1980s Willy Brandt created anIndependent Commission to study worldpoverty. Brandt was concerned that the prevail-

ing economic system was the cause of immensepoverty, suffering and degradation. He proposedintroducing emergency measures to alleviatethis, realising full well that these measures wouldalways only touch the surface of the problemand that until the deep underlying cause (anunjust economic system which favours the firstworld to the detriment of the third world) wasaddressed, the problem would never be solved.

In a series of recommendations the BrandtReport called for sweeping changes to be madeto the global economy, rendering it more demo-cratic, fair and equitable. Brandt was critical ofthe structure of the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF), whichwere, he said, unrepresentative of many of thecountries that they served. The policies of theWorld Bank and the IMF are determined by thefinance ministers, central bank governors andtreasury secretaries of the G7. This is openlyundemocratic, since third world countries haveno say in policy making.

Brandt had a vision for the future in which allthe issues facing the world would be discussedby the leaders and representatives of everynation, rather than by a small group of richnations (the G7) as is the case today. Poor coun-tries would have a chance to say what theirneeds were, rather than having solutions, whichin many cases further compounded their prob-lems, foisted upon them. Poor countries wouldhave a say in global economic policy making.Their participation in institutions such as theWorld Bank and the IMF would be real, ratherthan an illusory presence and they would be lis-tened to.

Brandt recognised the importance of organisa-tions such as the World Bank, IMF, WorldHealth Organisation (WHO), World TradeOrganisation (WTO), UNESCO etc. He didnot propose doing away with these organisa-tions, but rather making them more account-able to the people they purport to serve. Hewanted to see more co-operation between inter-national organisations and between worldnations in order to solve the many problems fac-ing the world today.

The Brandt Report was well publicized, readand discussed, but twenty years later none ofBrandt’s recommendations have been put intopractice. Indeed the third world has beenplunged deeper and deeper into poverty, hungerand degradation, while environmental destruc-tion and pollution have continued to increase.

Budget and trade deficits plague most coun-tries but in the third world debt actually inter-feres with many countries’ capacity to look aftertheir citizens. Brandt recommended that thirdworld debt should be reduced through partial orunconditional debt forgiveness. However,despite the fact that third world countries havelong since repaid the value of their debtsthrough their interest repayments, in most casestheir debts have never been forgiven and indeedhave continued to rise.

There are several reasons for the increase inthird world debt. One is that when the moneywas originally lent to third world countries,export revenue for raw materials and crops inmost third world countries was more than ade-quate for the repayment of interest on loans andtheir currencies were tied to the gold standard.However in 1971 the International FinancialInstitutions demolished the gold standard andfloated the world’s currencies. Brandt warnedthat the abolition of the gold standard was a rashand foolish move. When the gold standard wasin existence every country knew what its curren-cy was worth. It could devalue it at its peril, butthat was the choice of an individual country.Ever since the gold standard was dropped, nocountry has been able to predict what its cur-rency would be worth from one day to the next.Currencies are bought and sold on the interna-tional stock market. Small countries, having farless currency, are more vulnerable to the buyingand selling of investors, who can reduce thevalue of their currencies by anything up to 90%overnight, just by selling it. Countries such asthe US and Britain with strong currencies arenot as susceptible to these massive fluctuations.The abolition of the gold standard resulted inmassive devaluation of many third world coun-tries’ currencies.

Another reason for the increase in third worlddebt is that the price of third world commodi-ties has fallen constantly over the years, making

* Chair and Founder,Share The World’sResources (STWR). is anon-politically affiliatednetwork campaigning forjustice and peace throughthe fair and equitable dis-tribution of worldresources. STWR, P.O.Box 34275, London NW51XTWebsite : www.stwr.net E mail :mohammed@stwr.net /Mesbahi@slsuk.com© Mohammed MesbahiThe title is the editor’s.

Associations transnationales1/2005, 23-28

What happened to the Brandt Report?by Mohammed Mesbahi*

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it harder and harder for these countries to repaytheir loans.

As many third world countries struggled torepay mounting interest out of diminishingexport revenue, in many cases they have beenobliged to take on further loans. These furtherloans were tied to the strict conditions ofStructural Adjustment Programmes: pro-grammes imposed on the receiving countries,obliging them to cut back on health care, edu-cation, sanitation and housing programmes,thus further worsening the plight of their citi-zens.

Brandt recommended convening a summit ofworld leaders to plan and mobilize a majorinternational relief program, targeting hungerand poverty. He proposed that world leadersshould organise the provision of basic necessitiessuch as food, clean water, health and medicalcare. He also proposed that these world leadersshould organise preventable disease control pro-grammes in poor regions of the world. Recentlythe World Health Organisation has reiteratedthe need for disease control programmes, but (a)the WHO has no power to enforce its proposalsand (b) the countries worst affected by infec-tious diseases lack the money to implement dis-ease control programmes.

In the world today twelve million people dieof preventable disease every year. The largestnumber dies from dysentery and diarrhoea.These diseases are caused by water born diseaseorganisms. Far from improving the provision ofclean water in the third world, InternationalFinancial Institutions have worsened the situa-tion by imposing structural adjustment pro-grammes which include the privatisation ofwater supplies. In many parts of the world peo-ple cannot afford to pay for water, so where theirwater supply has been privatised they have beenforced to fall back on the remaining, oftenunsafe, meagre water supplies which have notbeen privatised. As water privatisation increasesso will the incidence of water born disease.

1,600 million people worldwide are at risk ofinfection from malaria. 300 million people areinfected (of which 275 million in Africa) andsomewhere between 1.4 and 2.8 million peopledie of this disease each year. It is caused by thePlasmodium parasite, which lives in mosquitoes.

Over the years the parasite has become resistantto all the drugs used to treat the disease.Combinations of drugs now have to be used totreat and prevent it and millions of people in thethird world cannot afford these drugs, all ofwhich have serious side effects. There is no vac-cine against malaria.

The mosquito which carries the plasmodiumparasite is not restricted to the third world. Thissame mosquito lives and breeds in Europe. ButEurope does not suffer from malaria. Why isthis? A century ago malarial plagues used tostrike many parts of Europe in the summer,especially the poorer Mediterranean countries.However as these countries drained theirswamps and treated the malarial victims in hos-pital, the disease was eradicated. The malarialmosquito continues to live in many Europeancountries but because the people of these coun-tries are not infected, the mosquitoes that bitethese people do not become infected. One of thereasons why the majority of malarial sufferersare to be found in Africa is because Africa ispoor.

The majority of the population in Africa livetoo far from the city to obtain any sort of med-icine. Road and rail infrastructure is often rudi-mentary and people are too poor to pay for pub-lic transport even where it does exist. Hospitals,doctors and nurses are insufficient to treat thevast number of infected people. To compoundthis already desperate situation, much neededdoctors and nurses are leaving many Africancountries, where their governments can nolonger afford to pay them a living wage, to pro-vide medical care in the west. Another reasonwhy malaria is endemic in Africa is becausethere is no concerted pan-African mosquitocontrol programme. And for as long as warscontinue to rage in many African countries nosuch programme can ever be implemented.

The deadly African sleeping sickness occurs in36 African countries, including Cameroon,Chad, Congo, Republic of Central Africa, Zaireand Sudan. It is caused by the African try-panosome, a parasite that lives in the tsetse fly.50 million people are at risk of catching it,despite the fact that the disease was almostbrought under control in the early 1950s.Sleeping sickness can be controlled simply by

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trapping the tsetse flies which cause the disease.Cheap effective traps can be made from sticksand cloth impregnated with cow urine. In the1950s a disease control programme was imple-mented in all the African countries affected bythe disease.

However wars over mineral deposits and oilhave interfered with tsetse control programmes,and cutbacks in health spending ordered by theIMF have put an end to diagnosis and treatmentof infected carriers of the disease. As long as eco-nomic conditions continue to worsen in Africa,sleeping sickness epidemics remain a continuousthreat. There is no vaccine against sleeping sick-ness and the few drugs which can be used totreat it are highly toxic. The people at risk live insome of the poorest counties of the world, sothere is no incentive for the big western phar-maceutical companies to put money intoresearch and development of drugs and/or vac-cines to treat the disease.

200 million people in Africa, the Americas,Asia and Europe are at risk of infection withLeishmania, a hideous, disfiguring and poten-tially lethal disease which can affect the skin, theviscera or the nasal passages. It is caused by theLeishmania parasite which lives in the phlebota-mine sand-fly. Half a million people will diefrom Leishmaniasis each year, if not treated. Allthe anti-leishmanial drugs are highly toxic, thefirst choice drugs being based on antimony. Theparasites are becoming increasingly resistant tothe current drugs and there is an urgent need fornew, effective, safe drugs.

In parts of Africa 90% of the population suf-fer from Schistosomiasis (Bilharzias) a debilitat-ing disease caused by the schistosome parasite,which lives in a water snail. This parasite leavesthe snail at certain times of the day, swimsthrough the water and burrows into the skin ofanyone who puts their feet into the water. Thisdisease can be cured by a single dose of the drugpraziquantel. It can be prevented by a numberof health measures: educating the public not toswim in infected water, not to urinate into therivers and streams, snail control measures andprotection of rice field workers with Wellingtonboots. Ducks can be used to control snails inrice fields. In China, where a concerted effortwas made, schistosomiasis was brought under

control and in all but a few remote areas, waseradicated.

Chagas disease is caused by a parasite whichlives in the reduvid bug, an insect which doesn’teven fly. Originally these bugs lived in a smallarea in Central America. However they foundideal conditions in the cracks and crevices in thehouses of the poor, and so the bugs spread, tak-ing the disease with them. Over the past centu-ry Chagas disease, a highly debilitating incur-able disease which affects the heart muscle, hasspread all over central and southern Americaeven reaching some of the southern states of theUS. This disease is completely preventable, sim-ply by providing adequate housing, where thereduvid bug cannot survive.

AIDS is yet another example of how a diseasecan have a far worse impact on the third worldthan it does in the West. The AIDS virus hasspread not just through sexual transmission, butalso through the re-use of hypodermic needlesand contaminated blood and serum. Many thirdworld countries lacked the equipment forscreening blood products and re-used needlesbefore the danger of this became apparent,because they could not afford to use new sterileneedles.

Why is Queensland, Australia, which enjoys atropical climate, apparently free of the tropicaldiseases which affect the third world? This isbecause it is not a poor country. WhiteAustralians do not suffer from malaria, leishma-niasis or dysentery because they have adequatemedical provision, housing and clean water.However, just as the poor in the US suffer fromsome terrible parasites (eg hookworm) which donot affect the rest of the population, Australiatoo has its forgotten poor community - theAborigines, the only members of the Australiancommunity to be affected by tropical diseases.

Brandt stressed the necessity for Internationalco-operative disease control programmes. A co-operative approach to world health could rid theworld of much of the ill health which holds backthe populations of the poorest countries. TheWHO has written reports outlining problemssuch as dysentery, bilharzia, malaria, etc. recom-mending control measures, but the countriesaffected do not have the money to implementthese measures. The countries worst affected by

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tropical diseases are all in the third world, strug-gling to repay interest on their debts and forcedinto cutbacks on health care due to structuraladjustment programmes.

The current world economic system is failingthe majority of the world’s population.

Much disease is preventable through insectcontrol programmes, clean water provision, ade-quate housing, diet and education.

Brandt recommended that rather than allow-ing corporations to invest and produce mainlywhere wages, taxes, trade and financial regula-tions and environmental safeguards are the low-est, there should be a commitment to raise theincome and quality of life of people in develop-ing nations. However the InternationalFinancial Institutions allow big corporations totreat the world like a giant chess board on whichthey can move their industries about like pawns,taking advantage of low wages and lax environ-mental controls in poor countries, to producegoods at minimum cost and maximum profit.Thus corporations are allowed to profit fromcheap labour in the third world, but are notobliged to ensure the health and wellbeing ofthese same workers. These are the double stan-dards which were employed by the VictorianIndustrialists in Britain at the turn of the lastcentury. In the twenty first century, such doublestandards are shameful.

Brandt proposed reducing arms exports. Hewanted to see a huge reduction in the sales ofarms and proposed high tax on arms exports tobe used for international development. Hewanted more transparency for arms exports. It isiniquitous that huge sums should be spent onthe development, production and sale of arma-ments, when so large a part of the world lives inabject poverty. Sale of armaments and backingof unjust despotic regimes has led to destabilisa-tion and war in many parts of the world, espe-cially Africa. 95% of arms are manufactured inthe first world and 98% of wars are fought inthe third world.

It should not be forgotten that countries whorely on the export of arms to provide a large pro-portion of their national income need to pro-mote the sale of these arms. It is not in the inter-est of an arms producing country to promotepeace. Without international controls such as

those proposed by the Brandt Reports, the armstrade will continue to grow and conflict willcontinue to be fuelled. The importance of trans-parency cannot be overstated. If the entire pop-ulation of Britain were aware of the magnitudeof the arms trade originating in Britain and ofthe impact of this arms trade on the third world,there would be an outcry. Huge numbers ofpeople would demand the closure of factoriesproducing weapons.

Brandt stressed the importance of preservingthe environment. The first world does far moredamage to the environment but the third worldsuffers more as a result of that damage. Ahealthy environment is essential for the well-being of all who inhabit the earth and the earthcan only be preserved by co-operative effort. Aworld governed by financial institutions is notand cannot be a stable, sane or healthy world.

We should, of course, be concerned for theplight of third world populations purely forhumanitarian reasons. But there is a further rea-son why we should be concerned. It has beenwell proven that poverty leads to a high birthrate. In numerous cases, where the standard ofliving has improved in a country, the birth ratehas dropped as a result. Even in Catholic coun-tries like Italy, this has been the case. The poor-est countries in the world suffer from hunger,lack of housing, sanitation, clean water suppliesand health care. And yet their populations con-tinue to grow. Even in countries racked by war,populations continue to grow. People in poorcountries have many children because theyknow that many of them will die. They havechildren to help them grow food and to lookafter them when they are old. They even havechildren so that they can grow up to be soldiersor freedom fighters.

If we do nothing to remedy the current worldeconomic situation, poverty will continue toincrease and the world population will continueto expand. Famines, epidemics, massive popula-tion migrations, environmental degradation andwars will be the result. If on the other hand, weare prepared to envisage a world where essentialchanges have been made to the global economy,where every citizen of the world has enough forhis/her need, then poverty can be eradicated, theworld population can be stabilised and wars can

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become a thing of the past. We need a globaleconomic system in which third world countrieshave a say. Third world countries should receivea fair price for their raw materials. They should

not have to pay out their entire export earningsrevenue in interest on loans. Housing, healthand education should be considered the right ofevery citizen of the world.

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La société de la connaissance estune nouvelle société : nouvellevision du mondeLe changement de l’outil de productionchange toute la vision de la vie

omme je montre dans mon livre1 la transi-tion vers la société de la connaissance nereprésente pas le niveau le plus profond du

changement qui secoue nos sociétés actuelle-ment. Cependant ce niveau de changement estcomme un turbo qui accélère les autres transfor-mations plus profondes qui ont lieu. Il contri-bue donc fortement à façonner et à modeler lacivilisation de demain. Karl Marx fut le premierà mettre en évidence l’importance de l’outil deproduction pour une société : lorsque celui ci semodifie, ce sont tous les rapports de production

changent à sa suite et c’est, en définitive, lavision, les valeurs et les formes de la société quise transforment.

Or, sous nos yeux, s’opère le remplacementrapide notre outil industriel, par un outil nou-veau: l’information et la connaissance2. Pour cer-tains observateurs de la Silicon Valley, l’écono-mie américaine serait d’ores et déjà immergée à60% dans la société de la connaissance. En clair,celle-ci s’infiltrerait de plus en plus même aucœur même des activités industrielles et agri-coles traditionnelles, l’information étant stockéeet gérée par de petits ordinateurs dont les puces,en quelque sorte, accomplissent un travail defourmis.

Dans la société agraire, le pouvoir était lié à lapossession de la terre. Celui qui ne possédait pasde terre était un manant, un serf. Il n’avait pasmême de nom3. Le noble, lui, possédait la terre,

*Expert auprès delaCommissioneuropéenne. Directeur de« Vision 2020 »,Sparrenweg, 10, 3051 SintJoris Weert, Belgique. Télfax 32 16 35 59 24. Email: marcluy@skynet.be1. Marc Luyckx Ghisi :Au-delà de la modernité, dupatriarcat et du capitalisme :la société réenchantée.L’Harmattan, Préface deIlya Prigogine, prix Nobel,Paris 2001.2. Selon certains écono-mistes, nous serions toute-fois simplement dans unephase d’industrialisationplus avancée, les services yoccupant une place plusimportante.3. L’Église chrétienne n’aimposé le baptême pourtous et, partant, un nomde baptême, qu’au 11èmesiècle. Mais ce faisant ellea puissamment favorisé ausein de la société occiden-tale la notion d’égalité detous les citoyens devantDieu. Même les serfs sontsortis de la non-existenceet ont reçu un nom debaptême, qui ne pouvaitpas être le nom dusuzerain. C’était leur nom.Nous touchons ici a laracine de la notion occi-dentale de personne.

Associations transnationales1/2005, 29-44

Territoires intelligents et esprit d’entreprisepar Marc Luyckx Ghisi *

Critères

1. Pouvoir

2. Secret

3. Management

4. Commerce

5. Économie

6. Argent

7. Travail

8. Social

9. Éducation

10. Culture

11. Buts de la société

Société industrielle

Possession de capital ettechnologie innovanteLa concurrence + la défense =basée sur le secret/brevetCentré sur la machine et salogique. L’homme doit s’adapter.Trade = argent OU beurre

Gère la possession du capitalet de la technologieConcept exclusif etaccumulatifConcept unique pourcréativité, insertion, dignité,familleEXCLUSION = inévitable

Diminue la créativité etadapte à la logique mécaniqueLa culture a un rôlepériphérique. (Cerise)Produire un maximumd’objets bon marché

Scénario positif Équipes de personnel créatifet innovantL’information « fuit » detoute façon : OUVERTURERecentré sur l’humain. La machine doit s’adapter. Échange et don d’information

Gère la créativité humaine enfonction du bien communConcept de plus en plussymbolique Mêmes valeurs organiséesautrement

Logique INCLUSIVE

Développe la créativité et lamaîtrise de la machineRôle central, car est la racineessentielle de la créativitéPromouvoir le progrèshumain, culturel et spirituel

Scénario négatifManipulation subtile del’esprit humainProtections de plus en plussophistiquées FERMETUREManipulation de l’humainpar le managementMonopolisation del’informationGère la créativité humainepour des intérêts particuliersManipulation du symbolique

Les politiques d’emploiaggravent les problèmes.

Pseudo-inclusion =EXCLUSIONManipulation plus subtilesous des dehors de créativité.Manipulation de l’âme descultures.Dualisation encore plusaccentuée de la société.

Société de la connaissance

Figure 1 : Troisième niveau de changement : la société de la connaissanceLe turbo du changement de paradigme

C

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et il en portait le nom. Il devait toujours possé-der plus de terre pour asseoir son pouvoir. D’oùles guerres et les invasions. La « science écono-mique » n’existait pas car la gestion de la terreétait assurée par les autorités politiques ou parles autorités religieuses, quand celles-ci avaient lepouvoir.

Lors de l’apparition de la société industrielle,le pouvoir est progressivement revenu à ceux quiparvenaient à rassembler du capital et une tech-nologie innovante. La force de travail, c’est-à-dire les anciens agriculteurs, était supposées’adapter, plus ou moins durement, à la logiquede la machine industrielle. Ceux qui n’ont pascompris ce changement de l’outil et donc dupouvoir, sont certes restés dans leurs somptueuxchâteaux, mais bientôt tels des marginaux plusou moins fortunés.

Aujourd’hui, un glissement analogue se pro-duit. Certes, la machine industrielle et agricolecontinue à produire, même plus et à meilleurmarché, mais elle va probablement absorber demoins en moins de main-d’œuvre. Au début dusiècle, l’agriculture occupait 87% de la main-d’œuvre en Europe. Aujourd’hui, 4% à peine.

Ce changement d’outil de production entraî-ne des bouleversements fondamentaux dans lanature du pouvoir, du commerce, de l’écono-mie, de l’argent, du management. Mais à traverslui, ce sont aussi les concepts de brevet, de tra-vail, de justice, de soutenabilité ou durabilitéécologique, d’éducation et de culture quimutent. Bref, nous changeons de société ! Lesfinalités mêmes de la société changent, évoluentvers autre chose. Une importante tendance aurecentrement sur l’humain se développe sousnos yeux, à tous les niveaux. Un recentrementqui, toutefois, peut être aussi perverti en unemanipulation plus sophistiquée.

La figure 1 tente de synthétiser le passage de lasociété industrielle à la société de la connaissan-ce. Pour une bonne compréhension de cettefigure et des commentaires qui l’accompagnent,il est nécessaire de définir quatre termes clé :- les données sont l’information brute comme

elle nous arrive dans notre boîte aux lettresélectronique ou non, le matin : non triée ;

- l’information est le résultat d’un tri, lequelpeut être opéré mécaniquement, par exempledéjà par les filtres électroniques.

- la connaissance est le résultat d’un tri réalisépar un cerveau humain créatif en fonctiond’un ensemble de valeurs donné. C’est un tricréatif et intelligent qui produit quelque chosequi n’existait pas avant. Il y a un processus decréation.

- la sagesse consistera à prendre les décisions quiprennent en compte au maximum le BienCommun y compris celui des générationsfutures. Ce dernier niveau de connaissance estdifficilement compatible avec la logiqueindustrielle, qui ne parvient pas à l’intégrer.Commentons maintenant le contenu de lafigure 1.

