Hegel's Social Philosophy

Hegel's Social Philosophy
Author: Michael O. Hardimon
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 300
Release: 1994-05-27
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521429146

Hegel's social theory is designed to reconcile the individual with the modern social world. The concept of reconciliation is explored in detail along with Hegel's views on the relationship between individuality and social membership, as well as on the family, civil society and the state.

The Family, Civil Society, and the State

The Family, Civil Society, and the State
Author: Christopher Wolfe
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 308
Release: 1998
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 9780847692255

The exact place of the family in a healthy political community, and the appropriate way to sustain it, are profoundly complicated and difficult questions. The distinguished contributors to this book endeavor to provide some answers. The first part of the book explores what is distinctive in the current situation of the family, and offers both optimistic and pessimistic assessments of the family in our time, as well as a historical overview. In the second part, authors look at the family today; demographics, economics, and social pathologies are all discussed. Part three offers analysis of the family and American law, especially the law of divorce, and the fourth part deals with the relationship between the family and two profoundly important facets of the structural framework of American life: our capitalist economic system and the cultural power of the media. Finally, the fifth part surveys the various areas of public policy, and concludes by asking whether, and what, public policy can do for the family. This is an important book for sociologists, legal scholars, political scientists, educators, and anyone concerned about the state of the family in America today.

The Golden Chain

The Golden Chain
Author: Jürgen Nautz
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 304
Release: 2013-03-01
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0857454714

The family can be viewed as one of the links in a “golden chain” connecting individuals, the private sphere, civil society, and the democratic state; as potentially an important source of energy for social activity; and as the primary institution that socializes and diffuses the values and norms that are of fundamental importance for civil society. Yet much of the literature on civil society pays very little attention to the complex relations between civil society and the family. These two spheres constitute a central element in democratic development and culture and form a counterweight to some of the most distressing aspects of modernity, such as the excessive privatization of home life and the unceasing work-and-spend routines. This volume offers historical perspectives on the role of families and their members in the processes of a liberal and democratic civil society, the question of boundaries and intersections of the private and public domains, and the interventions of state institutions.

Sustaining Civil Society

Sustaining Civil Society
Author: Philip Oxhorn
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2011
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0271048948

"Devoting particular emphasis to Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico, proposes a theory of civil society to explain the economic and political challenges for continuing democratization in Latin America"--Provided by publisher.

The Family in Civil Society

The Family in Civil Society
Author: Martha Albertson Fineman
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2012
Genre:
ISBN:

The civil societarians claim the family as their domain, its salvation as their mission. The family is a foundational concept - the 'cradle of citizenship' - which teaches 'standards of personal conduct that cannot be enforced by law, but which are indispensible for civil society. Problems with the family are seen as problems for democracy, justifying legal and political responses. This paper addresses civil societarians by examining two reports which set forth the purported diminished state of civil society and suggest proposals for civic renewal: A Nation of Spectators: How Civic Disengagement Weakens America and What we can Do About It, and A Call to Civil Society: Why Democracy Needs Moral Truths. By reviewing these works, the narrow focus of civil societarians, which deflects attention away from more serious problems that the current political and economic contexts present for the family, is laid bare. Issues like wage stagnation and income inequality are overshadowed by Civil Societarians' identification of morality as the paramount of concern. A more appropriate and equitable scheme would more evenly distribute the burdens for inevitable dependency, with the market as well as the state assuming some up-front share of the economic and social costs inherent in the reproduction of society. There is a need for structural changes and institutional accommodation of the demands of caretaking. The real crisis is that we expect marriage to be able to compensate for the inequality created by our other institutions.

