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Civil society is the third party, next to state and market.
Civil society is the freedom of union without any state intervention, leaving space to expand new types of not for profit NGO's.
Civil society is the space between government, market and citizens, free to use by all three parties.
Civil society is democracy made operationally.
Civil society is one element in the three-part framework comprising the state, the economy and civil society. Civil society is the primary locus for creating ideology, for building consensus and for legitimising power, that is, for creating and maintaining the cultural and social hegemony of the dominant group by consent rather than coercion.
Civil society is the arena where conflicting interests (that is, class interests) are contested and, short of direct domination and coercion, the state and the market must gain the consent of civil society for their legitimacy. In the end, whoever captures civil society captures all.
Civil society consist of the actions of citizens (all human beings), individually and together, to improve their community and society. Such actions are the basis on which democracy, pluralism, respect for human rights, good governance and the cohesiveness of society rests.
(Social movement: a conscious, collective, organised endeavour to achieve or to counteract large-scale change in the social order by not-institutionalised means. The movement can be reformatory (trying to improve the existing system), alternative (doing things your own way) or transforming (trying to change social structures).
Who wants to know more about social movement, read: Wilson: Introduction to social movements, NY Basic Books, 1973).