New Book from Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino

Written By Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky

We’re happy to share a new book by our colleagues Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino: The Civil Sphere: A Concise Introduction.

Abstract

This book provides a comprehensive introduction to Jeffrey C. Alexander’s Civil Sphere Theory (CST). It reconstructs the development and key features of this theory and explains why it offers an original and compelling way of thinking about civil society.  

The book reveals the ways in which the various components of CST come together to offer an illuminating framework for making sense of the complexities, ambiguities, and tensions inherent in modern democracies located in highly differentiated and pluralistic societies. It compares CST to civil society theories from the past and present, along with the idea of the societal community and Habermas’s theory of the public sphere.

Among the topics addressed are the relationship between CST and Alexander’s approach to cultural sociology; the binary character of cultural codes; normative philosophy; the role of social movements in effecting civil repair; and the idea of multiculturalism as a new mode of incorporation that makes possible a politics of recognition. The book assesses the main criticisms of CST and concludes by showing how it has proven to be an ongoing, evolving project that has generated a wide range of empirical research and stimulated further theoretical refinement and development.

Reviews

"Accessible and expert, The Civil Sphere introduces an essential perspective on modern democratic life. Kivisto and Sciortino explain Civil Sphere Theory's elements, backgruond, competitors, criqitues, and developments. Their important contribution helps everyone who wants to understand the fraught dynamics of democracy."
Lyn Spillman, University of Notre Dame

"Jeffrey C. Alexander, one of the most important social theorists of our time, has profoundly recast our understanding of civil society, democracy, and solidarity. Now his ambitious and groundbreaking theory of the civil sphere has the lucid, comprehensive introduction it deserves. Kivisto and Sciortino's masterful guide illuminates Alexander's work in relation to the history of ideas, contemporary debates, and ongoing political struggles."
Chad Alan Goldberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Kivisto, P., and Sciortino, G. (2026). The civil sphere: A concise introduction. Polity.

https://www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?book_slug=the-civil-sphere-a-concise-introduction--9781509560561

Table of Contents

  1. By Way of an Introduction

  2. Civil Society Theory: The Tradition

  3. The Civil Sphere: The Blueprint

  4. Criticisms, Questions, and Two Alternatives

  5. The Project: From Author to Network

  6. Coda: Democracy’s Future and Civil Sphere Theory

Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky

Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky is associate professor of sociology at Masaryk University, Brno (Czech Republic), and Faculty Fellow at Yale University’s Center for Cultural Sociology. She is a cultural sociologist in the tradition of the Strong Program, who focuses on the meaning-making process in her research on international migration. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College and her M.A., M.Phil., and PhD from Yale University. Recent books include The Courage for Civil Repair: Narrating the Righteous in International Migration (with Carlo Tognato and Jeffrey C. Alexander, eds., Palgrave, 2020) and Historicizing Roma in Central Europe: Between Critical Whiteness and Epistemic Injustice (with Victoria Shmidt, Routledge 2021), Besides civil sphere theory, her current research focuses on in-depth cultural sociological analysis and reconstruction of public issues such as perceptions of migration, and the cultural sociology of conspiracy theories.

https://www.cstnetwork.org/jaworsky-bio
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