Civil Sphere

What binds societies together and how can these social orders be structured in a fair way? Jeffrey C. Alexander's masterful work, The Civil Sphere, addresses this central paradox of modern life. Feelings for others - the solidarity that is ignored or underplayed by theories of power or self-interest - are at the heart of this novel inquiry into the meeting place between normative theories of what we think we should do and empirical studies of who we actuallyare. Solidarity, Alexander demonstrates, creates inclusive and exclusive social structures and shows how they can be repaired. It is not perfect, it is not absolute, and the horrors which occur in its lapses have been seen all too frequently in the forms of discrimination, genocide, and war. Despite itsworldly flaws and contradictions, however, solidarity and the project of civil society remain our best hope: the antidote to every divisive institution, every unfair distribution, every abusive and dominating hierarchy. This grand, sweeping statement and rigorous empirical investigation is a major contribution to our thinking about the real but ideal world in which we all reside.

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., The Civil Sphere is [a] crowning achievement ... that masterfully reconnects the normative and the empirical in ways that fill an important gap in our cultural discourse today ... A work of great importance, an enduring contribution to the literature on civil society and democracy. Its influence will be felt in political, cultural, and theoretical sociology for decades to come., A genuine masterpiece ... America's best, and best-known, social theorist defends the project of civil society and its utopia of democratic inclusion, This subtle and hugely informative work ... offers not only acute theoretical discussion of the civil society concept, but also generous and expansive accounts of social movements of race and gender, and the theory and practice of multiculturalism and assimilation (two chapters on the Jewish experience are especially compelling)., The Civil Sphere offers a bold and original thesis about the critically important role that civil societies play in Western democracies. Although I will challenge Alexander's thesis, it is important to state at the outset that The Civil Sphere is a valuable book packed with rich social histories, lively engagements with ancient and contemporary theories, and novel interpretations. There is much to be learned here about the historic and sociological nature of racial, gender, and ethnic oppressions, and the struggles waged to over throw them.

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).