A European Identity

7/29/2019 A European Identity

1/16

http://est.sagepub.comSocial Theory

European Journal of

DOI: 10.1177/1368431027605139652002; 5; 387European Journal of Social Theory

Bo StrthA European Identity: To the Historical Limits of a Concept

http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/4/387

The online version of this article can be found at:

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:European Journal of Social TheoryAdditional services and information for

http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.by MATEI MARIAN on September 26, 2007http://est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alertshttp://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navhttp://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navhttp://est.sagepub.com/subscriptionshttp://est.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts


2/16

A R T I C L E S

A European Identity

To the Historical Limits of a Concept

Bo StrthEUROPEAN UNI VERSIT Y IN STI TUT E, FLORENCE, ITALY

Abstract

The history of a European identity is the history of a concept and a discourse.

A European identity is an abstraction and a fiction without essential propor-

tions. Identity as a fiction does not undermine but rather helps to explain

the power that the concept exercises. The concept since its introduction on

the political agenda in 1973 has been highly ideologically loaded and in that

capacity has been contested. There has been a high degree of agreement on

the concept as such, but deep disagreement on its more precise content and

meaning. The concept of a European identity is an idea expressing contrived

notions of unity rather than an identity in the proper sense of the word and

even takes on the proportion of an ideology. In this sense the concept is

inscribed in a long history of philosophical and political reflection on the

concept of Europe. On these grounds the analytical use of identity in social

sciences can be questioned.

Key words

s Europe s heritage s history s identity s the Other

Identity is a problematic and fluid concept. If taken literally, it means equal, iden-tical. It is a concept used to construct community and feelings of cohesion andholism, a concept to give the impression that all individuals are equal in theimagined community. The invocation of community, cohesion and holism, yes,of identity, emerges exactly in situations where there is a lack of such feeling.Identity becomes a problem when there is no identity, particularly in situationsof crisis and turbulence, when established ties of social cohesion are eroding orbreaking down. Identity was a concept in ancient Greek philosophy and mathe-matics, which did not play any important role in social sciences until the end ofthe nineteenth century when it was incorporated in the emerging discipline ofpsychoanalysis. Only in the 1970s and the 1980s did the concept invade the coreof the social and historical sciences (Niethammer, 2000).

European Journal of Social Theory5(4): 387401

Copyright 2002Sage Publications:London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi

1368-4310[200211]5:4;387401;027993 2002 SAGE Publications. All rights reserved. Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution.

by MATEI MARIAN on September 26, 2007http://est.sagepub.comDownloaded from
http://www.sagepublications.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://www.sagepublications.com/


3/16

The argument in this article is that the history of a European identity is thehistory of a concept and a discourse. A European identity is an abstraction anda fiction without essential proportions. Identity as a fiction does not underminebut rather helps to explain the power that the concept exercises. The concept,since its introduction on the political agenda in 1973, has been highly ideologi-cally loaded and in that capacity has been contested. There has been a high degreeof agreement on the concept as such, but deep disagreement on its more precisecontent and meaning. The concept of a European identity is an idea expressingcontrived notions of unity rather than an identity in the proper sense of the wordand even takes on the proportion of an ideology (Delanty, 1995). In this sensethe concept is inscribed in a long history of philosophical and political reflectionon the concept of Europe. On these grounds the analytical use of identity insocial sciences can be questioned (cf. Brubaker and Cooper, 2000).

With this point of departure, an important question becomes when and howmore precisely the idea of a European identity emerged. What is the history ofthe concept of a European identity? And how is the concept connected to thehistorically developed images of Europe and to the institution building in theEuropean integration process that has been going on since the 1950s?

Intensified European integration has gone hand in hand with a growingacademic and political search for the roots of Europeanness in history, religion,science and culture (Goddard et al., 1994). The meanings of Europe are adiscourse of power on how to define and classify Europe, on the frontiers of

Europe, and on similarities and differences. The idea of Europe became, histori-cally and sociologically, a political idea and mobilizing metaphor at the end ofthe twentieth century, particularly in the wake of 1989. In many versions theemphasis is on Europe as a distinctive cultural entity united by shared values,culture and identity. References are made to Europes heritage of classical Graeco-Roman civilization, Christianity, and the ideas of the Enlightenment, Science,Reason, Progress and Democracy as the core elements of this claimed Europeanlegacy. There are subtexts of racial and cultural chauvinism, particularly whenconfronted with Islam. Europe acquires distinction and salience when pitted

against the Other. When the differences within Europe are emphasized, it is oftenin the form of unity in diversity. Religious differences (Catholic, Protestant,Orthodox Christianity) and linguistic differences (Romance, Germanic andSlavic languages) are seen as correlated, (CatholicRomance, ProtestantGermanic, OrthodoxSlavic), and essentially are underlying the major ethniccleavages and conflicts, historically and contemporary, in Europe.

