Description
Book Synopsis Civil society and civic engagement have increasingly become topics of discussion at the national and international level. The editors of this volume ask, does the concept of “civil society” include gender equality and gender justice? Or, to frame the question differently, is civil society a feminist concept? Conversely, does feminism need the concept of civil society?
This important volume offers both a revised gendered history of civil society and a program for making it more egalitarian in the future. An interdisciplinary group of internationally known authors investigates the relationship between public and private in the discourses and practices of civil societies; the significance of the family for the project of civil society; the relation between civil society, the state, and different forms of citizenship; and the complex connection between civil society, gendered forms of protest and nongovernmental movements. While often critical of historical instantiations of civil society, all the authors nonetheless take seriously the potential inherent in civil society, particularly as it comes to influence global politics. They demand, however, an expansion of both the concept and project of civil society in order to make its political opportunities available to all.
Trade Review “On the whole, this much needed book offers both a necessary corrective to and further development of theoretical thinking about and empirical analysis of civil society. It should be required reading among historians, political scientists and sociologists alike.” · Journal of Contemporary European Studies
“Civil Society and Gender Justice does double intellectual duty: at the same time that it subjects the idea of civil society to scrupulous feminist critique, it demonstrates the theoretical utility and political necessity of that concept. Cogently argued and studded with illuminating transnational case studies, this single volume is priority reading for feminists, historians, and citizens.” · Mary P. Ryan (University of California Berkeley)
“Finally, in this rich collection of sparkling essays, the much ballyhooed concept of 'civil society' receives a searching critique and reconstruction from the standpoint of gender. Ranging well beyond the usual Western European and North American contexts, the contributors disclose both the exclusionary limitations and the transformative prospects of multiple incarnations and imaginings of civil society.” · Nancy Fraser (New School for Social Research)
Table of Contents Acknowledgements
Editors’ Preface
Introduction: Gendering Civil Society
The editors
PART I: RETHINKING CIVIL SOCIETY AND GENDER JUSTICE
Chapter 1. Civil Society Gendered: Rethinking Theories and Practices
Karen Hagemann
Chapter 2. Dilemmas of Gender Justice: Gendering Equity, Justice and Recognition
Regina Wecker
PART II: EARLY CIVIL SOCIETIES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE
Chapter 3. The Progress of “Civilization”: Women, Gender, and Enlightened Perspectives on Civil Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain
Jane Rendall
Chapter 4. The City and the Citoyenne : Associational Culture and Female Civic Virtues in Nineteenth-Century Germany
Gisela Mettele
Chapter 5. Feminists Campaign in “Public Space”: Civil Society, Gender Justice, and the History of European Feminisms
Karen Offen
PART III: CIVIL SOCIETY AND THE FAMILY
Chapter 6. The Family – A Core Institution of Civil Society: A Perspective on the Middle Classes in Imperial Germany
Gunilla Budde
Chapter 7. Veiled Associations: The Muslim Middle Class, the Family and the Colonial State in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century India
Margrit Pernau
Chapter 8. “Only Connect”: Family, Gender and Civil Society in Twentieth-Century Europe and North America
Paul Ginsborg
PART IV: CIVIL SOCIETY, GENDERED PROTEST, AND NONGOVERNMENTAL MOVEMENTS
Chapter 9. Necessary Confrontations: Gender, Civil Society, and the Politics of Food in Eighteenth- to Twentieth-Century Germany
Manfred Gailus
Chapter 10. “Good” vs. “Militant” Citizens: Masculinity, Class Protest, and the “Civil” Public in Britain between 1867 and 1939
Sonya O. Rose
Chapter 11. Civil Society in a New Key? Feminist and Alternative Groups in 1970s West Germany
Belinda Davis
Chapter 12. Civil Society-by-Design: Emerging Capitalisms, Essentialist Feminism and Women’s Non-Governmental Organizations in Post-Socialist Eastern Europe
Kristen R. Ghodsee
PART V: CIVIL SOCIETY, THE STATE, AND CITIZENSHIP
Chapter 13. Gender and the Paradoxes of Social Provision: From Civil Society to Welfare State
Sonya Michel
Chapter 14. Fellow Feeling: A Transnational Perspective on Conceptions of Civil Society and Citizenship in “White Men's Countries,” 1890-1910
Marilyn Lake
Chapter 15. Bringing the State Back In: Civil Society, Women's Movements and the State
Birgit Sauer
Selected Bibliography
Notes on Contributors
Index