Le pouvoirNous assistons à un basculement progressif

mais fondamental du pouvoir. En prendreconscience n’est pas chose aisée, tant nous étionsconvaincus depuis toujours que le pouvoir rési-de dans la possession de capital et de technolo-gie. Or, cette « évidence » vacille aujourd’hui.De plus en plus, du moins dans les branchesinnovantes et en croissance, la créativité humai-ne devient la clé. Pourquoi sinon se mettrait-onà parler de human capital, à reconnaître aussique le capital humain ne peut se gérer de lamême manière que le capital financier ? C’estque, dans la société de la connaissance, l’enjeuest de produire de la connaissance nouvelle encommuniquant et en filtrant les données etinformations. Or, ce processus peut certes êtrefacilité par les ordinateurs, mais la contributionde la personnalité humaine s’avère centrale etindispensable. Autant l’homme pouvait êtreremplacé par la machine dans la société indus-trielle, autant il redevient absolument indispen-sable, dans la société de la connaissance. Cettetransformation est tellement rapide et fonda-mentale que nous avons du mal à la percevoir.

La fin du secretLe système de concurrence actuel repose sur le

secret de fabrication. Si quelqu’un dispose d’unetechnologie que le concurrent ne connaît pas, ilgagne des parts de marché. De même, lors d’uneguerre, si l’un des ennemis possède une armeinconnue de l’adversaire (fusil, poudre à canon,bombe atomique, etc.), il vaincra et parviendramême à dominer la terre. N’est-ce pas là, en

31

effet, une des clés de l’histoire des conquêtesoccidentales dans le monde ? Or, ainsi que l’ob-serve finement Harlan Cleveland, homme d’É-tat et membre de l’élite intellectuelle des États-Unis, le secret a tendance à disparaître dans lasociété de la connaissance, car « l’information aune tendance inhérente à fuir, à se répandre »4. Etil ajoute que « l’information est plus accessible àplus de gens que les autres ressources mondiales nel’ont jamais été dans l’histoire », si bien que leshiérarchies fondées sur la possession exclusive del’information et de la propriété intellectuellesont en train de s’écrouler, en silence mais rapi-dement. L’opinion s’approprie de plus en plusvite ce qui hier encore relevait du monde des« secrets ». Internet y contribue. Songez, à titred’exemple, aux programmes Linux qui ont étéinventés récemment par un jeune Finlandais. Ilssont non seulement disponibles sur le Web sansavoir à verser un dollar ou un euro ; ils sont enplus « ouverts », c’est-à-dire que, contrairementà ce qui se passe avec le Windows de Microsoft,chacun peut améliorer le programme et leremettre ensuite sur la toile afin d’en faire profi-ter d’autres. C’est donc comme si un cercle ver-tueux s’instaurait grâce à l’ouverture. Cette nou-velle logique ouverte me semble porteuse d’ave-nir.

Le managementNotre inconscient collectif tend à se méfier du

terme même de management. Il craint la mani-pulation humaine qu’il pourrait receler. Or, unrevirement spectaculaire des théories du manage-ment est en cours. Peter Drucker, l’un des pion-niers et l’une des autorités les plus respectées enla matière, annonce un recentrement du mana-gement sur l’humain dans une société post-capi-taliste5. Des propos a priori étonnants sous laplume de quelqu’un que l’on ne peut suspecterd’être « de gauche » ou un critique viscéral ducapitalisme. Mais voilà, pour lui, ce n’est plus lamachine qui peut dicter sa logique à l’humain.Ce sont, tout au contraire, les machines (ordi-nateurs) qui doivent désormais devenir « amiesde l’homme »6 pour être vendues.

Du commerce au partageDans la société industrielle, le commerce est

monétaire. En clair, on donne une marchandise

en échange d’une somme d’argent. Et la sagessepopulaire dit qu’il est impossible « d’avoir lebeurre et l’argent du beurre ». Or, dans l’échan-ge d’information, on ne perd pas l’informationqu’on partage! Au contraire, plus on partage l’in-formation, plus on peut bénéficier de retoursintéressants d’informations complémentaires,contradictoires ou nouvelles. La différence denature de l’échange saute aux yeux. D’abord, onne perd pas l’information dans l’échange.Ensuite, le retour n’est pas essentiellement del’argent, mais bien de l’information enrichie etenrichissante. Enfin, cet échange et ce partagede l’information sont essentiels pour la créationd’une information nouvelle. Évidemment, nousvivons encore le temps de la transition entre lesdeux logiques, si bien que l’argent semble de nosjours conserver une importance démesurée.Nonobstant, une toute nouvelle logique sous-jacente est en train de naître. Sans tambours nitrompettes, elle condamne la logique du com-merce « industriel » à une obsolescence rapideet irrémédiable.

Évidemment cette vision peut susciter lesobjections suivantes :a) Accès de plus en plus inégal à l’information.

Il est clair que la société de l’information nediffuse pas « naturellement » vers lescouches les plus basses de nos sociétés mon-diales.

b) Le stock d’informations produites et diffu-sées le sont en fonctions des intérêts desclasses dominantes de nos sociétés et nerépondent pas forcément à la demande de lagrande majorité des populations.

c) À la transmission et à la réception, il y adéperdition, perversion ou changement designifications. Ceci nous ouvre l’énormedomaine de la qualité de la communicationinterpersonnelle.

d) Attention à ne pas succomber à cequ’Armand Mattelart 7 appelle la techno-uto-pie sociale de la communication.

Je considère que les deux premières objectionssont tout à fait importantes, car elles correspon-dent à la situation actuelle et à une analyse moder-ne-industrielle. Mais je ne suis pas sûr que ces objec-tions correspondent aux dangers réels qui guettentla société de la connaissance et transmoderne danslaquelle nous entrons en silence.

4. Harlan Cleveland,Leadership and the infor-mation revolution, WorldAcademy of Art andScience publications,1997, p. 16.5. Peter Drucker, Post-cap-italistic society, HarperBusiness, New York, 1993.6. La force d’AppleComputers a été d’imposerun ordinateur beaucoupplus humain et facile d’u-tilisation. Bill Gates adébauché des concepteursd’Apple pour contre atta-quer avec Windows qui estdéjà plus humain et facile.7. Armand MATTELART,L’histoire de l’utopie plané-taire, De la cité prophétiqueà la société globale, Ed. LaDécouverte, Paris, 1999.

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Par contre, la troisième objection me semblebeaucoup plus sérieuse, car elle touche à un desfondements problématiques les plus difficiles dela société de demain : comment harmoniser etcoordonner les significations multiples incarnéesdans les différents substrats culturels. Nousabordons ici les luttes de pouvoir nouvelles pourle sens. En bref, les questions de sémiologie poli-tique et sociale.

Ma thèse est que tout en prenant en considé-ration les objections « industrielles », il esturgent et important de se préparer aux dangersde demain qui relèveront probablement plus del’ordre de la manipulation des significations etdes esprits, voire des âmes humaines. Ces nou-veaux dangers sont redoutables et on en parlevraiment trop peu.

Quant à la dernière objection. Oui, ce livre estpeut-être de l’ordre de la techno-utopie socialede la communication. Mais je demanderais à MrMattelart quel est son point de départ ? N’est-ilpas encore un peu trop moderne-industriel ?Quelle est son analyse des changements encours ?

L’économie se transformeL’économie a été inventée pour établir des

normes de gestion du nouveau pouvoir émer-geant de la société industrielle, le capital et lapropriété. Dans la nouvelle société de l’informa-tion, le pouvoir se déplace et le commerce seredéfinit. Il est probable que nous allions versune nouvelle discipline qui sera probablementtransdisciplinaire, plus ouverte à l’analyse quali-tative et à un dialogue constant avec la sociétécivile. Cette nouvelle logique économique pour-rait être inclusive et elle devra respecter l’envi-ronnement.

Il ne s’agit donc pas de s’opposer à l’économietraditionnelle, mais bien plutôt de commencer àécrire de toute urgence, des chapitres nouveauxsur la société de la connaissance ou, si l’on veutemployer les termes actuels, sur les intangibles.

Actuellement on assiste déjà à une pluralisa-tion de la science économique, d’où le nom« Économie plurielle » qui est le titre même de lanouvelle collection lancée par Henry Panhuys etHassan Zaoual aux Editions L’Harmattan. Maisà mon avis cette pluralisation est l’annonced’une recomposition probablement plus fonda-

mentale de l’économie et de l’ensemble dessciences sociales et humaines8.

L’argent de plus en plus symbolique ? Depuis que le président Nixon a décidé de

couper le lien entre le papier monnaie et unecertaine quantité d’or, la définition de l’argentest de plus en plus virtuelle9, liée au jugement devaleur que le « marché » porte sur un pays. Ladimension symbolique devient donc prépondé-rante. Cette tendance pourrait encore êtreaccentuée par l’apparition des monnaies électro-niques, elles aussi de plus en plus virtuelles.Quelles sont les règles et les normes dans cettenouvelle logique ? Quels en sont les dangers ?En même temps, l’époque est marquée par uneefflorescence de monnaies dites « alternatives »10

dont la logique est différente. N’est-elle pasmieux adaptée à la société de demain ?

Une nouvelle définition du travailLe concept de travail qui prévaut encore et

toujours a été forgé de toutes pièces par la socié-té industrielle. Non qu’on ne travaillait pasavant, mais la société industrielle a rassemblédans ce concept unique des valeurs aussi diversesque l’épanouissement personnel, l’insertionsociale, le maintien économique de la famille,l’assurance de la pension, le statut dans la socié-té, etc. Si bien que si quelqu’un perd son travaildans la société industrielle, il perd toutes cesvaleurs d’un seul coup et subit, de ce fait, undommage énorme, incommensurable même.Dans l’avenir, il est tout à fait possible quetoutes ces valeurs soient à nouveau réparties endifférents concepts et fonctions.

Vers l’inclusion socialeUne des caractéristiques majeures de la pro-

duction de connaissance est qu’elle s’enrichit parle biais du partage de l’information. Plus elleinclut de personnes différentes dans le partage,plus elle devient porteuse de richesse. Par consé-quent, nous nous trouvons bel et bien devantune logique inclusive. Nous sommes toutefoistellement imprégnés de notre credo industrieldominant d’économie excluante que nous avonstoutes le peines du monde à apercevoir la nou-velle logique inclusive qui affleure.

8. Immanuel WALLER-STEIN, Ouvrir les sciencessociales, Rapport de laCommission Gulbenkian,Descartes et Cie, Paris,1996.9. Joel KURTZMAN: «Money’s demise », pp. 53-61 dans The new businessof Business, Sharing respon-sibilities for a positive globalfuture, Publication of theWorld Business Academy,éditée par Willis Harmanet Maya Porter, Berret andKoehler, San Francisco,1997. 10. Bernard LIETAER,The Future of Money :Beyond Greed and Scarcity.Cette étude a été réalisépour la Cellule deprospective de laCommission européenneen 1997. Disponible chezl’auteur blietaer@earth-link.net

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Une éducation favorisant la créativitéIl s’agissait, dans la société industrielle, de

diminuer la créativité des enfants afin de les« adapter », de les insérer dans la logique d’unesociété dominée par la machine. Selon certainesétudes, le potentiel créatif d’un enfant passeraitainsi de 100 à 5 au cours des premières annéesde scolarisation. Or, dans la société de l’infor-mation, il faudra tout au contraire favoriser aumaximum la créativité puisque celle-ci sera laressource centrale. Ce qui implique une ré-invention de l’éducation. Ce sera une tâche exal-tante, mais elle suppose une excellente analysedes changements en cours.

Rôle central de la cultureDans la société actuelle, la culture est malheu-

reusement trop souvent considérée par les milieuxpolitiques comme la cerise sur le gâteau, commeun luxe, non comme une valeur centrale. Or, cetteplace centrale, la culture pourrait se la voir offrir,dans une société vouée à favoriser la créativité tousazimuts11. Pourquoi ? Tout simplement parce quesi vous coupez les citoyens de leur culture, voustuez les racines de leur créativité. Comme aujour-d’hui, la créativité s’étiolerait alors, petit à petit, enconformisme. Ce qui serait la négation de la socié-té entrevue. C’est précisément pour éviter ce dan-ger que, dans un livre dense en voie d’achèvement,Henry Panhuys, nous fait visiter une série de sitessocio-culturels pour y recueillir les élémentsconstitutifs du terreau à partir duquel pourrait seformer – et se forme déjà effectivement – la socié-té de la connaissance et de la créativité que noussouhaitons voir se créer davantage par le bas quepar le haut12. Sinon nous aurons une nouvellesociété avec des généraux sans armées.

Nouveaux buts de la sociétéSi ces changements se réalisent selon l’hypo-

thèse positive que nous explorons, une redéfini-tion fondamentale des objectifs de la sociéténous attend sans doute au bout du chemin. Lasociété pourrait alors délaisser le but purementmatérialiste de produire toujours plus d’objetsbon marché qui est le sien aujourd’hui pour pro-mouvoir le développement humain dans le sensle plus large possible, en harmonie avec le cos-mos tout entier. Et en incluant la dimension spi-rituelle. Vaste programme !

Scénario négatifPour positives qu’elles soient, les tendances

observables ne font pas davantage le printempsque les hirondelles. Elles peuvent se renverser, sepervertir. Sans compter qu’à lire le journal, c’estplutôt le scénario négatif qui semble monter enpuissance au fil des jours. Or, ce scénario estvraiment dangereux dans la mesure où les nou-velles technologies permettront une manipula-tion beaucoup plus subtile des citoyens, de leurintelligence, voire même de leur cerveau. Avecson « Big Brother », Orwell n’a-t-il pas faitœuvre de visionnaire ? Ce n’est absolument plusà exclure. Par conséquent, il est capital d’en aver-tir les citoyens. Et urgent d’en débattre plutôtque de se cantonner dans les débats industrielsd’hier.

La société de la connaissance est post-capitaliste.

Le phénomène est passionnant et angoissant.La logique du monde qui se dessine à toute allu-re est complètement différente de celle qui avaitcours auparavant. Leurs valeurs et concepts debase s’avèrent même antagonistes.

Et pourtant, notre monde continue, impertur-bable, son petit bonhomme de chemin tradi-tionnel: il utilise sans trop d’état d’âme lesconcepts d’hier, l’ancienne économie continue àle régir. Tout au plus les économistes les plusavertis - ou qui, du moins, refusent les œillères -se mettent-ils à parler des « intangibles », àadmettre qu’un pan non négligeable de l’écono-mie est constitué d’éléments que leur outilactuel leur interdit d’appréhender et d’analyser.

Il est temps désormais d’analyser les caractéris-tiques de la connaissance, de manière à pouvoiren tirer les conséquences pour la société et l’éco-nomie de demain. Avec pour source d’inspira-tion principale, cette fois, les écrits13 de HarlanCleveland, l’un des précurseurs de la pensée surla société de la connaissance, mais aussi HazelHenderson14, Verna Allee15, etc.

Au-delà de la matérialité des biens versl’immatériel ?

La société industrielle gravite désormais jus-qu’à la nausée autour des biens matériels qui, àtravers le capital et la technologie dans leur

11. Ce thème de l’impor-tance historique de la cul-ture et des représentationsest étudié en détail parHenry PANHUYS, dansL’enjeu culturel (titre provi-soire), ouvrage à paraîtreaux Ed. L’Harmattan,Paris 2001.12. cf. H. PANHUYS, op.cit. en préparation.13. Harlan CLEVE-LAND, Leadership andthe Information Revolution,Editeur : World Academyof Art and Science, 1997. Harlan CLEVELAND,The knowledge Executive :Leadership in anInformation Society,Editeur Truman TalleyBooks, E. P. Dutton, NewYork, 1985. Commandes àkvargo@hhh.umn.edu14. Hazel HENDERSON: - « Paradigms in progress» : Berret and Koehler,San Francisco, 1991, “Creating alternativeFutures: life beyond eco-nomics” Kumarian Press,1996.“Building a win-win world:life beyond global economicwarfare” Berret andKoehler, 1996. 15. Verna ALLEE : « TheKnowledge evolution :expanding organizationalintelligence » Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997.

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dimension la plus matérielle, celle du profitquantitatif qui se mesure en nombre de ou $,sont au cœur et le centre de son pouvoir. Tout,dans ce monde, est réduit à l’aspect matériel,voire matérialiste par une mesure quantitative.

Or, la connaissance est par définition immaté-rielle. Certes, des efforts herculéens sont actuel-lement déployés par certains en vue de « maté-rialiser » cette connaissance, pour pouvoir lamesurer à son tour en termes quantitatifs. Envain : même très intelligents, ces essais échouent.Pourquoi ? Parce que nous passons dans unautre monde, de plus en plus centré sur l’imma-tériel. Peut-être serions-nous en train de quitterle matérialisme en silence ?

Attention toutefois : l’apprentissage sera diffi-cile. C’est que le matérialisme est devenu, pournous, comme une seconde nature. Il fait partiede notre paysage familier. Il colore les lunettes -le paradigme - à travers lesquelles nous regar-dons et appréhendons le réel. Quoi d’étonnant,dès lors, si nous semblons avoir d’énormes diffi-cultés à nous en défaire ?

Au-delà du commerce : vers l’échange et lepartage ?

Le commerce tel que nous le connaissons estune notion assez récente. C’est une transactionoù l’on procède à l’échange d’une marchandisecontre de l’argent, point à la ligne. Une fois quel’échange a eu lieu, la transaction est considéréecomme terminée. Aucune suite n’est en principeprévue, seulement une éventuelle transactionultérieure. Cette perception du commerce noussemble, elle aussi, éternelle : puisque nousn’avons connu qu’elle, elle fait partie de notrevision du monde. Et pourtant...

Au Moyen Âge, par exemple, le commerciumétait une relation fort différente, beaucoup plusenglobante et riche. Cette relation de commer-cium était principalement fondée sur l’échangeet le don16. Prenons un exemple. Un fermier avaitbesoin de semences, son voisin en avait. Il lui endonnait en échange de quelque chose ou d’ar-gent... ou de rien. Et le premier acceptait alors derester en dette d’honneur. En cas de nécessité, ilétait entendu qu’il rendrait service. Qu’il ferait,en tout cas, un autre don quand l’occasion seprésenterait. De même, au marché de la ville, desdenrées s’échangeaient contre de la monnaie,

mais il y avait aussi beaucoup d’échanges infor-mels d’informations concernant les filles et les filsà marier, l’actualité politique, le savoir faire agri-cole, etc. La notion de commercium englobaitdonc beaucoup plus que les seules transactionsd’argent. En réalité, ce n’est qu’à l’apparition dela société industrielle que le concept de commer-ce s’est rétréci dans le sens que nous lui connais-sons. Et qu’a disparu, hélas !, la notion de detteréciproque, laquelle constituait pourtant unciment social extraordinaire.

Or, dans la société de l’information, si j’échan-ge de l’information, je ne la perds pas. Et monavantage n’est pas nécessairement l’argent, maisle retour de l’information qui me revient enri-chie de la créativité de l’autre qui va me donnerun éclairage nouveau que je ne connaissais pas.C’est la raison pour laquelle les nouveaux entre-preneurs insistent tellement sur le partage del’information.

Il y a donc rupture radicale avec le fondementmême du concept moderne du commerce, où jene peux, par définition, jamais « avoir le beurreet l’argent du beurre », mais seulement perdrece que j’échange. Nous basculons donc dans unelogique de partage et d’échange. Ce qui ne peutêtre sans conséquence sur le rôle assumé par l’ar-gent : il n’est plus tout à fait au centre de la tran-saction, celle-ci peut aussi se dérouler sansargent. Voilà qui, à n’en pas douter, annonceune redéfinition fondamentale du rôle de l’ar-gent dans la société de demain.

Toutefois, les notions du commerce capitalistesont ancrées en nous à une profondeur dontnous n’avons pas conscience. Donc, nous nouséchinons encore et toujours, au prix d’effortsénormes, à adapter l’échange de connaissances à« nos » normes commerciales.

Des centaines de chercheurs consacrent desmilliers d’heures de travail à tenter d’insérer lalogique de la connaissance dans la logiquemoderne capitaliste. Leurs efforts peuvent-ilsêtre porteurs d’avenir ? C’est tout sauf évident !

Pourquoi, sinon, d’autres auraient-ils prisconscience, dans le même temps, de l’existenced’une différence de logique ? Ainsi, pourquoicertaines firmes de la Silicon Valley ont-ellesdésormais érigé en règle l’obligation de faire cir-culer l’information, en clair de la partager ? Siun employé garde pour lui plus de 24 heures

16. Nous nous référons iciaux travaux du sociologuefrançais Marcel MAUSS,qui a écrit d’importantsouvrages sur l’économiedu don et de l’échange.Ces travaux, nous allons levoir redeviennent aujour-d’hui d’une actualitéexceptionnelle dans lasociété de la connaissance.

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une information importante, il est licencié ! Cesfirmes ont compris que la valeur ajoutée de laconnaissance s’acquiert lorsqu’elle circule. Pluson partage l’information, plus elle s’enrichit. Si,au contraire, l’information est tenue secrète, elleperd de sa valeur, la créativité du groupe baissantà vue d’œil. Et pourtant, nous continuons à cul-tiver le secret.

L’exception qui confirme la règle, c’est para-doxalement dans le domaine de la Défensequ’on le trouve : le Traité sur les ForcesConventionnelles en Europe est le premier àavoir été fondé sur un partage de l’information17.A ce titre, il a semblé faire basculer la stratégiemondiale dans la logique transmoderne post-capitaliste. Prudence toutefois : le Pentagonecampe sur l’ancien modèle et cultive de nou-veaux secrets technologiques dans la perspective- moins hypothétique depuis l’élection deGeorges W. Bush - d’une course aux armementsstratégiques dans l’espace.

Au-delà de la rareté et de l’exclusion ?A l’évidence, le capitalisme fonctionne sur la

base d’une logique de rareté de l’argent et d’ex-clusion. Tout au contraire, la société de laconnaissance semble devoir se fonder sur unelogique diamétralement opposée d’abondance etd’inclusion. L’information y abonde et on a avan-tage à la communiquer à un nombre maximal depersonnes pour la multiplier : plus j’échange del’information, plus je la partage, plus je serai

ensuite enrichi par les informations dont je béné-ficierai en retour. L’intérêt bien compris est doncd’inclure un maximum de monde dans son cir-cuit d’information. Un nouveau dicton pourraiten découler : « L’information, c’est commel’amour. Plus on en donne, plus on en reçoit ».