The European identity was designed and decided at the Copenhagen ECsummit in December 1973 (European Commission, 1973). The framework of themeeting was a global order in unexpected crisis. The Bretton Woods Agreement

after the Second World War, based on the dollar, had collapsed in 1971 after yearsof growing tension between the West European states and their American ally. TheVietnam War underpinned the tension and overstrained the dollar. Moreover,frictions had grown considerably in the machinery of economic growth and fullemployment, mass consumption and mass production mutually reinforcing one

European Journal of Social Theory 5(4)388

http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/http://est.sagepub.com/


4/16

another, based on the long post-war reconstruction boom, and the investments,which fed the boom. Finally, in the autumn of 1973, the dramatic oil priceincrease took the Western world by surprise producing a mood of crisis.

The idea of European identity was based on the principle of the unity of theNine, on their responsibility towards the rest of the world, and on the dynamicnature of the European construction. The meaning of responsibility towards therest of the world was expressed in a hierarchical way. First, it meant responsi-bility towards the other nations of Europe with whom friendly relations and co-operation already existed. Second, it meant responsibility towards the countriesof the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East. Third, it referred to relationswith the USA, based on the restricted foundations of equality and the spirit offriendship. Next in the hierarchy was the narrow co-operation and constructivedialogue with Japan and Canada. Then camedtentetowards the Soviet Unionand the countries of Eastern Europe. At the bottom of the list came China, LatinAmerica and, finally, a reference was made to the importance of the struggleagainst underdevelopment in general (Passerini, 1998).The fact that the MiddleEast was ranked before the USA in this hierarchical otherization demonstratesthe impact of the dollar collapse and the oil price shock.

The concept of European identity, in the 1970s, expanded from its dollarand oil price context as an instrument to consolidate Europes place in the inter-national order. It spread in the framework of attempts to establish a Europeantripartite order of corporatist bargaining to replace the collapsing national

arrangements in this respect. In 1977 the MacDougall Report to the EuropeanCommission suggested a European Keynesian strategy to bridge the economiccrisis and the collapse of key industries, a kind of Euro-corporatist order. A seriousattempt was made in 19778 to translate the national tripartite bargaining struc-tures, which had functioned so well during the era of economic growth in the1950s and 1960s, to a European level in a politics of de-industrialization inindustries like shipbuilding and steel. The idea of a European identity under-pinned these efforts. However, in the bargaining about capacity reduction andlayoffs of labour the solidarity ties among employers, trade unions and govern-

ments followed national lines rather than transnational labour and capital soli-darity (Strth, 1987). The proposals in the MacDougall Report were neverrealized.

In the emerging neo-liberal conceptual framework, which in the 1980s evermore replaced national or European corporatist conceptualization, the regionwas seen as a remedy for weak economic performance in a semantic field wherenetwork, market, nearness and flexibility were other key terms. Compensa-tion for the eroding political legitimacy at the national level and the collapse ofthe political economy was simultaneously sought at the regional and European

levels. Identity became the concept in this search for compensation. Successstories about high-performing regions based on nearness and trust in networkswere contrasted with negative stories of the old and large-scale industrial districts(Piore and Sabel, 1984; Medick and Schlumbohm, 1978; Hirst and Zeitlin,1989; Strth, 2000b).

Bo Strth A European Identity 389



5/16

Parallel to this development, the rhetoric about a European identity becamemore intense in the change of content and point of reference in the 1980s, afterthe failure to establish a European tripartite order. How the connection betweenthe change of economic rhetoric, on the one hand, and the idea of a Europeanidentity, on the other, was made more precisely is not clear. The Europeanidentity, which in the early 1970s was designed for another role, first, to give theEuropean Community new confidence and to define a new role for the EC inthe international order, then to support the Euro-corporatist arrangements, wastransformed to support the connection of the local/regional small-scale level withthe large-scale European framework, where the nation in some sense was by-passed.

Europe and the region were thus not only two alternatives separated from eachother, but they were also connected through the identity concept when Euro-politicans spent resource packages in emerging regions all over the Europe inorder to strengthen European cohesion (identity). And at the same time as theypromoted feelings of regional identities, they promoted the emergence of aEuropean identity, when regional and local politicians, employers, trade unionsand other voluntary associations joined in lobbying for money from Brussels.

The effects on European feelings of belonging were unintended rather thanintentional in the wake of EEC politics to improve economic structural cohesionwithin the polity. In the same vein also the single market discourse worked in the1980s and the Maastricht Treaty, union and euro language worked in the 1990s.

With the more active development of European symbols like the flag, theanthem, the driving licences, etc., connected to the idea of a European citizen-ship, one can talk about a more intentional European identity politics guided bythe Commission since the 1980s and critically analysed by Cris Shore (Shore,2000). These identity politics can be seen as an attempt to speed up theimplementation of what was decided in 1973 although under adjustment to avery different economic and political global situation.

