*** TERESA PINHEIRO, BEATA CIESZYNSKA, JOSE EDUARDO FRANCO (Editors: Ideas of / for Europe. An Interdisciplinary Approach to European Identity. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2012, 724 pp., €99.95. ISBN 978-3-631-61974-2.
This book begins with the Speech of Acceptance made by José Manuel Barroso when he was granted an honorary degree from Chemnitz University of Technology in May 2009 and should become bedside reading for all those in Brussels and other European capital cities that have the destiny of the Union and its citizens in their hands. In a little under the 700 pages and with around 50 different contributions, this book accurately illustrates the vast panorama of action that has taken place and which is succinctly summed up by the philosopher Viriato Soromenho-Marques in his foreword to the book that emphasises, “the strength of ideas, in the European capacity for striving for and reaching consensus regarding a vision of the future that will be powerful and peaceful, creative and environmentally sustainable”. Through the plethora of essays written in different disciplinary fields, the various foundations and aspects of a possible but very real European identity are patiently revealed and laid bare and which all could contribute towards the composition of a future “identity” that President Barroso, on the same lines as the Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, identifies in the shifting history of these past few decades. In these times of major European difficulty and despair, it is certainly not irrelevant to attempt to see beyond the political, economic and budgetary restrictions of the present time, to the values that over time have helped carve out the different specificities of Europe and its peoples.
The book's editors therefore explain in their introduction that the different writers have worked on speeches relating to the European identity to explain to what extent these have been closely linked to the political and historic contexts that have been forged out of them. They have also taken into account the fact that all identity constructions are based on the knowledge of the past and the utopias of the future; European identity is reflected on from national and supranational as well as peripheral and centralist perspectives and it gains its shape from both the gaze from within and the gaze from without. The six different parts making up the book are testimony to the need to have an extremely broad overview in this connection. The first part of the book looks at discourse relating to Europe in different historical contexts from Greek antiquity to the middle of the 20th century. In the second part, different writers tackle the way in which the national cultures of countries on the periphery (ranging from the Iberian peninsular to Russia, Greece, the Southern Tyrol, Macedonia, Poland and Turkey) have interpreted the concept of Europe. The third part of the book tackles the question of the European identity from a philosophical point of view and the different authors look at the dialogue engaged in this respect with a number of major European thinkers, such as Nietzsche, Habermas, Moran, Lourenço, Savater, Steiner and many others. The reader is then summoned to look at the possibility of a European memory being constructed, particularly in light of the lasting effects of the Holocaust. In the penultimate part of the book, a number of other writers look at how Europe is “seen by others”, for example how Henry Kissinger saw it and how it has been interpreted in Post-Colonial African Lusophone Literature.
The sixth part of the book has a resonance with a number of current concerns given that it looks at future prospects in the European Union. It also includes a number of reflections by different authors regarding Euroscepticism, relations with countries in the southern Mediterranean, Union governance, alternative immigration policies, ways to make Europe more inclusive and meet the challenges of globalisation and climate change etc. This book is of an almost unimaginably rich and broad subject matter. To provide a taster of it, we will only highlight a number of aspects provided in the reflection made by the sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman, in the guise of an epilogue that seeks to provide the essence and thrust of the entire book. He makes an appeal to make, “the planet hospitable to Europe” now that it is no longer the centre of the world and is uncomfortably discovering what is contributing to the current malaise of its citizens. He subsequently calls for Europe to establish some clear blue water as soon as possible between the US superpower which is failing, “abominably to lead the planet towards peaceful coexistence and away from the imminent disaster” by opting for, “the logic of global responsibility and global aspiration” rather than the tempting logic emanating from “ local retrenchment” towards an illusory fortress Europe. This Polish born theoretician now living in Leeds provides a warning to all European citizens that, “the choice we confront is between our cities into places of terror "where the stranger is to be feared and distrusted", or sustaining the legacy of mutual civility of citizens and "solidarity of strangers", solidarity strengthened by the ever harder tests to which it is subjected and which it survives - now and in the future”. This book is quite simply a must!
Michel Theys
*** PIERRE BRECHON, FREDERIC GONTHIER (Editors): Atlas des Européens. Valeurs communes et différences nationales. Armand Colin (21 rue du Montparnasse, F-75283 Paris. Fax: (33-1) 40464993 - Email: infos@armand-Colin.fr - Internet: http://www.armand-colin.com ). 2013, 128 pp. 2013, €29.90. ISBN 978-2-200-28781-8.
We could say that this book is of great value… Not a value in the stock market sense but in the way that each and everyone of us looks at themselves and others and on a more general level the way in which they look at the society in which they live. Let's explain, to be brief, what is given a price according to the scale of measures created by people and what are the ways of thinking and behaving in a given society? These values can be measured, such as opinions, attitudes and behaviour, particularly by way of opinion polls and representative samples of population segments examined. Obviously, this is a difficult task but the results are useful, indeed indispensable and need to be discussed.
For more than 30 years, a “European Values Study” has been carried out every nine years, under the supervision of an international group of researchers (sociologists and political scientists) in 14 European countries in 1981 and which has gradually been extended to the entire continent (47 countries in 2008). To a large extent this study has focused on the same issues, which has allowed for a number of useful comparisons to be made. A book in English has been published based on these studies but which has also been put together in a context that is more related to the different institutions (Loek Halman, Inge Sieben, Marga van Zundert: Atlas of European Values. Trends and Traditions at the Turn of the Century, Leiden, Brill, 2011). This is the first time that an Atlas of European Values has been published in French, edited by two authors from the University of Grenoble. In it, they present 13 different contributions containing many different cartographic illustrations based on seven major themes: identities and appearances, individual happiness, the social link, individual ethics, social norms, family, work and the economy, religion and politics.