Une perspective choquante ? Admettons plu-tôt que nous n’osons pas y croire parce que lalogique industrielle et capitaliste est fondamen-talement basée sur l’échange commercial, larareté et, donc, l’exclusion. Or, c’est cettelogique parfaitement intériorisée qui domineencore nos sociétés.

La nouvelle logique inclusive qui envahit dou-cement la vie économique pourrait, en tout cas,avoir des conséquences positives et inattenduesau plan géopolitique. Dans la société de demain,il pourrait devenir avantageux d’inclure le TiersMonde. Il pourrait même devenir avantageuxd’inclure le Cosmos, la nature et les générationsà venir. A tout le moins, il y a là matière à débatet réflexion. Soyez en sûr, il passionnerait l’opi-nion publique dans le monde entier. Très rapi-dement ! A l’inverse, il va de soi qu’il risque dedéranger ceux qui profitent de la logique actuel-le. Dès lors, il ne sera pas facile à instaurer. C’estpourtant une piste d’espérance et de réenchante-ment.

Cette piste semble d’autant plus sérieuse qu’iln’est pas acquis que les pays les plus industriali-sés seront nécessairement les premiers à s’enga-ger dans la société de la créativité et du partage.

17. Voir à ce sujet le livrede Robert COOPER,actuellement conseiller dupremier ministre britan-nique The post modernState and the new worldorder, Demos publications,London, 1997.

Figure 2 : D’une logique à l’autre

Valeurs capitalistes et industrielles

1. Capital + industrie = Biens matériels2. Commerce : « Ou le Beurre, ou l’argent du beurre ».3. Rareté et exclusion4. Secret et propriété privée : exclusion5 Propriété aliénée des moyens de production : privée oucollective.6. Progrès = croissance quantitative 7. Les choses vendues n’ont pas de valeur éthique8. La stratégie générale est la Maîtrise et Domination(Patriarcale)

Société de la connaissance

Connaissance = Bien immatérielÉchange et partage de la connaissance.Abondance et inclusion.Disparition secret et propriété : la connaissance « fuit ». Propriété individuelle des moyens de production. Chaquetravailleur part le soir avec les moyens de production.Progrès = croissance qualitative.Toute information est liée à un sens éthique.La stratégie générale est l’harmonie et la reconnection aucosmos (?) Ou le contraire !

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Sur ce plan, « nos » valeurs dominantes consti-tuent plutôt un frein, un obstacle. Par contre,pour des sociétés « sous-développées » quinourrissent encore un sens fort de la solidarité etdu partage, la transition vers la société de laconnaissance pourrait être - en principe - plusfacile. Et plus tentante.

Au-delà du secret et de la propriété privée ?A travers cette question, c’est le cœur même

du système industriel capitaliste ou communistequi est abordé. Le débat entre le capitalisme et lecommunisme ne tournait-il pas, en effet, autourde la propriété des moyens de production ?

L’information « fuit ». Des fuites, il y en a etil y en aura toujours. Geler l’information, lastocker dans le secret n’est pas possible, précisé-ment parce qu’elle est immatérielle et qu’elle serépand, surtout si son contenu interpelle. Lasagesse populaire ne dit-elle pas qu’un secret estune nouvelle qu’on ne communique qu’à uneseule personne à la fois ? Harlan Cleveland, quitravaille sur cette dimension depuis 1980, défi-nit la question en ces termes : « L’information estporeuse, transparente. Elle fuit. Elle a une tendan-ce inhérente à fuir. Et plus elle fuit et se répand,plus nombreux sont ceux qui en ont connaissance.Les corsets que constituent les secrets “gouverne-mentaux”, les secrets commerciaux, les droits depropriété intellectuelle et la confidentialité de toutesorte, conviennent très mal à cette ressource tou-jours en mouvement »18.

Or, l’information et la connaissance consti-tuent le centre du pouvoir de la nouvellelogique. Et il n’y a pas moyen d’isoler ni de pos-séder la connaissance. Donc, la nouvelle logiquene peut se baser sur la propriété privée dequelque chose que l’on ne peut posséder.CQFD.

Autre chose est aujourd’hui à inventer. Peut-être le temps de concepts plus ouverts - la notionde propriété collective, de patrimoine de l’hu-manité, de propriété de la planète Terre - est-ilvenu. C’est, en tout cas, encore un pilier desconcepts industriels et capitalistes qui s’effondre.

Propriété personnelle des moyens deproduction ?

Nous arrivons ici à la caractéristique la plusdéstabilisante de la société de l’information.

Contrairement à ce qu’avait prédit Marx, il n’y aplus d’aliénation du travailleur par rapport à lapropriété des moyens de production. Il n’y aplus non plus moyen d’être propriétaire desmoyens de production. C’est en même temps lafin du capitalisme et du marxisme. Tous les soirsles travailleurs de Microsoft rentrent chez euxavec leur outil de production : leur cerveauhumain et créatif.

On se souvient que la critique de Marx étaitque le système capitaliste « aliénait » les tra-vailleurs de la propriété des moyens de produc-tion et que le but de la révolution était la réap-propriation collective par les travailleurs desmoyens de production. On sait que les tenta-tives de marxisme concret ont dégénéré en uneétatisation abusive et totalitaire des moyens deproduction.

Or, ici, ce n’est plus ni le « capitaliste » ni la« collectivité » qui sont propriétaires desmoyens de production, mais la personne indivi-duelle. Et plus il y a de propriétaires créatifs etactifs des moyens de production, plus une socié-té sera prospère. Il deviendrait donc intéressantpour l’État de développer des stratégies inclu-sives favorisant la créativité du plus grandnombre de citoyens. Nous sommes dans unautre monde.

Certains objecteront que nous pourrions allerainsi vers une société où la personne individuellen’aurait plus besoin des autres pour créer ni sur-vivre. Bref nous serions en train d’aller vers unesociété hyper individualiste où le lien social seraitpratiquement absent. A notre avis cette analysequi pose des questions redoutables est encoretrop industrielle. Le lien social est à notre avisune composante essentielle de la société de laconnaissance. Il n’y a pas de créativité sans inter-action et échange d’information. Entrer dans lasociété de la connaissance c’est apprendre unnouveau type de lien social absolument indis-pensable pour continuer à être créatif.

Ensuite on peut dire également que l’entréedans la société de la connaissance est peut-êtreaussi l’entrée dans ce que Teilhard de Chardinappelait la Noosphère. Cette société de demainpourrait être une société qui réinvente et recrée denouvelles modalités de lien social. N’allons-nouspas vers une redécouverte de la dimension desacré au sein même du lien social de demain ?

18. Harlan Cleveland,Leadership and theInformation Revolution,World Academy of Artand Science, 1997, p.16.

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C’est en ce sens que ce livre parle de réenchante-ment.

Redéfinir le progrès en termes qualitatifs ?Un autre fondement de notre société indus-

trielle capitaliste consiste en une foi inébranlabledans le progrès, assimilé de plus en plus à lacroissance quantitative indéfinie. Or, dans unmonde fini, une croissance indéfinie est mathé-matiquement impossible. C’est désormaisconnu, mais tout le monde fait comme s’il n’enétait rien : nous continuons à ressasser les bien-faits de la croissance.

Mais voilà, la connaissance ne peut être mesu-rée que très médiocrement en termes quantita-tifs. Peter Drucker l’a bien montré19. Dès lors,que nous le voulions ou non, la question de lamesure de la connaissance nous fait basculerdans l’ordre qualitatif. Dans la société de laconnaissance, un progrès quantitatif n’aura pra-tiquement plus de sens ! Il faudra donc noushabituer à nous servir d’un concept nouveau : leprogrès qualitatif.

Voilà qui modifie totalement l’horizon de ladiscussion. Désormais, il ne conviendra plusd’augmenter impérativement les quantités, maisbien de se préoccuper de la dimension qualitati-ve du progrès. C’est un nouveau paradigme !Dans ce contexte, il sera par exemple possible deplacer l’environnement et le facteur social ethumain au centre des préoccupations. Ce qui estprécisément le souhait d’une majorité importan-te de l’opinion publique mondiale.

Irruption de l’éthique et de la transparence ?Dans la logique industrielle, les objets vendus

ne sont pas associés à une connotation éthique.En principe, une tonne d’acier vaut une tonned’acier, où qu’elle soit produite et quelles quesoient les méthodes de production. Par contre,dans la société de la connaissance, tout se sait ettoute connaissance a un contenu, donc un sens.Faire abstraction du sens n’est plus possible. Aterme, il en ira de même de l’éthique.

Un exemple très éclairant m’a été donné, à cetégard, par le directeur de recherche d’une entre-prise de consultance bruxelloise. La firme Coca-Cola a été confrontée récemment à une série decrises mineures, notamment en Belgique oùquelques enfants ont été légèrement malades

après avoir ingéré du Coca-Cola. Or, le manage-ment de Coca-Cola a géré cette crise comme s’ils’agissait d’une crise de produit, donc d’un pro-blème matériel. Il a retiré du marché belge desmillions de canettes suspectes et les a ensuiteexpédiées sur le marché africain. L’opération aété découverte et a, bien entendu, fait scandale.Sur le plan des objets, c’était peut-être du bonmanagement car cela économisait beaucoupd’argent et ne semble pas avoir causé de problè-me en Afrique. Malheureusement, le manage-ment n’a pas compris à temps qu’une canette deCoca-Cola est aujourd’hui constituée de 10% deliquide brun et de 90% d’image immatérielle.Or, on ne gère pas cette image comme on gèreun produit matériel. Pour gérer une imageimmatérielle, il faut prendre en compte uncontenu, une signification. Coca-Cola aurait pu,par exemple, investir dans une aide à des écolespauvres de Belgique. Voilà qui aurait pu redon-ner à l’entreprise une image positive parce queliée à une signification l’étant aussi.

Cette histoire témoigne du fait que noussommes dans un autre paradigme, dans un autremonde de valeurs. La conséquence a été qu’ensix mois, l’action Coca-Cola a perdu 50% de savaleur sur le marché mondial et que le présidentmondial de l’entreprise a été contraint à donnersa démission.

Et ce qui est vrai pour Coca-Cola l’est aussi,aujourd’hui, pour les voitures et autres produitsusuels. Tout simplement parce que notre sociétéest déjà, sans s’en rendre compte, à plus de 50%dans la nouvelle logique de la connaissance.

De la maîtrise et la domination à lareconnexion et à l’harmonie ?

L’apparition et l’affirmation de la connaissan-ce et de la créativité comme nouvelles sources depouvoir transforment de fond en comble le pay-sage de notre société. De manière étonnante, cenouvel outil met potentiellement fin à la straté-gie de domination et de maîtrise. Pourquoi ?Tout simplement parce qu’il n’y a plus moyen decontrôler la connaissance et moins encore lacréativité, contrairement à ce qui se passait avecle capital et l’industrie.

Ces transformations confirment l’abandonprogressif des valeurs de maîtrise et de domina-tion au profit d’un glissement vers des valeurs de

19. Peter DRUCKER, op.cit., p.186. L’argumentprincipal est que la quan-tité de connaissance, sonaspect quantitatif, estbeaucoup moins impor-tant pour mesurer la pro-ductivité de la connais-sance, que sa dimensionqualitative.

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partage et de respect de l’humain dans toutes sesdimensions, phénomène déjà observé dansd’autres domaines. Tout se passe donc commes’il y avait une synergie silencieuse entre les dif-férents niveaux de transformation.

Certes, la cause n’est pas entendue. Il y aurades tentatives désespérées et violentes, voiremême extrêmement violentes, pour préservercette maîtrise. Mais l’évidence est là : la logiquechange de manière fondamentale sous nos yeux! Les données du jeu civilisationnel se modifientradicalement. Et même si les vagues donnentl’impression de rester les mêmes, les courantsmarins profonds changent, eux, de direction.

Le scénario négatif ?

Ce changement radical de valeurs qui s’opèreest-il niable ? Non. Les pages précédentes, j’es-père, en ont témoigné. Toutefois, toute valeurpeut être utilisée dans un sens positif ou négatif,pour le meilleur et pour le pire. Les nouvellesvaleurs qui émergent au fil des jours et des moispeuvent ainsi être détournées et dénaturées parles actuels détenteurs du pouvoir pour tenter deperpétuer leur domination. A vrai dire, ce dan-ger les guette probablement dans un avenir pastrop éloigné. Toute ingénuité est à proscrire.

Dès lors, annoncer des lendemains qui chan-tent n’a pas de sens. Ce qui importe, c’est d’es-sayer de déterminer les termes du débat dedemain. Comment allons-nous envisager unesociété post-capitaliste appelée à reposer sanscesse davantage sur ces nouvelles valeurs ?Quelles manières de vivre envisager ? Commentrepenser l’économie au sens de la gestion de lamaison individuelle, régionale, nationale etmondiale ? Quelles sont les potentialités de cettesociété inclusive et centrée sur l’humain ?Comment repenser les relations Nord-Sud ?Autant de questions qui requièrent une imagi-nation collective positive.

En même temps, un effort d’imagination pru-dentielle est tout aussi indispensable. Quels sontles nouveaux dangers qui nous menacent ? Lesnouveaux écueils qui nous attendent ? Prendreconscience que ces dangers sont énormes etqu’ils se manifesteront probablement là où l’onne les attendait pas est d’une urgence capitale,vitale.

Tel est le débat auquel il me semble urgent dese préparer. Et de préparer l’opinion publiquemondiale.

Conclusion de la premiere partie

Nous sommes donc sans vraiment le savoirdans un changement de société important etprofond. Il est évident donc que les stratégiesdes régions des entreprises vont se modifier enprofondeur. Si nous sortons de la logique indus-trielle, nous sortons aussi des stratégies indus-trielles.

Les valeurs de base de l’entreprenariat se trans-forment aussi en profondeur, puisque l’entrepre-neur de demain devra absolument avoir unmanagement centré sur le respect de l’humainautrement ses « moyens de production » c’est àdire ses collaborateurs risquent d’aller chez leconcurrent et de le priver de ses moyens de pro-duction principaux.

L’importance du local et de l’enracinementconcret devient prééminent. Car sans enracine-ment culturel et local la créativité du personneldiminue rapidement. Elle se dessèche.L’importance sur le local et l’enracinement cul-turel ne sont donc pas des luxes, comme dans lasociété industrielle. Ils deviennent une partiecentrale de la stratégie de créativité.

Dans la société industrielle l’enjeu était de dis-poser d’un personnel docile et formé à la logiqueindustrielle, donc capable de s’adapter auxrythmes et à la logique de plus en plus exigeantde la machine. Maintenant il va falloir avoir à ladisposition un « territoire intelligent. »

Le territoire intelligent, clef devoute de la societe de laconnaissanceDéfinition du territoire intelligent

Un territoire intelligent est un territoire oùcette nouvelle société peut prendre petit à petitracine. Mais pour que les racines poussent, ilfaut que le terrain soit favorable, bien exposé etfertile. Voici quelques caractéristiques qui ànotre avis seraient favorables à l’éclosion de cettenouvelle logique de société.

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Un territoire intelligent est un territoire où : Les interactions entre les citoyens sont multiples

et denses : chorales, clubs de philatélie, comitésde toutes sortes, mouvements caritatifs et d’entrai-de, mouvements politiques, cercles de réflexiond’échange, réseaux d ‘échanges de services et deproduits, et surtout, de monnaies alternatives, etc.

Les liens familiaux se reconstituent ou se res-serrent à nouveau, quelle que soit par ailleurs laforme de la famille (classique, monoparentale,reconstituée, etc.)

les relations homme femme sont différentes, nesont plus régies par une logique patriarcale. Lasortie de la logique patriarcale contribue forte-ment à libérer la créativité de la moitié de lapopulation, celle des femmes.

La créativité artistique, culturelle, mais aussientreprenariale, fleurit naturellement, et est unecomposante forte et dominante de la culture locale.

L’enracinement culturel est fort et produit uneidentité culturelle positive, c’est à dire non refer-mée sur le passé (récupération des gloires pas-sées, etc.). Le critère est que les citoyens soientfiers de leur région et sans complexes si bienqu’ils osent la concevoir comme ouverte sur lemonde d’aujourd’hui et de demain.

Une dimension spirituelle est de nouveau partieintégrante de la vie sociale du territoire, maisdans un climat de tolérance profonde. La dimen-sion profonde de l’existence n’est plus niée sys-tématiquement. Il y a donc une nouvelle dimen-sion de profondeur dans ce territoire.

L’entreprenariat est une force d’innovation etd’inclusion, qui favorise la créativité, la respon-sabilité et la participation des collaborateurs.L’entrepreneur est aussi celui qui accepte leserreurs de son personnel, sinon la créativité n’estpas possible.

Le leadership politique n’est plus un leadershipqui « sait », mais un leadership qui « fait sens »,qui est capable de mobiliser les citoyens autourd’un projet nouveau et porteur d’avenir et desens pour le territoire. Mais pour ce faire il s’agi-ra d’aller au delà de « futurs probables » (pro-jection linéaire dans le futur. ), qui sont produitspar le cerveau gauche uniquement. Il faut aucontraire s’orienter vers des « avenirs choisis »,qui engendrent ce qu’ils annoncent en balisant etcréant la route à suivre…(cerveau gauche etdroit). Il s’agit donc de faire appel, non seule-

ment à l’intelligence mais aussi au désir, à l’ima-gination, à la créativité individuelle et collective20.

Le territoire intelligent est, selon notre hypo-thèse, un territoire dans lequel les transforma-tions de valeurs, de comportements et/ou laredécouverte de valeurs enfouies dans le passé,rendent possible l’éclosion de cette nouvellelogique, cette nouvelle culture post-industrielleet post-capitaliste.

Trois niveaux d’innovation

Operationnel par la nouvelle plateformetechnologique

Il est très important de ne pas sous-estimer laportée de la dimension technologique.S’agissant de créer un “territoire intelligent”, ilest essentiel de dépasser l’innovation technolo-gique. Cett condition n’est toutefois pas suffi-sante, car il est aussi essentiel d’intégrer deuxautres niveaux d’innovation : celui des compor-tements et celui des institutions, qui requièrentpar ailleurs des modèles théoriques et cognitifsd’un genre nouveau.

Tactique : les institutions et les comporte-ments doivent se rénover. Dans le KS, il fautpartager le savoir, faute de le dévaloriser. Ce quiest l’exact contraire de la logique industriellefondée sur le secret des connaissances et despatentes. Il faut aussi établir des organisationshorizontales, à l’opposé des pyramides du pou-voir qui dominent la logique industrielle.

Stratégique : il faut engager une réformeradicale des images et des modèles de pensée etd’interprétation du monde. Nos schémas etméthodes de pensée doivent évoluer. Le cocktaildes valeurs qui fondent notre mode de penserdoit se transformer et se réorienter vers la vie ertla survie de l’humanité et le partage de laconnaissance (voir première partie).

L’Europe comme territoireintelligent ?Qand les obstacles d’hier deviennent lesavantages de demain…

Si l’on accepte cette hypothèse de travail, lepaysage se transforme progressivement. Et une

20. Daniel GOLEMAN :« Emotional Intelligence »Bantam Books, October1995.

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des conséquences de cette nouvelle manière devoir est une bonne nouvelle qui est rarementcommuniquée au public : les tares qui sont repro-chées à l’Europe, entre autres par l’OCDE, encette fin de la société industrielle, sont précisé-ment les avantages essentiels sur lesquels serontbasés et construits la société de demain. Ces «tares » sont des caractéristiques très importantesdu territoire intelligent de demain. Il serait doncsuicidaire de s’y attaquer comme les experts« industriels » le préconisent.

Voyons cela de plus près. Pour l’instant, ce quiest reproché à l’Union européenne, c’est d’avoirencore :

trop de régulations sociales, un filet de solida-rité trop dense et donc trop coûteux ;

trop de diversité culturelle qui contribue à unetrop grande segmentation des marchés ;

trop de solidarité avec le Tiers-Monde alorsqu’il vaut mieux que les pays du Sud soientconfrontés à la réalité du marché mondial ;

trop de prise en compte des besoins familiaux,crèches, congés parentaux, etc. Cela coûte beau-coup trop cher et finit par handicaper la compé-titivité.

Mais aussi :- trop de régulations inutiles et infiniment

diverses ; - trop peu d’esprit d’initiative et de créativité ; - trop peu de vision et d’audace.

Les trois derniers reproches sont pleinementjustifiés et méritent d’être corrigés au plus vite.L’Union et les gouvernements s’y emploient ouessaient de le faire.

Par contre, dans l’optique de société de laconnaissance et de créativité, que nous venonsd’esquisser, les quatre premiers reproches visentdes « défauts » qui sont appelés à devenir le ter-reau qui alimentera, fera vivre et grandir la créa-tivité humaine. Car il faut le dire à haute etintelligible voix :

Sans réseau humain dense et souple, sans tissusocial vivant, la créativité humaine diminuerapidement et dépérit. Le tissu social d’unerégion est donc un atout primordial pourdemain si nous voulons que l’Union européennenon seulement s’adapte aux nouveaux outilsinformatiques, mais qu’elle devienne un acteurmondial dans l’invention de la nouvelle sociétéde la connaissance.

Sans enracinement culturel, sans capitalisationsur la diversité culturelle, il n’y aura pas de créa-tivité humaine. La créativité se nourrit de la cul-ture, de l’enracinement culturel. Mais cet enra-cinement doit être positif, ouvert sur l’avenir etla tolérance.

L’inclusion est le principe de base, la pierreangulaire de la formation de la connaissance. Sil’information ne circule pas, le cerveau humainn’enrichit pas sa connaissance. Pour faire circu-ler la connaissance, il faut partager, mettre lesautres dans le coup. Il faut donc inclure à toutprix ! Ce qui tue l’énergie créatrice, c’est précisé-ment le principe d’exclusion, du « chacun poursoi ». C’est la logique inverse de ce que nousconnaissons. Par conséquent, toute la traditionde solidarité sociale si chère au Européens est àconserver et à favoriser à tout prix.

