Projects
Danish civil society from a comparative perspective
This sub-project draws on republican theories of democracy to develop an original theoretical lens through which to rethink ‘Civil Society’. In the republican-democratic view, Civil Society is not a ‘third sector’ beyond the state and the market as in the currently dominant liberal understanding of the concept. Rather, Civil Society designates a political community (or in modern times a state), in which
a) the control of the state apparatus lies in the hands of an empowered citizenry, and
b) a “moral economy” has been constitutionalized, in the form of basic socio-economic rights to all citizens.
Civil Society, then, is not what lies beyond the ‘logics’ of ‘the state’ and ‘the market’, but rather refers to a society, which has been both politically and economically democratized.
Based on this republican concept of civil society, the historical-empirical part of the subproject compares main lines in the development of modernity in China and Western Europe (including Denmark) to ask:
1) Why did the liberal vision of Civil Society as a non-state sphere come to eclipse the classical republican vision of civil society as democratic statehood in Western European societies?
2) Why has the vision of Civil Society – whether in its liberal or democratic-republican form – not (yet) become a dominant concept in modern Chinese society?
3) What are the conditions of possibility for a revival of the republican vision of Civil Society in both Western Europe and China?
This subproject is carried out by Andreas Møller Mulvad.
This subproject is carried out by Andreas Møller Mulvad.
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News
If you wish to participate in the conference Movements & Morality new deadlines have been made! |
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Lars Bo has agreed to sit on the panel for the Civil Society Knowledge Center made by the Danish independent online paper Altinget. |
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In this edited volume, CISTAS researcher Andreas Møller Mulvad has contributed with a chapter |
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CISTAS researcher Anders Sevelsted has just published a new article "Protestant Ethics-In-Action: The Emergence of Voluntary Social Work in Copenhagen 1865-1915" in European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie |
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Researchers from the CISTAS project have participated with papers on several conferences including ISA, LSA, CSSI, PROS, EGOS & SASA during the summer. |
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