Citation

Alexander JC. Socio. Theor. 2001; 19(3): 371-400.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2001, American Sociological Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/0735-2751.00146

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Over the last decade, I have been trying to help fashion a new kind of critical social theory, one that can contribute to the "new theoretical reflection and interpretation of social contestation and political action" (Cohen 1982:xii) that such post-Marxist thinkers as Cohen and Seyla Benhabib (1986) called for two decades ago but that has seemed less and less ascertainable with the passing of time. Outlining a sociological approach to what I call the "civil sphere" of society, I have defined what I would like to think is a new object domain for sociology, one centering on the expansion and contraction of democratic solidarity. Through a series of conceptual elaborations and empirical investigations, I have begun to sketch out core components of this "civil sphere." These cultural and institutional components are fundamentally ambiguous, and they form contradictory relations with the "noncivil" domains that surround the civil sphere.

Language: en