Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere

It is not only a paradox but something of an intellectual scandal that, in an era so shaken by radical actions and ideologies, social science has had nothing theoretically new to say about radicalism since the middle of the last century. Breaching the Civil Order fills this void. It argues that, rather than seeing radicalism in substantive terms - as violent or militant, communist or fascist - radicalism should be seen more broadly as any organized effort to breach the civil order. The theory is brilliantly made flesh in a series of case studies by leading European and American social scientists, from the destruction of property in the London race riots to the public militancy of Black Lives Matter in the US, the performative violence of the Irish IRA and the Mexican Zapatistas to the democratic upheavals of the Arab Spring, and from Islamic terrorism in France to Germany's right-wing populist Pegida.

Author: Jeffrey C. Alexander
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 12/12/2019
Pages: 678
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.00w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9781108427234

About the Author
Alexander, Jeffrey C.: - Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, Connecticut. His writings over the last three decades have been foundational to the new discipline of cultural sociology, and his seminal work The Civil Sphere (2006) has come to be regarded as the major sociological theory of democracy. He founded and co-directs the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology. He has authored and edited more than fifty books, and his work has been translated in almost thirty languages.Stack, Trevor: - Trevor Stack is Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Latin American Studies at the University of Aberdeen. He is Director of the inter-disciplinary Centre for Citizenship, Civil Society and Rule of Law (CISRUL), which focuses on the study of political concepts in the world. Currently he leads a large (Economic and Social Research Council) ESRC project on Activism in Violent Regions, as well as an EU Marie Curie COFUND grant on Political Concepts in the World.Khosrokhavar, Farhad: - Farhad Khosrokhavar is retired professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris and a director of Observatoire de la radicalisation in the Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, Paris. He has published twenty-seven books, five of which are in English; his work has been translated into ten languages.