Civil Society, Philanthropy, and the Fate of the Commons
Publication Year: 2010
Published by: Tufts University Press
One advantage of taking a long time to complete a book is that it allows incorporation of new research and information on events that occur along the way. That has certainly been the case with this project. It began in the form...
Beneath many of the great challenges facing humanity in the twenty-first century—threats to the environment, public health, and global security among them—lurks a single underlying dilemma: How do we solve the perplexing problem...
1. The Concept of Civil Society
The concept of civil society, like that of democracy, has come to have worldwide resonance. But what exactly is civil society? The idea has ancient roots. From the earliest times, human communities required cooperative behavior for survival...
2. Institutional Structures
The institutional structures of modern civil society evolved from a long sequence of historical developments that have their beginnings in the classical formulations of civic life in ancient Greece. The polis, the city-state, in its ideal form...
3. Normative Traditions
Like the institutional elements, the three normative strands that are central to the constitution of civil society emerged from a long history of moral argument and social change. They represent the value commitments that underlie...
4. The Emergence of Civil Society in the Dutch Republic
The streams of philosophical and social development that predated modern civil society flowed in parallel currents from the classical period into the early modern era of sixteenth-century Europe. In the seventeenth century...
5. The Enlightenment Legacy
The conclusion of the Thirty Years’ War in Continental Europe, the Civil War in England, and the Glorious Revolution marked points of radical historical transformation in Western culture, resulting in a new relationship between state...
6. Civil Society in America
The profound influence of the Enlightenment on the development of American political and social thought is well known from the works of the writers and activists who provided the impetus for the American War of Independence...
7. Private and Public Goods in the Twenty-first Century
The seven dimensions of civil society that had evolved through the historical developments described in the preceding chapters—institutional structures of philanthropy, the rule of law, private associations, and a system of free...
8. Philanthropy, Civil Society, and the Commons
Given the enormous challenges involved in reconciling the pursuit of individual interests with the protection of the commons in the twenty-first century, what resources does society have for balancing the two? Our historical review...
Page Count: 224
Publication Year: 2010
Series Title: Civil Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
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