Table Of ContentCivil Society: Between Concepts and
Empirical Grounds
Examining the historical and social trajectories involved in the continuous
development of civil society, this volume reveals the contextual nature of the
process. Through empirical studies focusing primarily on Denmark and cov
ering the period from 1849 to the present day, it analyses the manner in which
civil society has been practised and transformed over time. Presenting a new
theoretical framework informed by a relational and processual perspective,
the book sheds new light on familiar questions pertaining to civil society, the
production of its boundaries and spaces of action, and the means by which
these spaces can become causal factors. A fresh intervention in the study of a
concept that has been central in defining ideas of solidarity and the common
good, and to which researchers and politicians look for solutions to the great
challenges of our time, Civil Society: Between Concepts and Empirical
Grounds will appeal to scholars of sociology, politics, history and philosophy
with interests in civil society.
Liv Egholm is Associate Professor in the Department of Management, Politics
& Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark.
Lars Bo Kaspersen is Professor in the Department of Management, Politics &
Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. He is the co-editor of
Does War Make States? Investigations of Charles Tilly's Historical Sociology
and the author of Anthony Giddens: An Introduction to a Social Theorist.
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Transitional Societies in Central Europe and Beyond
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Indigenous Invisibility in the City
Successful Resurgence and Community Development Hidden in Plain Sight
Deirdre Howard-Wagner
Socio-gerontechnology
Interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Ageing and Technology
Alexander Peine, Barbara L. Marshall, Wendy Martin, and Louis Neven
Young Refugees and Forced Displacement
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Liliana Riga, Mary Holmes, Arek Dakessian, Johannes Langer, and David
Anderson
Urban Secularism
Negotiating Religious Diversity in Europe
Julia Martínez-Ariño
COVID-19
Volume I: Global Pandemic, Societal Responses, Ideological Solutions
Edited by J. Michael Ryan
COVID-19
Volume II: Social Consequences and Cultural Adaptations
Edited by J. Michael Ryan
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.
com/Routledge-Advances-in-Sociology/book-series/SE0511
Civil Society: Between Concepts
and Empirical Grounds
Edited by
Liv Egholm and Lars Bo Kaspersen
First published 2021
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2021 selection and editorial matter, Liv Egholm and Lars Bo Kaspersen;
individual chapters, the contributors
The right of Liv Egholm and Lars Bo Kaspersen to be identified as the
authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Egholm, Liv, 1970-editor. | Kaspersen, Lars Bo, editor.
Title: Civil society : between concepts and empirical grounds / edited by
Liv Egholm and Lars Bo Kaspersen.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series:
Routledge advances in sociology | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020027833 (print) | LCCN 2020027834 (ebook) | ISBN
9780367340957 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429323881 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Civil society–History. | Civil society–Denmark–History.
Classification: LCC JC337 .C58 2021 (print) |
LCC JC337 (ebook) | DDC 300–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027833
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020027834
ISBN: 978-0-367-34095-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-32388-1 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Taylor & Francis Books
Contents
List of contributors vii
Preface x
PART 1
Setting the Scene 1
1 A processual-relational approach to civil society 3
LIV EGHOLM AND LARS BO KASPERSEN
2 The modern conceptual history of civil society 31
CHRISTIANE MOSSIN
3 The “long history” of civil society in Denmark and Western
Europe: Civil society – in the shadow of the state (eighteenth to
the twenty-first century) 48
LARS BO KASPERSEN AND ANDERS SEVELSTED
4 Different states, different shadows: The particular exceptionalism
of civil society in the United States 70
ELISABETH S. CLEMENS
PART 2
The Emergence of the Danish Civil Society 81
5 Civil society and the civilizing mission 83
MAJ GRASTEN
6 Christianity, state, and voluntarism: Protestant processes of
privatization and deprivatization 98
ANDERS SEVELSTED
7 Philanthropy as the co-creator of the welfare state 112
LIV EGHOLM
vi Contents
8 Past and present futures of democracy: The Danish peasants’
movement as democracy instigator and cultural mythologizer 128
CHRISTIANE MOSSIN
9 Eclipsed by the welfare state: Understanding the rise and decline
of the Danish Workers’ Cooperation, 1871–2000 145
ANDREAS MØLLER MULVAD AND BUE RÜBNER HANSEN
10 Civil society in the shadow of the Danish welfare state 159
MATHIAS HEIN JESSEN
11 Civic action as temporal process-in-relations: Towards an
events-based approach 172
DIMITRA MAKRI ANDERSEN
PART 3
Epilogue 187
12 Epilogue: Civil society as process and valuation 189
FRANK ADLOFF
Index 202
Contributors
Frank Adloff is a professor of sociology at the University of Hamburg and the
co-director of the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Futures of
Sustainability”. His research focuses on gift giving, conviviality, civil
society and sustainability. His latest publications include Gifts of Coopera
tion, Mauss and Pragmatism (Routledge, 2016) and Politik der Gabe. Für
ein anderes Zusammenleben (Edition Nautilus, 2018).
