Brief Biography of the Theorist
John Keane has been a leading figure in civil society theory for more than 3 decades. A student in Toronto of C. B. Macpherson under whose direction he wrote his Ph.D. thesis on the public sphere, now a professor of Politics at the Wissenschaftszentrum in Berlin and at the University of Westminster in London, where he founded the Centre for the Study of Democracy, Keane was one of the first contemporary authors to draw new attention to the concept of civil society and to bring together a remarkable group of intellectuals to reflect on the subject. Along the period, he has intelligently witnessed the changes of civil society, has underlined its relation to real democracy and has produced substantial ideas and insights on civil society development and new tendencies.
His contribution became truly remarkable in 1988 when two books under his name were simultaneously published: one (Democracy and Civil Society) reunited seven essays on the subject of civil...
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Keane, J. (1988). Civil society and the state (quoted as CSS). London: Verso.
Keane, J. (Ed.) (1988). Democracy and civil society (DCS). London: Verso.
Keane, J., Inoguchi, T., & Newman, E. (Eds.) (1998). The changing nature of democracy. Tokyo/New York: United Nations University Press.
Keane, J. (1991). The media and democracy. London: Polity.
Keane, J. (1995). Tom Paine. A political life. London: Bloomsbury.
Keane, J. (1996). Reflections on violence (RV). London: Verso.
Keane, J. (1998). Civil society. Old images, new visions (OI). Cambridge: Polity.
Keane, J. (2000). Vaclav Havel – A political tragedy in six acts. London: Bloomsbury.
Keane, J. (2002). Whatever happened to democracy? London: Institute of Public Policy Research.
Keane, J. (2003). Global civil society (GCS). Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press.
Keane, J. (2004). Violence and democracy (VD). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keane, J. (2006). Civil society: Berlin perspectives. Oxford/New York: Berghan Books.
Keane, J. (2009). The life and death of democracy. London: Simon and Schuster. (A brief essay on Democracy, from Encarta Encyclopedia is quoted as DE).
Mellucci, A. (1989). Nomads of the present – Social movements and individual needs in contemporary society. London: Hutchinson.
A larger view of Keane’s books, articles and essays may be consulted at http://www.johnkeane.net
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Puga, C. (2010). Civil Society Theory: Keane. In: Anheier, H.K., Toepler, S. (eds) International Encyclopedia of Civil Society. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-93996-4_521
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