Andrew D. Davies’s scientific contributions

Civil society is a concept central to most, particularly Euro‐American, understandings of politics. Broadly conceived as the area of political activity that takes place outside the state, civil society has often been seen as a space of liberal political freedom or, from a more radical perspective, as a space of bourgeois hegemonic control. Since the collapse of state socialism, “civil society” has become a key term for political and development geographers seeking to understand how processes like economic and cultural globalization have shifted political activity into “new,” transnational forms. These debates did not do away with radical theorists' concerns that the potential of civil society as a domain for transformative political change has been overblown. Current debates concern the utility of “civil society” as a concept that adequately expresses the diversity of political forms occurring today. In particular, the concept of political society has been posited as a subaltern zone of difference to an elite civil society. An engagement with civil society then remains a key part of a framework for understanding the relations between politics and society.