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Paradoxes of Civil Society

Paradoxes of Civil Society

Frank Trentmann

(2000)

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Book Details

Abstract

"Civil Society" has been experiencing a global renaissance among social movements and political thinkers during the last two decades. This collection of original papers by junior and senior scholars offers an important comparative-historical dimension to the debate by examining the historical roots of civil society in Germany and Britain from the seventeenth-century revolutions to the beginning of the welfare state.


Frank Trentmann is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Birkbeck College, University of London.


"[This book] does an admirable job of making our understanding of civil society both more elaborated and more complex. Bringing together theoretical and historical perspectives, and insisting on the significance of the comparative, these essays provide an important resource for researchers, teachers and students."  ·  Catherine Hall,

"It is fitting to recognize ways in which civil society may produce conformity and inequality; it is also fitting to recognize how it allows for challenges to insularity and discrimination. This volume succeeds admirably in fostering an appropriately nuanced and balanced view."  ·  Albion

"The resurgence of interest in the concept of civil society among political scientists and social theorists has permeated the language of historians during the past decade – bringing with it the familiar dangers of inflation, confusing eclecticism, and misuse. This volume ... grounds the discussion in an impressive series of carefully delimited essays, contextualizing the category in rich and illuminating ways. Frank Trentmann's team eloquently brings theory and history together."  ·  Geoff Eley,

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Title Page iii
Copyright Page iv
Table of Contents v
Preface to the Revised Second Edition vii
Acknowledgments x
Preface to the First Edition xi
Part I. Introductory Perspectives 1
Introduction 3
Chapter 1. Reflections on the Making of Civility in Society 47
Part II. Conceptual Origins 59
Chapter 2. \"The Commerce of the Sexes 61
Chapter 3. Kant, Smith, and Hegel 85
Chapter 4. Immanuel Kant's Two Theories of Civil Society 105
Part III. Associational Life and the Education of Citizens 133
Chapter 5. The Intelligence Gazette (Intelligenzblatt) as a Road Map to Civil Society 135
Chapter 6. Club Culture and Social Authority 157
Chapter 7. Energy, Willpower, and Harmony 176
Part IV. The Limits of Inclusion 197
Chapter 8. Civic Culture, Women's Foreign Missions, and the British Imperial Imagination, 1860 - 1914 199
Chapter 9. The Village Goes Public 223
Chapter 10. Religion and Civil Society 244
Chapter 11. Prostitutes, Civil Society, and the State in Weimar Germany 263
Part V. Political Culture and Social Citizenship 281
Chapter 12. Oligarchs, Liberals, and Mittelstand 283
Chapter 13. Civil Society, Commerce, and the \"Citizen-Consumer 306
Chapter 14. Socialism, Civil Society, and the State in Modern Britain 332
Chapter 15. Civil Society in the Aftermath of the Great War 352
Contributors 369
Select Bibliography 371
Index 377