From Juan Cole: In the soon-to-be-proposed Iraqi government, >The
[(fundamentalist) United Iraqi Alliance] Shiites will get the ministries of finance, petroleum, interior, electricity, labor, municipalities, youth, education, commerce, national security, health, civil society, agriculture, transportation, immigration, tourism, antiquities, and the state ministry for parliamentary affairs.
They have a Ministry of Civil Society? Quick, someone alert Jurgen
Habermas! Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami wrote a work on civil society in the Habermasian school, which has been influential for some Iraqi Shiites. Khatami had lived many years in Germany and studied the great Frankfurt School sociologist. Habermas wrote of the "public sphere," but that overlaps with the idea of civil society. Someone should add Habermas and Craig Calhoun to the wikipedia article on the subject. (At least one other government has a ministry responsible for "civil society"-- Belize.)< -- Jim Devine / "the world still seems stuck in greed-lock, ruled by fossilized fools fueled by fossil fuels." -- Swami Beyondananda