Freedom's Right

Freedom's Right
Author: Axel Honneth
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 441
Release: 2014-03-11
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0745680062

The theory of justice is one of the most intensely debated areas of contemporary philosophy. Most theories of justice, however, have only attained their high level of justification at great cost. By focusing on purely normative, abstract principles, they become detached from the sphere that constitutes their “field of application” - namely, social reality. Axel Honneth proposes a different approach. He seeks to derive the currently definitive criteria of social justice directly from the normative claims that have developed within Western liberal democratic societies. These criteria and these claims together make up what he terms “democratic ethical life”: a system of morally legitimate norms that are not only legally anchored, but also institutionally established. Honneth justifies this far-reaching endeavour by demonstrating that all essential spheres of action in Western societies share a single feature, as they all claim to realize a specific aspect of individual freedom. In the spirit of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and guided by the theory of recognition, Honneth shows how principles of individual freedom are generated which constitute the standard of justice in various concrete social spheres: personal relationships, economic activity in the market, and the political public sphere. Honneth seeks thereby to realize a very ambitious aim: to renew the theory of justice as an analysis of society.

The State and Civil Society

The State and Civil Society
Author: Nicole Bolleyer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2018-10-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0191076201

State regulation of civil society is expanding yet widely contested, often portrayed as illegitimate intrusion. Despite ongoing debates about the nature of state-voluntary relations in various disciplines, we know surprisingly little about why long-lived democracies adopt more or less constraining legal approaches in this sphere, in which state intervention is generally considered contentious. Drawing on insights from political science, sociology, comparative law as well as public administration research, this book addresses this important question, conceptually, theoretically, and empirically. It addresses the conceptual and methodological challenges related to developing systematic, comparative insights into the nature of complex legal environments affecting voluntary membership organizations, when simultaneously covering a wide range of democracies and the regulation applicable to different types of voluntary organizations. Proposing the analytical tools to tackle those challenges, it studies in-depth the intertwining and overlapping legal environments of political parties, interest groups, and public benefit organizations across 19 long-lived democracies. After presenting an innovative interdisciplinary theoretical framework theorizing democratic states' legal disposition towards, or their disinclination against, regulating voluntary membership organizations in a constraining or permissive fashion, this framework is empirically tested. Applying Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA), the comparative analysis identifies three main 'paths' accounting for the relative constraints in the legal environments democracies have created for organized civil society, defined by different configurations of political systems' democratic history, their legal family, and voluntary sector traditions. Providing the foundation for a mixed-methods design, three ideal-typical representatives of each path - Sweden, the UK, and France - are selected for the in-depth study of these legal environments' long-term evolution, to capture reform dynamics and their drivers that have shaped group and party regulation over many decades.

When Strangers Become Family

When Strangers Become Family
Author: Ronald J. Angel
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 186
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000436357

As the 21st Century unfolds, the traditional welfare state that evolved during the 20th Century faces serious threats to the solidarity that social programs were meant to strengthen. The rise of populist and nationalist parties reflects the decline of a sense of belonging and inclusiveness that mass education and economic progress were meant to foster, as traditional politics and parties are rejected by working- and middle-class individuals who were previously their staunchest supporters. Increasingly, these groups reject the growing gaps in income, power, and privilege that they perceive between themselves and highly educated and cosmopolitan business, academic, and political elites. When Strangers Become Family examines the potential role of civil society organizations in guaranteeing the rights and addressing the needs of vulnerable groups, paying particular attention to their role in advocacy for and service delivery to older people. The book includes a discussion of the origins and functions of this sector that focuses on the relationship between the state and non-governmental organizations, as well as a close examination of Mexico – a middle-income nation with a rapidly aging population and limited state welfare for older people. The data reveals important aspects of the relationship among government actors, civil society organizations, and political parties. Ronald Angel and Verónica Montes-de-Oca Zavala ask the fundamental question about the extent to which civil society organizations represent a potential mechanism whereby vulnerable individuals can join together to further their own interests and exercise their individual and group autonomy.

The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society

The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society
Author: Michael Edwards
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 532
Release: 2013-07-04
Genre: Law
ISBN: 019933014X

Broadly speaking, The Oxford Handbook of Civil Society views the topic of civil society through three prisms: as a part of society (voluntary associations), as a kind of society (marked out by certain social norms), and as a space for citizen action and engagement (the public square or sphere).