Barber makes an interesting observation regarding the current wave of privatization sweeping many societies. So building a strong civil society requires a clear idea of what civil society is and a clear notion of the pitfalls that must be avoided. Building civil society has a great potential for uniting people who have many differences and one of the goals of a strong civil society is to force government to be more responsible, more accountable. Strengthening civil society, however, is a difficult and delicate matter. For instance, families are the building blocks of every extended form of human association and religion is a social glue stronger than any other, seemingly indispensable to civil society.
Barber notes that voluntarism shares the limits of localism.
We live in a world of multinational corporations, global environmental and communication ecosystems, and transnational economic and cultural forces. We cannot solve, one by one and locally, the big infrastructural social problems created over a half century by national and transnational powers. The doors that open to civic engagement are in the neighborhoods, but the rooms where power is exercised are in the commercial capitals and global metropolises. In a time when society seems to be divided between two great powers, the government and the corporations, the rebirth of a strong civil society is will be a long a difficult labor. But a lively civil society is necessary not just to fill in the voids that government and corporations have neglected.