Big Society cynics (and there are many of them) will wonder how even an academic investigation can stretch to some 177 pages. Even more so at a time when its political lifespan appears to have distinctly run its course. But is Jason Edwards’ edited investigation into the relevance of the idea a useful political postscript or something more relevant? All the contributors are united in ‘thinking that the Big Society is more than bombast or window dressing’ for the Coalition Government's deficit reduction programme and accompanying cuts to public services. But most appear equally cynical about whether the idea was only a rhetorical solution to another opposition soundbite ‘Broken Britain’ and the failed ‘big state’ politics of Labour. Either way you don't hear much of either slogan from David Cameron or his fellow Conservatives these days.

But there is certainly more thought and consideration in this collection of papers than there will have been when the Big Society was first coined as a political idea. The collection charts its origins as a major political theme prior to the 2010 General Election – mixed with a rejection of Margaret Thatcher's anti-society stance and the need to more firmly establish the view of a detoxified, more compassionate Conservative party. This was a key Conservative slogan that Cameron and his team thought would seal the deal with the electorate. And yet it didn't and many in the Conservative party still blame the concept for the failure to win an outright majority in 2010.

This collection of contemporary and revisionist pieces attempts to put more flesh on the bone and it not only finds an expression and a home for social capital theory – but also a wide range of contributing influences from Robert Putnam to Adam Smith, including de Tocqueville, Burke, Hayek, Thomas Paine, Owen, Carlyle and Ruskin for good measure. We are even treated to a little of Philip Blond and Steve Hilton for good measure.

Given the contemporary accounts of some of the chapters, it is impossible to know whether the authors thought the political concept would have ridden its course by the end of 2012. But they certainly would have known that it was largely a subject for derision both inside the Conservative party and beyond and something that was rarely understood or embraced by the wider public.

Some contributing authors are suitably cynical – Rodney Barker and Jose Harris thinking it at best theft of others’ traditions and ideas and at worst a more or less empty concept. But most of the authors in the book clearly believe that there is something in the Big Society concept – politically, socially and/or economically – and as more than just a postscript to a fleeting political slogan or to a bygone age.

Even without the script, some aspects of the Big Society clearly endure. Louise Bamfield explores the continuing impact on early years provision, Adam Leeder and Deborah Mabbett examine how it has taken root in Michael Gove's free school movement and Johnston Birchall looks closely at its acceleration of mutualism in public service delivery.

Perhaps the most entertaining chapter is the transcript, from a seminar at Birkbeck College in November 2011, of a discussion between Maurice Glasman, the Labour Peer and author of Blue Labour, and Jesse Norman, Conservative MP and co- author of the Big Society. Both agree that there needs to be a place for high ideals in today's politics and that the Big Society, like Aristotle before it and the rather more recent Occupy Movement both extol. They even agree on concepts of mutualism, localism and at least a partial rejection of the neo-liberal market orthodoxy that has hastened their decline.

It is well worth a read. Big Society (for it is now a political noun) may now have slipped from David Cameron's and the Conservatives political narrative but its sociological significance is unlikely to go away so easily. Ultimately rooted in the liberal–conservative traditions of anti big government thinking, the concept is most obviously summarised in its similarity to social capital and its decline over recent decades. The desire to rebuild that has been widespread across the political spectrum – and the Big Society is just the latest political expression of that ambition. For that reason alone, politicians and other commentators should hold on to, rather than dismiss the Big Society as failed or discredited political vocabulary.

Edwards points out that the Big Society – like those such as Robert Putnam charting the decline of social capital – essentially ‘laments a world that has been lost: ‘ a world where strong local politics, voluntary public service and mutual and cooperative civic associations were at the heart of Britain's social and economic life’. In that sense, amidst all the modern language and aspirational politics of change, it is clearly a political throwback to the ‘little platoons’ of a bygone age.

So perhaps the best line in the collection therefore comes from the title of Alan Ware's chapter – ‘The Big Society and Conservative politics – back to the future or forward to the past?’