Description
Book Synopsis At the moment, no other European city attracts so much fascination as the city of Berlin. An unrivalled symbol of modern urban life, Berlin is a dynamic city whose inhabitants, in the course of the past two centuries, have lived through both the rapid growth and the violent destruction of the institutions of civil society, several times over. This volume situates itself within these developments by presenting, for the first time in English, a sample of the best, recently written essays on contemporary civil societies, their structural problems, and their uncertain future, written by scholars with a close, long-standing relationship with the city. They are pre-occupied with a broad sweep of substantive themes, but in each case they focus upon one or other of the key trends that are shaping actually existing civil societies.
Trade Review “The range and depth of this volume is impressive, as evidenced in Keane's excellent introduction, which extends from the philosophical foundations of civil society to its historical antecedents… By providing such a rich canvas of case studies and by illuminating the immanent tensions civil societies contend with, this book will become a standard reference for those interested in Europe and for scholars more generally engaged in state-society relations and the growing field of global studies.” • H-German
Table of Contents Editors’ Preface
Dieter Gosewinkel and Jürgen Kocka
Introduction: Cities and Civil Society
John Keane
Chapter 1. Civil Society in Historical Perspective
Jürgen Kocka
Chapter 2. Corporate Responsibility and Historical Injustice
Susanne-Sophia Spiliotis
Chapter 3. The Faces of Social Inequality
Paul Nolte
Chapter 4. Civil Society: Desperate Wishful Thinking?
Herfried Münkler
Chapter 5. Transformations of German Civil Society: Milieu Change and Community Spirit
Hans Joas and Frank Adloff
Chapter 6. Civility, Violence and Civil Society
Sven Reichardt
Chapter 7. Is There, or Can There Be, a ‘European Society’?
Claus Offe
Chapter 8. Social Movements Challenging Neoliberal Globalization
Dieter Rucht
Chapter 9. Entangled Histories: Civil Society, Caste Solidarities and Legal Pluralism in Post-colonial India
Shalini Randeria
Chapter 10. The Temptations of Unfreedom: Erasmus Intellectuals in the Age of Totalitarianism
Ralf Dahrendorf
Notes on Contributors
Index
