The Nordic Civil Sphere

Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander,Anna Lund,Andrea Voyer
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 368 pages
File Size : 40,6 Mb
Release : 2020-01-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781509539475

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The Nordic Civil Sphere by Jeffrey C. Alexander,Anna Lund,Andrea Voyer Pdf

The civil sphere is a distinctively democratic field in modern societies, one that sustains universalizing cultural aspirations and organizational structures and that has tense and uncertain boundaries with other spheres of social life, like the economy, religion, family, and state. Unlike the latter, which are more particularistic and hierarchical in character, the civil sphere defines itself in terms of solidarity – the feeling of being connected with every other person in the collectivity. The utopian ideals of democratic solidarity shape every modern society, even if they are often compromised by the messy realities of social life. This volume uses the theory of the civil sphere to shed new light on Nordic societies, while at the same time drawing on the distinctive experiences of the Nordic nations to reflect on and advance the theory of the civil sphere. Nordic societies have long been admired for creating a distinctive form of social democracy, but this admirable achievement has not been well conceptualized theoretically. Most attempts to explain Nordic social democracy focus on material and organizational factors. This volume, by contrast, emphasizes the cultural foundations and characteristics of social democracy, demonstrating how civil sensibilities are necessary for the creation of an egalitarian and democratic state. Nordic civil spheres, however, are not only pro-civil but also white in color, European in ethnicity, secular in character and gender-equal in a subtly restrictive manner. Such primordialization of state civility is vividly on display in the sometime tense relationships that develop among natives and “foreigners” in Nordic countries, relationships that expose the primordial undersides of the social democratic codes and civil values that constitute the Nordic civil sphere. A major contribution to the theory of the civil sphere and to our understanding of the cultural and normative underpinnings of social and political life, this volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of sociology and politics.

Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander,Anna Lund,Andrea Voyer
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 251 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2020-01-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781509538850

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The Nordic Civil Sphere by Jeffrey C. Alexander,Anna Lund,Andrea Voyer Pdf

The civil sphere is a distinctively democratic field in modern societies, one that sustains universalizing cultural aspirations and organizational structures and that has tense and uncertain boundaries with other spheres of social life, like the economy, religion, family, and state. Unlike the latter, which are more particularistic and hierarchical in character, the civil sphere defines itself in terms of solidarity – the feeling of being connected with every other person in the collectivity. The utopian ideals of democratic solidarity shape every modern society, even if they are often compromised by the messy realities of social life. This volume uses the theory of the civil sphere to shed new light on Nordic societies, while at the same time drawing on the distinctive experiences of the Nordic nations to reflect on and advance the theory of the civil sphere. Nordic societies have long been admired for creating a distinctive form of social democracy, but this admirable achievement has not been well conceptualized theoretically. Most attempts to explain Nordic social democracy focus on material and organizational factors. This volume, by contrast, emphasizes the cultural foundations and characteristics of social democracy, demonstrating how civil sensibilities are necessary for the creation of an egalitarian and democratic state. Nordic civil spheres, however, are not only pro-civil but also white in color, European in ethnicity, secular in character and gender-equal in a subtly restrictive manner. Such primordialization of state civility is vividly on display in the sometime tense relationships that develop among natives and “foreigners” in Nordic countries, relationships that expose the primordial undersides of the social democratic codes and civil values that constitute the Nordic civil sphere. A major contribution to the theory of the civil sphere and to our understanding of the cultural and normative underpinnings of social and political life, this volume will be of particular interest to students and scholars of sociology and politics.

Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 816 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2008-09-08
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9780199708956

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The Civil Sphere by Jeffrey C. Alexander Pdf

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 actually are. 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 its worldly 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.

Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander,Peter Kivisto,Giuseppe Sciortino
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 275 pages
File Size : 41,9 Mb
Release : 2020-12-03
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781509544752

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Populism in the Civil Sphere by Jeffrey C. Alexander,Peter Kivisto,Giuseppe Sciortino Pdf

Even as the specter of populism haunts contemporary societies, scholars have not been able to agree about what it is. Except for one thing: a deviation from democracy, the source, it seems, of the precarious position in which so many societies find themselves today. This volume aims to break the Gordian knot of “populism” by bringing a new social theory to bear and, in so doing so, suggesting that normative judgments about this misunderstood phenomenon need to be reconsidered as well. Populism is not a democratic deviation but a naturally occurring dimension of civil sphere dynamics, fatal to democracy only at the extremes. Because populism is highly polarizing, it has the effect of inducing anxiety that civil solidarity is breaking apart. Left populists feel as if civil solidarity is an illusion, that democratic discourse is a fig leaf for private interests, and that the social and cultural differentiation that vouchsafes the independence of the civil sphere merely reflects the hegemony of narrow professional interests or those of a ruling class. Right populists share the same distrust, even repulsion, for the civil sphere. What seems civil to the center and left, like affirmative action or open immigration, they call out as particularistic; honored civil icons, such as Holocaust memorials, they trash. How can the sense of a vital civil center survive such censure from populism on the left and the right? Populism in the Civil Sphere provides compelling answers to these fundamental questions. Its contributions are both sophisticated theoretical interventions and deeply researched empirical studies, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the most important political developments of our time.

