Introduction to Social Threefolding ( part one)

There are three global forces that shape the quality and direction of world today. These are government, business and civil society. Governments and businesses have been contending for global power since the 1980s. The Battle of Seattle and the defeat of the World Trade Organization (WTO) agenda, among others, show that civil society has now joined these two as a third global force. The emergence of global civil society changes the world from a uni-polar or bi-polar world to one that is tri-polar. We now live in a tri-polar world where the forces, capacities, and resources to change the world are clustered in the hands of business, government, and global civil society. In many countries, cities and towns are also characterized by this constellation of forces. Three global powers are now determining the understanding and fate of burning social issues. Threefolding as the New Language of the Tri-Polar World We need to become familiar with the new social landscape of the tri-polar world. We need to know the key words of the language spoken in this new tri-polar world. The word threefolding has a central place in this new language. Threefolding is key to understanding the new social landscape and what goes on within it. The term integrates and sheds light on many of the new concepts in the tri-polar world. But first we need to understand why our world is now tri-polar. It is so because, as we saw, there are now three contending institutional powers that reside in the world–global civil society, government, and business. And there is something else. Though its emergence, civil society also gives birth, consciously or not, to cultural life as an autonomous realm within larger society. Second we need to connect the three institutions to the three realms of society. From social science, we learn that there are three realms in social life or three subsystems in society–cultural, political, and economic. The interactions of these three realms determine what kind of social life or society we have. We live in a healthy society if the three realms mutually recognize and support each other and develop their initiatives with awareness of their potential impacts on the other realms. We live in an unhealthy society if one realm dominates and tries to subjugate the others. For example, in that destructive form of globalization we call "elite" or "corporate globalization," one sphere of society, the economic, dominates over the justified concerns of the political and cultural realms. In addition, economic and political institutions, in general, have only a vague understanding and appreciation of culture and the role it plays in social life. Businesses as institutions derive their force from their work, destructive or otherwise, in the economy. Their natural habitat is the economy. Governments as institutions gain their power, legitimate or not, from political life. They naturally inhabit the realm of polity. And the institutions of civil society derive their strength, deserved or not, from their defense and articulation of the worldviews and values of cultural life. Their natural habitat is culture. Businesses have economic power. Governments have political power. And civil society organizations have cultural power. None has a monopoly of power. This is the reason why we can now say that civil society, government, and business are the three key institutions of social life. Each of these powerful institutions has the potential to "represent," in its own way, the realm of society from which each is active–civil society represents culture; government represents polity; and business, the economy. The three institutions may be "institutional powers of a tri-polar world," but they are not necessarily aware what social realms actually constitute this "tri-polar" world. Nor do the institutional powers necessarily know which social realms they inhabit and have affinity with. They may only be aware of their opposition to each other and not necessarily whether they come from the economy, polity, or culture. For example, if a civil society activist thinks that civil society belongs to the political realm, then this indicates a usage reminiscent of being an "institutional power" in a tri-polar world. Civil society, in this case, is merely aware of its power but not which social realm it comes from. Or worse, none of the three may think that the cultural realm is of any importance and all three would therefore prefer to inhabit either the political or economic realms only. The term key institutions of social life, on the other hand, implies that the actors within these institutions have a definite and clear idea as to what the three social realms are and which one their institution belongs to. Business, for example, is aware that the three social realms are economy, polity and culture and that its realm is the economy. In terms of time sequence, it is normal for civil society and the other institutions to be aware first that they are an institutional power in a tri-polar world. Later on, they become aware that they are key institutions of social life. And, as we shall see, this makes a big difference in societal transformation and evolution, in general, and in threefolding, in particular. Source: Perlas, Nicanor