Journal of Civil Society has launched in 2005 as the leading academic voice for research and policy analysis on civil society. As a peer-reviewed journal with demanding standards, JCS will provide a high profile, high impact outlet for world-class scholarship and debate on civil society, and serve as the authoritative source for research in an emerging field that lacks a central organ for dissemination.

Civil Society is a contested concept. There is little agreement on its precise meaning, though much overlap exists among core conceptual components. In a generic sense, civil society refers to the set of institutions, organizations, and behaviors situated between the state, the business world, and the family. This would include voluntary organizations of many different kinds, philanthropic institutions, social, cultural and political movements and dimensions of the public sphere, forms of social capital, political participation and social engagement, and the values and behavioral patterns associated with them. In its transnational dimension, the term goes beyond the notion of both nation state and national society, and allows us to examine critical aspects of globalization and the emergence of a new social, cultural and political sphere.

JCS seeks to improve the theoretical understanding and empirical knowledge of civil society, its nature, patterns and composition, its history, development, and relationships with the economy, the political system and society at large. A major focus of the journal will be to encourage and inform the range of scholarships and approaches on civil society across disciplines and national as well as cultural boundaries.

Specifically, JCS welcomes research and contributions on the history and evolution of civil society in different world regions, at local and regional levels, types, forms and expressions of civil society, empirical work on structure and change of civil society, mapping the contours and dimensions of civil society, theoretical and conceptual studies, comparative analysis, inter- and cross-disciplinary approaches, policy analysis, institutions, community, social inequality, social inclusion, social justice, social and cultural capital, economy, governance and democracy.

Civil society cuts across disciplinary boundaries and brings into focus some of the longstanding and nagging questions about the relationship between economy, polity and society. Indeed, civil society may well emerge as the most significant conceptual innovation of the social sciences at the turn of the century. The concept signals the beginning of an intellectual shift away from disciplinary specialization on ‘the’ state and ‘the’ market to more general debate about key aspects of the human condition. This shift, and the growing importance of the term civil society in virtually all social sciences, may well be indicative of a potential paradigmatic change among the major social sciences more generally.

Journal of Civil Society Call for Papers

To order the Journal of Civil Society please click here.