The international conference “The Civil Sphere in Central and Eastern Europe” took place on 30 June–1 July 2025 at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Co-organized by Nadya Jaworsky (Masaryk University Brno) and Susann Worschech (European University Viadrina), the event gathered scholars from across the world to examine civil, uncivil, and noncivil dynamics in post-socialist societies. The result will be an edited volume entitled Post-Transformation and the Civil Sphere in Central and Eastern Europe, to be published in 2026 by Palgrave MacMillan, with Jeffrey Alexander, Nadya Jaworsky and Susann Worschech as editors…

We’re happy to announce that the full program for the Civil Sphere Theory Working Group Meeting 2025 is now available. Explore the panels, speakers, and sessions that await you in Vienna this October.

This special issue arose out of a conference hosted at Heidelberg Univer­sity “The Civil Sphere: Global Perspectives on Culture and Politics,” from Oc­tober 18-19, 2023. The conference united scholars working in the field of cul­tural sociology from across the globe, with the shared goal of engaging with and further developing Civil Sphere Theory, considering its global dimensions, in particular…

Indian democracy is in trouble. A still widely popular, democratically elected leader stands athwart it, dangerously authoritarian and disrespectful of civil liberties, the independence of the courts and the press, and disputatious vis-à-vis organized counter-powers. Leading intellectuals, Indian and Western, write about the death of Indian democracy and the passage to despotism. Despite these clear and present dangers, this volume suggests that the death of Indian…

When activists, advocates, victims of injustice, and ordinary citizens seek to advance (or block) social justice and cohesion, they draw on morally charged ideals. But the wellsprings of solidarity and conflict are complex in a society as diverse as Canada…

The present paper delves into how symbolic boundaries in a school that is undergoing a desegregation process come to shape social boundaries of ‘we-ness’ and ‘otherness’. The theoretical framework of the study starts from an interest in analysing whether symbolic and social boundaries emerge…

This article introduces a theory of societalized politics to investigate crisis events in the German civil sphere between 2015 and 2024, and to proffer an answer to the disputed question of the preconditions that facilitated the rapid rise of right-wing populism in the German context. Drawing on civil sphere and societalization theory, the article specifies the foundational cultural elements, or binary cultural codes (BCCs)...

The book addresses the structures of the meaning of politics in Mexico in recent decades. It studies how the symbolic codes of populism, patrimonialism, and democracy...

The editorial team of the journal Philosophy and Society is pleased to announce a call for papers for the 2025 Special Issue, dedicated to the topic “Resilience and/or vulnerability of the civil sphere.”

The conference titled "The Civil Sphere and Authoritarian Trends in Democracies" was held as part of the 2023-2024 cycle "Past and Present of Authoritarianism in Latin America," coordinated by Dr. Nelson Arteaga Botello at FLACSO Mexico…