Civil Society A Reader in History, Theory, and Global Politics

John A. Hall and Frank Trentmann provide the first critical selection of texts on the evolution of "civil society" as a seminal and hotly debated idea from the seventeenth century to the present. It combines European texts with global debates about civil society, including texts about Islam, China, and human rights. This critical edition is essential reading for students and academics in history, sociology, politics, and international relations as well as for members of the public and social activists interested in civil society today.

John A. Hall is Dean and Faculty of Arts James McGill Professor of Sociology, McGill University.

Frank Trentmann is Senior Lecturer in Modern History, Birkbeck College, University of London.

Introduction * Apotheosis: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries * Europe * Toleration * Civil Society/Political Society * Civility, Sociability, Associational Life * Commerce * Civil Society and War * Civil Society, Nation, Cosmopolitanism * Civil Society and the Challenge of Modern Ideologies: Liberalism, Imperialism, Socialism, Nationalism * Rights of Man/Radicalism vs. Religious Civil Society in Conservatism * Liberalism and Empire * Idealism * Burgerliche Gesellschaft * Moral Reform/Popular Radical/Emanicpatory Associations/Middle Class Sociability and Nostalgia* Organic Associationalism and the Critique of Liberalism