About the CST
The Civil Sphere Theory Working Group is composed of theorists and empirical social scientists who share the goal of developing and revising Civil Sphere Theory, fifteen years after its seminal formulation in Jeffrey C. Alexander’s The Civil Sphere (Oxford UP, 2006). The working group conferences every other year and sustains an ongoing discussion via the CSWG website, posting papers, comments, and other news. The CSWG continues the discussions already taking place among nearly 100 sociologists from around the world, which have produced the following volumes:
Solidarity, Justice and Incorporation: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere (edited by Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino, Oxford UP, 2015),
The Civil Sphere in Latin America (edited by Carlo Tognato and J.C. Alexander, Cambridge UP, 2018),
The Civil Sphere in East Asia (edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, David A. Palmer, Sunwoong Park and Agnes Shuk-mei Ku, Cambridge UP, 2019),
Breaching the Civil Order (edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trevor Stack and Farhad Khosrokhavar, Cambridge UP, 2019),
The Nordic Civil Sphere (edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Anna Lund and Andrea Voyer, Polity, 2020), and
Populism and the Civil Sphere, (edited by J. C. Alexander, Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino, Polity, 2021).
Further volumes on India, Canada, and cultural trauma are in the works.
The first meeting of the Civil Sphere Working Group was held at the University of Trento, Italy, in October 2021. The second meeting is planned for 2023, in Germany.
Please visit the Membership page to join the Civil Sphere Working Group!