civil society and the state can be traced back to Ferguson and Hegel in the 18th and 19th centuries, who reflected on the progressive appearance of capitalism by conceptualising a sphere of trade and social interactions separate from government and law. In the following decades, scientists followed this dual division of the social world between market or the economy on the one hand, state (apparatus of administrative, judicial, legislative and military institutions) on the other. Only in the 20th century did civil society become separated from economic interactions: the Italian communist Gramsci initiated this shift, by 1 The term conflict management should be understood in this paper as a generic field of theory and intervention in conflict, divided between short-term approaches focusing on ending violence through negotiated settlements (i.e. conflict management in its narrower meaning), middle-term approaches focusing on the gradual shifts in adversaries’ attitudes and perceptions (i.e. conflict resolution), and long-term approaches focusing on the transformation of structures and cultures of violence (i.e. conflict transformation). For more details on these semantic distinctions, see for example Dudouet 2006. 2 For instance, some authors do not draw the distinction between the civil society and private spheres: Cohen and Arato (1995) include the “intimate sphere” (family) as part of civil society. psychologists