Check out the new special issue: Civil Sphere Theory in Cultural Sociology.

The website for the civil sphere theory conference is UP, and registration is open. Registration will be open from March 6, 2023, to July 31, 2023 and please note that contributors must register by May 15, 2023, to be included in the program…

“Photographs of migrants can evoke powerful reactions. Since the ‘migration crisis’ of 2015–16, politicians, media, and the public have all expressed strong opinions about people who cross borders. Within the civil spheres of Western democracies, debates about who belongs as a ‘good citizen’, and who should be excluded as an ‘anticivil’ outsider, result in consequences for migrants and locals alike…”

“Combining Alexander’s (The civil sphere. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) account of an assimilatory mode of civil incorporation with his concept of “societalization” (Alexander in Am Sociol Rev 83(6):1049–1078, 2018; What makes a social crisis? The societalization of social problems. Wiley, Hobroken, 2019), we discuss how “re-societalizing” antisemitism led to strong enactment of anti-antisemitism and increased Jewish sub-group anxiety in the civil sphere. Anti-antisemitism in Denmark has historically been integrated into cultural codes and historical narratives in the civil sphere…”

The organizing committee for the second meeting of the Civil Sphere Theory Working Group is pleased to announce that our meeting will be held on October 18-19, 2023, in Heidelberg, Germany!

The organizing committee for the second meeting of the Civil Sphere Theory Working Group is pleased to announce that our meeting will be held on October 18-19, 2023, in Heidelberg, Germany!

“With eSports and video games rapidly gaining popularity, we are witnessing a rise of semi-autonomous gaming communities. I propose using Alexander’s civil sphere theory and my concept of the gaming sphere to understand the dynamics of the meaning-making processes herein. I ask: why did the Blitzchung controversy spark such outrage?”

Ondřej Klíma

Jeffrey Alexander hosted a group of scholars on October 22 and 23, 2022 at Yale University to workshop their chapters for the forthcoming volume, The Civil Sphere in India (Polity Press).

The sixth in a series of conference-book projects to globalize civil sphere theory (CST) is here and will take place on Saturday, October 22, and Sunday, October 23, 2022, at the Humanities Quadrangle, Room 107; Yale University; New Haven, CT.

“Responding to social protest may face state authorities, and especially public security forces, with the difficult task of juggling the preservation of the public order, the need to push back on insurgencies, and the demand to safeguard democratic practices in society. To maintain that tricky balance, authorities need to decipher it. This, however, is less straightforward than it might appear at the first glance.”

Carlo Tognato