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Several decades ago, the two-volume Democracy and Civil Society and Civil Society and the State: New European Perspectives (1988) made an appeal for reclaiming the old category of civil society and placing it at the heart of the contemporary human sciences. First revived in Japan during the 1960s, the term civil society featured prominently in the ‘poetry’ and strategies of the 1989 revolutions in central-eastern Europe. It took root throughout Latin America and has subsequently enjoyed a global reception, in countries as different as South Africa and China, Taiwan, India and Indonesia. A case still needs to be made for keeping the category alive, especially by taking it into zones of life, such as childhood and ageing, neglected by most theorists and practitioners of civil society….
Towards a Civil Society: Hopes for Polish Democracy: Interview with Erica Blair (John Keane)
In Adam Michnik, Letters from Freedom: Post-Cold War Realities and Perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998, pp.: 96-113 Click here to read scanned excerpt in PDF format
Eleven Theses on Communicative Abundance
(This is a shortened version of his keynote address at the inaugural meeting of the Amsterdam School of Communications Research, University of Amsterdam, 18 September 1997. This article was first printed in CSD Bulletin Volume 5, Number 1 Autumn 1997)
Structural Transformations of the Public Sphere
Abstract : We are living in times in which spatial frameworks of communication are in a state of upheaval. The old hegemony of state-structured and territorially-bound public life mediated by radio, television, newspapers and books is being rapidly eroded. In its place are developing a multiplicity of networked spaces of communication which are not tied [...]
New perspectives on social movements
An interview with Alberto Melucci, 1991, pp. 180-233, From Alberto Melucci, Nomads of the Present – Social Movements and Individual Needs in Contemporary Society, edited by John Keane and Paul Mier. Click here to read excerpt scanned in PDF format
The Polish Laboratory
New Left Review I/179, January/February 1990 pp. 103-110 Warsaw. Wednesday December 7th. The eighthanniversary of martial law approaches. Foul-smelling fog blankets the city. The battered Russian-made taxi which fetches me from the airport clatters down potholed roads. Rows of grey apartment blocks stand guard, frozen, expressionless. Trams whirr and clang through street crowds. Fur-capped shoppers skelter, [...]
The Legacy of Max Weber
By John Keane, Public Life and Late Capitalism,Cambridge University Press, 1984. Chapter 2, pp. 30-69. This chapter has been scanned and it is available for download in PDF format More information about this book, including excerpts and notes can be viewed here.
Civil Society and the Peace Movement in Britain
From Thesis Eleven, 1984, 8: 5-22. Please click here to read scanned PDF format