The Civil Sphere

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, and a Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology. He is also the author of The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology (Oxford, 2003).

• PART I. CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOCIAL THEORY; 1. POSSIBILITES OF JUSTICE; 2. REAL CIVIL SOCIETIES: DILEMMAS OF INSTITUTIONALIZATION; 3. BRINGING DEMOCRACY BACK IN: REALISM, MORALITY, SOLIDARITY; PART II. STRUCTURES AND DYNAMICS OF THE CIVIL SPHERE; 4. DISCOURSES: LIBERTY AND REPRESSION; 5. COMMUNICATIVE INSTITUTIONS: PUBLIC OPINION, MASS MEDIA, POLLS, ASSOCIATIONS; 6. REGULATIVE INSTITUTIONS (1): VOTING, PARTIES, OFFICE; 7. REGULATIVE INSTITUTIONS (2): THE CIVIL FORCE OF LAW; 8. CONTRADICTIONS: UNCIVILIZING PRESSURES AND CIVIL REPAIR; PART III. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE CIVIL SPHERE; 9. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AS CIVIL TRANSLATIONS; 10. GENDER AND CIVIL REPAIR: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD THROUGH M/OTHERHOOD; 11. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (1): DUALITY AND THE CREATION OF A BLACK CIVIL SOCIETY; 12. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (2): THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND COMMUNICATIVE SOLIDARITY; 13. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (3): CIVIL TRAUMA AND THE TIGHTENING SPIRAL OF COMMUNICATION AND REGULATION; 14. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (4). REGULATORY REFORM AND RITUALIZATION; PART IV. MODES OF INCORPORATION INTO THE CIVIL SPHERE; 15. INTEGRATION BETWEEN DIFFERENCE AND SOLIDARITY; 16. ENCOUNTERS WITH THE OTHER; 17. THREE PATHWAYS TO INCORPORATION; 18. THE JEWISH QUESTION: ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE FAILURE OF ASSIMILATION; 19. ANSWERING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN AMERICA: BEFORE AND AFTER THE HOLOCAUST; 20. CONCLUSION: CIVIL SOCIETY AS A PROJECT; NOTES; BIBLIOGRAPHY; INDEX

The Civil Sphere offers grand theorizing in ways that remind us of both what we are and what we can be. Jeffrey Alexander offers sociology at least a place from which it may begin again.