Author: Sudipta Kaviraj
Sunil Khilnani/
Editor(s): Sudipta Kaviraj / Sunil Khilnani
Publisher: Cambridge University press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 330
ISBN/UPC (if available): 8175961082
Description
Civil society is one of the most used - and abused - concepts in current political thinking. In this important collection of essays, the concept is subjected to rigorous analysis by an international team of contributors, all of whom seek to encourage the historical and comparative understanding of political thought. The volume is divided into two parts: the first section analyses the meaning of civil society in different theoretical traditions of Western philosophy.
In the second section, contributors consider the theoretical and practical contexts in which the notion of civil society has been invoked in Asia, Africa and Latin America. These essays demonstrate how an influential Western idea like civil society is itself altered and innovatively modified by the specific contexts of intellectual and practical life in the societies of the South.
REVIEW
This collection is unusually coherent in plan and consistent in quality. The editors have assembled an excellent group of authors.
-The Times Higher Education Supplement
Contents
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
INTRODUCTION
Ideas of civil society
PART I - THEORETICAL TRADITIONS IN THE WEST
The development of civil society
SUNIL KHILNANI
Concepts of civil society in pre-modern Europe
ANTHONY BLACK
The contemporary political significance of John Locke’s conception of civil society
JOHN DUNN
Civil society in the Scottish Enlightenment
FANIA OZ SALZBERGER
Enlightenment and the institution of society: notes for a conceptual history
KEITH MICHAEL BAKER
Hegel and the economics of civil society
GARETH STEDMAN JONES
Civil society in the Marxist tradition
JOSEPH FEMIA
PART II - ARGUMENTS IN THE SOUTH
Civil society in extra-European perspective
JACK GOODY
On civil and political societies in post-colonial democracies
PARTHA CHATTERJEE
Civil society and the fate of the modern Republic in Latin America
LUIS CASTRO LEIVA AND ANTHONY PAGDEN
The Western concept of civil society in the context of Chinese history
THOMAS METZGER
Civil society, community and democracy in the Middle East
SAMI ZUBAIDA
Mistaking governance for politics: foreign aid, democracy and the construction of civil society
ROB JENKINS
The promise of civil society in the South
GEOFFREY HAWTHORN
In search of civil society
SUDIPTA KAVIRAJ
INDEX