WS: “Civil society and Green Transition in Botswana”

The workshop departs from two observations about the state of the civil society in Botswana and its relatedness to practices of a Green Transformation. Firstly, a civil society according to the established understanding of the concept (Habermas 1996; Taylor 1990) largely not exists in Botswana. According to Taylor, civil society “includes those dimensions of social life which cannot be confounded with, nor swallowed up, by the state” (Taylor 1991: 117). Whereas in Botswana, there is no such strict separation of the state and (civil) society. Due to an understanding of society that is highly based on the legacy of the state (Mogalakwe/Sebudubudu 2006; Maundeni 2005), it does not attach to the genuinely “Western Tradition” (Taylor 1991) of the civil society. The understanding of the public sphere linked to this concept has not established in Botswana which makes it, seemingly, difficult to apply the concept of the civil society on Botswana. Which does request the invention of a specific Batswana approach to civil society. Secondly, Botswana might lend itself as paradigmatic case of the civil society due to the importance of the communities within its overall structural societal organization. In large parts, communities and villages in Botswana rely on practices of self-organization, participatory action and inclusive communication, anchored in the system of the Kgotla (Alm 2025; Holm et al. 1996); citizen participation in Botswana “ranks top in the world” (Reiter 2024: 1). Reiter claims that it is Botswana’s “ancient tradition of institutionalized, village-based, local direct democracy, kgotla, that accounts for its exemplary performance” (Reiter 2024: 1). Despite its profound commitment for measures in sustainable development, all pointing into the direction of a Green Transformation of the Botswana society, there still is a significant gap left between the well-established level of engagement of the Botswana government in transnational sustainability governance and the production of national concepts on the one hand and strategies to include the communities and to fully recognize their social actors who are, eventually, addressed by those concepts, on the other. The missing link in Botswana’s efforts for sustainable development as Green Transformation is the one between grassroot community action, especially including its individual actors and community-based organisations, and the level of state governance. Such linkage is of key meaning as the community level is that social sphere within which practices for sustainable development and Green Transformation need to be anchored. Hence, the top-down, vertical organization of climate agency, run by government actors, needs to be supplemented by a horizontal mode of organization that guarantees the networking and communication between various actors and communities. By emphasizing such grassroot logic, ordinary social actors in their everyday life routines and life-world topographies turn out to be the backbone of civil society and Green Transformation.

Workshop programme:

09:15 Welcoming

09:30-10:30 Pearl Lefadola: Community agency for food security and Green Transformation in Botswana

 10:30-11:30 Anja Peltzer: Digital platform communication as gateways for the civil society and Green Transformation practices in Botswana

 11:30-13:00

 Lunch Break 13:00-14:00

 Elisabeth Alm: The Kgotla as ambiguous actor in the context of civil society and Green Transformation in Botswana

14:00-15:00 Jörn Ahrens: Action and Perception of Climate Change Impact in a Botswana village and the case of the civil society

15:00-15:15 Coffee Break

15:15-16:15 Gabriel Faimau: Civil Society and Reflexive Sustainability in Botswana: Reimagining Civic Engagement for Transformative Change

Workshop Participants Prof. Dr. Jörn Ahrens, Prof. of cultural sociology, JLU Giessen

 Elisabeth Alm, MA, Postgraduate Student Global Studies, Frankfurt, Germany

 Prof. Dr. Gabriel Faimau, Prof. of sociology, University of Botswana

Dr. Pearl Lefadola, Senior Lecturer and Researcher, Faculty of Education, Family and Consumer Sciences, University of Botswana

PD Dr. Anja Peltzer, acting chair in media sociology, JLU Giessen