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  • The Civil Sphere
  • Michael Allen
The Civil Sphere By Jeffrey C. AlexanderOxford University Press. 2006. 791 pages. $49.99 cloth, $24.95 paper.

In The Civil Sphere, Jeffrey Alexander sets out both to illuminate "a new social fact" and open up "a new arena for social scientific study, one much closer to the spirit and aspirations of democratic life."(24) The new social fact is that of the civil sphere, its illumination calling for an analytic model which aims to define the "boundary relations between civil and uncivil spheres."(24) Alexander's contention is that only when the analytic distinction is made between these otherwise empirically inter-related spheres does it become possible to reveal the "possibilities of justice" that establish the "normative mandates" of democratic societies (33). Revealing these possibilities, he claims to mediate between normative political philosophy and empirical sociology.

Alexander develops his new model by contrasting it with two earlier models of civil society, Civil Society I & II. Neither of these two earlier models adequately establishes the boundary relations between the civil and uncivil spheres, so neither succeeds in capturing the complexity of modern democratic life. As "post-medieval and post-Hobbesian," CSI provides an expansive conception of a "plethora of institutions beyond the state," ranging from capitalist markets to "every form of private and cooperative social relation that created bonds of trust."(24) Such expansiveness was tied to a "positive moral and ethical tone," which came increasingly to focus on markets as "producing self-discipline and individual responsibility."(24) This narrow equation of morality with capitalism, however, led to the demise of this model and the emergence of CSII. Here civil society was shorn of its "cooperative, democratic and associative, and public ties" until it became, primarily under the influence of Marx, a pejorative term denoting a mere "epiphenomenon of capitalism."(27)

Only in recent decades have social theorists renewed their interest in civil society. Although enthusiastic about this development, Alexander laments the paucity of theoretical innovation that has accompanied it, noting that most contemporary theorists simply fall back on CSI. In this connection, he hazards his own model, Civil Society III. Here his core innovation is that civil society is to be conceived [End Page 984] as a sphere that is "analytically independent, empirically differentiated, and morally more universalistic vis-à-vis the state, and the market and from other social spheres as well."(31) Appealing to the well-worn sociological category of solidarity, civil society becomes, for Alexander, a "solidary sphere" that comes into being not through self-interest or power relations, but universalistic moral feeling for others. Indeed, such feelings are not merely products of the market, the state, even the family or corporation, but may be understood to achieve an existence of their own apart from these uncivil spheres. Such a distinctively ontological claim, however, is immediately tempered by the observation that the civil sphere "can only be sustained to one degree or another… always limited by, and interpenetrated with, the boundary relations of other, non civil spheres."(31)

How does the analytic separation of the civil sphere from those non-civil spheres with which it is interpenetrated, mediate between normative political philosophy and empirical sociology? Alexander's answer is decidedly sociological: the "domination of one sphere over another... has been forcefully blocked" only when the civil sphere effectively "invade[s] uncivil spheres, to demand certain reforms."(33) This invasion of diverse uncivil spheres of particularity and prejudice by the analytically distinct sphere of universal moral feeling indeed facilitates "repairs that aim to mend the social fabric."(33) He subsequently defends this idea with considerable insight and vigor throughout the book, in case studies ranging from race and gender to the Jewish Question in America.

But to what extent can Alexander be said to succeed in his ambition to mediate between normative political philosophy and sociology? Undoubtedly, CSIII provides a counterpoint to the philosopher John Rawls for whom "justice is assumed in fantasy as idealization" in the counter-factual original position (34). But it is less clear that Alexander's own analytic model of a solidary civil sphere is sufficient to make good on his own claim to "lay the basis...

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