Idem pour le Tiers-Monde. Plus on l’inclura,plus le retour de créativité vers nous pourrait êtreimportant. A certains égards, les Africains sontplus créatifs que nous. Tant mieux, incluons-les,faisons circuler au maximum l’information ettout le monde y gagnera. Comment ?Probablement pas dans les catégories capitalistesd’aujourd’hui. Il faut inventer, mais il y désor-mais une lumière au bout du tunnel.

Le respect de la famille et des préoccupationslégitimes des parents est une autre conditionsine qua non de la créativité. Sans familles équi-librées, reconstituées ou non, où l’amour, laconfiance et la sérénité circulent, il n’y a pas decréativité possible. Toutes les formes de stresssont nocives, voire mortelles pour le créativité.

L’intuition des citoyen(ne)s européen(ne)s estdonc juste. Il ne faut pas liquider la solidarité etles acquis sociaux. Il ne faut absolument pas lais-ser se détériorer le tissu social. Cela reviendrait àtuer dans l’œuf les germes de la créativité dedemain. Ceux qui ont succombé à cette tenta-tion risquent de s’en mordre les doigts à moyenterme, sauf si, comme les États-Unis, ils impor-tent d’ailleurs les cerveaux créatifs.

Un nouveau concept d’éucation ?

L’éducation, on l’aura compris, est égalementappelée à se transformer assez profondément. Leconcept général est facile à comprendre. Il s’agitde passer rapidement d’une éducation qui dimi-

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nue la créativité et informe énormément à uneéducation qui favorise la créativité en la cataly-sant et en l’éduquant, en la guidant pour qu’ellepermette aux élèves de devenir des acteurs créa-tifs et efficaces dans l’invention d’un mondetransmoderne et dans la société de la créativité etde la connaissance.

La connaissance reste certes importante, maisil convient à l’évidence de se rendre compte quenous sommes dans une période de changementstechnologiques si rapides et profonds que lestechniques apprises aujourd’hui aux élèvesseront probablement dépassées quand ils serontappelés à les mettre en application ! La seulechose qui demeure très importante, c’est doncd’apprendre à apprendre.

Il s’agira, dans les années à venir, de s’atteler àla tâche exaltante de revenir à ce que l’éducationn’aurait jamais du cesser d’être : un chemin versl’appropriation de la créativité et, partant, vers ledéveloppement humain dans le sens le plus largeet le plus profond du terme. Une mission noblequi a de quoi motiver les enseignants du mondeentier et leur rendre une légitime fierté. C’estencore un domaine dans lequel l’Europe pour-rait jouer un rôle de révélateur, de catalyseur duchangement.

C’est encore un domaine dans lequel l’Europepourrait jouer un rôle de révélateur, de cataly-seur du changement.

Une nouvelle université formant des « généra-listes » ?

L’Université de demain pourrait se présenterde manière fort différente de ce que nous

connaissons aujourd’hui. Au lieu de former desgénéralistes qui se spécialisent dans les années dedoctorat, on pourrait imaginer le contraire. Elleformerait des généralistes en bout de cycle supé-rieur. Les étudiants commenceraient par unespécialité comme ingénieur électronicien, puisils acquérraient une « généralisation ». C’est àdire qu’ils apprendraient à travailler réellementen transdisciplinarité. Ils seraient invités à élargirleur vision spécialisée par un point de vue philo-sophique, anthropologique, économique, poli-tique, linguistique, etc. Si bien que leur thèse dedoctorat serait une généralisation de leurapproche spécialisée. Les doctorants seraient des« généralisations ». Et les carrières supérieuresseraient réservées aux « généralistes » diplômés.

L’Europe conviant a un monde nouveau ?

Le rôle de l’Europe ne sera pas de s’essouffler àessayer de redevenir une « grande puissanceindustrielle et militaire » comme par le passé, nide se poser en concurrente plus ou moins habi-le des États-Unis. Elle n’excelle d’ailleurs pas tel-lement à ce jeu.

Il s’agit d’autre chose. L’Histoire attendl’Europe ailleurs. Elle a placé l’Union européen-ne dans la position inconfortable de disposer –mais à son insu – des premières structures poli-tiques transmodernes. Pas moyen, par consé-quent, de s’en sortir avec les catégories modernesd’hier. Elle est acculée à l’innovation. Elle peut devenir un des premiers territoires

intelligents de la planète.

21. NESKEY = NewPartnership for Sustainabledevelopment in theKnowledge EconomY.

AppendixNeskey 21

A roadmap on new measurements in the Knowledge societyCharacteristics of Neskey:

Neskey’s Roadmap is about measuring progress toward a sustainable society. If EU wants tobecome a sustainable and inclusive knowledge society, it is crucial for the actors to be able tomeasure and assess any progress towards that goal. Without measurements it is impossible for theEU to know if it is progressing or falling behind.

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Hence Neskey has brought together a unique gathering of experts in three dimensionsExperts in intangible and sustainability metrics, including research groups working on mea-

surements of sustainability to join the roadmap construction: “GRI” (Global Reporting Initiative),and “Accountability”.

Business and technology partners like Brutish Telecom, GeSI (Global e-Sustainability Initiative),a consortium of Telecommunications companies working on sustainability.

Cities and organizations that focus on the “built environment” as a responsible party for address-ing overall sustainability issues such as pollution and high quality human environments.

Neskey roadmap takes a systemic view of measuring sustainability. The concept of sustain-ability has environmental, social, economic and cultural dimensions. It has quantitative dimen-sions, but is becoming more and more a qualitative concept. Progress presupposes the creationof new measurements. It presupposes also that norms and measurements correspond and inte-grate with each other, which for the moment is not the case, especially between cities andBusiness. Corporations are developing reporting systems that do not correlate to the needs ofcities, of governments, advocacy groups, consumers, or employees. The current reporting focusis skewed toward the needs of the investment community.

Neskey studies those new measurements in the context of the knowledge society. Althoughacknowledging the overall importance of technology, Neskey is not really a technological pro-ject. Rather, Neskey is confronting the growing importance of intangibles and the societal impli-cations of this shift in values. (An intangible is a source of future benefits that does not have a phys-ical or financial embodiment 22. According to that definition, sustainability and social inclusionare more and more considered as “new” intangibles, increasing greatly the value/brand of thecompanies, and the reputation of the cities.

The Vision of Neskey:

Internet and computer technologies are the new “tools of production” that have expandedcompetitivity and value capability from corporations and industrial complexes to individuals andnetworks. A new economy emerges that requires dramatically different business practices: theknowledge economy. Some authors speak about “post capitalist”23 economy, because the powerresides more in knowledge than in capital.

Instead of being based on secrecy and exclusivity, new business practices (in the knowledge society)are going towards sharing, transparency, accountability and real cooperation. Knowledge grows as itis shared: the more you share the more you have of it. This is not the case with financial capital. So,the basic logic is changing.

Other research on sustainability 24 shows also that the actual economic frame is seemingly notable to lead Humanity towards a really sustainable future. We need a new economic frame, calledthe “Economy of sustainable development”.

This leads Neskey to the vision that in the coming years the global trend could be towards 360°Accountability, transparency and participation in a sustainable economy. This means corpora-tions, governments, cities, advocacy groups, and civil society organizations seek ways they cancollectively share knowledge about indicators, participate in the sense making processes aroundthose indicators and become more transparently accountable to each other embracing sustain-able practices.

This accountability/transparency/participation would become an extraordinary acceleratortowards more sustainability and social inclusion, because the value of those new intangibles (sus-tainability and inclusion) increases with transparency.

22. Lev BARUCH:“Intangibles: Management,Measuring and Reporting”Brookings Institution,Washington D.C. 2002.23. Peter DRUCKER:”Post capitalist society”Harper Business. 1993.24. James ROBERTSON:“The New economics of sus-tainable development: aBriefing for policy makers”Forward Studies Unitpapers, 1999. editors :Kogan Page, UK, andOffice of the OfficialPublications of theEuropean Commission,Luxembourg.

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This vision presupposes the availability of an “elegant CORE set of measures, indexes andmethods, commonly used by Business, cities and regions, civil society, and governing bodies. Thecurrent feedback mechanisms and systems of indicators are too limited and if this is notaddressed they may seriously impede the emergence of new practices and metrics that will berequired to achieve the EU goals proclaimed at Lisbon.

In order to reach this point of transparency and acceleration of sustainability, we need to switchto a post industrial/sustainable economic frame. We need to understand that we are already inanother society, although our minds are still in the old structures, references and habits.

In order to realize the Neskey roadmap, we need the next generation of technology, which fos-ters this transparency and participation, and makes visible new metrics for the built environ-ment, societal health, environmental viability, and corporate intangibles.

We need innovation. But not only in technology, which was the foundation of the industrialsociety. In the knowledge society, we also need social innovations for inter-organizational coop-eration, including new institutions and a new vision (paradigm = set of values), which is not lin-ear and systemic.

In this new society, based on sharing, collaboration and open source, the main research toolcould become the thematic network (like Knowledge Board) linking together experts, business,cities, governments, and citizens. They all would be working to calibrate the measurement ofintangibles and sustainability. They would be the real new research engine, producing newknowledge.

In the follow up discussion, many participants found the roadmap interesting and challenging. S. Curwell, finds it “very exciting”, and asks what are the priorities? Would a priority not be

the standards of information quality? Clark Eustace confirms the growing importance of intangibles and asks for removal of the

incentives to the monopoly rents in public goods. This is the deeper, systemic issue beyond theobvious. Transparency is also about those type of issues.

Pol Deschamps underlines the importance of citizens’ participation.Peter Johnston:

- considers that Neskey is right in thinking that there is an irresistible movement towards self-organizing from below, through “communities of practice” and action networks. Those com-munities are indeed pushing for more transparency and participation. They are pushingtowards something new…We have yet to fully recognize it.

- He also considers Neskey roadmap as making a “correct jump” in saying that in the followingphases of the emerging knowledge society, public policies will be subjected to public screeningconcerning their influences on sustainability.

- He finally asks how to combine this extraordinary diversity of experiences with 360° transparency.

45

Introduction

his paper examines the impact of recentchanges in the relationship betweenlandowners and tenants in Egypt by looking

at Law 96 of 1992, which revoked rights of tenurefor tenants, to see whether the proposed shifttoward market-based formulas for tenancy haveimproved opportunities for rural civil society. Putsimply, has there been any link between econom-ic liberalization on the one hand and political lib-eralization on the other, specifically as it relates torural Egypt? Have the possibilities for politicalexpression by farmers and rural dwellers, throughlocal organizations and associations, expanded asthe opportunities for entry into a land market arealso supposed to also have increased?

These questions raise issues that are at theheart of rural livelihoods, asset redistributionand especially land. This paper examines thedeclared intentions on political liberalizationand expansion of rural civil society of theGovernment of Egypt (GoE) and donors,notably the United States Agency forInternational Development (USAID) and theWorld Bank. Those intentions will be set againstactual recent outcomes for political representa-tion, participation in local institutions and therule of law, and the improvement of rural well-being and protection of rural livelihoods. Theapproach is rooted in political economy. Thepaper examines the relationship between thestate and economy in Egypt, identifies the actorswho shape that relationship, and looks at theimpact of structural adjustment on rural Egypt’sinstitutions.

This is not always easy work in the Egyptiancontext. Egypt’s ruling elite views the control ofaccess to information and the debate of policyissues as central to its maintenance of political

and economic power. Egypt has at differenttimes been characterized as a democracy ofnewspapers, as the centre of Middle Easternmedia and cultural liberalism: that view hasalways been questionable, and especially so atthe start of the twenty-first century.1

While there have been many GoE announce-ments of the importance of widening politicalparticipation, and donors have stressed the needfor an expansion of what they call “civil society”,neither has taken place. This failure raises twoimmediate questions related to Egypt’s ruralareas that the GoE is reluctant to address. Thefirst of these is what will be the likely outcomeof the state’s withdrawal from the provision ofagricultural inputs and marketing for the fel-lahin’s, or peasants’, ability to continue agricul-tural production? How have the fellahin man-aged to cope with the reduction of GoE supportwith agricultural services as rural povertyincreases? Second, has there been an increase inthe number and variety of civil society organiza-tions (CSOs) to substitute for state withdrawalfrom agricultural provision, and has this usheredin a new era for political liberalization anddemocratization?

This paper demonstrates that there has been,in recent years, a political deliberalization(Kienle 2001). There has been a narrowing ofthe possibility for political action independentof the state. This narrowing authoritarianismchallenges the view that a civil society exists asanything other than as a slogan used by the GoEto curry favour from the donor community.This should not be surprising for any keenobserver of Egypt’s political economy. Whilethere was a degree of political reform followingthe death of President Gamal Abdel Nasser in1970, with the ending of the single-party systemby Anwar Sadat’s in 1977, Egyptian politics has

*Ray Bush teaches in theSchool for Politics andInternational Studies atthe University of Leeds inthe United Kingdom. Heis an editor of The Reviewof African PoliticalEconomy. This paper wasprepared under theInstitute’s project on CivilSociety Strategies andMovements for Rural AssetRedistribution andImproved Livelihoods,which was carried outbetween 2000 and 2003.The project was led byK.B. Ghimire, with assis-tance from Anita Tombez. The author is grateful toSarah Bracking, Asef Bayatand K.B. Ghimire forcomments on an earlierdraft of this paper. Hegratefully acknowledgesresearch support from theNuffield Foundation thathelped facilitate some ofthe data collection. He is,however, alone responsiblefor the contents of whatfollows. © UNRISD.1. Extensive media censor-ship seems at odds withPresident Mubarak’srepeated observation thathe is concerned about pro-tecting the “freedom ofthe press”, although thesecomments are usuallyhedged by his view that“such freedom is governedby national conscience”.See Cairo Press Review, 17July 2001, page 15.

Transnational Associations1/2005, 45-68

Civil society and the uncivil stateLand tenure reform in Egypt and the crisis of rural livelihoods

by Ray Bush*

In this paper, Ray Bush examines the impact of recent changes in the relationship between landownersand tenants in Egypt and the links between economic and political liberalization, specifically in ruralEgypt. In this context, he considers the declared intentions of the government and donors (the United StatesAgency for International Development—USAID, and the World Bank, in particular) relating to politicalliberalization and the role of rural civil society. In terms of political representation, participation in localinstitutions, rule of law, and improvement of rural livelihoods.

His study raises two immediate questions: the likely outcome of the state’s withdrawal from the provisionof agricultural inputs, and the ability of civil society organizations (CSOs) to substitute for the state’s with-drawal from agricultural provision.

T

46

been unable to break free from the fact that themain political parties were created by the state.Any new party still has to be approved by a com-mittee on the formation of political parties. Thestate continues to determine what constitutesformal political practice—the extent to which apolitical party can politicize, organize andrecruit new members as well as hold meetingsand organize democratic opposition to theregime—and even the number of representativesthat will be tolerated in the People’s Assembly.

One of the failures of Nasser’s revolution wasits dependency upon limited and restricted polit-ical participation from the social and class forcesit had used to fight the injustice of the ancienrégime. Yet the social contract that was imposedto protect the revolution coerced the fellahin andworking class to accept political quietude forlimited land reform, and improved living andworking conditions. That compact reducedpolitical participation during the Nasser years,but also inhibited future reform that sought towiden the scope for decision making and formu-lation of policy beyond the armed forces andcrony political and economic elite. As ShahendaMaqlad has noted, reflecting on her life as a ruralactivist and leftist Tagammu militant:2

One of the big mistakes of the July 1952 revo-lution was that it didn’t allow autonomous pop-ulist organizations. When Sadat took away peas-ants’ gains and started his campaign against every-thing Nasser stood for, resistance was weak andunorganized (Cairo Times, 4–10 May 2000:20).

President Hosni Mubarak’s regime (1981–pre-sent) has failed to move away from the authori-tarian corporatism and nationalist populismthat characterized the previous regimes. He hasconcentrated efforts to sustain his politicalpower that was, at the time of Sadat’s assassina-tion, without much legitimacy. The 1960s and1970s were marked by severe limitations onpolitical participation as the regimes tried toquell unrest with moderate improvements toservice provision. The limited improvement tohealth and education was only possible whilethe regime could finance it. However, Egypt’seconomic crisis intensified as its ability to gen-erate growth away from its traditional rentiersectors like revenue from the Suez canal,migrant labour remittances and oil with a sus-

tainable agriculture and manufacturing basedrove it into deeper recession and fiscal crisis.3

The record of the 1980s and 1990s has beenlargely of the Egyptian regime equipping itselfwith the ability to continue to manage dissentwhile also promoting a somewhat garbled andpartial message of economic reform, market lib-eralization and financial austerity, for farmersand workers.

This paper examines opportunities that havearisen for the fellahin, especially tenants andthose dispossessed since 1997, to mobilize andpromote their interests within the context ofEgypt’s “uncivil” state—a state that often ridesroughshod over human and civil rights withoutdue process of law. I will discuss issues raised byseveral tenants who lost land after 1997 and theconsequences of that land loss for their assetbase, their level of poverty, the social exclusionthat they have endured and the assault on theirrights to land. I will examine the level of vio-lence that took place in Egypt’s countryside,especially after 1997, and assess the extent towhich that might be seen as indicative of protestwithin the realm of civil society, or as a new anddifferent form of political mobilization. It willbecome clear that while the declared rationalefor donors and the GoE at different times hasbeen that the 1992 reform of tenancy wasintended to promote improvements in Egypt’sland market with the parallel development ofimproved opportunities for rural politicalexpression, this has certainly not taken place. Iwill not focus on issues of a land market, whichhas been looked at elsewhere (Bush 2002).Instead, I will highlight the fact that civil societygroups have not emerged as a result of marketreform. Egypt’s history of the last decade hasbeen one of deliberalization. Where people havespoken out locally or have organized againstimpoverishment as a result of market liberaliza-tion, they have tended to do so around familyand kinship structures. Market liberalization hasgenerated greater rural poverty and unemploy-ment that has been partly managed by the fel-lahin in terms of a greater dependence uponfamily resources. Yet this has also become jeop-ardized as economic hardship has intensified,and there is little sense that it will diminish.

Improving opportunities for civil society rep-

2. Shahenda Maglad isalso the widow of SalahHussein, a peasant activistwho was murdered bykillers hired by a powerfullandowning family calledFiqqi in the village ofKamsheesh in the gover-norate of Minoufiya on 30April 1966. The murderwas prompted by activistsinsisting that the wealthyFiqqi family comply withNasserist land legislation.The Tagammu party orNational ProgressiveUnionist Party has itsroots in the Arab SocialistUnion and at differenttimes has defended itsNasserist origins.3. Frischak and Atiyas1996; Waterbury 1983;Richards and Waterbury1990.

47

resentation has never been on the agenda ofEgypt’s policy makers. It has been, at differenttimes, part of the pretence of political liberaliza-tion that commentators have assumed will ipsofacto emerge alongside market reform, but theGoE has no intention, or need, to liberalizepolitically. And even if it did, it certainly wouldnot focus on rural political empowerment whichmight jeopardize the wealth and status of land-ed interests.

I will begin with a brief review of whether theconcept of civil society is an appropriate one touse and whether it has any usefulness in under-standing rural Egypt. I will also trace the recentprocess of deliberalization. I will then provide thecontext for examining agriculture and rural liveli-hoods by looking at what the characterization ofEgypt’s persistent agricultural crisis has been. Itwill then be possible to look at the debate abouttenure and markets and the impact recent gov-ernment policy has had on rural livelihoods andassets. There has been a significant continuity inthe debates about Egypt’s countryside and thepolitical role of the fellahin within it. However,there has been no notion that rural organizationsthat might challenge authority would be impor-tant for farmers’ self-esteem and confidence, andthat support for a political process might empow-er rather than enervate rural producers and possi-bly enhance regime legitimacy.

Deliberalization and politics inEgypt: whither civil society?

The idea that a vibrant civil society is neces-sary to keep rulers and politicians in check, andto promote democratic transition and consoli-dation, is prevalent throughout the donor com-munity and is part of the rhetoric of most devel-oping country governments (Keane 1988; Clark1991). Political conditionality has been writteninto most aid and donor relations with develop-ing countries. The need for civil society has beentaken for granted and its virtues extolled by,inter alia, the World Bank, the United StatesAgency for International Development(USAID) and the United Kingdom’sDepartment for International Development(DfID).4 Egypt is no exception to this, althoughwhat is meant by civil society at a time of delib-

eralization and an authoritarian regime isunclear (Kandil 1994; Ibrahim 1995).

Civil society

Since the mid-1980s, the term civil society hasbeen “dusted off and deodorized to suit a varietyof ideological, intellectual and practical needs”(White 1996:178; see also Keane 1988). In itsbroadest definition, civil society refers to publicspace independent of the state where many dif-ferent forms of associational life exist.Additionally, it has been used to refer to allactivity outside the state, whether spontaneousor organized. It was the protest movements thatemerged to help transform the political regimesof Eastern Europe in the 1980s that many West-ern commentators saw as capturing the vibrancyof civil society. In that context and since then,the notion of civil society was very much linkedwith “opposition” to the state (Geremek 1996).There is another view of civil society: A“catchall” to refer to associations between firms,families and the state, especially to refer to thepresence of voluntary organizations. These twoviews of civil society, the more theoretical andanalytical category defining “political space”between the state and private life, and the moreempirical view referring to all public activity notdirectly sanctioned by the state, has left a lot ofroom for confusion.

The difficulty of establishing a clear definitionof civil society and avoiding its use to includeevery activity beyond the state, as in some sensein opposition to it, has often rendered the termtoo inclusive. If we accept, moreover, the termto include the association between peoplebeyond the home and the state, we need toexamine what it is that the organization actuallydoes to determine whether it can be called“civil” or not. That continues to be the case eventhough civil society is used by policy makers andpoliticians to imply an arena outside govern-ment or state control. In the Egyptian context Iwill indicate farmers’ adoption of a range ofstrategies to cope with economic liberalization.These have involved aspects of using formalprotest through existing state-orchestratedavenues as well as elements of what Bayat hascalled “quiet encroachment” (1997, 1998,

4. DfID 2000; USAID2000; World Bank 2000a.

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2002). But they have most obviously been char-acterized by farmer adoption of more usual cop-ing strategies to reduce economic stress, andthey have failed to impact positively on the cre-ation of rural civil society.

