REVIEW ESSAYS Two Cheers for Global Civil Society ALISON BRYSK Department of Political Science, University of California, Irvine, USA Global Civil Society? John Keane Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 234 pp., ISBN 10: 0521815436/ ISBN 13: 9780521815437 (hardback), ISBN-10: 052189462X/ISBN 13: 9780521894623 (paperback) Global Civil Society and its Limits Gordon Laxer & Sandra Halperin (Eds) Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 272 pp., ISBN 1-4039-0314-X (hardback) Globalizing the Sacred: Religion across the Americas Manuel A. Vasquez & Marie Friedmann Marquardt New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 2003, 256 pp., ISBN 0-8135-3284-1 (hardback), ISBN 0-8135-3285-X (paperback) Can global civil society save the world? What is its relationship to globalization? To local civil society? To global governance? These are the questions we continue to struggle with in the adolescent years of the current wave of globalization; well after the hopeful emergence of a new era, we are beset by doubts regarding its ungainly behavior and ultimate development. The first two works under review offer a sharp debate, which is somewhat emblematic of divisions on the left over these questions. On the other hand, Globalizing the Sacred proposes and documents a completely distinctive set of phenomena that transcend this controversy. Each of these books departs from a clear normative agenda, but they differ in matters as basic as the definition of global civil society and the questions they pose. All encompass a significantly broader understanding of global civil society than the concept’s roots in transnational social movements, including cross-border campaigns, networks, contesta- tions, institutions, and flows (for a useful overview, see Khagram et al., 2002). As theoretical treatments, all make a valuable contribution to move beyond the first wave of mapping literature (Smith et al., 1997; Keck & Sikkink, 1998; Florini, 2000). The joint consideration of these works sheds interesting light on the state of social science as well, since they draw from virtually incommensurable paradigms despite 1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/05/0100095-9 q 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd DOI: 10.1080/14742830500052034 Correspondence Address: Alison Brysk, Department of Political Science, University of California, 3151 Social Science Plaza, Irvine, CA 92697-5100, USA. Social Movement Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 95–103, May 2005