Civil society and the landscape the organizations inhabiting this societal sphere make up is multifaceted and built around particularism and the myriad of interests that individuals organize themselves around. This is also what we find when specifying our interest and focus on civil society in rural areas, which has not been the focus of too many previous studies since much existing civil society research has focused on urban areas and civil society organizations working in, or in the vicinity of, metropolitan and urban areas (cf. Cras, von Essen & Åberg, 2022). In many rural areas, civil society organizations fill many important functions for the local community. Furthermore however, our studies show that in small local rural communities where there is a vibrant civil society, this is contingent on particular civil society organizations, who often have a long tradition in the area, providing a kind of infrastructure for civil society and for new organizations to form. This provision of infrastructure often takes place behind the scenes and such organizations become an invisible glue and an invisible resource that is of great importance for maintaining and developing a strong local civil society (Cras, et al., forthcoming). Furthermore, it seems as if this kind of supporting infrastructure, by providing resources and establishing networks which assist entrepreneurs within local civil societies, is particularly important and salient in rural areas. In this paper, we wish to explore this, often unseen, function of established organizations and of networks of friends and family, which become important nodes for building and maintaining a vibrant local civil society. By studying this in the setting of small rural communities and including personal networks that are often important especially in smaller communities (cf. Wuthnow, 2013) we also approach the borderland between the two societal spheres of civil society and the private sphere of the family, which is much less studied than the borderlands between civil society and the state or between civil society and the market (Åberg & Rodin, 2017; Ginsborg, 2013). Hence, the question we ask is: in what ways do civil society organizations and networks provide an infrastructure for civic engagement in local rural communities? Empirically, we base our paper on 46 semi-structured interviews with people active in various civil society organizations in five small rural communities in Sweden. In addition to the interview material, we have made observations of meetings and organizational activities in these communities and we also have access to quantitative data describing the communities we study. Theoretically, we primarily draw on social capital (Lin, 2001; Putnam, 1992, 2000) and resource mobilization theory (McCarthy & Zald, 1977) to make sense of and interpret the empirical findings in relation to the question posed.
2024.