Civic Action in the Civil Sphere ~ Conference and Book Project

Saturday, May 25 and Sunday, May 26, 2024.

Humanities Quadrangle, Room 107 ~  Yale University ~ New Haven, CT

This is the eighth in a series of conference-book projects to globalize civil sphere theory (CST).

For several decades, sociologists have been re-energizing inquiry into the conditions for social self-organization and solidarity. This question speaks both to the founding concerns of sociology and pressing contemporary concerns about the future of inclusive, equitable, and sustainable democracies around the world. Two cultural approaches share this passionate world of intellectual inquiry. One is Civil Sphere Theory (CST), the other is the civic action approach (CA). While each has been plying its own research program, they share broadly similar normative horizons. CST examines the discursive and institutional structures that orient a democracy from a more macro-societal standpoint. CA examines styles of coordinating action that actors engage to solve social problems – a core component of democracy – from the standpoint of interaction.  

What if our research and theory encompassed both the “big” discursive-institutional structures and the meaningful patterns of civic interaction?  

We are organizing our project to explore just this possibility. We are convinced that each line of work offers irreducible insights. Combining them promises a fuller picture of the cultural and institutional conditions for civic engagement and civil solidarity. We need that picture at a time when even the very aspiration to inclusive, democratic self-organization and governance is imperiled.

Co-Organizers: Jeffrey Alexander, Yale University & Paul Lichterman, University of Southern California

Commentator: Lynette Spillman, University of Notre Dame

Generously supported by: The Edward J. and Dorothy Clarke Kempf Memorial Fund and the MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, and the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University.

Special thanks to CCS Junior Fellow Nicolás Rudas for his assistance with this event.