Author : Fredrik Engelstad,Håkon Larsen,Jon Rogstad,Kari Steen-Johnsen
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 280 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2017-04-24
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 9783110546330

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Institutional Change in the Public Sphere by Fredrik Engelstad,Håkon Larsen,Jon Rogstad,Kari Steen-Johnsen Pdf

The main focus of the book is institutional change in the Scandinavian model, with special emphasis on Norway. There are many reasons to pay closer attention to the Norwegian case when it comes to analyses of changes in the public sphere. In the country’s political history, the arts and the media played a particular role in the processes towards sovereignty at the beginning of the 20th century. On a par with the other Scandinavian countries, Norway is in the forefront in the world in the distribution and uses of Internet technology. As an extreme case, the most corporatist society within the family of the “Nordic Model”, it offers an opportunity both for intriguing case studies and for challenging and refining existing theory on processes of institutional change in media policy and cultural policy. It supplements two recent, important books on political economy in Scandinavia: Varieties of Liberalization and the New Politics of Social Solidarity (Kathleen Thelen, 2014), and The Political Construction of Business Interests (Cathie Jo Martin and Duane Swank, 2013). There are further reasons to pay particular attention to the Scandinavian, and more specifically the Norwegian cases: (i) They are to varying degrees neo-corporatist societies, characterized by ongoing bargaining over social and political reform processes. From a theoretical perspective this invites reflections which, to some extent, are at odds with the dominant conceptions of institutional change. Neither models of path dependency nor models of aggregate, incremental change focus on the continuous social bargaining over institutional change. (ii) Despite recent processes of liberalization, common to the Western world as a whole, corporatism implies a close connection between state, public sphere, cultural life, and religion. This also means that institutions are closely bundled, in an even stronger way than assumed for example in the Varieties of Capitalism literature. Furthermore, we only have scarce insight in the way the different spheres of corporatism are connected and interact. In the proposed edited volume we have collected historical-institutional case studies from a broad set of social fields (a detailed outline of contents and contributors is attached): • Critical assessments of Jürgen Habermas’ theory of the public sphere • Can the public sphere be considered an institution? • The central position of the public sphere in social and political change in Norway • Digital transformations and effects of the growing PR industry on the public sphere • Institutionalization of social media in local politics and voluntary organizations • Legitimation work in the public sphere • freedom of expression and warning in the workplace • “Return of religion” to the public sphere, and its effects

Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander,Peter Kivisto,Giuseppe Sciortino
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 316 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-07
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781509544851

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Populism in the Civil Sphere by Jeffrey C. Alexander,Peter Kivisto,Giuseppe Sciortino Pdf

Even as the specter of populism haunts contemporary societies, scholars have not been able to agree about what it is. Except for one thing: a deviation from democracy, the source, it seems, of the precarious position in which so many societies find themselves today. This volume aims to break the Gordian knot of “populism” by bringing a new social theory to bear and, in so doing so, suggesting that normative judgments about this misunderstood phenomenon need to be reconsidered as well. Populism is not a democratic deviation but a naturally occurring dimension of civil sphere dynamics, fatal to democracy only at the extremes. Because populism is highly polarizing, it has the effect of inducing anxiety that civil solidarity is breaking apart. Left populists feel as if civil solidarity is an illusion, that democratic discourse is a fig leaf for private interests, and that the social and cultural differentiation that vouchsafes the independence of the civil sphere merely reflects the hegemony of narrow professional interests or those of a ruling class. Right populists share the same distrust, even repulsion, for the civil sphere. What seems civil to the center and left, like affirmative action or open immigration, they call out as particularistic; honored civil icons, such as Holocaust memorials, they trash. How can the sense of a vital civil center survive such censure from populism on the left and the right? Populism in the Civil Sphere provides compelling answers to these fundamental questions. Its contributions are both sophisticated theoretical interventions and deeply researched empirical studies, and it will be of great interest to anyone concerned about the most important political developments of our time.

