• ISBN13: 9788126938643
• Binding: Hardcover
• Subject: Politics and Current Affairs
• Publisher: Atlantic Publishers & Distributors (P) Ltd
• Publisher Imprint: Atlantic
• Publication Date: February 27, 2024
• Pages: 290
• Original Price: INR 1495.0
• Language: English
• Edition: N/A
• Item Weight: 500 grams
• BISAC Subject(s): History & Theory

Political theorists and activists have of late become increasingly enamoured with the concept of ‘civil society’. They see it as the salvation of democratic societies and have used this concept to reconstruct both radical left-oriented and liberal political theories. In this thought-provoking book, Neera Chandhoke argues that to focus on civil society in abstraction from the state and to conceive of it as comprising everything that is not the state constitutes a theoretically flawed stance. She positions her analysis against the state-centric theories of political explanation that have come to dominate the intellectual world, particularly since the 1970s, as well as against studies that use the concept of civil society in isolation, without considering how the state fashions many of the processes in this sphere. The author argues instead that civil society can only be understood by referring to the politics of the state and vice versa. Through an extensive reading and interpretation of the literature in political theory, this study constructs an entirely fresh theory of civil society that can be used to promote democratic participation and responsibility. A pathbreaking study that differs from purely theoretical exercises by addressing itself to praxis-oriented politics, it will be widely welcomed by students of political and social theory, political science, sociology and history, as also by political activists and the general reader interested in the concepts of state and civil society.

Neera Chandhoke is a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for Equity Studies Delhi. She held a professorship in the Department of Political Science, University of Delhi. She has published multiple books on civil society and is a regular contributor to academic journals and newspapers. Her latest publications include We, The People, and Our Constitution (2023) and Violence in Our Bones (2020).

• Acknowledgements.... v
• 1. Of States and of Civil Societies.... 1
• 2. Thinking About the State.... 42
• 3. Civil Society: A Conceptual History.... 74
• 4. Civil Society: The Hegelian, Marxian and Gramscian Traditions.... 116
• 5. Civil Society Reconsidered: The Constitution of the Civil Sphere.... 167
• 6. Civil Society as the Arena of Contestation.... 212
• 7. Restating the Need for Civil Society.... 254
• References.... 266
• Index.... 277