*** GILLES ROUET (Editors): Citoyennetés et nationalités en Europe. Articulations et pratiques. L'Harmattan (5-7 rue de l'École-Polytechnique, F-75005 Paris. Email: diffusion.harmattan@wanadoo.fr - Internet: http://www.librairieharmattan.com ). "Local & Global" series. 2011, 268 pp, €27. ISBN 978-2-296-55797-0.
The book partially covers a university colloquy organised in Bulgaria last year. This event brought participants together from sociological, political, economic and anthropological disciplines in an effort introduce some order into the changing face of citizenships, nationalities and identities in Europe. In this connection, Professor Gilles Rouet explains in his preface that, “the weakening of the state, the development of independent economic powers (globalisation), migratory movements, the increasing power of the regions and, finally, the evolution of the European Union” all combine to significantly threaten the case of assimilating citizenship to nationality. At the same time, these developments also help explain a certain turning inwards on the question of identity and the discrediting of the political class that is occurring throughout Europe. On this note, the philosopher, François Soulages, addresses European thinkers on the question of what constitutes nation, citizenship and identity, “as problems to work out together and which are rooted in the present and past pleural so that they can be directed to the future through action and reflection”.
This appeal has been understood perfectly and this book contains proof that this impressive dimension cannot be summed up in just a few lines. The lines that follow are therefore a pale and reductive reflection of the entire contents and seek to arbitrarily identify a few ideas among many others. Therefore, sociologist and anthropologist Serge Defoulon points out that as part of modernity, citizens' implacable equality under antiquity has now become more of a leitmotif than a reality. Jamil Sayah confirms this in light of the specific case of France and considers that the rehabilitation of republican citizenship is inevitably through a re-evaluation of social justice. The economist, Pierre Bailly, argues that European social dialogue is undoubtedly a premise of social democracy and undeniably reduces the ability of the state to influence the process of collective bargaining and helps create, “the European social citizenship that is in parallel and complimentary to European citizenship”. In response to those who attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the unions in certain countries due to the low level of unionisation, which he notes in his contribution, he provides an extremely strong argument in which he explains that, “ no-one tries to look at how representative the political parties are in relation to the number of their supporters, which are far fewer than those in the unions”.
The most innovative part of the book is provided in the commentaries provides by the writers on the developments affecting the citizen participation in democracies, with European citizenship being the crucible of this. In this respect the contributors attempt to locate new expressions of European citizenship and nationality and Gilles Rouet, the Jean Monnet Chair of interdisciplinary studies on the Union and currently working in Bulgaria, indicates that this additional citizenship has to be continually developed on the basis of political commitments and not on the basis of political structures. He subsequently pays tribute to the digital public area, which has nothing virtual about it what so ever and in which the European citizen's initiative could therefore prove highly productive, “the global aspect of the Internet has an impact on its local counterpart, civil disobedience becomes practice as a way to intervene and many appeals to resistance or non-respect of the law and rules evolve on Facebook and therefore help towards an evolution in democratic practices for citizens who are not simply content with just voting (or not deliberately voting at all”. Katia Hristova-Valtcheva points out, however, that this instrument could lead to the marginalisation of citizens in the new member states, who, at this present time, do not possess an organised civil society but other authors agree that this cyber citizenship could increase citizenship significantly or replace it. The last word in this essay goes to the philosopher, Gérard Wormser, who conjectures that, “the logic of viral communication is undoubtedly… significative of contemporary forms of belonging and identity”, a claim that will not be rejected by those who have not always admitted that citizenship will not always be the prisoner of nationality.
Michel Theys
*** FRITS BOLKESTEIN: De intellectuele verleiding. Gevaarlijke ideeën in de politiek. Uitgeverij Prometheus / Bert Bakker (540 Herengracht, NL-1017 CG Amsterdam. Tel: (31-20) 6241934 - fax: 6225461 - Email: info@pbo.nl - Internet: http://www.uitgeverijbertbakker.nl ). 2011, 343 pp, €15. ISBN 978-90-351-3667-0.