Author : Inger Furseth
Publisher : Springer
Page : 341 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2017-08-20
Category : Religion
ISBN : 9783319556789

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Religious Complexity in the Public Sphere by Inger Furseth Pdf

This book is an empirical comparative study of the complexity of religion in the public spheres of the five Nordic countries. The result of a five-year collaborative research project, the work examines how increasingly religiously diverse Nordic societies regulate, debate, and negotiate religion in the state, the polity, the media, and civil society. The project finds that there are seemingly contradictory religious trends at different social levels: a growing secularization at the individual level, and a deprivatization of religion in politics, the media, and civil society. It offers a critique of the current theories of secularization and the return of religion, introducing religious complexity as an alternative concept to understand these paradoxes. This book is for scholars, students, and readers with an interest in understanding the public role of religion in the West.

Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander,Carlo Tognato
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 279 pages
File Size : 55,9 Mb
Release : 2018-05-03
Category : History
ISBN : 9781108426831

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The Civil Sphere in Latin America by Jeffrey C. Alexander,Carlo Tognato Pdf

Illuminates hot button issues in contemporary Latin America from an intellectually radical perspective: a sociological theory of democracy as civil sphere.

Author : Jeffrey C. Alexander,Agnes Shuk-mei Ku,Sunwoong Park
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 323 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2019-02-21
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781108427838

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The Civil Sphere in East Asia by Jeffrey C. Alexander,Agnes Shuk-mei Ku,Sunwoong Park Pdf

Examines a range of contemporary social and cultural conflicts in East Asia and the echoes they have throughout the world.

Author : Filip Wijkström,Annette Zimmer
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 0 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2011
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 3845231629

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Nordic Civil Society at a Cross-Roads by Filip Wijkström,Annette Zimmer Pdf

Author : Bernard Enjolras,Karl Henrik Sivesind
Publisher : Emerald Group Publishing
Page : 312 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2009-12-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781849506083

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Civil Society in Comparative Perspective by Bernard Enjolras,Karl Henrik Sivesind Pdf

Presents a collection of comparative studies of civil society around two main issues: the comparison and analysis of civil society regimes in relation to different constructions of citizenship and welfare states and the role of civil society in governance and active participation of citizens.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 45,6 Mb
Release : 2014-11-13
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9789004281196

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The Paradox of Openness by Anonim Pdf

Openness implies bottom-up empowerment and top-down transparency. The Paradox of Openness analyses the tensions encountered when openness is applied to the quest for democracy and markets, freedom and truth, compliance and transparency, and consensus and dissent in progressive Nordic societies.

Author : Seth Abrutyn,Omar Lizardo
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 714 pages
File Size : 45,8 Mb
Release : 2021-11-01
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783030782054

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Handbook of Classical Sociological Theory by Seth Abrutyn,Omar Lizardo Pdf

This is the first handbook focussing on classical social theory. It offers extensive discussions of debates, arguments, and discussions in classical theory and how they have informed contemporary sociological theory. The book pushes against the conventional classical theory pedagogy, which often focused on single theorists and their contributions, and looks at isolating themes capturing the essence of the interest of classical theorists that seem to have relevance to modern research questions and theoretical traditions. This book presents new approaches to thinking about theory in relationship to sociological methods.

Author : Graham Smith
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 160 pages
File Size : 44,6 Mb
Release : 2021-02-01
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781509539260

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Can Democracy Safeguard the Future? by Graham Smith Pdf

Our democracies repeatedly fail to safeguard the future. From pensions to pandemics, health and social care through to climate, biodiversity and emerging technologies, democracies have been unable to deliver robust policies for the long term. In this book, Graham Smith asks why. Exploring the drivers of short-termism, he considers ways of reshaping legislatures and constitutions and proposes strengthening independent offices whose overarching goals do not change at every election. More radically, Smith argues that forms of participatory and deliberative politics offer the most effective democratic response to the current political myopia, as well as a powerful means of protecting the interests of generations to come.

Author : Carlo Tognato,Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky,Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 291 pages
File Size : 45,9 Mb
Release : 2020-07-04
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783030445904

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The Courage for Civil Repair by Carlo Tognato,Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky,Jeffrey C. Alexander Pdf

This original, scholarly collection of essays investigates the intersections of large-scale international migration and solidarity-building. Unpacking how civil courage occurs, under what forms, and what sustains it, Carlo Tognato, Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky, and Jeffrey C. Alexander bring together authors to explore a new theory of the exemplary individual or collective in the recent age of “migration crises”—actors who stand against injuries or injustices toward migrants, even when it is costly or risky in a context of hostility or indifference. A resource for those interested in the triggers and safeguards of democracy and civil society, and for scholars and practitioners alike, this volume offers empirical case studies from the US, Europe, Australia, and Latin America of cross-group solidarity efforts.