Solutions to the political tensions in the wake of eroding nation-state legiti-macy after the collapse of the international economic order and production mode

in the 1970s were approached through attempts to reconstruct lost nationallegitimacy through the EC and the idea of making poor regions prosperous.Regions provided with cash from Brussels were not necessarily in opposition tothe nation-state but rather were dependent on its support for the cash supply.Success in this respect reinforced both the region and the nation-state as well asEurope. In the rhetoric Europe, the nation and the region are separate andprovided with specific identities. However, they constitute three levels of abstrac-tion, which in practice and in politics are entangled. The expressions of theirentanglement vary between mutual support and mutual competition. Ideas of

belonging are overlapping, inclusive and exclusive in complex and contradictorypatterns, where it would be far too simple to put a European identity againstnational ones. Europe has been and isbothan active element of national, and ofother identitificationsand, at the same time, something different and separatefrom national and other identifications. Europe is both We and the Other.




6/16

Europe can reinforce or weaken national and other identifications depending onthe historical situation and the historical heritage.

Identities and interests, which are of the same category as identity, andtermed national interest are constructed in the intersection between self-images and images of the Other. What has the image of Europe in various partsof Europe represented in this respect? To what extent has Europe been anelement of self-images and to what extent has it been understood as an elementof the Other? In Britain and in countries such as Sweden and Norway, forinstance, Europe is referred to as the Continent, i.e. as belonging to the Others.

As just suggested, as a rule, the answer to these questions is hardly a mutuallyexclusive but rather an overlapping issue. Europe has been an element of bothnational self-understanding, the nation as a part of Europe, and of somethingdifferent outside the nation. How this mix has varied in Europe geographicallyand historically since the Second World War and earlier is a key question to beelaborated further.

Another point of departure in such an undertaking is that national views onEurope vary not only between nations but also within nations (Malmborg andStrth, 2002). There is not one but several contested views of Europe in thevarious nations and at various times, although one specific discourse on Europemight be predominating in a country or across countries at a certain point oftime. The different attitudes to Europe in general and to the European inte-gration project in particular are divided in the national environments along

various lines such as class, gender and age.

Europe and Non-Europe: the Historical Relationship

Since the Middle Ages the image of a European community has been constructedby demarcation from others, e.g. the Turks or the Chinese (the yellow peril).Here ideas emerging in the nineteenth century of white superiority requiring aspecial responsibility in the world (the white mans burden) fit in. Russia has

sometimes been seen as a part of Europe and sometimes as being outside it. Thereare in particular three mirrors in which the idea of Europe has taken shape: theOriental/Asian, the American and the East European. In these mirrors the Otherhas been seen both in terms of inferiority to Europe and in terms of a model toemulate. On first thought Eastern Europe might look less like a model, but theSoviet Union in the 1920s, and among Communists in Western Europe for muchlonger, demonstrates the contrary.

It is difficult to over-emphasize the importance of the monotheisticcompetition between Christianity and Islam beginning with the Crusades for the

self-understanding of Europe. The Crusades did not curtail commercial and othercontacts but built a cultural distinction between a Christian Self and a MuslimOther. This demarcation was further pronounced during the Ottoman expansioninto the Balkans in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Turkish peril waspropagated through new printed media as the main threat to Christianity. The




7/16

Christian identification against the Ottoman rulers was problematic in the Balkanpeninsula inside the Ottoman Empire, however, as the Ottomans had a tolerantregime with respect to religious practices. Moreover, the military and economicpower struggle in the Levant, between the Habsburgs, France, Spain and theItalian city-states, penetrated the ChristianIslamic/Ottoman divide and went inmany respects beyond the religious dichotomy. Economic interaction and militaryconflicts between Ottoman rulers and European powers in the Mediterranean andin the Balkans were in principle no different from the corresponding interactionswithin Europe, although they were complicated by the discourse on the Turkishperil. In constantly shifting constellations some European powers made pacts withthe Ottoman rulers while others made war. In this way the constructedreligious/ethnic borderline between Europe and the Turkish Other became a fluidEuropean line of contention (Hfert, 2001).

The long-term implication of the Islamic expansion was, irrespective of thisporous and fluid order of pacts and wars, nevertheless that Europe took on themeaning of being synonymous with Christianity, defined as a community witha distinct territory, a res publica christiana. Christianity represented Europe,Europe was called Christianity. Christianity substituted Europe as a concept forunification. The substitution of Europe with Christianity as a concept for unifi-cation and concord was undermined from within through religious wars. Whenthe connection between Christianity and unity was destroyed by the Thirty YearsWar, Europe took on new meaning in the emerging Enlightenment discourse and

became a lodestar for unity. The term Europe came to fulfil the need for a moreneutral designation of the common whole. As Denis Hay put it: In the courseof the seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries Christendom slowly enteredthe limbo of archaic words and Europe emerged for its peoples as the unchal-lenged symbol of the largest human loyalty (1968: 116). Norman Davies notesthat in the early phase of the Enlightenment, it became an embarrassment forthe divided community of nations to be reminded of their common Christianidentity; and Europe filled the need for a designation with more neutral conno-tations (1996: 7).

