Civil Society: History and Possibilities

by Edited by Sudipta Kaviraj , Sunil Khilnani

• ISBN13: 9780521633444
• ISBN10: 0521633443
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

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.

Table of Contents

List of contributors	ix
Introduction: Ideas of civil society	1	(8)
Part I : Theoretical traditions in the West	9	(138)
The development of civil society	11	(22)
Sunil Khilnani
Concepts of civil society in pre-modern Europe	33	(6)
Antony Black
The contemporary political significance of John Locke's conception of civil society	39	(19)
John Dunn
Civil society in the Scottish Enlightenment	58	(26)
Fania Oz-Salzberger
Enlightenment and the institution of society: notes for a conceptual history	84	(21)
Keith Michael Baker
Hegel and the economics of civil society	105	(26)
Gareth Stedman Jones
Civil society and the Marxist tradition	131	(16)
Joseph Femia
Part II : Arguments in the South	147	(177)
Civil society in an extra-European perspective	149	(16)
Jack Goody
On civil and political society in post-colonial democracies	165	(14)
Partha Chatterjee
Civil society and the fate of the modern republics of Latin America	179	(25)
Luis Castro Leiva
Anthony Pagden
The Western concept of civil society in the context of Chinese history	204	(28)
Thomas A. Metzger
Civil society, community, and democracy in the Middle East	232	(18)
Sami Zubaida
Mistaking `governance' for `politics': foreign aid, democracy, and the construction of civil society	250	(19)
Rob Jenkins
The promise of `civil society' in the South	269	(18)
Geoffrey Hawthorn
In search of civil society	287	(37)
Sudipta Kaviraj
Index	324