Civil Repair

Jeffrey Alexander theorizes these radical reforms as "civil repairs" – as efforts to make real the utopian promises of the civil sphere. Ideal civil spheres make stirring commitments to social solidarity, equality, and individual autonomy. Real civil spheres are rent by anti-civil hierarchies of class, gender, race, and religion. Contradictions between real and ideal civil spheres generate social movements for justice, which are not only about challenging power but making new and more solidarizing meanings. Civil repair is at once symbolic and institutional. It offers a new way to conceptualize progressive social change.