other polities?
Anthony Smith, a prominent theorist of nationality and nationalism, is quite pessimistic about the EU’s possibility of ever attaining something similar to a national identity
There is no European analogue to Bastille or Armistice Day no European ceremony for the fallen in battle, no European shrine of kings or saints. When it comes to the ritual and ceremony of collective identification there is no European equivalent of national or religious community … 13
Other authors are more sanguine about the prospects. Jürgen Habermas in a response to sceptics such as Smith and Siedentop argues that
Es fragt sich, ob dieser Wechsel des Politischen Klimas nur einen gesunden Realismus..ausdrückt Oder eher einen kontraproduktiven Kleinmut, wenn nicht gar schlichten Defäitismus 14
Habermas’ optimism derives from his very different understanding of the sources of identity.
For Jürgen Habermas what is at stake is the defence of a specific European way of life, a social model. His views echo those of French and Italian politicians from the centre to the left, and of many Scandinavian politicians on the Left.
Many readers will ask, but why is identity important anyway? Is it not enough for the population in the EU to feel that they are citizens of a union with specific rights and obligations, perhaps sharing a certain pride in the institutional structure, they have helped create? This is a debate that overlaps with more normative and ideological debates.
As I see it, a European identity is important for essentially three reasons:
(i) because culture is related to democracy
(ii) because common identity is the precondition for solidarity and without solidarity neither economic re-distribution nor common defence is realistic
(iii) because identity is about uniqueness and most Europeans want to preserve the unique European heritage.
The latter point deserves the comment that due to the impact of economic globalization, if cultural Europe stands still, it moves backwards. A Danish intellectual, Viggo Hørup, writing in the late 19th century put it this way: “Culture is not like old wine that can be stored away to be enjoyed at some future moment; culture is like medicine that has to be taken three times every day (see chapter 14).15 It takes an effort to preserve a cultural uniqueness.
The literature on European identity contains certain lacunae. A serious weakness is the confusion and vagueness of the conceptual debate, and the scarcity of new empirical data in much of the literature. With this book I try to offer both new theoretical and new empirical insights in a debate that tends to get repetitive. First and foremost I offer a new theoretical perspective on European identity and upon identity as such. That there is a need for a new perspective is evident. I totally agree with Adrian Fawell, an American scholar, when he castigates much of the literature on European identity, criticising its tendency to argue in holistic and collectivistic terms. He is surely right in asking the question … “How is any kind of ‘individual’ identity possible, once we move to the historical or sociological mode of understanding, in which persons are in fact exhaustively determined by the (contextually defined, therefore everchanging) social roles and positions that they are found in”.16 As he points out … “the ghost of Talcott Parsons rides again, and a neo-Durkheimian ontology of social facts, collective consciousness, and functionalist explanations is embraced anew”.17 To get out of this quagmire and rediscover personal identity, I think one has to broaden the argument about political identity and rely more upon the insights that can be gained from philosophy and the arts. It has to be understood that the nature and sources of national identity depends upon our understanding of Political Man and Mankind itself.
It is not enough to conduct polls and ask people, if they regard themselves as European, although this is a useful starting point for the discussion. We need to ask the right kind of questions in the right way.
Generally, the available literature can be divided into two categories: First of all, liberal and constructivist accounts which often focus upon European citizenship and its potential. Within this strand one also finds a number of post-modernist historical studies seeking to deconstruct traditional understandings of the past. The emphasis in this literature has been upon showing the political and ideological nature of much history-writing on nations.18 The weaknesses of this literature have to do with the scarcity of theoretical reflection and the problems inherent in social constructivist thinking. I share the scepticism of Scott Thomas, who talks about … “the unbearable lightness of social constructivism”. Unfortunately, although he draws attention to more useful theories and perspectives, he does not offer a coherent, alternative paradigm.19
Secondly, there is a strand of ethnically and culturally oriented studies exemplified by Anthony Smith focusing upon the limitations of the EU’ s federalist endeavour. A recent contribution belonging in the first category is Gerard Delanty’s constructivist Inventing Europe, which examines the interplay between Europe as idea, identity and reality taking as his point of departure Benedict Anderson’s now classical work Imagined Communities.20 Delanty’s book is largely a historical account distinguishing between Europe as a cultural idea and Europe as a political identity-building project. The problem is addressed from the second angle in another important work by Chris Shore, who in his book Building Europe analyzes the ways in which the Commission has tried to weld the EU together by means of a top-down cultural effort reminiscent of nation-building.21
To what extent then, do Europeans actually feel that they belong together and that they share a set of political and cultural experiences, values, symbols etc.? The current state of the European Union in this regard can be analyzed from different angles. I examine the degree of European identity at both the elite level and the popular level.
The book is based upon a modern positivist epistemology, but one that has a clear preference for qualitative methods. While stressing the inherent limits to testing in the humanities and social sciences, I remain committed to the goal of improving and enhancing our scientific knowledge i.a. through inter-subjective peer evaluation and Popperian falsification.22 Given the book’s individualist ontology and its emphasis upon motivations that are not strictly rational, it has been necessary in some parts of the study to apply a hermeneutical method.
What kinds of conclusions can we expect to be drawn from a study of European identity? Like all social entities, Europe and the EU have certain sui generis features. In fact, to talk about culture and civilization implies almost per definition a sui generis perspective. Having said that, it is unhelpful for EU-studies to stress the sui generis features of European integration to the point of closing the scholarly mind to processes of collaboration taking place beyond Europe. We should try as far as possible to escape the methodological predicament of N=1 – drawing conclusions on the basis of a single case. To some extent this is a question of arguing at a sufficiently high level of abstraction and of avoiding purely descriptive studies. Fortunately, there has in recent years been a tendency in EU-research to relate the study of EU-matters to general theories not only within International