With the Enlightenment philosophy the distinction between Christianity andIslam was in a certain sense relativized because religion lost its absolute position.One of the discursive fields in the Oriental image was that defined by theopposition of Enlightenment and despotism, however, not every oppositionrepresented a negative xenostereotype of the Orient in European eyes. The trans-lation ofA Thousand and OneNightsinto French at the beginning of the eight-eenth century reinforced the image of an exotic Orient. The recurring enthusiasmfor China and India can be seen as either a direct or an indirect criticism whichenriched and problematized the European image of itself as a civilizing project.

The discursive antinomy among elements of the European view of the Orient wasnot so much a competition between different schools of thought, as somethingwhich characterized individual thinkers. Some, for example, regarded Muhammedas an enlightened philosopher, others as a cheat, while Voltaire admired Muslimtolerance, which he contrasted to Christian intolerance (Strth, 2000a).




8/16

Although the demarcation between an enlightened Christianity and a fanaticIslam was a frequent component of the European discourse, there was at the sametime, not only Voltaires opposite view but also the merger of Enlightenment anddespotism into oneDenkfigur which was applied to both Europe and the East. ForEurope, the notion of enlightened absolutism was an expression of this merger(Strth, 2000a). These developments are well documented in Edward SaidsOrien-talism(1978; cf. Piterberg, 2000). Asia and the idea of the Orient were thus oneof the mirrors in which a European self-image emerged in a long historical process.It was a mirror in which one could discern many different and competing images,and it was also a mirror where one saw what one wanted to see.

The Enlightenment project constructed another divide. Eastern Europeemerged as a concept of demarcation. As Enlightenment philosophers establishedWestern Europe as the seat of civilization, so too they invented an EasternEurope as its complementary other half. Eastern Europe exhibited a conditionof backwardness on a relative scale of development; however, the philosophersdid not bestow on Eastern Europe the radical otherness ascribed to non-Europeanbarbarians (Bugge, 1999; den Boer, 1995). The opposition between civilizationand barbarism assigned Eastern Europe to an ambiguous space. Since Tacitus, theold division of Europe had been between the North and the South, between theEmpire and the Barbarians. It was Voltaire who led the way when Enlightenmentphilosophers shifted their gaze to the contrasts and demarcations between eastand west in their construction of Us and the Other. A conceptual reorientation

of the European map occurred when the old lands of barbarism and backward-ness in the North were displaced to the East (Wolff, 1994). The idea of EasternEurope was entangled with the evolving Orientalism, for while philosophicalgeography casually excluded Eastern Europe from Europe, implicitly shifting itinto Asia, scientific cartography seemed to contradict such a construction. Therewas room for ambiguity. The construction of Eastern Europe was a paradox ofsimultaneous inclusion and exclusion: Europe, but, at the same time, not Europe.Our view of Peter the Great is a case in point: enlightened modernizer, preparedto learn from the West, but locked in a more or less hopeless struggle with a

barbarian environment.Philosophical geography was a free-spirited activity. It was, as Larry Wolff hasdemonstrated, not actually necessary to travel to Eastern Europe in order toparticipate in its intellectual discovery. Some did leave their Paris salons. MadameGeoffrin visited the King of Poland in 1766, and Diderot paid his respects toCatherine the Great in St Petersburg in 1773. Yet no one wrote more authorita-tively about Russia than Voltaire, who never travelled west of Berlin, and no onewas more creative on behalf of Poland than Rousseau, who never went east ofSwitzerland. Prague is north of Vienna and slightly to the west, but when Mozart

travelled from Vienna to the Bohemian capital it was, nevertheless, a voyage tothe East (Wolff, 1994).The establishment of acordon sanitaireafter the First World War is another

illustration of the ambiguity in the division between East and West. In the frame-work of Woodrow Wilsons naive belief in the connection between nationalism




9/16

and democracy, a number of Slavic states from Yugoslavia in the south to Estoniain the north (Estonia does not belong to the Slavic-speaking nations) were giveninternationally guaranteed autonomy. Finland north of Estonia gained autonomyin 1917 in the turmoil of the Russian Revolution after a bloody civil war, andgot its international guarantee somewhat differently, but can be seen as the exten-sion of thecordon sanitaire. As a democratic no mans land between Germany andRussia, the new countries were assigned the role of preventing a new war betweenthese two powers. During the First World War, the Germans were referred to inthe West as the Huns, that is, belonging to the barbarian Eastern camp. Afterpunishment in the form of severe war indemnities and political restrictions,Germany was then allowed to cross the borderline and re-enter the Western(democratic) fold. Already, four years prior to thiscordon sanitairebeing mappedout in Versailles, Friedrich Naumann had published his bookMitteleuropa, whichdescribed a domain marked out for German economic and cultural hegemony.This idea, which can be traced back to the nineteenth century, was later on incor-porated into the Nazi Lebensraumideology, in whichMitteleuropa,OsteuropaandOstraumformed overlapping and mutually supplementary key concepts, and inwhich thecordon sanitairewas transformed into a German sphere of interest. Aswe know, the idea of inserting a democratic corridor to prevent a new barbarianeruption died in the 1930s. However, the idea of Mitteleuropa survived andsurfaced again in the 1980s (Brechtefeld, 1996).

