The paradox of civility: Rethinking Alexander's civil sphere theory in an age of global conflicts

Abstract

This article revisits Jeffrey C. Alexander's Civil Sphere Theory to explore the enduring paradox of civility and the fragile pursuit of cosmopolitan peace in an era marked by renewed warfare and deepening global divisions. Building on Giambattista Vico's claim that civil society is a human creation and David Held's assertion that history remains with us and can still be made, this article argues that the aspiration toward a global civil sphere – though yet unrealized – endures as a persistent moral and sociological horizon. The analysis positions Alexander's recent reflections in dialogue with Bauman's notion of deterritorialized ‘reconnaissance wars’ and Mann's contemporary sociological analysis of warfare. Together, these perspectives reveal how globalization – within which current wars are increasingly situated – was once envisioned as a framework for extending democratic solidarity beyond nation states but has instead reinforced nationalist boundaries, geopolitical rivalries, and the militarization of international order. At the same time, contemporary struggles for justice, alongside the communicative and affective capacities of twenty-first-century media, are generating new forms of transnational empathy and moral imagination that may reconfigure the civil sphere. The paper concludes that peace, inseparable from the civil sphere itself, remains – though fragile – the most profound and enduring achievement of global civil life.