The focus for most commentators of civilsociety is to argue that associations therein tendto take an organized form with a routinizedcharacter (Steward 1997, citing Hadenius andUggla 1996). Yet this view of civil society doesnot adequately capture the forms of protest andopposition that have arisen in Egypt since1990. Indeed, such a view of civil society doesnot capture the reality of civil society in West-ern liberal democratic states either. This isbecause of the difficulty of knowing what toinclude in the list of “non-state” actors, or thosethat operate outside the sphere of the state. Forin many social formations it is clear that civicinstitutions like academic unions, public sectorinterest groups and those citizens who derivecore income from the state are firmly embeddedin the state system itself (Bangura 1999:1). Thisraises issues related to the boundaries of civilsociety when discussing associational groups.Are all groups and associations, irrespective ofmembership, aims and objectives, to be includ-ed as part of civil society? If civil society is to belinked with political liberalization, do allgroups within it contribute to that process or isit more appropriate to discriminate in theassessment of the associations contributing tocivil society? Might we want, for instance, tolook not only at the aims and objectives of dif-ferent groups, the types of recruitment mecha-nisms and social base that they have, but also atthe precise relationship they may have with thestate?

There is a lot of theoretical slippage whendealing with debates of contemporary civil soci-ety. This relates in part to the fact that it wasseen in political theory as part of the organicgrowth with European capitalist development inits early formulation. In its subsequent use tochart a “proper” course for political democracyin developing countries, it has failed adequatelyto locate the specificity of the term in its histor-ical genesis within continental Europe and hasnot recognized the difficulties of structurallyembedding it in non-Western society. This is

not to minimize or fail to see the significance ofcivil society in the global South. It is instead tounderstand the possible implications for its latearrival in political discourse and the way inwhich it has rather confusingly been bandiedabout, viewed as a liberating force in authoritar-ian regimes and linked closely with donors andpolitical conditionality. I want to now look a lit-tle closer at a number of general limitations tothe usefulness of the term, civil society. I want tolook at the way in which it has automaticallybeen linked with democratization and why itslink to the importance of non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) can misleadingly implyipso facto that a process of democratization isunder way simply because a “civil society” canbe discerned.

The presence of civil society and organizationssuch as NGOs have been hailed as the necessaryingredients for promoting and consolidatingdemocracy, empowering people in their strug-gles against states, and increasing political par-ticipation. The argument of many commenta-tors in the 1980s and 1990s was that the pres-sure to liberalize economies by promoting mar-ket reform should be accompanied by politicalliberalization promoting a plurality of associa-tional groups to ensure greater accountability ofthe state. While international agencies at theheart of economic liberalization promoted theneed for states to reform politically to advanceassociational life, it has also been the case thatpolitical reforms have been seen to necessarilyfollow market reform. They must follow, ratherthan predate economic liberalization, to avoid aRussian-style reform fiasco. Second, the politicalreforms on the agendas of international financialinstitutions (IFIs) are not envisaged to empowerorganizations that might challenge the “sanctity”of property rights.

The difficulties with using the term civil soci-ety have led Chris Allen to question its use andits simplistic linkage with democratization. Hehas argued that

the concept of civil society is difficult to pindown empirically, and the theoretical argumentswith which it is involved are so closely associatedwith neo-liberal ideological campaigning, as tocast doubt on the value of the concept overall(Allen 1997:330).

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Allen is unhappy with the term because it hascarried with it the ideological assertions of itsneoliberal origins. First, the preoccupation withassociational life asserts that civil society is thesource for liberal democratic values, namelyopenness, transparency, accountability and therule of law. Second, civil society is seen as themotor for democracy—that is, a liberal democ-ratic version. And third, civil society is posed inopposition to the state. Crucially, a flourishingcivil society requires a non-interventioniststate—one that furthers the interests of market-oriented individual freedoms (Allen 1997:335).

What has followed for Allen and others(Fowler 1991; Powell and Seddon 1997) hasbeen a development agenda since the early1980s that has made donor funds conditionalwith the presence of, or policies to facilitate, astrong civil society in recipient countries. Civilsociety, made up invariably of a plurality ofNGOs, is seen by donors as an opponent ofinefficient, corrupt and rent-seeking states. It ishere that donors and the debates about civilsociety have been misleading. In arguing foruniversal support—some might argue “knee-jerk” support—for NGOs in their opposition tothe state, donors have operated with a very naiveidea of what NGOs are and the role they mightplay in a proposed democratization process. AsRobert Cox has suggested:

In a ‘bottom-up’ sense, civil society is therealm in which those who are disadvantaged byglobalisation of the world economy can mounttheir protests and seek alternatives? In a ‘top-down’ sense, however, states and corporate inter-ests influence the development of this currentversion of civil society towards making it anagency for stabilising the social and political sta-tus quo (1999:10–11).

While there is no doubt that donors have beencareful to channel funds to NGOs that arebroadly in agreement with donor policies fordevelopment, economic liberalization and polit-ical reform that do not challenge the interests offoreign capital, it is also the case that there aremany different types of NGOs with differentagendas. NGOs, for example, might comple-ment the state by providing social services. Theymight oppose the state by trying to generatelocal opposition to aspects of state policy, and

they might try to reform the state from withinby working with the government (Marcussen1996:418). And some NGOs are undemocraticin their internal organization and in their ulti-mate aims and objectives. That has certainlybeen the accusation made against many Islamistgroups in Egypt that have articulated the inter-ests of militant armed groups, promoted exclu-sion of women and would probably limit thescope for non-Islamic groups and politicalopposition more generally, if they came intopower. In other words, there is no necessary rela-tionship of NGO opposition to the state. TheNGO sector, as might be expected, is subject tointernal divisions, in relation to what the aimsand objectives of NGOs might be and whatposition they might adopt, or be encouraged toadopt vis-à-vis the state. It is more likely thatsome business NGOs, although clearly not all inthe Egyptian case, will be more sympathetic tothe state than, say a human rights organization.And of course we might note here too that whileNGOs are divided horizontally, they are alsodivided vertically, internally, in terms of theirclass membership, organization, recruitmentand activist base.

It is perhaps more fruitful in understandingcivil society to take the focus away from a pre-occupation with NGOs and associational activ-ity per se and instead to use the term to describethe processes by which states configure relationsof consent and coercion. Gramsci’s concern inthe spiralling fascist Italy of the 1930s was tograpple with a topsy-turvy world where life out-side or beyond the state at different times andoften in quick succession became enmeshedwith the state, separate from it or subordinate toit (Gramsci 1976; Showstack Sassoon 1978).5

For Gramsci, the essential way in which domi-nant classes maintained authority was to presentthemselves as legitimate rulers. This was done,most of the time, by convincing subordinateclasses of the hegemonic dominance and legiti-macy of governing class actions. The constantcreation and re-creation of hegemony—rule byconsent, but when necessary by force—was, forGramsci, the crucial factor characterizing theexercise of political power in the interests of thedominant economic classes. According toGramsci, civil society was only meaningful as a

5. This formulation of“processes” is not meant torelegate any concrete “spa-tial location” for civil soci-ety. Gramsci was clear,using the evocative lan-guage of trenches, ditchesand fortifications aroundthe state, that consent wasmanufactured defusingany raw class relations ofexploitation within andbeyond the institutions ofthe state. Civil society thusbecomes among otherthings the arena(s) inwhich culture, structuresof power and creation ofsocial order are reproducedand any possible class-based identity is under-mined. We will see belowhow on the one hand thedevelopment of a morerobust structure for com-munity development asso-ciations (CDAs) is atremendous achievementto help promote greaterdemocratization and open-ness for rural decisionmaking. Yet CDAs alsopotentially serve to contin-ue to fragment class-basedopposition to government-imposed actions.

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political concept or political reality if it was partof a relationship with the state. Thus while con-temporary donors and mainstream academiccommentators have tended to talk about civilsociety in opposition to the state or as a substi-tute for it, Gramsci believed that civil societycould not exist without the state.

This leads us to what Marcussen has identifiedas a paradox. To cite Naomi Chazan reportingon patterns of state-society incorporation anddisengagement in Africa, “strengthening civilsociety requires as a necessary indispensable con-dition the strengthening of the state: the stateand civil society stand or fall together” (cited inMarcussen 1996:421). It is thus mistaken tocounterpoise civil society to the state. Thisdichotomous view is guided by the ideologicalpremise that states are necessarily bad and civilsociety, namely NGOs, are good. While thisneoliberal concern was founded on the impor-tance of securing individual rights, it has beenused, since the 1980s, in an ideological battle bydonors against states perceived as corrupt andinefficient. The policy formula that resultedfrom this was to downsize state activity andimprove opportunities for individuals to orga-nize collectively in civil society. While there is aneed for state reform in the South, by, for exam-ple, opening up the arena of decision making,improving transparency and opportunities forpolitical expression, and promoting and uphold-ing the rule of law, donors have usually insistedon a crude formulation that has seen the state asa homogenous inefficient unit in contrast withthe need to empower individuals throughNGOs or the market (Stewart 1997:12). Thisview has many shortcomings, but there are twothat are interrelated. The first is that if a vibrantcivil society is to exist, it requires a strong state;and the second is that the existence of NGOswill not singlehandedly create democracy.

A strong civil society, composed of competingassociational groups of different sizes with dif-ferent foci, needs a strong state to help facilitatethe arenas in which civil society can operate.States provide rules for participation and oppor-tunities to express dissent. In short, states deliv-er the different political, social, economic andcultural processes whereby hegemonic classesremain dominant. States provide the frame-

work, therefore, and are also subject to contra-dictions and oppositional forces that emerge as aresult of the myriad conflicts that states cannever fully contain. There is also another con-tradiction. Strong states are required for strongcivil societies, but also jeopardize the indepen-dence of NGOs. For example, some organiza-tions have tried to pursue democratic reforms,but this was made difficult by the fact that theirleaders were part of the government (Allen1997:336). And it is common in Egypt for therelationship between the state and civil societyto be harnessed around NGOs and “partner-ships” between government and associations.Talking more broadly, Allen has noted that

there is no single pattern of relationshipsbetween regimes and elements of civil society.Not only are there some organisations close toauthoritarian governments, but there is a gener-al sense in which civil society as associational lifedepends on the state, while its growth maydepend on material support from government(Allen 1997:336).

Instead of donors therefore seeking to under-mine an often already fragmented state, theymight more usefully seek to enhance state capac-ity. Unfortunately, where this has been adopted,it has tended to promote management reforms,including privatization that has lessened ratherthan promoted state effectiveness and, ironical-ly, enabled “spoils politics” to continue (Bangura1999:5). In so doing, donors prioritize the polit-ical liberalization of the state that is intended todirectly assist economic liberalization and pres-sures for globalization. Because of the Egyptianstate’s still rentier character, the GoE remainsinsulated from the pressures of local politicalforces. This has been aided by a corrupt electoralprocess, severe limitations on political organiza-tions and censored media. While donors havebeen fixated with encouraging the GoE to with-draw from economic activity, to shed its “social-ist” inheritance, they have effectively promoteda wish list for NGOs to replace government ser-vices. Yet that fails to understand that the state’swithdrawal cannot be adequately picked up bythe new donor-funded entrants—even if thatwas the policy intent—and such interventionwould be divisive and would fragment opposi-tion political forces. In other words, while it is

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useful to view the relationship between the stateand NGOs as one of a struggle for ideas, policyand active legitimacy, it would be wrong toinvest in NGOs as the force for democratiza-tion, simply because they may emanate frombeyond the state.

Deliberalization in Egypt

Civil society debate is seldom concerned withrural civil society. Whether donor- or govern-ment-led, debate is generally focused to includeurban society, and social and political forces,namely the working class and other class or asso-ciational forces. Egypt is no exception to this,except for the rhetorical views expressed aboutSharouk to which I will refer later.

It is difficult to estimate accurately the num-ber of NGOs in Egypt. A 1998 World Bankstudy suggests there were 28,000, while theMinistry for Insurance and Social Affairs(MISA), which was responsible for registeringNGOs (prior to 2000 this was the Ministry forSocial Affairs) indicates that there were 14,600.MISA has the responsibility to effectively regu-late NGOs under Law 32 of 1964.6 While thatlaw was revised in 2000 it was deemed uncon-stitutional, and a new law to replace Law 32 wasredrafted in 2001 to avoid the embarrassment ofMISA being unable to intensify the legal polic-ing and marshalling of NGOs. In any case thatpolicing role was effectively managed by internalsecurity, and apparently the previous Minister ofSocial Affairs was removed partly because shewas unable to counter external attempts tointervene in the workings of her ministry.Among other things, the legal restraints onNGOs ensure that no foreign funding finds itsway to the organizations unless it has been chan-nelled through and agreed with MISA. The reg-istration of NGOs characterizes them as welfareor development agencies, the latter more com-monly known as community development asso-ciations (CDAs).

Welfare organizations, or gamiyat reiaia, arerequired to focus on a specific activity, namelydelivery of health services, welfare or literacy.CDAs may have a range of activities as long asthey are approved by MISA and based in a sin-gle location. This classification is restrictive, fails

to capture the complexity of different NGOactivities, and hides many different political andreligious activities (Mahfouz 2001).

While on the surface the numbers of NGOsmay indicate a certain vibrancy in Egypt’s civilsociety, the measures of state control and thelimitations imposed on NGOs constrain effec-tive independent action that might offer thepretence of autonomous public activity outsideof a state intent on control. The level of controlby the Egyptian state of NGOs may not betotal—even the most repressive of regimes isunable to stifle all opposition—but the sleightof hand between the GoE pronouncements forliberalization, and the actual de-liberalizationthat has been the hallmark of the 1990s, is veryevident.

USAID notes that less than one third ofMISA’s figure of 14,600 Egyptian NGOs workin the countryside and only about 3,000 active-ly play a part in “developing and representingtheir communities” (USAID 2001:1). This isdespite the fact that 50 per cent of Egypt’s pop-ulation is rural. And for USAID, the impor-tance of NGOs for rural governance is signifi-cant. Before Egypt’s structural adjustment pro-gramme (SAP) in 1991, the GoE controlledagricultural input and output markets, and themajor vehicle for driving agricultural growthwere the co-operatives. These were locatedthroughout the country and in every village.Nasser’s vision had been that they would providepart of the social contract with the fellahin, sub-stituting the power of merchants and feudallandlords.

There were effectively two kinds of co-opera-tives. The multipurpose co-operatives handledissues of credit, agrarian reform and land recla-mation. They provided production and market-ing services to membership that was compulso-ry where individuals had benefited from Nasser’sagricultural reform. But, more generally, mem-bership was not voluntary as the co-operativewas the sole vehicle for access to farming inputs.The second type of co-operative specialized inareas like livestock, poultry and agriculturalmachinery.

In 1998 there were 6,604 agricultural co-oper-atives, including 776 agrarian reform co-opera-tives and 520 land reclamation co-operatives.

6. Law 32 of 1964 gov-erned the approval andregulation of NGOs andincluded, among otherthings, government repre-sentation on the boards ofNGOs.

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About 67 per cent were multipurpose co-opera-tives and 33 per cent were specialized. Table 1indicates the number of agricultural co-opera-tives and their main activities.

Table 1: Number of agricultural co-operatives in Egypt, 1998

Type and level Multipurpose Specialized TotalCredit co-ops

Local 4,263 732 4,995Joint 133 — 133

Central 22 70 92General 1 11 12Subtotal 4,419 813 5,232

Agrarian reformLocal — 687 687Joint — 70 70

Central — 18 18General — 1 1Subtotal 0 776 776

Land reclamationLocal — 561 561Joint — 21 21

Central — 13 13General — 1 1Subtotal 0 596 596

Total 4,419 2,185 6,604

Source: USAID and Agricultural Policy and Reform Program (1999).7

The evidence from table 1 is misleading. Itsuggests a vibrant co-operative structure, yet theco-operatives have, in fact, collapsed followingthe implementation of economic reform. Theirdemise has led to much unrest among poorlandowners and tenants who were previouslydependent upon subsidized inputs and guaran-teed marketing structures and have beendeprived of subsidized inputs and controlledmarkets. While there had been widespread dis-satisfaction with the old co-operative system, itwas little compared to the villagers’ unease withthe new control by merchants and largelandowners that emerged with market liberaliza-tion. The prices of inputs fixed by these groupsare now much higher compared to the old sys-tem and control markets in less flexible waysthan the old co-operatives did.

There is a clear tension between the erosion ofold rural structures and institutions for themaintenance of agricultural productivity andthe rhetoric that market reform will empowerthe rural individual to make decisions that willenhance agricultural productivity. On the one

hand, the rhetoric of both USAID and GoE hasrepeatedly paid lip service to rural governanceissues and political liberalization alongside eco-nomic reform. On the other hand, there hasbeen the dissolution of Nasserite agriculturalinstitutions (albeit many of these had served todepoliticize farmers), the erosion of the legalrights of tenants and increases in costs of pro-duction that have led to higher levels of ruralpoverty and unemployment (USAID 2000,2001; Fergany 2002).

USAID has noted, for instance that there is animportant role for NGOs in developingEgyptian society. They are keen to promote“Participatory, accountable governance and astrong non-governmental organization…com-munity” because they are “also important forsupporting economic growth” (USAID 2000:1).Nevertheless, USAID does recognize that mostEgyptian PVOs [private voluntary organiza-tions]/NGOs are not meeting the needs of theircommunities due to lack of autonomy, institu-tional capacity, and resources? Overall, fewPVOs/NGOs in Egypt are effectively engaged inmaking contributions to Egypt’s development(USAID 2001:1).

There are two reasons why USAID is unlikelyto see any improvement in the role that NGOsmight have in developing Egypt’s political econ-omy, including its organization of governance.The first is that too much is invested in the ideathat NGOs will transform Egypt’s politicalstructures. This was raised earlier in relation todonor optimism regarding the importance ofNGOs in struggles for development. There islittle point in promoting NGOs as a vehicle fordemocratic governance (meant here to gobeyond formal democratic practices of regularfree and fair elections). They seem unable, with-out other political and social pressures, toencompass issues like the possibility for agendasetting, popular mobilization and citizenshipwith social and economic rights defendable inan independent judiciary. In other words, whileNGOs may be important as conduits forexpressing particular interests, they will not addmuch to the processes of democratization unlessand until institutional reform recognizing theright of democratic participation and expressionis actively promoted. And this also needs to be

7. The figures for thistable conflict with USAIDPolicy Brief No. 18,September 1999, where asimilar table is reproduced.

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promoted by non-NGO forces. There does needto be an arena in which citizens can dissentwithout fear of reprisal, torture or ridicule. Andthis broader and deeper view of democracyextends to a deeper view of human rights, whichcan only be effective if people’s obligations areacknowledged by everyone in society, and polit-ical institutions effectively deliver the normativesystem to recognize and respond to attacks onpeople’s rights (Beetham 2000). This is far frombeing achieved in Egypt.

This leads to the second reason why it is inap-propriate to invest in the idea that civil societypromotion through NGOs in Egypt is a vehiclefor democratization. The GoE in the 1990s haspromoted a strategy of deliberalization. Thistheme has been dealt with extensively by Kienle(2001). He has detailed the processes whereby theGoE has restricted positive liberties in the centralinstitutions of the state by, among other things,restricting participation in government, politicalparties and in the “election” of the president in areferendum where he has been unopposed forfour terms. Kienle has also examined the ways inwhich the GoE has restricted participation inmunicipal and local government arenas. WhatKienle has euphemistically called “streamliningthe state apparatus” included preventing partici-pation from below in elections for umdas (villageheadmen) and deans of university faculties.During Mubarak’s presidency these officeholdershave become state appointments rather than elec-toral positions (Kienle 2001:164).

There are many reasons for Egypt’s deliberal-ization and among these, the idea of a conflictbetween the regime and radical Islamic groupshas been central. So too has the impact of eco-nomic reform that has generated greaterinequality and the threat of greater political dis-sent. Kienle has documented the legal restric-tions imposed on the Egyptian press and theways in which the state sought to restrict bothpersonal liberties and collective freedoms(Kienle 2000: 89–115).

The evidence of deliberalization is substantial.It was much debated in Egypt during the refer-endum campaign that confirmed Mubarak foran unprecedented fourth term on 26 September1999. The state-controlled media pulled out allthe stops in the referendum campaign. Many

street banners and news headlines read, “Godgave three gifts to Egypt; the pyramids, the Nileand Mubarak”. Mubarak himself announced anew dawn for the country after gaining adeclared 93.79 per cent of the vote. The presi-dent called for greater political participation toaccompany economic liberalization. Yet in thecabinet “reshuffle”, he retained 19 of the oldguard, and the ageing technocrat Atif Abeid wasnamed prime minister. The 13 new appoint-ments, moreover, were not popular and itbecame clear, especially after the 2000 parlia-mentary general election, that the governmentof Atif Abeid was the most criticized for manydecades (Cairo Times, 19–25 July 2001).

There has been a discrepancy between thestatements of politicians and the actual policiesto initiate political liberalization. The GoE’s eva-sion of crucial political issues and forgoing anopportunity to develop its own legitimacy wasalso at odds with the unprecedented and short-lived agreement between Egypt’s four mainpolitical parties (excluding the ruling party).The leftist Tagammu, Waft, the Islamist labourparty and the Nasserites, together with almost200 prominent political figures, initiated a peti-tion to the GoE in September 1999. It called forthe lifting of emergency legislation, which hadbeen virtually uninterrupted since Sadat’s assas-sination in 1981. The petition also called for therelease of political prisoners; guaranteed free andfair elections; full freedom to form political par-ties; and independence for the country’s tradeunions and syndicates.