In the political discourse Eastern Europe seems to be perceived as something

integral due to its common socialist past and present transitional contradictions.In the Cold War dichotomic thinking (WestEast, capitalismplanned economy,liberalismsocialism, democracytotalitarianism), the image of Eastern Europewas portrayed in mainly negative terms. In such mental dichotomies the fron-tiers between West and East coincided with political ones. What do suchdichotomies represent 1015 years after the end of the Cold War? Beyond theideological packaging there is a huge territory with rich cultures, differenthistorical experiences and a variety of everyday life. Each East European countryhas followed its own cultural and historical development, and the problem of

national and cultural identification is not new but arose long ago.Correspondingly, there exists a variety of modes of interpretation of Europe,and the connection between Europe and the nation and other identity categories,in the East European countries, developed by philosophers, historians, linguists,artists and other intellectuals. All those cultures should perhaps be understoodless in terms of being impoverished by political regimes in the past and economiccrisis at present, and more as struggling to recapture again a sense of their owncommunity and reconsidering the past in order to be able to move ahead. It isimportant to discuss the historical construction of an East European borderline

not only from a West European point of departure but also from within theeastern side of the borderline. What has Europe meant there? An element of Weor of the Other?

It is important to locate the ongoing reconfiguration of the images ofEurope and the nation, and their religious/secular/cultural components in




10/16

macro-historical developments of modern state formation, nation-building,religious change, and the embedded forms of nationalism, along the EuropeanEastWest axis. In particular it is important in this historical setting to discernin what directions the EastWest divide has been evolving since 1989.

The discourse on Eastern Europe does it belong to the real Europe or not as well as the discourse on America emerged with the Enlightenment. Thediscourse on the Orient began in the Middle Ages as a demarcation between theChristian and the Muslim spheres. The mirrors have provided xenostereotypes,stereotypes of the Other, which probably have said more about the Europeanspectators than about those in the aims of their gazes. The stereotypes have thenbeen incorporated in the self-understandings and have provoked the emergenceofautostereotypes, in complex processes of identity and interest formation andtransformation. Such xeno- and auto-stereotypes are, furthermore, not unani-mously agreed on but contested. A case in point is the emergence of Japan as amodel in a Western Europe struck by identity crisis and general disorientation inthe 1970s. The Japanese model was a miracle of economic growth, peacefulindustrial relations, and a Confucian labour ethic according to some influentialobservers, and a hierarchical authoritarian and union-busting political orderaccording to others. In the debate on Japan as a remedy to the European sicknessone saw and projected the expectations one wanted to. The projections weremade from ones own normative and political positions. This is how images ofthe Other work.

What has this historical heritage and the three mirrors represented during thesecond half of the twentieth century, when the West European integration projecttook shape in the framework of the Cold War, de-colonization and the emerg-ence of the Third World (Tngerstad, 2000)? What was the image of EasternEurope west of the Iron Curtain? What did Adenauers image of an AtlanticEurope (including the USA) and de Gaulles image of a Europe between theAtlantic and Urals (excluding Great Britain and the USA but including parts ofthe Soviet Union) mean? What did Europe during the Cold War and the emerg-ence of the European Community represent in countries which today are referred

to as Central Europe? What happened to the pre-war German idea of aMittel-europa? How did it survive and how was it transformed after the bankruptcy ofthe Nazi regime? To what extent were the USA and the East European countriesparts of Europe and the ideas of a European civilization during the Cold War?Was the USA in and Eastern Europe out, for instance? What has the end of theCold War meant in respect of the demarcation of Europe? Can the term CentralEurope today be seen as an instrument of demarcation from Russia after 1989?What have the events in 1989 meant for the image of Europe? There are manyquestions. They are all important for the problem of a European identity.

One of the most influential thinkers on the relationships between xeno- andautostereotypes is Edward Said, already referred to above. The Others oftenincorporate, even appropriate, in their own self-identification the xenostereotypesimposed upon them. This is the thrust of his thesis on the role of Orientalismnot only as an instrument of Western understanding of the Orient but also as




11/16

something incorporated in the Oriental self-understanding. Images of Europeand images of Others are intersected and reinforce one another. A key questionfor further research is to what extent, in what forms and with what content non-European cultures are defined by the European culture. To what extent donon-European cultures define themselves in terms of what they discern asEuropean particularities? And, vice versa, to what extent does Europe define itselfin terms of what is seen as particularities of other cultures, Islam, for instance?

