Frontlash/Backlash

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Yale University.

• Introduction. The Doing and Undoing of Civil Repair1. Frontlash and Backlash2. Office Obligation as Civil Virtue: The Crisis of American Democracy, November 3, 2020 – January 6, 2021, and After3. Trump’s Brain: Steven Bannon Rages against the Enlightenment4. The Challenge of Solidarity: The Indian Civil Sphere between Vitality and Suppression5. Europe’s Backlash against Immigration: Resisting the Multicultural Mode of Incorporation6. The Re-emergence of Antisemitism (1): Waves of Societalization and What Conditions Them (with Tracy Adams)7. The Re-Emergence of Antisemitism (2): Inverting the Lessons of the Holocaust Before, During, and After Gaza

�Jeffrey Alexander, sociology's leading theorist of �civil society� and of �culture� and �meaning,� in this work rejects assumptions that history is a story of inevitable human progress. Instead, he sees a recurrent alternation of �frontlash� and �backlash.� Impassioned and quite simply brilliant!� Michael Schudson, Columbia University �As democracy withers under rising authoritarianism, these essays bring sobering, indispensable news. The struggle for civic equality is not a continuous march toward progress. �Frontlash� and �backlash� movements expand, then shrink a society�s circle of civil solidarity. Jeffrey Alexander illuminates this ongoing drama of inclusion and exclusion with wit and passion.� Paul Lichterman, author of How Civic Action Works: Fighting for Housing in Los Angeles