Michael Edwards provides a wealth of information and theoretical framework that firmly grounds the concepts surrounding “civil society” in something that is graspable and understandable. Edwards establishes these three general conceptual frameworks, but wastes no time pulling out their inconsistencies or inability to effectively tackle every scenario. What he proposes instead is a synthesis of ideas that balances the shortcomings of any one school of thought by channeling the strengths from others.
Although I've been doing some pretty extensive reading in this field, Edward’s divisions into three general schools of thought helped to parcel out and categorize ideas into something digestible. The lack of specification that usually goes with these terms left me with only a hazy grasp of their roots and ideology, but thankfully this book helped clear that up again. Trying to look at civil society as a global phenomenon and trying to figure out what direction to take said civil society is an awfully imposing task - but to even begin it, I think everyone needs a solid grounding in the evolution of philosophies that pertain to it, and an idea of how we can utilize all of them. On those fronts, Edwards gives us some hope for a better tomorrow.

Great overview of what the term civil society really means. it was interesting to see the various academic definitions which are used without specification in most discussions.