It is interesting to have my historical outline of Europe seen from within bya European related to, even confronted with, corresponding outlines of othercultures from within where Europe is seen from the outside. Such compari-sons/confrontations, with a point of departure in Shmuel Eisenstadts and othersconcept of multiple modernities (Eisenstadt, 1992), would promote interculturaldialogue as opposed to a clash of civilizations (Strth, 2002). However, the onceinnovative concept of multiple modernities can be taken one step further, entan-gled modernities has recently been suggested to express that various cultures donot only exist in parallel but that they are interwoven (Fuchs et al., forthcom-ing). The problem following from the fact that Europe does not exist withoutnon-Europe and that non-Europe does not exist without Europe, is in otherwords how to make it the starting point for bridge-building not for demarcation.The practical implication of this way to formulate the problem is that earlier stat-ically defined concepts of strictly separated and self-entrenched civilizations(Europe, the West, the Orient, Islam) should be superseded by more dynamic

understandings of the potent meaning-producing processes that construct suchentities. Symbolic and geopolitical boundaries between them must be reconsid-ered and seen as historically and discursively shaped rather than naturally given.Doing so would contribute to more transparent and less norm-laden interpre-tations and applications of concepts like civilization and modernity. Thisscenario would focus on the continuous and infinite processes of drawing andaltering cultural and civilization boundaries, where, be it in terms of violent clashor peaceful competition, different civilizations emerge in historical processesthrough dense transcultural intersections. The historical mutual formation of

Europe and the Islamic Middle East as units of civilization can be understood inthis view. The impact of Islam on the construction of Europe and the inversecannot be overestimated. It impinged on the building of religious and moderndiscourses and institutions in both Europe and the Middle East (Hfert andSalvatore, 2000).

In such a research agenda and political programme there is a need for aEuropean responsibility of a different kind than the Enlightenment civilizationmission. In the light of this new responsibility the concept of a European identityis problematic since it conjures up images of a European unity and a fiction of

peace and concord as well as strength and power. The concept connotes a politicalutopian projection rather than a political pragmatic project.What currently could be more pressing than to acquaint ourselves with the

impact of Islam in the construction of Europe, and its inverse, the many ways itimpinged on the building of religious and modern discourses and institutions in




12/16

both Europe and the Middle East? And, in the same vein, the role of Jews andJudaism in a long historical perspective of entanglement, involving both inte-gration and disintegration.

The conclusion of this historical outline is that a concept like Europe isconstructed in processes of contention and bargaining. The images of Europe donot exist as a natural phenomenon but are discursively shaped. Central to ouridentifications are images of others. The idea of, for instance, a European identitynecessarily contains a demarcation from the non-European. This is inherent toall distinctions, they are both inclusive and exclusive. Europe can only be realizedin the mirror of Others. These projections probably say more about their produc-ers than about the targets they construct. So if Europe does not exist withoutnon-Europe, and non-Europe does not exist without Europe, the great challengeis how to make this the starting point for bridge-building, not for demarcation.Symbolic and geopolitical boundaries must be urgently reconsidered, and seen ashistorically and discursively shaped.

An Active Europe but in a New Sense

What images of Europe and of the Other, in particular the Orient, would trans-gress established images of demarcated civilizational camps and promote inter-cultural dialogue? How can new preconditions for intercultural dialogue be

established?A tentative first answer to this question would go in the direction of a more

active Europe. Not active in the old sense of propagating one specific Europeanor Western development standard as the gauge for the rest of the world, but anew active Europe as a mediator and a bridge-builder in a global world.

The Enlightenment quest for improvement and mastery, with a funda-mentalist and totalizing core, would in this new activism scenario be trans-formed into a communications specialism, based on a readiness to listen to otherviews and promote dialogue among them. Slogans like cultural diversity and a

common heritage or unity in diversity would expand from terms used in aEuropean self-reflection to take on global dimensions. In the long run theinter-cultural dialogue should rather become a transcultural dialogue transgressingestablished boundaries. This active Europe would be an alternative to a militaryactive Europe.

Towards a New Conceptualization of Europe

In the historical framework and future scenario as outlined here the concept ofa European identity is of limited value. Like the classification of human beingsaccording to ethnicity and race, it has reached its limits. It should be seen as ahistorical concept which played a crucial role during a difficult phase of Europeanintegration between the 1970s and the 1990s. The twenty-first century requires




13/16

a new conceptual topography less Euro-centred and narcissistic and more globalalthough in another sense than the globalization rhetoric which is nothing but anarrative on Americanization and only repeats the old European version of thewhite mans burden and civilization mission. In the development of new semanticfields the historically constructed divides through the Baltic and the Mediter-ranean must be transgressed. I am not suggesting the construction of a new dividethrough the Atlantic, but more critical distance emphasizing differences betweenEurope, in a new mediating role, and the USA is urgent. Not least theconceptualization in social theories after the collapse of Marxist theory is almosthegemonically American. The debates between libertarians and communitarians,the neo-liberal rhetoric, with a unilateral focus on the market concept, and thearguments for rational choice and methodological individualism, are all muchmore inscribed in a specific American history than in European ones. The samegoes for the debate on human rights, democracy and ethnicity and for theoriesof modernity and development. They have nevertheless imposed themselves alsoas the point of departure, given more or less by nature, for the European theor-etical reflection on society. On this point concepts must be developed, whichmuch more reflect specific European historical experiences in all their variety.Max Weber, for instance, with his intellectual capacity to see Germany andEurope in a context of global cultures, could be a point of departure in such atheoretical reconstruction. Another point of departure could be that part of theEnlightenment heritage, which emphasizes qualities like tolerance and intellec-

tual openness for dissident opinions.An urgent task in a European reconceptualization would be to re-integrate the

individual in a social context. Here the concept of a European social responsi-bility could fill a dangerous gap between a growing nationalism in the wake ofnation-state legitimacy deficits, and the market-oriented emphasis on the indi-vidual deprived of social connections, as Peter Wagner (2000) has argued.

