Beyond this, they produce a summary “state of the field” in terms of knowledge about the civic. As a group, they provide an opportunity to take stock of core theoretical and methodological characteristics in the cultural analysis of the civic. In reality, despite their recent publication, I already had dog-eared copies of two on my shelf, with the third on my “must read” list. As a result, one might assume that the network of meaning among them that I articulate in this essay is just an artifice, the result of the idiosyncratic tastes of the journal’s book review editor. I was asked to review these books together. They are trustworthy guides for understanding how the historical association between religion and philanthropy (Boltanksi 2012 Mauss 1990 Silber 1998) unfolds in important cases (the Red Cross, global AIDS relief, United States charitable campaigns). The three books reviewed here are engaging, exemplary pieces of scholarship that move the project of explaining the civic along. Though most of this recent work is not “about” religion, a hallmark of this efflorescence is the frequent presence of religion as a core object of the analysis, as religious actors, ideas, and institutions inhabit the civic landscape of post-secular modernity (Gorski et al. Oriented around an array of terms and concepts-civil society, civic arena, civil sphere, civic action, civic engagement-this efflorescence has generated considerable evidence of what a cultural approach brings to a research domain previously dominated by organizational, political, or normative approaches (Boli and Thomas 1999 Habermas 1981 Putnam 2000). and Offutt 2017 Baggett 2001 Bender 2003 Braunstein 2017 Delehanty and Oyakawa 2018 Eliasoph and Lichterman 2003 Eliasoph 2011 Kaufman 2003 Krause 2014 Kurasawa 2007 Lichterman 2005 Lichterman and Potts 2009 Lichterman and Eliasoph 2014 McCormick 2015 Polletta 2006, 2020 Wood 2002).

The cultural analysis of what is termed, in the broadest sense, “the civic,” has blossomed within sociology over the past two decades (Adler Jr.

Simon oakland religion