Former European Commissioner Bolkestein admits that since his university studies he has had a particular interest in how influence and seduction operate… on intellectuals with regard to political practice and dangerous ideas that lead them into politics. A number of Dutch critics consider that his most recent book is one of his best and confirms the originality of an erudite politician and is written with the verve of the historian of ideas. Nonetheless, there will no doubt be a number of dissatisfied customers who hope to read it as an historical document because although the vision provided in this book is a passionate and more than interesting discovery, it is that of an incontestably erudite conservative and liberal individual. Two different phenomena from the last century come under the spotlight: the rise and fall of totalitarian dictatorships and the genesis and evolution of the European Union. Although the founder of the directive on the free movement of services (which was on the receiving end of a lot of opposition at the time) asserts that he is interested in examining current policy, it is in fact three centuries of political debate that he attempts to illustrate and three thirds of this book are more to do with history than what is going on now. These pages are in fact the most nourishing from the point of view of intellectual curiosity and are also written in a pleasant and accessible style. The author seeks to identify and set out the central points of modernity in the here and now and demonstrate their validity with regard to the different forms of irrationalism he sees in Romanticism, post-modernism and vitalism. In this book, Frits Bolkestein illustrates to what extent he is one of the last to take the cast of public intellectuals seriously and ideas as a cornerstone of society. He states that the different interests at play are not enough on their own and have to be underpinned by ideas, which are unimaginably powerful. His anger, however, is particularly inflamed by a number of fellow travellers and “Lumpenintelligenz”, those from the second division who broadly create the intellectual atmosphere in which political leaders have to operate. The part of the book that focuses on current affairs is disappointing because we see Bolkestein largely clashing with his opponents when he was still active in politics and particularly because he leaves it up to the reader to make the link between the historical part of the book and the link is not emphasised enough in his comments with regard to multiculturalism, development aid, cultural masochism and capitalism. This book is very much influenced sociologically by Calvinism and in which there is an obvious lack of empathy for Latin cultures.
(LT)
*** ANDREAS WILKENS (Editors): Willy Brandt et l'unité de l'Europe. De l'objectif de la paix aux solidarités nécessaires. Presses Interuniversitaires européennes / Peter Lang (1 av. Maurice, B-1050 Brussels. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). « L'Allemagne dans les relations internationales / Deutschland in den internationalen Beziehungen » series, No. 2. 2011, 510 pp, €47.50. ISBN 978-90-5201-786-0.
Everyone, including those from the younger generation in Germany, knows that at a European level, Willy Brandt was key to the conceptualisation of a “new Ostpolitik” and had been a tireless artisan of a policy of détente and reconciliation between the Federal German Republic and its neighbours in the east. This is only part of the story and would leave out the rest of his career as the Mayor of West Berlin, foreign affairs minister (1966-1969) and Chancellor (1969-1974), which makes up a much broader sweep, as summarised by Professor Andreas Wilkens, “getting Europeans to live together was one of Brandt's goals even before the division of Germany and Europe into two”. This book is the extension of a colloquy at the University of Paul Verlaine - Metz. It pays tribute to Willy Brandt and illustrates his commitment and European action since his exile in Oslo at the very beginning of the Second World War, when the Norwegian newspaper published his first reflections on what shape a new Europe should assume, until his very final speech in 1992 in Luxembourg, when he was still speaking about the quest for a, “new architecture through Europe”. Historians from Germany, France, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Norway all contribute to this book and examine the concepts, projects and actions undertaken by Willy Brandt from the years of his Scandinavian exile, through the period of his governmental responsibilities in Bonn during the 1960s, 70s and 80s, to the end of the Cold War. Other contributions look at the way in which Willy Brandt and his policy were perceived and interpreted by the Federal Republic's partner countries and how the image of this country subsequently evolved. The book also includes very useful annexes, particularly the text of the speech he made on 1 December 1969, at the beginning of his mandate as Chancellor, to the opening of The Hague Summit and his speech made four years later in Strasbourg, which made him the first government leader ever to address MEPs. Andreas Wilkens explained that reading these later speeches helps the reader to understand Brandt's conviction and determination but also illustrates the deep concern he had that if too much time were lost in building the necessary unity, Europeans would be in danger of missing out on their historic rendezvous. He would certainly have said the same thing today but perhaps would have felt even more anguish because the idea he expressed to the journalist Oriana Fallaci in September 1973 still rings true to this day, “building Europe means keeping the values of national identity and subsequently maintaining them above the structure of a European government…”
(MT)
*** CHANTAL METZGER: La République démocratique allemande. Histoire d'un État rayé de la carte du monde. Presses Interuniversitaires européennes / Peter Lang (see address attached). 2012, 385 pp. €37.50. ISBN 978-90-5201-791-4.
