Civil Society

The Critical History of an Idea

John R. Ehrenberg
(http://nyupress.org/author/3890)
285 pages
March, 1999
ISBN: 9780814722077

AUTHOR
John Ehrenberg is Professor and
Chair of the Political Science
Department at the Brooklyn
Campus of Long Island University
and has written extensively on
social and democratic thought.
All books by John R. Ehrenberg
(http://nyupress.org/author/3890)

In the absence of noble public goals, admired

leaders, and compelling issues, many warn of a
dangerous erosion of civil society. Are they
right? What are the roots and implications of
their insistent alarm? How can public life be
enriched in a period marked by fraying
communities, widespread apathy, and
unprecedented levels of contempt for politics?
How should we be thinking about civil society?
Civil Society examines the historical, political,
and theoretical evolution of how civil society
has been understood for the past two and a half
millennia. From Aristotle and the Enlightenment
philosophers to Colin Powell's Volunteers for
America, Ehrenberg provides an indispensable
analysis of the possibilities-and limits-of what
this increasingly important idea can oer to
contemporary political aairs.
Civil Society is the winner of the Michael J.
Harrington Award from the Caucus for a New
Political Science of APSA for the best book
published during 1999.

REVIEWS

"A sweeping and illuminating analysis of the evolving

concept of civil society. Ehrenberg locates
understandings of civil society in the context of
historically changing relations of state, economy, and
community and helps us to understand the ambiguities
and even contradictions which beriddle the oft-evoked
term."
Frances Fox Piven, CUNY Graduate Center
"Ehrenberg's work is a book that anyone studying the
third sector shoul dhave on his or her bookshelf."
Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary & Nonprofit
Organizations
"No one involved in the current debates over civil
society-and there can only be a few serious scholars
who are not-will want to miss John Ehrenberg's
trenchant and thrill-packed (well, for us theorists
anyway) work. A major contribution to the history of
political theory by one of the brightest stars in the
critical galaxy."
Bertoll Ollman, author of Dialectical Investigations
"An absorbing study of a seminal idea in the history of
political theory . . . This is a beautifully written work with an
important critical perspective. It makes a genuine scholarly
contribution."
Stephen Eric Bronner, Rutgers University