Taken together, the petition effectively calledfor a parliamentary republic that was clearly noton the agenda of a government that continuedto benefit from spoils politics. It was a short-lived political moment when there was agree-ment among groups that normally fail to findany common ground. Since there was no socialmovement able to translate slogans from a peti-tion into political mobilization around a pro-gramme for reform, the GoE was not alarmed.

From crisis to crisis: agriculturalneglect to economic reform

There have been several major themes of con-tinuity and discontinuity in the history of land

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and agriculture in Egypt. The first of these is thedepoliticization of Egypt’s farmers by successiveregimes—the felt need to reduce opportunitiesfor farmers to organize independently of thestate—and the second is the politicization ofland. This politicization was first promoted byNasser as a vehicle to marginalize feudal royalistlandowners, who were opposed to the 1952 rev-olution, in his attempt to redraw rural politicalboundaries, to secure legal land rights for smallfarmers, and to stabilize prices and security oftenure. However, the politicization of land con-tinued after Nasser’s death, in the struggle forde-Nasserization, to reverse the revolutionarychanges of land tenure and security that Nasserhad put in place and to replace them withincreased strength of the social and economicforces of the ancien régime. This was first pro-moted by Anwar Sadat and was continued byHosni Mubarak. It has taken the form of marketliberalization in agriculture pushed by DeputyPrime Minister and Minster of AgricultureYussef Wali and culminated in Law 96 of 1992.That law revoked rights of tenure for tenantsthat had been a hallmark of Nasser’s social revo-lution.

Egypt’s land reform in 1952 was the firstlarge-scale reform in the Middle East.8 Nasserretained the sanctity of private property, andindividual family farms remained the centre-piece for rural development. The land reformsin 1952 and 1961 redistributed about one sev-enth of the country’s cultivable land from largelandowners to middle peasants and landless.

Prior to 1952, about 0.1 per cent of totallandowners owned 20 per cent of the cultivatedland. One hundred and ninety-nine out of atotal of about 2,000 large landowners owned7.3 per cent of the agricultural land. Many ofthese were owners or relatives of those who hadreceived land from Mohammed Ali Pasha dur-ing the Ottoman period as rewards for involve-ment with his military campaigns or for helpingrural tax collection. In contrast, 3 million fel-lahin owned less than one feddan.9 These nearlandless represented about 75 per cent oflandowners but only held 13 per cent of thetotal cultivable land. Those who owned the restof the land were largely absentee landlords wholived luxurious lives. This led to many distur-

bances during the early twentieth century aspoor farmers rebelled against their harsh livingconditions.

Nasser wanted to break the hold of powerfulrural elites, who would force the fellahin to voteen masse for whoever their masters wanted. Thereforms gave the state the authority to seize anindividual’s privately held land that exceeded200 feddan, a ceiling reduced to 100 feddan in1961; however, families could still hold up to300 feddan, and the amount a landlord couldrent out was limited to 50 feddan. Exemptionswere allowed where families had more than twochildren, where an additional 100 feddan couldbe retained. There were also exemptions to wagfland (endowed land held by religious authori-ties), desert land or land owned by industrial orscientific organizations. Landowners receivedcompensation, except the royal family who lost170,000 feddan.

Seized land was distributed to agriculturallabourers and tenant farmers with holdings ofless than 5 feddan. The recipients on averagereceived 2.4 feddan and paid for the land ininstalments over a 40-year period. There werealmost 2 million beneficiaries of the reforms.Smallholders also benefited from an increase inland sales, as landowners feared expropriation orsequestration of their estates. The biggest impactof the reforms was felt by the largest and thesmallest landholders. Those with less than 5 fed-dan increased by 13 per cent and the land theyowned by 74 per cent. The biggest estates ofmore than 200 feddan disappeared. The reformshelped to improve income distribution, ruraldiets and levels of productivity.

According to El-Ghonemy (1999, 1993), theland reforms between 1952 and 1975 helpedreduce poverty and promoted growth. One esti-mate is that rural poverty fell from a level of56.1 per cent in 1950 to 23.8 per cent in 1965(El-Ghonemy 1999:11). This reduction was notsolely due to agrarian reform. The rural poorbenefited from extensive government food andagricultural input subsidies, improved healthand education provision. Yet the reforms mightalso have been more effective. Ceilings on land-holdings remained high, so they did not sub-stantially undermine the interests of big land-lords. When challenged regarding their contin-

8. The following sectiondraws on Ray Bush, “Landreform and counterrevolu-tion”, in Bush (2002).9. One feddan equalsroughly one acre, or 0.4hectare.

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ued large holdings, the landowners simplysigned land ownership to family members orused local or national patron-client links toinfluence policy implementation and keep thestate off their backs.

Sadat began reversing Nasser’s legacy in the1970s by reducing the gains made by small-holders and tenants. He reinforced the econom-ic and political strength of large landholders andremoved elected farmers from representation inco-operatives and other rural institutions. Inthis he paved the way for the eventual passing ofLaw 96 of 1992.

Exit left, enter right: economic reform inagriculture

Agricultural reform was intended to redressthe record of poor growth. Between 1981 and1992 the average rate of real growth in the agri-cultural sector was about 2 per cent per annum.This was 2 per cent less than was thought to benecessary to sustain economic growth and farshort of the GoE target of 5 per cent.Agricultural growth of 1.9 per cent in1980–1985, down from 2.8 per cent in1965–1980, was less than estimated populationgrowth of 2.7 per cent per annum and govern-ment policies that had favoured food importsled to an estimated annual net deficit of $3 bil-lion in agricultural trade by the mid-1980s(Khedr et al. 1996:53).

Egypt’s Ministry of Agriculture and LandReclamation (MALR) identified excessive gov-ernment intervention during Nasser’s presiden-cy as the cause of a decline in agricultural pro-ductivity. These policies included price and mar-keting controls, state ownership of major agri-cultural industries and an overvalued exchangerate. By the early 1980s, the extent of the agri-cultural crisis led the GoE to work with USAIDto formulate a reform programme.

While the statistical evidence is unreliable, it isestimated by USAID that agriculture in Egyptaccounts for about 19 per cent of the country’sgross domestic product (GDP), at least 36 percent of employment and an estimated 22 percent of commodity exports. According toUSAID figures, half of Egypt’s population ofapproximately 65 million lives in rural areas and

industrial activity linked to agriculture, like theprocessing and marketing of commodities, andprovision of agricultural inputs like water, fertil-izer, pesticides and seeds, accounts for another20 per cent of GDP and “a substantial portionof the work force”.10

Egypt’s agricultural sector reform, whichbegan in the mid-1980s, predated the EconomicReform and Structural Adjustment Programme(ERSAP) agreed in 1991. The programme hadtwo main elements to promote the withdrawalof the state from economic activity. The first wasto liberalize markets and input provision. Thesecond was to promote the production forexport of high-value, low-nutrition foodstuffsand cut flowers for Europe.11

USAID has been a major driving force inEgypt’s strategy for liberalization and landtenure reform. It initiated two major pro-grammes. The first was the AgriculturalProduction and Credit Project between 1986and 1996 that cost $289 million. This was fol-lowed by the Agricultural Policy and ReformProgramme. Between 1986 and 1996, theemphasis of economic reform was market-ledgrowth, liberalization of inputs and prices, and asmaller role for the state agricultural credit bank,the Principal Bank for Development andAgricultural Credit (PBDAC). There have alsobeen debates with the World Bank regardingcost recovery in water, health and educationprovision more generally.

USAID’s concern since 1996 has been to con-firm changes in pricing policy, focus on export-led growth and encourage Egypt to emulate aUS-farm-type model of extensive capital inten-sive agriculture. USAID is keen to reform priceand marketing policies in cotton, rice, sugar-cane, livestock and fertilizer. The benchmarksalso include privatization of marketing and dis-tribution, increased efficiency on public invest-ment in agricultural research and the removal ofconsumer subsidies.

State intervention in general and the Nasseristreforms in particular, have been identified byboth the GoE and the IFIs, the World Bank,IMF and USAID as causing Egypt’s need to turnto the international agencies for help with debtreduction and policy reform. As USAID notes,“Due to state intervention, agriculture sector

10.www.usaid.gov/eg/proj-agr.htm.11. For the programme seeUSAID (1998a, 1998b);GoE and USAID (1995);and websitewww.usaid.gov/eg/proj-agr.htm. For a detailed cri-tique, see Bush (1999).

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growth during the early to mid-1980s was verypoor with value of production growing at lessthan 1 per cent per year”.12

The agricultural reform programme has beentrumpeted as a success by academics and aidbureaucrats alike. It has been reflected, reformersargue, in an increase in the real value of crop pro-duction for the 23 major crops in the period1980–1990; and an increase in farm incomes anda doubling of wheat production between 1986 and1992 because of improved yields and area planted.There has also been a decline in food subsidies andthe deregulation of controls on cropping patterns(Faris and Khan 1993; Fletcher 1996).

Yet beneath evidence of reform success lie sev-eral persistent concerns.13 There are six majorareas that the reforms ignore or downplay andwhere there is a significant disjuncture betweenpolicy and actual outcomes. This helps preparethe way for debating the implications of Law 96and possibilities for local political actionsagainst reform.

The evidential base used by reformers is ques-tionable as is the accuracy of data where often“guesstimates” are used to indicate aggregateproduction and growth figures.

Most arguments used by the protagonists ofreform relate to the early evidence of increases inoutput and changes in cropping patterns, par-ticularly in the period between 1986 and 1992.Yet there is little evidence that early improve-ments in productivity have been sustained andthat early increases were due to price reform perse (Mitchell 1998:23).14

Productivity increases that were heralded bythe IFIs seem not to have been sustained. TheWorld Bank, for example, suggests that the rateof growth in agriculture since 1990 (apart from1996–1997) has been less than for 1980–1987(World Bank 2000b).

Any increase in agricultural exports has beensurpassed by an increase in major agriculturalimports. Most Egyptian agricultural importsinclude commodities characterized by low elas-ticity of demand, like wheat and edible oils,while most exports are marked by elasticity.Agriculture now contributes more than 33 percent of Egypt’s trade deficit.

Economic reform has had a disastrous impacton employment. Fergany (2002) has estimated

that job losses in agriculture for 1990–1995alone were at least 700,000. Reform waspremised upon high levels of national economicgrowth to create urban jobs to absorb displacedrural labour and for these jobs to be created bythe private sector: there is little evidence ofeither.

Poverty levels have dramatically increased.The latest government Household Income andExpenditure Survey (HIES) indicates that thelevel of poverty more than doubled in Egyptbetween 1990–1991 and 1995–1996 from 21per cent to 44 per cent. The poverty line isdefined by the cost of a minimum basket ofnutrition. But if a more widespread criterion isused, such as a minimum income of $1 (orequivalent in LE) per person per day, and weassume that LE500 is necessary for a family offive per month, the extent of poverty is farworse. By this measure more than 80 per cent ofEgyptians are poor.

There is very little debate about Egypt’s agri-cultural future apart from the notion that it lieswith the export of high-value horticulturalproducts. The MALR and United StatesEmbassy have indicated the need to press for-ward with agricultural reforms because therecent record has been less good than at the startof the reforms. This has been the institutionalresponse rather than thinking further about thestrategy itself, whether it is appropriate and howit might redress issues of poverty creation andpersistent marginalization of poor, landless andnear landless, and particularly women andwomen-headed households. The institutionalresponse seems to be that policy will be effectiveif it is better implemented and if farmers aremore conducive to market reform.

The failure of USAID to promote a policy ofgreater transparency and of greater sympathywith the majority of Egypt’s farmers has playedinto the hands of Egypt’s landed elite. That elitehas taken advantage of the veil that marketreform offers to repoliticize land as a significantbut not openly debated policy issue. It was veryevident from the “debate” about Law 96 of 1992that farmers were regarded as lazy and as charla-tans who had benefited after Nasser’s reformswhile landowners had lost status, wealth andpolitical influence. Yet the way the legislative

12.www.usaid.gov/eg/proj-agr.htm.13. The detailed critiqueof the strategy has beendealt with elsewhere (Bush1999; Mitchell 1998,1999).14. Mitchell is led to theconclusion that “theimpact of the free-marketreforms may have beengreater on the statisticspublished by the statethan on what farmersactually grow” (Mitchell1998:23).

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proceedings for Law 96 were affirmed and theway in which the media were unwilling todebate the impact of tenure reform on tenantsdemonstrated precisely the power and influencethat landowners had to marginalize the interestsof the rural poor. There was certainly an absenceof any discussion for improved rural civil societyor political and institution building for localgovernance.15 The fellahin have once more beencharacterized falsely as passive and malleable tocentral government policy making as policymakers suggest smallholder inefficiencies holdback strategies for agricultural modernization.Policy makers, it seems, misunderstand thecomplexity of the way in which rural produc-tion is organized and the benefits that mightaccrue to a society if farmers had the politicalinstitutions to represent and articulate theirviews.

Land tenure reform and political violence

We can now look in more detail at what thetenure reform of 1992 ushered in and what itsrationale was. One issue is clear: the attempt topromote a more open and comprehensive landmarket failed. And it certainly did not lead tothe emergence or the elements of a rural civilsociety in the form of organized NGO or otherformal activity. Opposition to the land act waslargely unco-ordinated, and was dealt withextremely harshly and brutally by securityforces, who were in collusion with landowners.This prevented poor tenants from voicing theirviews. Spontaneous opposition to the actemerged piecemeal and did not spread acrossEgypt. It did not facilitate the development ofNGOs and other associational groupings, nordid it protect and further peasant interests.Instead, there seems to have been a greaterreliance upon family and kinship lines for cop-ing with the rural disruption and increasedpoverty that followed tenure reform.

Law 96 of 1992 revoked Nasser’s AgrarianReform Law No. 178 of 1952 that had giventenants security of tenure and legalized the rightto inherit tenancy agreements. The law was fullyimplemented in October 1997 after a five-yeartransition period. Contracts during the transi-tion were intended to remain valid so rights to

land could still be inherited but the rent after1992 was increased from seven to at least 22times the land tax. The land tax is revised every10 years and is based on the fertility and loca-tion of the land. After 1 October 1997 alllandowners could take back their land andcharge tenants market-based rent, which insome cases increased to between LE 1,200 andLE 1,800 per feddan, an increase of 300–400per cent depending on location and productivi-ty. Tenancies became annual contracts renewedat the landowners’ discretion, yet it is rare for anactual contract to exist. Landowners can disposeof their land without notifying tenants, whomight have been farming the same plot for 40years. Despite contract renewal, they remainvulnerable and insecure because of threats ofeviction from landlords. Rents in many loca-tions by 1997 had increased to LE 2,500 perfeddan.

Despite the five-year transition most tenantssimply did not believe that Law 96 would beimplemented. Farmers in Giza and Daqahliyaresponded to questions about their preparationfor the tenancy law by saying “PresidentMubarak would never allow such a law”. Andmost tenants, it seems, heard about the pro-posed law from friends and neighbours ratherthan through any structured government mediacampaign. Perhaps as much as 15 per cent ofEgypt’s agricultural land is tenanted, and ten-ants may have access to their own family land aswell as renting in land—some may also rent outland. This means the relationships of tenancyare complicated, and they vary from householdto household, but no allowance was made forthis in the drafting of legislation.

Opposition to the implementation of theland act was downplayed by the GoE. The GoEcharacterized unrest as evidence of outside trou-blemakers or local Islamists. While the Fatwahigh committee of Al Azhar, headed by theGrand Sheikh, adopted the GoE position thatthe new law was consistent with the Islamicview that people had the right to own privateproperty, the radical Islamic group, Gamaa elIslamia, disagreed. It made several statementsthat any legislation that further impoverishedthe country’s poor farmers must be opposed asun-Islamic.

15. See Saad (2002, 1999)for detailed discussion ofthe way in which the ten-ancy bill became law andthe way in which farmersin general and tenantfarmers in particular weredepicted by the state-con-trolled media.

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Table 2: Recorded deaths, injuriesand arrests in rural Egypt, January1998–December 2000, relating toLaw 96 and associated land conflict

Governorate Deaths Injuries Arrests

Giza 12 116 169Assuit 24 92 157Sharkia 10 122 243Minya 8 69 61Dakhalia 6 21 36Sohag 15 70 79Damietta — — 42Fayyum 6 44 103Suez — — 7Minoufia 1 35 84Kalubia 4 34 46Gharbia 5 58 123Qena 13 53 66Beheira 4 39 74Aswan 1 8 3Beni Suef 9 27 46Port Said — 25 30Kafr El Sheikh 1 27 31Ismailia 0 6 9

Total 119 846 1,409

Source: Land Centre for Human Rights, Cairo (2002).

Table 2 indicates the extent and geographicalspread of violence linked to the implementationof Law 96. The figures for fatalities, injuries andarrests are indicative rather than complete.16 Inspite of the fact that the Land Centre forHuman Rights in Cairo has unprecedentedaccess to Egypt’s countryside and excellentinformants, it remains difficult to assert thecomprehensiveness of the data they supply. Thefigures reflect the growth in the politicization ofland-related violence. This can be violencelinked to dispossession of tenants by the forcesof law and disorder—the security forces,landowners and thugs—but it also relates to theincrease in conflict between farmers over disput-ed boundaries, irrigation and other issues. Allthese disputes seem to have increased followingOctober 1997, when access to land was contest-ed in a way that had not happened since 1952.Law 96 effectively gave a green light to

landowners, including relatives of the Ministerof Agriculture, to contest rights in land thatwent far beyond the terms and conditions oftenanted land.17 Many disputes that emergedafter October 1997 relate to landowners wanti-ng to regain access to land that had been confis-cated in the 1950s and that was not part of theterms of reference of Law 96.

Law 96 established for USAID “a more nor-mal and balanced relationship between tenantsand owners” (USAID 1999:2). Yet their under-standing of the outcome of the law has beenvery narrow, focusing only on the view that thelegislation helped to further a land market andthus the overall strategy of economic liberaliza-tion. They glossed over any notion of conflictand upheaval for the poor that accompanied thelaw and failed to ask questions about governanceand rural institutions that went beyond recog-nizing that there was the need for legislativechange to remove obstacles for rural organiza-tions. USAID studies of land tenure since 1997emphasized good relations between landlordsand tenants where police were rarely used to set-tle disputes. The peaceful implementation ofLaw 96 was seen as a result of the creation ofreconciliation committees by local officials. Incontrast, the Land Center for Human Rights inCairo noted that relations between owners andtenants in the Egyptian countryside after 1997were often far from cordial. And where reconcil-iation committees were established, they wereidentified by tenants as working in the interestsof landowners and often held proceedings in theintimidating presence of police and securityofficials.

One of the aims of Law 96 was to create moreconducive conditions for market liberalization;part of this strategy was for owners to have theability to sell their land if they wanted to. Before1997 an owner could not sell until a settlementhad been reached with the tenant. If tenants didnot want to move from their tenancy, they couldargue for continued access to part of the landthey worked. After 1997 the landlord could dowhat he liked with the land that had previouslybeen leased. This increased landlord power isseen by USAID and other IFIs as facilitating aland market. Yet this assertion implies that amarket did not previously exist and that by

16. Data for January toMay 1997 indicates fivedeaths, 86 injuries and167 arrests. Private com-munication with the LandCenter for Human Rights,Cairo.17. Descendents of AminWali, a large landowner inFayoum, tried to regainland that had been confis-cated from the family dur-ing Nasser’s land reforms.

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empowering the wealthy the market will some-how work more efficiently.

USAID explains the slow development of theland market as a result of “difficulties from try-ing to prove land ownership” (USAID 1999:9).It concludes that a reform of land titling is nowurgent so as to benefit from the change in land-lord-tenant relations. Land registration proce-dures in Egypt are complicated. In many casesthe land remains registered in the names of thepeople who owned it at the time of the firstcadastre at the start of the twentieth century.Registration only took place if a conflict hadpreviously arisen between landlords and tenants.Landlords are unable therefore to prove owner-ship of land by accessing deeds, but they can doso by producing contracts between themselvesand tenants—although there are many caseswhere these have been forgeries. USAID hasthus called for “the valid and up-to-date regis-tration of land ownership…for future land mar-ket stability and continued investment in landimprovements” (USAID 1999:9). The transac-tion costs for farmers to register land when it issold are seen simply to be too high for an effec-tive market in land to develop alongside the lib-eralization of other aspects of the agriculturalsector. Islamic inheritance laws add to the prob-lem for USAID because children are supposedto each inherit a portion of land (althoughfemales receive a smaller share than their malesiblings); this fragments viable holdings.

Underpinning USAID’s concern with titlingand land registration is the view that rural sta-bility and increased productivity will only beforthcoming if landowners have security oftenure and legal rights of land alienation. Therehas been very little said about the associationsthat would be instrumental in facilitating thegreater security posited as necessary for the landmarket. And there is little said about the needfor a rural civil society that might promotegreater representation to ensure checks againstlarge and powerful landed interests. Economicadjustment has progressed for USAID from themacroeconomic concerns of the post-1991 peri-od to the post-1996 demands of putting in placea regulatory framework that secures the interestsof private capital and private land ownership inan accessible legal structure.18

Clearly, one of the problems in focusing ontitling is the reification of a land market, whichexcludes issues of security of access to land andlandlessness, rural work and markets, the devel-opment of rural infrastructure, affordable pro-duction inputs and rural growth, and politicalrepresentation. These issues need to be raisedconcurrently, rather than be offered as a vagueby-product of economic reform. The emphasison title and tenure reform oversimplifies localtraditions of work and the prior existence ofmarkets in land. Taken together, these short-comings accelerate processes of rural social dif-ferentiation and class formation in which, sinceLaw 96, the landless and near landless, and espe-cially female-headed households and dispos-sessed are marginalized.

