Civil society, international donors and poverty in Bangladesh

The recent donor emphasis on building civil society in poor countries assum es that such support will benefit the poorest sections of these societies. It therefore presumes to be readily connected to the international agency g oal of poverty eradication. Unfortunately, most foreign donors define civil society using a Western liberal framework, which in many development conte xts understates both configurations of power within civil society and also the enmeshment of civil society with the state. Bangladesh has a strong his tory of what can be described as civil society activity, but there is growi ng evidence that a considerable part of this activity may not necessarily l ead to a reduction of poverty and may even be implicated in the ongoing rep roduction of poverty.