Peter Kivisto is the Richard A. Swanson Professor of Social Thought at Augustana College and was formerly the Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Turku, Finland.Giuseppe Sciortino is Professor of Sociology at the University of Trento and a Faculty Fellow at Yale University's Center for Cultural Sociology.

Jeffrey Alexander's The Civil Sphere was an original and powerful book, exploring the cultural dimension of civil society, making explicit the normative grounding of his sociology and offering a distinctively American, non-statist understanding of multiculturalism. This book brings together some international leading theorists to explore as well as challenge Alexander's ideas in ways which illuminate the nature of social solidarity and what sociology can offer our fragmented societies.

• List of Contributors ; Introduction: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere, Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino ; Chapter 1: Religiong and the Civil Sphere: A Global Perspective, Robert Bellah ; Chapter 2: Civil Sphere and Political Performance: Critical Reflections on Jeffrey C. Alexander's Cultural Sociology, Bryan S. Turner ; Chapter 3: Civil Society as a Democratic Battlefield: Comments on Jeffrey C. Alexander's The Civil Sphere, Axel Honneth ; Chapter 4: Social Movements, Civil Repair, and Social Movement Theory, Mario Diani ; Chapter 5: The Jewish Question and the Civil Sphere, Chad Alan Goldberg ; Chapter 6: The Civil Sphere and the Arab Spring: On the Universality of Civil Society, Farhad Khosrokhavar ; Chapter 7: Nine Theses on the Civil Sphere, Jeffrey C. Alexander ; Notes ; Index

Peter Kivisto is the Richard A. Swanson Professor of Social Thought at Augustana College and was formerly the Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Turku, Finland.Giuseppe Sciortino is Professor of Sociology at the University of Trento and a Faculty Fellow at Yale University's Center for Cultural Sociology.

Jeffrey Alexander's The Civil Sphere was an original and powerful book, exploring the cultural dimension of civil society, making explicit the normative grounding of his sociology and offering a distinctively American, non-statist understanding of multiculturalism. This book brings together some international leading theorists to explore as well as challenge Alexander's ideas in ways which illuminate the nature of social solidarity and what sociology can offer our fragmented societies.

• List of Contributors ; Introduction: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere, Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino ; Chapter 1: Religiong and the Civil Sphere: A Global Perspective, Robert Bellah ; Chapter 2: Civil Sphere and Political Performance: Critical Reflections on Jeffrey C. Alexander's Cultural Sociology, Bryan S. Turner ; Chapter 3: Civil Society as a Democratic Battlefield: Comments on Jeffrey C. Alexander's The Civil Sphere, Axel Honneth ; Chapter 4: Social Movements, Civil Repair, and Social Movement Theory, Mario Diani ; Chapter 5: The Jewish Question and the Civil Sphere, Chad Alan Goldberg ; Chapter 6: The Civil Sphere and the Arab Spring: On the Universality of Civil Society, Farhad Khosrokhavar ; Chapter 7: Nine Theses on the Civil Sphere, Jeffrey C. Alexander ; Notes ; Index

Peter Kivisto is the Richard A. Swanson Professor of Social Thought at Augustana College and was formerly the Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of Turku, Finland.Giuseppe Sciortino is Professor of Sociology at the University of Trento and a Faculty Fellow at Yale University's Center for Cultural Sociology.

Jeffrey Alexander's The Civil Sphere was an original and powerful book, exploring the cultural dimension of civil society, making explicit the normative grounding of his sociology and offering a distinctively American, non-statist understanding of multiculturalism. This book brings together some international leading theorists to explore as well as challenge Alexander's ideas in ways which illuminate the nature of social solidarity and what sociology can offer our fragmented societies.

• List of Contributors ; Introduction: Thinking Through the Civil Sphere, Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino ; Chapter 1: Religiong and the Civil Sphere: A Global Perspective, Robert Bellah ; Chapter 2: Civil Sphere and Political Performance: Critical Reflections on Jeffrey C. Alexander's Cultural Sociology, Bryan S. Turner ; Chapter 3: Civil Society as a Democratic Battlefield: Comments on Jeffrey C. Alexander's The Civil Sphere, Axel Honneth ; Chapter 4: Social Movements, Civil Repair, and Social Movement Theory, Mario Diani ; Chapter 5: The Jewish Question and the Civil Sphere, Chad Alan Goldberg ; Chapter 6: The Civil Sphere and the Arab Spring: On the Universality of Civil Society, Farhad Khosrokhavar ; Chapter 7: Nine Theses on the Civil Sphere, Jeffrey C. Alexander ; Notes ; Index