Information Society and Civil Society: Contemporary Perspectives on the Changing World Order (Science and Society (West Lafayette, Ind))

Any examination of contemporary society must recognize a central place for information and communication processes and for the technologies and institutions on which they rely, particularly for public communication. The essays in this volume juxtapose two central concepts of recent social and political thought -- civil society and information society - and relate them to the complex nature of contemporary public communication. A number of authors, including several contributors to this collection, argue that on the eve of the twenty-first century, civil society is beginning to disintegrate everywhere. In this volume, fifteen scholars from ten different countries address that argument by problematizing the relation between the older concept, civil society, and the newer one, information society, and offering perspectives on future directions.