Formal and informal rural resistanceand livelihoods

The GoE does not seem to have indicated therole it envisages for rural civil society. Its posi-tion on urban-based NGOs is draconian. Theregime does not encourage civil society activityand that which exists is heavily policed. Themore effective agencies have usually been thoseregistered under civil law as private non-profitcompanies which also act effectively as NGOs.The Ibn Khaldun Centre was one of these untilits director, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, and associateswere incarcerated by the GoE in 2001 for,among other things, being found guilty by amilitary court of receiving foreign funds withoutdeclaring them and bringing Egypt into disre-pute. Although he was temporarily released onappeal, he was imprisoned again in 2002 forseven years on the same charges. The GoE doesnot encourage any political or associationalgroup activity because it fears that the groupswill generate opposition to the regime even ifthe activity is around issues which might be seenas marginal to local political reform.19 Thedonors have refused to promote the civil societycard because they favour Egyptian political sta-bility and regional influence, although the latterhas diminished significantly.

The only formal policy instrument that is inplace by the GoE is Sharouk, which was an ini-tiative for integrated rural development driven

18. It should be notedhere that although the IFIsin Cairo seem intent onland titling elsewhere inAfrica, the World Bankespecially has declared amore nuanced view abouttenure reform. See, interalia, Adams (2000),Deininger and Binswanger(1999), and Toulmin andQuan (2000).19. This is why the GoEopposed and disruptedEgyptian Palestinian soli-darity groups who werefrustrated from transport-ing aid to Gaza in 2001,which led to disturbancesin el Arish. And it is possi-ble to see Al Azhar studentunrest in 2001, due to theMinistry of Culture’s pub-lication of materialthought to bring Islaminto disrepute, as a chancefor students to protestrestrictions on opportuni-ties to voice their con-cerns, such as youthunemployment and theforming of organizationsto promote the politicalparticipation of students.

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by the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP) and early donor interestregarding rural representation. Sharouk wasintended to reduce the development dividebetween town and country. It was intended toimprove the rural resource and service base, andlocal government institutions. Launched in1994, its aims and objectives were to incorpo-rate service provision for all Egyptian villages by2002. It was to function until 2017 and pro-mote infrastructural development, humanresource development, and economic and insti-tutional development. The programme’s aimswere to encourage “popular participation” andto provide “democratic channels for the partici-pation of the rural population in the decisionmaking process” (Institute of National Planning1996:85). However, the programme’s greatestachievements have been limited improvementsin rural services like roads and drainage. There isno evidence that it is delivering even limitedgovernance and institutional opportunities forfarmers to voice their concerns to the GoE.While on paper Sharouk suggests greater oppor-tunities for rural political participation, there isno evidence of mobilization and popular partic-ipation. Moreover the programme relies heavilyon GoE financial support, which is not forth-coming as rural development is not a policycommitment.20

In addition to using Sharouk to improve localgovernance, USAID identified another formalactivity for enhancing local decision-makingstructures, namely, water-user associations(WUAs). These associations, which began in themid-1990s, were formed to improve waterdelivery into mesqas (small irrigation canals),and to operate and maintain improved mesqasand improve on-farm water-user efficiency.USAID estimated that by 1999 there were2,900 registered WUAs (USAID 1999:5).

USAID is very optimistic about the role ofWUAs. It has argued that the WUAs haveachieved greater “equity in the distribution ofirrigation water while reducing the cost of irri-gation”, and these improvements have extendedto increasing crop productivity. USAID notesthat “the establishment of water-user associa-tions offers a success story for an institutionalarrangement that can contend with the problem

of using common property: irrigation water”(USAID 1999:5). Yet the optimistic write-upabout WUAs glosses over many issues. It slursover the mechanisms that ensure local digni-taries maintain a presence in determining WUApolicies and strategies for irrigation, and a gen-der bias against women whose irrigation needsare often subordinated to male interests. Theway in which gender issues are obscured byinstitutional structures has been highlighted inseveral recent reports (Ibrahim 1998).

Somaya Ibrahim noted in appraising severalirrigation and WUA schemes that gender issueshave been ignored and that WUAs tend to mar-ginalize women in rural decision-making struc-tures. This is not to downplay women’s strugglesto maintain a voice within WUAs and in house-hold structures across a whole range of activitiesincluding, but also going beyond, irrigationmatters. However, as Ibrahim notes, “All mem-bers of the water associations are men. This maledomination reflects the assumption that irriga-tion tasks in general and water managementspecifically is a male affair”(Ibrahim 1998:4).21

Ibrahim found that stereotypes regarding so-called women’s work and status informed theways in which WUAs operated. For example,despite the fact that there were many de factoand de jure women-headed households, it wasassumed women did not take part in irrigatingland. There was thus little communicationbetween women and men over issues of irriga-tion. Women were not, in Ibrahim’s Minia casestudy, consulted by WUAs regarding the selec-tion of WUA board members, did not know theterms of reference of office holders, and did nothave a voice in policy relating to the distributionof water. All board members were men, and thisdivision over the administration of irrigationwas mirrored in the distinction made by menand women in terms of the problems that theyidentified for agriculture. Men raised problemsrelated to machinery and prices of irrigation,while women noted issues of water shortagebecause of competition with male users andnight irrigation slots. As Ibrahim notes,“Needless to say it is the male farmers who canbetter defend their interests and get their turnsat appropriate times during the day” (1998:4). Itseems that while WUAs have been an initiative

20. While the erstwhilePrime Minister Kamal Al-Ganzouri did seem sensi-tive to the need for ruraldevelopment—herenamed the Ministry ofLocal Administration theMinistry of RuralDevelopment in 1997,noting that “the new min-istry aims to develop therural areas which consti-tute a major and impor-tant sector in the structureof the Egyptian society”—there was no accompany-ing indication of the strat-egy or extra resources thatwould be used to promoteeffective rural develop-ment. See Al AhramWeekly, 10–16 July 1997.21. Ibrahim studied gen-der biases in Minia andMinoufeya governorates.

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that has accompanied rural market liberaliza-tion, they have acted to promote the interests ofmany existing village office holders, dignitariesand landowners. Opportunities for voicing con-cerns of a broader range of rural social and classforces, women, landless and near landless havenot improved.

Community development associations

There is at least one other recent developmentwhere an existing formal structure has been usedto promote improved rural governance. This hasbeen with the work of the development agency,CARE Egypt, with community developmentassociations. CDAs are one of the two types ofNGO allowed to register with MISA (alongwith welfare organizations). There has beenmuch debate about these organizations, theireffectiveness, independence and outreach,which will not be repeated here (Mahfouz 2001;Saad n.d.). The criticism of CDAs is that theylack autonomy and serve only the interests ofthe state. CDAs often deliver welfare benefitsthat the state should be delivering and subsidizegovernment expenditure, but generate littleimproved governance because of tight MISAcontrol. A recent example, however, of anattempt to empower CDAs with an opportuni-ty to deliver resources and improve governanceis highlighted in the work of one of CAREEgypt’s development initiatives.

In 2000, CARE Egypt, together with theSwiss Development Fund, initiated a projectcalled Capability Enhancement through CitizenAction, or CAP (CARE 2000). This project isintended to “improve the quality of life includ-ing participation in civic affairs of 32,500 vul-nerable households in rural communities ofseven governorates of middle and Upper Egyptby 2003” (CARE 2000:2). While the strategy ofa donor to improve local livelihoods is not new,CARE’s project concern with enhancing com-munity participation does seem important.CARE’s work is unrelated directly to changes inland tenure and market liberalization, althoughclearly the burden of helping to improve rurallivelihoods during economic reform has becomea greater challenge, and they report an increasein the needs of respondents who recently lost

land. CARE’s aim is to ensure 130 community-based NGOs in seven governorates “will be bet-ter able to represent and involve their con-stituencies in community affairs and decisionmaking processes” (CARE 2000:3).

The innovation in CARE’s work seems to bethe recognition that there might be some spacefor CDAs, often where they have lain dormant,to be energized and to become vehicles forgreater rural decision making. A problem histor-ically is that while CDAs may have been “on thebooks” since the 1960s, they often have beenempty shells. Alternatively their local adminis-tration may have been dominated by landown-ers, rural elites and village sheikhs who act aslocal policemen and inform the government ofany potential local unrest. CARE has thussought to combine the improved efficiency ofCDAs, reorganization of administration anddecision making by involving the CDA in pro-moting a household livelihood/security frame-work for allocating donor resources.

One of the first questions that CARE asks theCDAs it works with is: “If you want to help thepoor, are you willing to pay for change?” CAREhas promoted a more rights-based approach towork—seeking, in their words, to move awayfrom simple philanthropy. CARE admits thatthe big problem with this approach is that, forthe livelihoods strategy to be effective, it is nec-essary for issues of local social differentiationand conflict to be recognized by CDAs.22

Ultimately, moreover, the CDAs must admitmembers of the disadvantaged groups in societyto become office holders in the CDA. Thisinvolves the rich and powerful relinquishingauthority and control of the CDAs, includingumdas who were appointed by the governmentto keep control and act as local intelligence forpossible sources of village conflict.

One of the target groups for CARE has beenthe landless and those who lost land followingimplementation of Law 96. In el Minia, CAREreactivated a traditional syndicate registered inthe 1950s. It drew on an alliance of seven localCDAs and involved government and non-gov-ernment personnel in the idea of recasting theroles of CDAs to actively include people in thelocal community that the CDAs claimed to sup-port. In Sohag, the idea of using CDAs was

22. Interview with CARE,July 2001.

62

taken further. An association for tarahil (labourmigrants) was established. These tarahil workedfor subcontractors and would often go longperiods without payment, especially during theliquidity crises of 1999–2001. They wereencouraged to convene collectively to defendtheir legal employment rights. In this, the groupseemed to have benefited from visiting theBetter Life Association (BLACD) in el Minia,which has had success in defending worker andwelfare rights for quarry workers.

CARE’s work, still in its early stages, has high-lighted the possibility of concentrating on anexisting structure within civil society, seeking torevitalize it. Working with local and central gov-ernment personnel and institutions, CARE hasoperated fully within the restrictive practices ofthe Egyptian state, and persuaded bureaucratsand villages of the benefits of CDAs havingmore open and accessible rural decision-makingstructures. Reinvigorating CDAs is intended toinitiate a round of debate about local democra-cy and greater participation for landless andsmallholders. The intention is to help the reacti-vation of CDAs by facilitating greater opportu-nities for younger elements and the poor. CAREseems to be more optimistic about the outcomeof this work in the newer CDAs, where landlessand day labourers can more effectively expresstheir concerns. It seems too that unemployeduniversity graduates or technical graduates whoreturn to the countryside might help develop amovement that demands local change, greaterrepresentation and more opportunities foryounger people. It is too soon to see how sus-tainable this strategy will be and whether it willweaken existing undemocratic forces withinCDAs. It is also unclear whether other donorsare prepared to invest in CDAs as possible vehi-cles for promoting local governance. And whileindividual CARE workers and others linked tothe attempt to empower CDAs may be opti-mistic about their liberalizing potential, it is alsonecessary to note that CARE works fully withcentral and local government agencies. Thatensures that CARE can deliver on its promisesand legitimizes the donors’ strategy. However, itmight also be a way for the Egyptian state topromote hegemony. Yet, as in most of theseprocesses of negotiation between donors, states

and social forces, there is a dialectic of struggleat work. This means that there is always a possi-bility that, while the forces of the state are dom-inant, they are not immune from social and classpressure to change or develop conditions forrural civil society. At the turn of the twenty-firstcentury, however, there is little indication thatthe struggles between these competing forces arebeing resolved in the favour of smallholders orthe rural poor.

Informal rural civil society

Egypt does not have a rural civil society in thesense of one that is autonomous and active, freeand able to organize and publicize as well aspoliticize agendas for action to redress griev-ances, government neglect and facilitate associa-tional life. Since the land act was fully imple-mented and the consequences of economicreform for increasing rural poverty intensified in1997, there has been more active use of informalmechanisms, usually through family support, toprovide a safety net against market failure. Therewas a tendency at the time to see the absence ofmass rural revolt against landlords as anotherexample of farmer quietude. Yet there werebloody confrontations, usually in the gover-norates like Daqahliya where there were largelandholdings and landowners were impatient totest the legality of Law 96. In el Zeni,Daqahliya, a landlord sold 82 feddans that hadbeen rented to 126 tenants, and he needed thehelp of security forces to ensure new landownerscould take possession of the land. Protesting vil-lagers were tear-gassed, 90 arrested and sevenimprisoned more than 120 kilometres fromtheir village for 45 days.

It seemed inevitable that a government thathad used the threat from Islamists as a reason tomaintain the state of emergency and deploy themilitary would blame outside forces for the dis-sent that emerged.23 Yet the favoured view ofauthoritarian regimes (and liberal democraticones too) of blaming dissent with unpopularlegislation on terrorist activity rather than rec-ognizing it as a legitimate criticism of govern-ment policy does not withstand scrutiny. Theextent of continued rural unrest caused by dis-putes over land is indicated in table 2 above. It

23. Al Ahram Weekly,10–16 July 1997.

63

is now important to try and indicate a way ofunderstanding it.

One fruitful attempt to understand opposi-tion to state and dominant class action in Egyptand elsewhere in the Middle East has beenoffered by Asef Bayet. He has used a notion of“quiet encroachment of the ordinary”.

This refers to non-collective direct actions ofindividuals and families to acquire basic necessi-ties (land, shelter, urban collective consump-tion, informal jobs, business opportunities) in aquiet, unassuming fashion (Bayat 2000:iv).

Bayat formulated the idea of quiet encroach-ment (1997, 1998, 2002) while discussingessentially urban unrest. It is for him

qualitatively different from defensive measuresor coping mechanism.?…?It represents a silent,protracted, pervasive advancement of ordinarypeople—through open-ended and fleetingstruggles without clear leaderships, ideology orstructured organisation—on the propertied andpowerful in order to survive (Bayat 1997:5).

One of the reasons Bayat gives for this type ofstruggle is the outcome of the Nasserist socialcontract with the working class and peasantry.Effectively, as indicated earlier, the relationshipNasser established in the 1950s and which hashad the most serious consequences for Egypt’spolitical history since was the social contract:the state provided basic services while the subor-dinate classes agreed to political passivity.However, the peasantry did not agree to passivi-ty. There are many cases of political oppositionand violent antagonism being expressed by thefellahin to landlords and the state.24 Yet, accord-ing to Bayat, the legacy is that political struggleshave often taken the form of individualisticsolutions to problems instead of class or groupsolidarities being the major vehicle for opposi-tion.

Bayat has also noted that, in the 1990s, whiletrade unions often opposed the austerity pack-ages of the IFIs, these bodies represent only asmall proportion of the workforce, not only inEgypt but the Middle East region as a whole.The majority of workers toil in small-scale infor-mal locations in the urban economy, and it istherefore in these areas, among neighbourhoodsand within communities, that Bayat has arguedcollective action might find support and oppor-

tunities for success. This may well be a usefulmodel to examine in relation to recent ruralstruggles over land access, access more generallyto resources as well as outputs and marketpower. Yet more research is needed to demon-strate that farmers are doing anything more thanadopting coping strategies in the face of worsen-ing hardship rather than actually taking the ini-tiative themselves to recover lost ground.

Since October 1997, tenants have experienceda dramatic increase in the level of poverty result-ing from changed lifestyles as a result of beingexpelled from their land. There has been anincrease in rural debt, dispossession andenforced proletarianization—the search forwage employment often in harsh labour regimesthat are reminiscent of indentured and contractlabour. This has had a particular impact on childlabour. Children have been removed fromschool as recently dispossessed families try andcompensate for loss of agricultural income byreducing schooling costs.

Significantly there has been an increase in ruralinsecurity. Evidence suggests at best a veryuneven level of information reached tenant farm-ers regarding implementation of Law 96. Manyrespondents in Giza and Daqahliya either simplydid not know about Law 96 (despite its five-yeartransition period from 1992 to 1997), or had notbeen informed regarding the content of the newlegislation and how it would impact on tenants.There had been scant regard paid by governmentto farmers’ access to information and formal net-works like co-operatives; local and village coun-cils were unclear both about the law and its con-sequences, especially about the legal rights oftenants to appeal the non-renewal of contracts.Tenants had not been informed about the legis-lation in a systematic way. There had been noprovision of information by either central gov-ernment or governorate authorities regardingLaw 96, and many tenants learned of its dramat-ic implication on 1 October 1997—when land-lords refused to renew rental contracts.

One group of tenants was especially affectedby a decline in their livelihoods: women whoheaded households and worked tenancies regis-tered in their late husband’s name. Thesewomen were expelled from the land in October1997. They either could not pay the new, high-

24. The bloody episode atKhamsheesh is one illus-tration. On 30 April 1966,the peasant leader SalahHussein was murdered inKamsheesh by assassinshired by the powerfullandowning Figgi family.The family refused tohand over land earmarkedby the state for sequestra-tion, and peasant opposi-tion mounted to ensurelegal rights of smallholdersand landless were met. SeeBrown (1990).

64

er rents, or were victims of prejudiced landlordswho did not want to renew women. Women inthis category whom I interviewed periodicallyover a 20-month period, 1999–2001, seem toconfirm a pattern of greater reliance upon fami-ly and neighbours for accessing resources anddefending livelihoods. While people admitted totensions within the village community in Gizaand Daqahliya as a result of Law 96, it was alsothe case that the lines of cleavage between land-lords and tenants within the community mayhave reinforced family and kinship bonds, whilealso stretching these bonds to the limit in theiruneven delivery of material assistance.

While women respondents had not engagedin direct opposition to the land act nor tried toestablish a formal organization to oppose theact’s implementation, they had promoted arange of actions that sought to defend their orig-inal position. Many had tried to use networks offamily and kin to put pressure on landlords notto dispossess them, although this was not suc-cessful. The women had experienced a dramaticloss of income after 1997. One respondent whopreviously had a net income of LE6,965 wasreduced to accepting infrequent loans ofLE25–50 from relatives, handouts from anIslamic charity, and had to take her children outof school and send them to work in neighbour-ing fields. Another respondent who in 1999 hadmanaged to keep her son in school, had toremove him in autumn 2000 to work as a car-penter. He complained of the hard life that hewas forced into at 14 and blamed her for it. Andwhile she hoped that one day he would have aworkshop of his own to sustain the family, sheherself had become a seasonal agriculturallabourer picking vegetables when there wasenough demand. Other respondents becamedependent upon charity, help from family andchild labour.

Respondents had also sold jewellery to raisecash for daily living expenses or pay for a daugh-ter’s wedding, and two of the respondents hadmanaged to eke out a living on savings fromlivestock sales in October 1997 when they lostthe land, yet by 2001 these savings wereexhausted.

For women respondents in Giza andDaqahliya, depending on family for loans, using

the opportunity to visit on weekends for arespite, thereby lessening weekly expenditure,was central to coping with economic difficulty.It nevertheless remained extremely difficult forrespondents to transform increased relianceupon family and friends into a strategy tooppose the reasons for their new poverty. It wasalso not always possible to see that elements of astrategy for “quiet encroachment of the ordi-nary”, conflicts over land and access to ruralresources, was transforming coping mechanismsinto a proactive strategy against those responsiblefor accelerated rural poverty.

Conclusion

Egypt does not have a healthy civil society.Attempts to enliven it beyond the watchful eyesof the state and its cronies have not been suc-cessful. This is not surprising, given the historythat was traced early in this paper. It is also thecase that, because associational life itself can soeasily be hijacked by both governments anddonors, perhaps the absence of civil society inthis form should not be too loudly lamented.But civil society is more than just associationallife. It involves the struggles within the state andbeyond it that embody the many ways in whichthe dominant classes try to ensure the reproduc-tion of their dominance. In this the GoE hasbeen very successful. For while there mightoccasionally be signs of dissatisfaction with eco-nomic reform, market liberalization and broad-er regional issues, demonstrations, wildcatstrikes and even the “quiet encroachment of theordinary”, nowhere have these been able tocome close to a counter-hegemonic politicalmovement.

It remains remarkable that criticism of Egypt’sagricultural strategy, including Law 96, has beenlimp, ineffectual and unfocused. Some universi-ty academics, and even departments, havereported on the devastating impact of increasedpoverty linked with economic reform, but inter-nal security discouraged any attempt to holdmeetings with affected farmers or mobilize evenpeaceful dissent. The agricultural co-operativeshave been devastated, rural trade unions arenon-existent, and agricultural research centreskeen to accrue donor resources have complied

65

readily with the message of market prudenceand economic liberalization.

One of the problems in mobilizing an acade-mic and intellectual opposition to land tenurereforms has been the difficulty in making a casefor the necessity of reform without capitulatingto the IFI and GoE agenda. The “debate” aboutmarket liberalization has crudely and naivelyparroted the mantra that the Nasserist “socialist”period was the cause of Egypt’s economic crisisof the 1970s and 1980s, and the only alternativewas state retrenchment and economic liberaliza-tion. This dominant discourse is a disservice tothe credibility of the tremendous vitality ofEgyptian intellectual life and has led to a neglect

of debates around the crises of rural livelihoods.For where academics and party political leadershave sought to use the parliament or newspapersto criticize the GoE, it has invariably been a cri-tique of the impact of reform on Egypt’s macro-economy, or on its urban landscape and socialforces. Egypt’s fellahin remain the forgottensouls. They do speak out but to each other andusually only in muted terms and with littleimpact on an aloof urban elite. There is littleevidence that Egypt’s reforms are promotingnew configurations in rural civil society, and thepossibilities for future effective rural mobiliza-tion are bleak.

