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Globality, Democracy and Civil Society explores the relationship between the concepts of democracy and civil society through a comparison of their meaning and function in different historical and cultural contexts.
This volume presents detailed contextual studies in Europe, North America, Japan, Russia and Turkey. The contributors explore different ways of understanding and developing democratic practices and institutions. Rather than projecting the conditions of modern representative, state-centric democracy onto the global realm, they propose ways of rethinking these very conditions in terms of human diversity and difference. This is done by exploring conceptions of democracy that reconcile cultural plurality with democratic practices, and by using a number of examples and perspectives framed by a global context, rather than by geographical divides between East and West. The contributors are not trying to define the concept of civil society, but rather demonstrating the different ways it is deployed in political practice and disseminated through on-going processes of globalisation.
This book will be of interest to scholars and students of global democracy and governance, cosmopolitan democracy, the future of civil society in a globalising world, comparative politics and political thought.
List of contents
1. Introduction Terrell Carver & Jens Bartelson Part 1 Engaging the Issues in Theory 2. Civil Society and Class: Centrality and Occlusion in Discourse and Practice Terrell Carver 3. The East/West Perspective and Civil Society: Making Visible Similarities and Differences Terrell Carver, Shin Chiba, Reiji Matsumoto, James Martin, Bob Jessop, Fumio Iida and Atsushi Sugita 4. A Historical Reappraisal of Civil Society Discourse in Postwar Japan Reiji Matsumoto 5. The 'Postwar Enlightenment' Project: Masao Maruyama and Liberal Civil Society Fumio Iida 6. 'Mass Society' and 'Civil Society' in Postwar Japan Ryusaku Yamada 7. Challenging Democratic Governance: The Impact of Globalization on the Territorial and Temperal Sovereignty of the State and the Capacities of Civil Society Bob Jesssop 8. Civil Society, Democratic Values and Human Rights Chantal Mouffe 9. Democracy in the 21st Century: Global Questions John Keane Part 2 Engaging the Issue in Practics 10. Democracy, Civil Society and Women's Public Personae: Turkish Women in Muslim Headscarves Hakan Seckinelgin 11. Civil Society between Europe and Asia: Postcommunist Russian Democracy Oleg Kharkhordin 12. Civil Society in Japan: Peace Movements and the Post-War Japanese Constitution Shin Chiba 13. Citizens at Play: Space and the Politics of Civil Society James Martin
About the author
Terrell Carver is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Bristol, UK.
Jens Bartelson is Professor in the Department of Politics at Lund University, Sweden.
Summary
This book explores the past, present and future of democratic values and practice, focussing on conceptions of democracy that reconcile radical plurality with democratic practices, presenting examples and perspectives framed by ‘globality’, rather than an East/West binary.
