Book Review, Mario Diani 'The Cement of Civil Society' Cambridge University Press 2015

Reviewing The Cement of Civil Society means engaging with a book elaborated over almost a decade of theoretically driven empirical work, aimed at updating the sociological literature on collective action within a wide and sweepingly ambitious scope. Without a doubt, Mario Diani’s latest work is worth reading and studying for scholars and students of many different fields – among them network analysis, organizational sociology, political sociology, and social movement studies. This is not to mention its general social scientific interest beyond any of these particular niches. This work attempts to account for how interactions shape social bonds, how collective actors exchange resources, and how the combinations of all these factors definitively “cement” social life – thereby forming some of the bedrock for what we generally call “civil society.” Thus, the questions it poses are of relevance to anyone concerned with general social mechanisms, and the dynamics affecting social life at a broad level.