Share
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
PART ONE: UNCIVIL HIERARCHIES
Elisa P Reis
Banfield's Amoral Familism Revisited
Michael Pusey
Between Economic Dissolution and the Return of the Social
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
Philip Smith
Barbarism and Civility in the Discourses of Fascism, Communism and Democracy
Ronald N Jacobs
The Racial Discourse of Civil Society
PART THREE: ARBITRARY FOUNDINGS
David Zaret
Neither Faith nor Commerce
Piotr Sztompka
Mistrusting Civility
V[ac]ictor P[ac]erez-D[ac]iaz
The Public Sphere and a European Civil Society