Other important elements in a reconceptualization would be to see culturenot as an entity with cohesion and fixed borders, but, as Gerard Delanty andothers have argued, as a floppy concept, describing something in a flux with no

clear borders and with internal opposition and contradictions, discursivelyshaped in contentious social bargaining processes (Delanty, 1995; 1999). It isimportant not to essentialize Europe but to emphasize the openness of theconcept much more than European identity does.

In the same vein Gerold Gerber (2000) analyses Malta. His point of depar-ture is that the EU is a paradoxical project. On the one hand, a European identityis supposed to overcome nationalisms and to ensure solidarity among themembers; on the other, as in any construction of collective identity, a definitionof the Other(s) is required. The inclusion of European insiders implies the

exclusion, by whatever criteria, of non-European or not-yet-European outsiders.Thus, humanistic ideals such as equality, freedom and pluralism have come intoconflict with the need to exclude. All this has been seen and discussed, of course,and a solution does not seem to be in sight. However, Gerber emphasizes theneed to accept ambivalences and paradoxes as a fundamental condition of social




14/16

life, rather than being a nuisance to be ordered away. In doing so he refers to MaxWeber and Zygmunt Bauman (1991), and he takes note of Neil Smelsers (1998)defence of ambivalence against rational choice. His case study of Malta suggeststhat politicians and intellectuals, far from being avant-garde, may actually bebehind actors in everyday life, when it comes to coping with paradox. Whilepolitical and economic exigencies are likely to force Maltese officials into a choicebetween Europe and the Arab world, Maltese people may happily embrace theoption of being both European and non-European in daily life. As long as thesocial sciences comply with intellectual and political efforts to construct coher-ence and order by classifying the social world into categories, they will face thechallenges of logocentrism. Yet, a critique of Western metaphysics should notmean the end of science and reason altogether. With the point of departure inhis inquiry of Malta Gerber proposes to develop a social science, which takesordinary actors that is all of us and their practical solutions to flux andparadox more seriously. Politicians, intellectuals and scientists may be inspired bysuch expertise in how to deal with ambivalence without being afraid.

Self-images and images of the Other are not static entities, but are elements ina continuous process. Anja Hnsch (2000) demonstrates this in a study of Arabemigrants encounter with Europe. During emigration, the encounter with theOther leads to both a reflection on the self-image and a reflection on the previousimage of the Other. These types of reflection start all over again with the returnof the emigrants to their home country, where the culture of origin is confronted

after the experiences of Europe have left their traces on the emigrants. Emigrationfunctions as a catalyst for the creation and for the questioning of images and self-images. Situations of emigration can be described in terms of liminality or rites depassage(Turner, 1987; van Gennep, 1981). Separation is followed by margin/limenand incorporation. The migrant is in a situation of betwixt and between, in aliminal or transitional stage between cultures and countries. This situation leadsto a questioning of both culture of origin and the new culture, which is encoun-tered. Given the great number of immigrants in Europe it seems reasonable toargue that they should be incorporated in concepts expressing community and

belonging. European identity is no doubt problematic in this respect. The liminalposition does not only refer to migrants, however. Arpd Szakolczai (1998),elaborating on Foucault, has argued that modern Western culture is a continuousliminality, a moment of transition lasting for centuries and rooted in the collapseof the Middle Ages. The transient becomes a permanent state. Thus the migrantsituation brings with it a double risk of getting lost, namely the risk of falling in-between two cultures and the risk of falling into the abysses of modernity whereanti-structure and uprootedness become part of everyday life.

All these examples indicate the direction in which a new conceptualization of

culture and feelings of belonging could be elaborated. Ambivalence, transitionand being more historically informed are some key elements. The concept ofEuropean identity has taken on a career in the direction of essentialism, and doesnot mediate these elements very well.




15/16

References

Bauman, Zygmunt (1991) Modernity and Ambivalence. Cambridge: Polity Press.Brechtefeld, Jrg (1996) Mitteleuropa and German Politics: 1848 to thePresent. London:

Macmillan.Brubaker, Rogers and Cooper, Frederick (2000) Beyond Identity,Theory & Society

29(1): 147.Bugge, P. (1999) Central Europe: A Tool for Historians or a Political Concept?,European

Review of History6(1): 1535.Davies, Norman (1996) Europe: A History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Delanty, Gerard (1995) Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality. London: Macmillan. (1999) Social Integration and Europeanization,Yearbook of European Studies12:

22138.Den Boer, P. (1995) Europe to 1914: The Making of an Idea, in Kevin Wilson and J.

van der Dussen (eds)TheHistory of theIdea of Europe. London: Routledge.Eisenstadt, Shmuel N. (1992) A Reappraisal of Theories of Social Change and Moderniz-

ation, in H. Haferkamp and N.J. Smelser (eds)Social Changeand Modernity. Berkeleyand Los Angeles: California University Press.