Acronyms

BLACD Better Life AssociationCAP Capability Enhancement through Citizen

ActionCARE Egypt Cooperative for American Relief

Everywhere, Inc., EgyptCDA community development associationCSO civil society organizationDfID Department for International

Development (United Kingdom)ERSAP Economic Reform and Structural

Adjustment ProgrammeGDP gross domestic productGoE Government of EgyptHIES Household Income and Expenditure

Survey

IBRD International Bank for Reconstruction andDevelopment

IFI international financial institutionIMF International Monetary FundLE Egyptian pound (1 LE = 0.1623 USD, at

time of publication)MALR Ministry of Agriculture and Land

ReclamationMISA Ministry for Insurance and Social AffairsNGO non-governmental organizationPBDAC Principal Bank for Development and

Agricultural CreditPVO private voluntary organizationSAP structural adjustment programmeUNDP United Nations Development ProgrammeUSAID United States Agency for International

DevelopmentWUA water-user association

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Le FMI a affiché sur son site latraduction en français du Projetde guide sur la transparence desrecettes des ressources naturelles.Ce Guide vise à aider les pays àmieux gérer les recettes des indus-tries extractives (pétrole, gaz natu-rel et ressources minières). Il insis-te aussi sur le fait que le renforce-ment des institutions et une plusgrande transparence peuvent êtreextrêmement bénéfiques, tantpour l’État que pour les contri-buables. L’amélioration de latransparence des financespubliques encourage un débatpublic mieux informé et contribueà la mise en oeuvre de politiquesbudgétaires avisées.

Commentaires à envoyer àrrt@imf.org

El FMI acaba de publicar enespañol el Borrador de la Guía detransparencia del ingreso provenien-

te de los recursos naturales, cuyoobjetivo es ayudar a los países aadministrar mejor los ingresosprovenientes de industrias extrac-tivas como la explotación depetróleo y gas natural y la mine-ría. Asimismo, subraya que el for-talecimiento de las instituciones yde la transparencia puede aportarsignificativos beneficios tanto a losgobiernos como a los contribu-yentes. Con un nivel más elevadode transparencia fiscal se fomentaun debate más informado en laopinión pública y se facilita laaplicación de políticas fiscales másacertadas.

Los comentarios y sugerencias sedeben enviar a rrt@imf.org

O FMI acaba de publicar oProjeto de Guia para aTransparência da Receita dosRecursos Naturais em português. OGuia visa ajudar os países a mel-

horar a gestão da receita dasindústrias extrativas, como opetróleo, o gás natural e a minera-ção. Além disso, ressalta que oreforço das instituições e oaumento da transparência podemrender benefícios significativospara o governo e os contribuintes.A elevação do nível de transparên-cia fiscal promove o debate públi-co mais informado e ajuda aconsolidar as políticas fiscais.

Comentários e opiniãos :rrt@imf.org

Contact/Contacto/Contato : Simonetta Nardin, Senior

External Affairs OfficerInternational Monetary Fund.

Tel 202 623 4899.Cell 202 439 9183

Günther Taube (gtaube@imf.org) http://www.imf.org/external/np/

fad/2004/grrt/fra/guidef.pdf

69

Guide sur la transparence/ Guía de transparenciaGuia para a Transparência

Speaking on the day of themuch-awaited publication of theWim Kok expert group report onprogress on the Lisbon Agenda,John Monks, Secretary General ofthe European Trade UnionConfederation (ETUC) painted a

sombre picture of what he called“a pretty depressing set ofcircumstances.” The EU wasstruggling against slow growth,high unemployment and the costimplications of an ageing popula-

tion without immediate prospectof any major macro-economicsolution. The ETUC had no listof easy answers but the futuredepended on “a social model thatworks.”

The European Trade Unions and the future of the European Economic andSocial Model

A quel moment peut-on parler decrise humanitaire ? Où s’arrête laneutralité du Comité internationalde la Croix-Rouge (CICR) ?Comment renforcer les relationsentre cette ONG et la presse pourmieux alerter sur les conséquencesd’un conflit armé ?

Quelle est la meilleure protec-tion pour un journaliste dans unezone de crise ? Ce sont là les ques-tions autour desquelles un débatintéressant, mais souvent houleux,a été ouvert durant cette fin desemaine à Beyrouth, la capitalelibanaise, entre des responsablesdu CICR et une trentaine dejournalistes venus de quinze paysarabes. Sous le thème générique «Nouveaux défis de l’action huma-nitaire », les participants ont misen exergue « la menace » qui pèsesur les activités humanitaires etl’exercice du métier de journalistedans les situations de conflit armé,mais aussi le coût humain qu’ellesengendrent. « Les deux sont entrain de payer un lourd tributparce que l’une tente d’alléger lessouffrances des victimes et l’autrede dévoiler leur douleur », a décla-ré Balthazar Staehelin, déléguégénéral du CICR pour le Moyen-Orient et l’Afrique du Nord, àl’ouverture des travaux.

« Oui, nous savions »Trois points importants ont

marqué la première journée, àsavoir la torture dans la prisond’Abou Ghraïb, le massacre deFalloudjah, en Irak, et le génocidedu Darfour. Toutes les questionsont été axées sur le « silence » duCICR. « Oui nous savions, maisde par notre statut, nous ne pou-vions rendre publique l’informa-tion afin surtout de préserver lesvictimes. Nous dialoguons avec

ceux qui torturent et ceux quituent juste pour avoir accès à leursvictimes et essayer de changer oud’améliorer leur sort. Si nous par-lons, nous coupons tout espoir deles assister », a indiqué YahiaAlibi, du service communicationdu CICR à Genève. Selon lui,l’action humanitaire est aujour-d’hui « frappée de suspicion » parles gouvernements et les parties enconflit « parce que les deux ne res-pectent pas les règles selon les-quelles les populations civiles doi-vent être épargnées. Ils appliquentle principe du ou vous êtes aveceux ou on vous considère commeleur ennemi et ils vous trouventles plus grands défauts qui puis-sent exister avant de vous expul-ser... ». Journalistes et membres duCICR affirment que l’absence desécurité détruit toute actionhumanitaire et activité média-tique. Le journaliste irakienAhmed Abdelmadjid a très bienrésumé la situation dans laquelle ilexerce dans son pays : « Au nomde la lutte contre le terrorisme,l’Irak a été attaqué par les USA.Aujourd’hui, l’absence de sécuritéa eu pour conséquences la des-truction de 3170 écoles et desdizaines d’universités, le pillagedes hôpitaux, des centres de santéet des laboratoires, le sabotage denombreuses infrastructures écono-miques, 1,5 million de veuves vul-nérables et affectées et 500 000enfants handicapés. L’absence desécurité a nourri le banditisme.Néanmoins, dans ce constat chao-tique, il y a des images d’espoir,celles des enfants qui poursuiventleurs études, des médecins quicontinuent à soigner les malades.Mais cette image est censurée parles médias... » La Palestine, une

autre zone de conflit, a été le sujetde discussions très houleuses.

La confidentialité est un moyende réussite

Un confrère de la radio palesti-nienne, Radouane Abou Ayache, aexpliqué comment l’exercice dumétier de journaliste se transfor-me en « un risque mortel sous unrégime aussi répressif que celuid’Israël ». Après son long témoi-gnage sur le comportement vio-lent et raciste des militaires israé-liens à l’égard des Palestiniens,Abou Ayache s’est demandé si leCICR peut déposer une plaintecontre l’Etat d’Israël pour racisme.Alloula Bira Kidani, journalistesoudanais, s’est attaqué avec viru-lence aux régimes arabes et à lapresse de leur pays, les accusantd’avoir « occulté » le génocide duDarfour et « parfois même justifié» ces crimes contre l’humanité. «Même le CICR est venu enretard, bien après que nos jour-naux eurent relaté les faits et queAmnesty et Human Rights Watcheurent dénoncé le génocide. » Lesréponses du CICR ne se sont pasfait attendre. « Le CICR ne peutaller dans un pays sans l’accord deson gouvernement. Pour atteindreles victimes, nous devons passerpar le bourreau pour l’obliger àépargner les personnes civiles nonimpliquées dans les conflits, maisaussi apporter aide et assistance àces dernières. La confidentialitéest très importante dans ces cas.Elle n’est pas un objectif, mais unmoyen pour réussir notre mission», a déclaré Nada Doumani duCICR. Elle a ajouté qu’à proposde l’Irak, l’ONG a été « la premiè-re » à avoir qualifié la présenceaméricaine dans ce pays d’« occu-pation telle que définie par les

70

Journalistes et CICR : même cible

conventions internationales ».D’autres journalistes de Jordanie,de Syrie et de Tunisie se sontinterrogés sur les motifs qui pous-sent la presse à ne pas faire état dela situation des prisonniers dansles pays arabes. « Nous écrivonsles vérités qui sont ailleurs, àAbou Ghraïb et en Israël, mais pascelles qui existent dans nos paysrespectifs.... », ont-ils souligné.Feriaz Rouandazi, journaliste dujournal de l’union kurde, s’est luiaussi plaint de l’absence d’intérêtde la presse arabe à la région duKurdistan, particulièrement à ceque les Kurdes de l’Irak ont vécusous le régime de SaddamHussein. Intervenant pour faire lacomparaison entre la presse duMoyen-Orient et celle duMaghreb, le journaliste tunisienKamel Benyounes, du journalEssabah, a estimé que les journa-listes de l’Afrique du Nord semontrent plus palestiniens que lesPalestiniens eux-mêmes, mais serefusent de faire état de la situa-tion des prisons dans leurs paysrespectifs. Pour étayer ses propos,il a cité le cas de l’Algérie où « ladernière guerre a fait 100 000morts et que celle qui l’a opposéeau Maroc s’est terminée avec desprisonniers de guerre dont on neconnaît ni le nombre ni le sort.Les deux parties refusent d’en par-ler à ce jour ». Il a poursuivi sonintervention en parlant de la pres-se algérienne à laquelle, d’un côté,il reconnaît le statut de la pluslibre dans le monde arabe, maisd’un autre côté, il a fait remarquerque « les journaux les plus libresappartiennent à des généraux »...

Vérités et contrevéritésIl a qualifié le drame du peuple

sahraoui de crise humanitaire,mais s’est étonné pourquoi les res-ponsables du Polisario sont aidés

par l’Algérie au point que leurambassade se trouve à DidoucheMourad, à Alger. Mieux, il va jus-qu’à dire que le présidentBouteflika a lui-même déclaré lorsdu congrès de l’ONM que le «règne des généraux du Sahara estfini ». Des contrevérités qui ontfait réagir les deux journalistesalgériens présents dans la salle. «La guerre est entre les Sahraouis etles Marocains et non pas entre leMaroc et l’Algérie. De plus, laquestion du Sahara est celle relati-ve à une décolonisation. Ce quiexplique les résolutions duConseil de sécurité de l’ONU, ledossier est en train d’être géré... »,lui a répondu une consœur algé-rienne. Une journaliste jordanien-ne a, quant à elle, conclu endisant à l’intervenant qu’il est plusfacile de parler de l’Algérie que deparler de la Tunisie. La deuxièmejournée des travaux a été axée surles lois humanitaires internatio-nales, mais aussi sur les moyensqui peuvent protéger les journa-listes dans les conflits armés.Intervenant sur l’expérienced’Amnesty International (AI) dansle domaine des campagnes média-tiques, Ahmed Keroud a expliquéque l’ONG agit en faisant pres-sion sur les gouvernements et lesparties en conflit à travers lescampagnes de presse.L’intervenant a longuement parlédu principe de neutralité qui régitson organisation. Un journalisteégyptien a exprimé son doutequant à cette neutralité. Il lui aexhibé un rapport de AI publié enmai 2004 sur la Palestine où figu-re une carte géographique d’Israëlqui ne fait aucune mention de laPalestine occupée. Reprenant laparole, M. Balthazar a insisté surle principe de confidentialité deson organisation et rappelé que

lorsqu’il a rendu visite à NelsonMandela, alors en prison, ce der-nier lui a dit : « Ce qui est impor-tant pour nous, ce n’est pas lebien que vous nous faites, mais lemal que vous nous évitez. Celaexplique assez bien le pourquoi duprincipe de la confidentialité. Ouinous savions tout sur AbouGhraïb, mais nous n’avons pasmis de gants pour le dire auxautorités militaires américaines.Nous voulions garder le contactavec les victimes. Si nous avionsparlé, nous n’aurions pas pu soi-gner les malades parmi les prison-niers... » Sur le problème de lasécurité des journalistes, tous lesintervenants ont exprimé leurs «inquiétudes » quant au danger quiguette les journalistes dans leszones de conflit, citant commeexemples la Palestine et l’Irak. Aaucun moment, les conférenciersne citeront le cas de l’Algérie oùplus de 120 professionnels desmédias ont été assassinés, dont 70journalistes, en l’espace de quatreans. « Nous avons l’impressionque les confrères arabes décou-vrent les assassinats de journalistesen Irak et en Palestine. Ils n’ontpas tiré les leçons de ce qui s’estpassé en Algérie. Il n’est pas ques-tion ici de faire le décompte denos morts, mais de trouver lesmoyens d’assurer une meilleuresécurité pour les journalistes dansles zones en conflit, mais égale-ment dans les pays où il n’y pas deliberté... », a déclaré une journalis-te algérienne. Pour la porte-paroledu CICR, de par son métier, lejournaliste est « une personnecivile protégée par les lois et nedoit en aucun cas être ciblé ». Ellea précisé que son organisations’occupe aussi des journalistesmenacés et exerçant dans lesrégions à risque. « Il est aussi

71

important que les responsables desentreprises de presse soientconscients de ces dangers et qu’ilsn’envoient pas sur le terrain desjournalistes non expérimentés etsans assurance vie. Il est impor-tant de ne pas se rapprocher tropd’une zone militaire ou occupée

par des parties armées... » Desconseils, a-t-elle dit, qui peuventsauver, mais qui souvent ne sontpas pris au sérieux par les journa-listes. Les participants de Jordanie,Iran, Bahreïn, Tunisie, Algérie,Soudan, Syrie, Irak, Ghaza, ElQods, Qatar, Koweït, Liban,

Egypte, Arabie Saoudite se sontentendus pour mettre la lumièresur les zones de conflit, mais aussisur leurs conséquences sur lespopulations civiles, notammentles femmes et les enfants.

El Watan, 13 décembre 2004Salima Tlemçan

72

Since 2003, Asian DevelopmentBank’s NGO/Civil SocietyCommittee has approved over$800,000 in small grants to 60NGO-run projects in 15 develop-ing countries. ADB’s PovertyReduction Cooperation Fundprovides financing for these pro-jects though a pilot programdesigned to support small-scale

NGO initiatives. With most ofthe available funds now allocated,ADB will, in 2005, evaluate thepilot and consider possibilities forcreating a permanent NGO smallgrants fund. To date, grants havebeen provided to support handi-crafts training for disabled womenin the Kyrgyz Republic, a biogasdemonstration project in the

People’s Republic of China, legalaid clinics in Peshawar inPakistan, poultry raising in VietNam, an NGO InformationCenter in the Cook Islands, andmany other activities.For more information, contact Bart

Édes at ngocoordinator@adb.org. http://www.adb.org/

Documents/PRF/REG/RETA6109.as

ADB pilot program gives boost to 60 NGO initiatives

La Commission européenne alancé une consultation en lignesur le futur programme d’actioncommunautaire visant à promou-voir la citoyenneté active. Cetteconsultation constitue la premièreétape d’une procédure qui invite

les citoyens et les organisationsintéressées à faire part de leur avissur les orientations du futur pro-gramme. La deuxième phase seprésentera sous la forme d’unforum qui rassemblera les repré-sentants des parties intéressées,au

mois de février 2005, autour d’undébat plus approfondi. La périodede consultation en ligne dureradeux mois.

La Lettre, Fondation RobettSchuman, 193/2004

Citoyenneté active

A new ministry of Non-Governmental Organisations(NGOs) has been created in Iraq tobuild national and local aid agenciesand civil society groups. DawoodPasha, Director- General of Iraq’snew NGO ministry, was recently

interviewed by IRIN in Baghdadabout plans to regulate NGOs, theneed for training of local staff andthe image of NGOs in Iraq, wherea deteriorating security situation hasforced many international agenciesout of the country.

www.irinnews.org/report.asp?ReportID=44630&SelectRegion=Middle_East.

(Source: IRIN News.org: UNOffice for the Coordination of

Humanitarian Affairs)

Iraq launches new NGO ministry

Georgetown University’s Centerfor Democracy and the ThirdSector (CDATS) invites articlesubmissions for the next issue ofDemocracy & Society.

Theme: Global Civil Society:role and impact of global civilsociety as well as changes in itsstructure or composition.Potential questions to addressinclude, but are not limited to: Inwhat ways is global civil societyable to promote greater interna-tional democracy? In what ways isit failing? Whom does global civil

society represent, and how is rep-resentation legitimated? How isglobal civil society responding tothe challenge of the rising powerof “regressive globalizers” whofavor globalization only when it isin their particular interest? Whathas been the effect of a more for-malized role for civil society inglobal institutions? How are thepeople, organizations, and valuesof transnational civil society shap-ing our world? Can we look toglobal civil society to address con-cerns about inequity, health, and

security? What are the implica-tions of growing demands for theaccountability of global civil soci-ety organizations?

Submissions are due Friday,March 3, 2005.

For additional information,please contact Nicole Love or

David Madland atcdatsnews@georgetown.edu.

http://www.georgetown.edu/centers/cdats.

http://www.georgetown.edu/centers/cdats/newsletter.htm

Applications are invited forplaces on five workshop/seminars,supported by the QuantitativeMethods in the Social Sciencesprogramme of the EuropeanScience Foundation. These inte-grated workshops and seminarswill provide opportunities forjunior researchers to undertakehigh-level training in the latestdevelopments in quantitativemethods. They will also enablejunior and senior researchers tointeract and share ideas andexpertise based upon recentresearch. These fiveworkshop/seminars will take placebetween June and September2005 on the following topics:- Social Network Analysis;- Methods for Public Policy

Evaluation in the Social Sciences;

- Measurement, Data Collectionand Data Quality;

- Structural Equation Modelling inCross-National ComparativeResearch;

- Simulation Methods forLongitudinal Analysis.Each event will consist of a one-

week workshop providing high-level training, led by two leadingresearchers in the field, followedby a two day seminar at whichadditional senior researchers willpresent and discuss research at thecutting edge of the field.Applications to participate inthese events are invited from well-qualified junior scholars, who areresearching quantitative methodsor using quantitative methods inresearch in the social sciences andwho are seeking to extend and

broaden their skills. Thirty juniorscholars will be selected to partici-pate in each workshop/seminar.Selection will be primarily on thebasis of merit, subject to consider-ation of balance with respect tocountry, discipline and betweenthose with primarily substantiveinterests in the social sciences andthose with primarily methodologi-cal interests.

Applications should be sent by e-mail by 8 April 2005 to the

Programme Coordinator, Mrs. JuliaD’Arrigo, at

qmss@socsci.soton.ac.uk.Information: ESF website at

http://www.esf.org/qmss or theQMSS website at

http://www.s3ri.soton.ac.uk/qmss

73

Call for participantsQuantitative methods in the social sciences (QMSS)A European Science Foundation scientific programme 2003-2007

Call for Submissions to Democracy & Society

74

Some items in recent issues: Issue number:Parmi les thèmes traités récemment : Numéros :

Transnational actors in the international system 2/2000, 3/2001Les acteurs transnationaux dans le système international 4/2002, 3/2004.

The recognition of the legal personality of INGOs 3/1986, 3/1990,La reconnaissance de Ia personnalité juridique des OING 5/1990, 3/1995.

Cooperation between INGOs and IGOs 6/1999, 6/2000,La coopération entre les OING et les OIG 3/2003, 4/2003

Sociology of international relations 3/2001, 4/2002,Sociologie des relations internationales 1-2/2003, 3/2003.

Social movements, trade unions and cooperatives 6/1996, 3/1997Mouvements sociaux, syndicats et coopératives 5/1999, 1/2001.

Economic and trade issues 4/1998, 5/1999,Questopms économiques et commerciales 3/2002, 4/2003.

Environmental problems 4/1995, 2/1996,Les problèmes écologiques 3/2000, 2/2001.

Humanitarian aid and humanitarian law 2/1996, 2/1999,L'aide et le droit humanitaires 2/2001, 4/2002.

Language, culture, communication and gender 2/1998, 1/1999,Langage, culture, communication et genre 6/1999, 2/2000.

Civil Society and the State 4/1998, 1/1999,La société civile et I’Etat 4/2000, 2/2001.

Latin American and North-American Associations 6/1989, 3/1990,Les associations latino-américaines et nord-américaines 1/1993, 4/1996.

African Associations 1/1996, 2/1996,Associations africaines 1/1999, 4/2002.

European Associations 3/2000, 6/2000,Les associations européennes 1/2002, 3/2003.

Arab Associations 1/1998, 6/1999Associations arabes 2/2001

Asian Associations 2/1997, 6/1999Associations asiatiques 3/2003, 1/2004

Some authors / ont publié dans nos colonnes :Chadwick Alger, Benjamin R. Barber, Chérif Bassiouni, Mohammed Bedjaoui, Jan Berting, Maurice Bertrand,Elise Boulding, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Daniel Cohen, Jacques Delors, Adama Dieng, Francis Fukuyama,Françoise Gadet, Johan Galtung, Susan George, André Gorz, Group of Lisbon, Robin Guthrie, Jürgen Höffner,Bill Jordan, Alexandre Kiss, Alain Labrousse, Ronnie D. Lipschutz, Marc Luyckx, Federico Mayor, Elikia M’Bokolo,Marcel Merle, Morton Mitchnik, Edgar Morin, Basarab Nicolescu, Ignacio Ramonet, François Rigaux, Nigel Rodley,John G. Ruggie, Wolfgang Sachs, Pierre de Senarclens, Jan Aart Scholte, Vaudana Shiva, Dusan Sidjanski,Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Rajesh Tandon, Charles Taylor, Fernand Vincent, Peter Waterman.

Transnational Associations 57th yearAssociations transnationales 57e année

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Transnational Associations 57th yearAssociations transnationales 57e année

Forthcoming topics:Dans les prochains numéros :

• Participation of NGOs in WTOLa participation des ONG à l’OMC

• Civil society and democracy in GermanySociété civile et démocratie en Allemagne

• International cooperation among local and regional authoritiesCoopération internationale entre les régions et les collectivités territoriales

Articles appearing in the journal are indexed in PAlS (Public Affairs Information Service) andAGRIS (International Information System for the Agricultural Sciences and Technology), FAO.

Belgium Rest of the worldBelgique Hors Belgique

1 YEAR EUR 121.00 EUR 100.00(2005)

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