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Real Civil Societies
Dilemmas of Institutionalization
Edited by:
- Jeffrey C Alexander - University of Michigan, USA
May 1998 | 256 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd
In recent social and political theory the term `civil society' has achieved renewed currency. Traditionally used in a normative or `ideal-type' sense, the term describes a form of social organization - that is simply neither economic nor political - where democracy, liberty and widespread solidarity are essential regulatory concepts.
Written from an empirical social-science perspective by some of the world's most important social theorists, this volume is a critical examination of the normative sense of `civil society'. It includes analyses of civil society and democracy, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and post-communism.
Jeffrey C Alexander
Introduction
Civil Society I, II, III: Constructing an Empirical Concept from Normative Controversies and Historical Transformations
PART ONE: UNCIVIL HIERARCHIES
Elisa P Reis
Banfield's Amoral Familism Revisited
Implications of High Inequality Structures for Civil Society
Michael Pusey
Between Economic Dissolution and the Return of the Social
The Contest for Civil Society in Australia
Luis Roniger
Civil Society, Patronage, and Democracy
G[um]oran Ahrne
Civil Society and Uncivil Organizations
PART TWO: BIFURCATING DISCOURSES
Jeffrey C Alexander
Citizen and Enemy as Symbolic Classification
On the Polarizing Discourse of Civil Society
Philip Smith
Barbarism and Civility in the Discourses of Fascism, Communism and Democracy
Variations on a Set of Themes
Ronald N Jacobs
The Racial Discourse of Civil Society
The Rodney King Affair and the City of Los Angeles
PART THREE: ARBITRARY FOUNDINGS
David Zaret
Neither Faith nor Commerce
Printing and the Unintended Origins of English Public Opinion
Piotr Sztompka
Mistrusting Civility
Predicament of Post-Communist Society
V[ac]ictor P[ac]erez-D[ac]iaz
The Public Sphere and a European Civil Society
