Overview

This book challenges the pessimism that has so marked, and impoverished, social theorizing about modern life. Modernity has often been dark and debilitating, but it has also generated hope for a better life and extraordinary reforms and liberations, from the creation of hopeful democracies in the face of dangerous dictatorships to feminist transformations of patriarchy, struggles against imperialism and racial domination, and the stubborn but persistent reconstruction of pivotal institutions. Jeffrey Alexander theorizes these radical reforms as ""civil repairs"" – as efforts to make real the utopian promises of the civil sphere. Ideal civil spheres make stirring commitments to social solidarity, equality, and individual autonomy. Real civil spheres are rent by anti-civil hierarchies of class, gender, race, and religion.  Contradictions between real and ideal civil spheres generate social movements for justice, which are not only about challenging power but making new and more solidarizing meanings. Civil repair is at once symbolic and institutional. It offers a new way to conceptualize progressive social change.

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9781509506453

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Reviews

“Repair: really? According to Jeffrey Alexander, yes, really!  Whether you still want to believe in its utopian promises, or see the civil sphere as the source of Western democracy’s failures, this collection of essays on the challenges of the new millennium from one of the preeminent American social theorists of our time will help you – or maybe force you – to take a fresh look at social movements, politics, and social change.” Doug Hartmann, University of Minnesota “With his civil sphere theory, Jeffrey Alexander offered us a decoder ring for the dizzying debates and deep divisions that shape modern democratic life. In his newest work, Civil Repair, he shows that amid this tumult determined groups of democratic actors have succeeded in their efforts to advance solidarity and justice. Though he is clear that these ‘frontlash’ projects of civil repair often trigger equally powerful spasms of ‘backlash,’ this book offers hope during a troubling time.” Ruth Braunstein, University of Connecticut

Author Information

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University.

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