European Commission (1973) Declaration on European Identity, in General Report oftheEuropean Commission. Brussels: European Commission.

Fuchs, Martin, Luig, Ute and Randeria, Shalini (forthcoming) Introduction, EuropeanJournal of Social Theory.

Gerber, Gerold (2000) Doing Christianity and Europe: An Inquiry into Memory,Boundary and Truth Practices in Malta, in Bo Strth (ed.) Europeand theOther and

Europeas theOther. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.Goddard, Victoria A., Llobern, Josep R. and Shore, Cris, eds (1994)TheAnthropology of

Europe: Identification and Boundaries in Conflict. Oxford: Berg.Hnsch, Anja (2000) Emigration and Modernity: On the Twofold Liminality in Arab

and Franco-Arab Literature, in Almut Hfert and Armando Salvatore (eds) BetweenEuropeand Islam: Shaping Modernity in a Transcultural Space.Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.

Hay, Denis (1968) Europe: TheEmergenceof an Idea. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UniversityPress.

Hirst, Paul and Zeitlin, Jonathan, eds (1989) Reversing Industrial Decline?Oxford: Berg.Hfert, Almut (2001) Wissen und Trkengefahr. Die Formierung des ethnografischen

Wissenskorpus ber die Osmanen in Europa (15.16. Jahrhundert). PhD thesis,European University Institute, Florence.

and Salvatore, Armando, eds (2000) Between Europeand Islam: Shaping Modernityin a Transcultural Space. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.

af Malmborg, Mikael and Strth, Bo, eds (2002)TheMeaning of Europe: Variety andContention within and among Nations. Oxford: Berg.

Medick, Hans and Schlumbohm, Jrgen, eds (1978) Industrialisierung vor der Industrial-isierung: GewerblicheWarenproduktionen auf dem Land in der FormationsperiodedesKapitalismus. Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. English translation 1981: Indus-trialization before Industrialization: Rural Industry in the Genesis of Capitalism.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Niethammer, Lutz (2000) A European Identity?, in Bo Strth, ed. Europeand theOther

and Europeas theOther. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.Passerini, Luisa, ed. (1998) Identit culturaleEuropea: Idee, sentimenti, relazioni.Florence:

La Nuova Italia.




16/16

Piore, M.J. and Sabel, Charles F. (1984)TheSecond Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Pros-perity. New York: Basic Books.

Piterberg, Gabriel (2000) Orientalist Discourse and Nationalist Historical Narratives inthe Middle East: Egypts Ottoman Past, in Almut Hfert and Armando Salvatore (eds)

Between Europeand Islam: Shaping Modernity in a Transcultural Space. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.

Said, Edward (1978) Orientalism. London: Routledge.Shore, Cris (2000) Building Europe: TheCultural Politics of European Integration. London

and New York: Routledge.Smelser, N.J. (1998) The Rational and the Ambivalent in the Social Sciences, in

American Sociological Review63: 115.Strth, Bo (1987)ThePolitics of De-industrialisation. London: Croom Helm. (2000a) Introduction: Europe as a Discourse and Multiple Europes: Integration,

Identity and Demarcation to the Other, in Bo Strth (ed.) Europeand theOther and

Europeas theOther. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang. (2000b) The Concept of Work in the Construction of Community, in Bo Strth

(ed.)After Full Employment: European Discourses on Work and Flexibility.Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.

(2002) Images of Europe in the World, http://europa.eu.int/comm/education/ajm/dialogue/links_en.html

Szakolczai, Arpd (1998) Reflexive Historical Sociology, European Journal of SocialTheory9(2): 20927.

Tngerstad, Erik (2000) The Third World as an Element in the Collective Construc-tion of a Post-Colonial European Identity, in Bo Strth (ed.) Europeand theOther

and Europeas theOther. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.Turner, Victor ([1967]1987)TheForest of Symbols. New York: Cornell University Press.Van Gennep, A. ([1909]1981) Les rites depassage. tudes systmatique des rites. Paris:

Editions A. & J. Picard.Wagner, Peter (2000) The Exit from Organised Modernity: Flexibility in Social

Thought and in Historical Perspective, in Bo Strth (ed.) After Full Employment:European Discourses on Work and Flexibility. Brussels: PIE-Peter Lang.

Wolff, Larry (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: TheMap of Civilisation on theMind ofEnlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

s Bo Strth is Professor of Contemporary History at the European UniversityInstitute in Florence. He has published widely in the field of modernization and

democratization processes in Western Europe in a comparative context with a

focus on the complexity and the contradictions in concepts such as modernity and

democracy. Address: Contemporary History Chair, European University Institute,

Robert Schuman Centre, via dei Roccettini 9, IT-500 16 San Domenico di Fiesole (FI),

Italy. [email: [email protected]]


A European Identity

Documents

Transcript of A European Identity