Egon Bahr was close to Willy Brandt and served both as his and Helmut Schmidt's Minister. He once declared that, “the Nazis left behind them mountains of corpses and the SED, mountains of documents”. Chantal Metzger is a professor of contemporary history at the University of Nancy and took full advantage of the rapid opening up of the archives of the former RDA and Federal Republic, as well as the spluttering opening up of the archives in the former Soviet Union, to retrace in this excellent book, the stages of the brief existence of this state born from both the Second World War and the Cold War. This historian starts off from the “prehistory” of this state, namely 2 May 1945 until 7 October 1949, the day when it theoretically ceased to exist… and became a zone under Soviet occupation. The existence of this furtive state is subsequently divided into four main periods. The first period involves the setting up of the, “workers and peasants' state” and the resistible rise in power of the Communist SED, the United Socialist Party of Germany”. Chantal Metzger then explores the period from 1961, when the communist regime began to stabilise itself, “in the shade of the antifascist rampart”, namely the Berlin Wall, built on 13 August 1961. From the 1970s to the end of the 1980s, the period that follows is that which includes the inexorable division that grew between the leadership of the state and the East German population. The final period is the shortest but most concentrated and sees the regime embodied by Honecker, collapse. Chantal Metzger includes an epilogue in her book focusing on the situation in the “new Länder” or regions 20 years after the complete disappearance of the RDA.
(MT)
*** ROSEMARY STOTT: Crossing the Wall. The Western Feature Film Import in East Germany. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). “New Studies in European Cinema” series, No. 11. 2012, 308 p, € 43.30. ISBN 978-3-03911-944-8.
This book is a continuation of a thesis developed at the University of Reading. It demonstrates that the Berlin Wall was in the number of cases very porous: the German Democratic Republic's cinematographic production company spent more time choosing western films to be imported than producing ideologically pure films … Rosemary Stott is now a senior lecturer in film studies at London Metropolitan University, which enables her to demonstrate that during the time of the “iron curtain”, Ms Merkel and other Germans in the East did not just have access to films from the capitalist world through western television channels they managed to get. This is a detailed study of the cinema in this country that no longer exists in its previous form …
(PBo)
*** GIUSEPPE SANTOLIQUIDO: Bunga Bunga mode d'emploi. Les dessous choc du système berlusconien. Renaissance du Livre (1 av. du Château Jaco, B-1410 Waterloo. Tel: (32-2) 2108914 - fax: 2108915 - Internet: http://www.renaissancedulivre.be ). 2012, 122 p. ISBN 978-2-50705-021-4.
Based on investigation documents, witnesses and bugged telephone reports, the author of this book invites the reader to take a plunge into the universe of the not greatly recommended world of docu-fiction, which gravitated around the previous president of the Italian Council and which will remain the essential mark of the “Berlusconi” era, of which Italy still bears the scars to this day.
(MT)