Dimitra Makri Andersen is a PhD Fellow at the Department of Management,
Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School, affiliated to the
CISTAS project. Within the frame of the CISTAS subproject ‘Civil Society
and Organizational Forms’, her research examines the dynamics of cross-
sector partnerships between Danish NGOs and businesses, focusing in
particular on issues pertaining to time and temporality. Dimitra holds a
BA in Business Administration and Sociology and an M.Sc. in Strategy,
Organization and Leadership, both from Copenhagen Business School.
She has in the past held different positions as a trade union leader and
politician (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dimitramakriandersen/).
Elisabeth S. Clemens is William Rainey Harper Distinguished Service Pro
fessor of Sociology at the University of Chicago and the current editor of
the American Journal of Sociology. Her research explores the role of social
movements and organizational innovation in political change. Her books
and edited volumes include The People's Lobby (Chicago, 1997) and Poli
tics and Partnerships: Voluntary Associations in America’s Past and Present
(Chicago, 2010). Most recently, Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of
the American Nation-State (Chicago, 2020), traces the tense but powerful
entanglements of benevolence and liberalism in American political
development.
Maj Grasten is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Management,
Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School. Her research sits at
the intersection of Socio-Legal Studies and Global Governance, with par
ticular focus on international organizations and legal bodies, experts and
knowledge production in international law, and the legal foundations of
viii List of contributors
markets. Among her latest publications is the edited book The Politics of
Translation in International Relations (Palgrave, 2020).
Liv Egholm is PhD in history, anthropology and semiotics and an associate
professor at Copenhagen Business School, co-PI of the research program
CISTAS, director of CBS’s Centre for Civil Society Studies (CfC) and the
co-organizer of the EGOS SWG on Organizing in and Through Civil
Society: Perspectives, Issues, Challenges. Her areas of research draw on
pragmatism, cultural history and conceptual analysis to study notions and
practices of “the common good”, gift-giving and the blurred lines of state,
market and civil society. Among her recent publications are Civil Society
Organizations: The Site of Legitimizing the Common Good (2019), Com
plicated Translations (2019), Practicing Civil Society (2020), and Advancing
a Post-Sectoral Conception of Civil Society (2020).
Bue Rübner Hansen is an intellectual historian and sociologist, working as a
postdoc at the University of Jena. His research focuses on ideas and prac
tices of social reproduction, class composition and political ecology.
Within that framework, he has published texts about migration, care on
social media, social movements, and ecological interest formation. He has
recently finished a postdoc project on the “Emergent Ideas of the Good
Life in Common” funded by the Danish Council of Independent Research.
Mathias Hein Jessen is Associate Professor at the Department of Manage
ment, Politics and Philosophy at Copenhagen Business School. He holds a
PhD in The History of Ideas from Aarhus University. He is interested in
the relation between state, market and civil society, and between the state,
corporations and civil society organizations. He has most recently pub
lished articles in Theory, Culture & Society, Voluntas: International Journal
of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations and International Journal of
Politics, Culture, and Society.
Lars Bo Kaspersen (b. 1961), is currently a Professor at Copenhagen Business
School, Formerly Head of the Department of Political Science, University
of Copenhagen. He is author of, among other publications, Anthony Gid
dens: An Introduction to a Social Theorist (Blackwell), Does War Make
States? (co-edited with Jeppe Strandsbjerg; Cambridge University Press),
and War, Survival Units, and Citizenship (Routledge forthcoming, 2020).
Kaspersen’s research areas are state formation processes in Europe, the
transformation of the welfare state, sociology of war, civil society (includ
ing the idea of associative democracy), social theory, and in particular
relational theory. He is co-director, together with Liv Egholm, of CISTAS.
Christiane Mossin is a postdoctoral researcher at Copenhagen Business
School. Based in continental philosophical traditions, her work explores
political, legal and cultural aspects of societal transformations while
building on interdisciplinary approaches in the intersection between
List of contributors ix
political philosophy and sociology, structural anthropology, law and legal
history. Her current research is oriented towards inherited and emerging
discourses and manifestations of collectivity, as well as fundamental issues
of collective subjectivity, with a view to their implications for social order
and change.
Andreas Møller Mulvad is an anti-fraud analyst with the Danish tax autho
rities, and formerly Assistant Professor at the Department of Management,
Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School.
Anders Sevelsted holds a post doc position at the School of Social Work at
Lund University and is an Assistant Professor at the Copenhagen Business
School. Anders’ research focuses on the historical development of civil
society elites, moral elites, social movements and voluntary organizations,
as well as the role of ideas in the development of welfare states that he
studies from a mixed methods approach through interpretive methods,
Social Network Analysis, and GIS. He has further strong research interests
in moral sociology, sociology of religion, elite sociology, historical sociol
ogy, and the American Pragmatist tradition.