We are not going to attempt to sum up this book here and will only highlight the interesting contribution made by Cécile Belot, head of research at the University of Grenoble, on the issue of “Confidence in the European Union”. The observation that, “Europeans have a certain confidence in the Union but this confidence fell between 1990 and 2008 in very many countries” will not come as any surprise to readers of the Eurobarometer. In 2008, three Union countries displayed very high levels of confidence: Slovenia, Lithuania and Portugal. The countries displaying lower levels of confidence are the United Kingdom, Austria and a very recent member, Croatia. Overall, changes in value systems in Europe over the past 20 years has been accompanied by and sometimes has lea to significant social change. Some of the major factors underpinning these changes, as mentioned by Professor Bréchon, highlight a high level of education, the growth of leisure and the development of social networks (e.g., the special edition of the “Futuribles” review on “European values” July-August 2013, p. 134). .A lot of research still needs to be undertaken, particularly on the evolution of values according to socio-demographic and socio-economic characteristics of people answering questions in each of the different European countries. This will be no mean feat for both researchers and institutions! The European elections will also provide an important way of gauging how much citizens have confidence in the Union... (J-RR)
*** Diasporiques. Cultures en mouvement. Association Diasporiques et Ligue de l'enseignement (3 rue Récamier, F-75007 Paris. Email: postmaster@diasporiques.org - Internet: http://www.diasporiques.org ). 2013, No. 22, 104 pp. €6.50. Subscription: €25 (France), €30 (European Union and Switzerland), €35 (rest of the world).
This issue of this publication seeks to establish bridges between geographical and cultural frontiers. It specifically focuses on linguistic diversity and Abdou Diouf, the Secretary General of the Organisation internationale de la francophonie (International Organisation of French Speakers) emphasises that this is perfectly compatible with respect for multilingualism. The former Senegalese president makes an appeal in this book to not develop European construction on the basis of, “the language of the country least supportive of this construction, namely, the United Kingdom” if it wants to prevent the European Union becoming nothing other than a large single market. This war in defence of linguistic pluralism is far from being won, as pointed out by the participants in a debate on the subject, who also indicate that although multilingualism is supposed to be perpetuated throughout the Union, it is only ever the official languages and languages of state that benefit and that regional or minority languages remain largely discriminated against. The historian Gilles Manceron expresses his concern about the different forms of movements promoting sovereignty on both the left and right and which are in danger of poisoning the forthcoming European elections because they will play these aspirations off against more universal aspirations. Finally, the contribution by Charles Conte, made on the basis of 30 different books, examines the political and social conditions that could produce a secular Europe.
(MT)
*** Fedechoses… pour le fédéralisme. Presse fédéraliste (Maison de l'Europe et des Européens, 242 rue Duguesclin, F-69003 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). June 2013, No. 160, 40 pp. Annual subscription: €30.
This fighting federalist review gives an ice cold welcome to the proposals made by President Hollande on 16 May with regard to whether the euro zone should be given the possibility of establishing an economic government. The French leader confirmed, according to Professor Fayette, his preference for the, “inter-governmental method over the Community method”. This author believes that they would have done better if they had listened to the president of the Italian Council, Enrico Letta, who has refused to abandon the word, “federal”. In the same sense, Barbara Spinelli believes that the speech made by Hollande is possibly dangerous and that reducing, “policy to an economic government is an evasion in which power is transmitted to the technocratic oligarchies which are only accountable to the markets and subsequently depoliticises democracy”. This Italian journalist believes that it is up to Germany to say whether the federalism it professes is a real aim or whether it is just window dressing in an effort to, on the contrary, speed up the development of its antithesis, the disappearance of political sovereignty, the submission to uncontrollable markets and the weakening of every European country except for its own. The Italian federalist, Roberto Palea, is completely at odds with European Union Policy and President Giorgio Napolitano makes a heartfelt appeal to the European Parliament and national parliaments to share, “the exercising of the Union's constituent power” as soon as possible. To help strengthen the democratic deficit in Europe and which is dangerously giving succour to Eurosceptics, those promoting sovereignty and other extremists, the editor and other writers also look at the potential of European citizen initiatives. A number of the other contributions look at the Euro zone crisis, the issue of territorial imbalance and the destiny of regional languages. (MT)
*** JÜRGEN SCHWARZE (Editor): EU-Kommentar. Nomos Verlag (3-5 Waldseestrasse, D-76530 Baden-Baden. Tel: (49-7221) 2104-0 - fax: 2104-27 - Email: nomos@nomos.de - Internet: http://www.nomos.de ). 2012, 3019 pp. ISBN 978-3-8329-6329-3.
In this significant and comprehensive book, the authors look at the European treaties amended by the Lisbon Treaty. A number of different specialists provide a detailed legal analysis of all the different provisions and articles in the latter and formulate a number of extremely useful commentaries on the matter. The authors also provide a similar analysis of the Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights. (SH)
*** MICHAEL E. GARDINER: Weak Messianism. Essays in Everyday Utopianism. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - fax: 3761727 - Email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Ralahine Utopian Studies" series, No. 11. 2013, 274 pp. €53.10. ISBN 978-3-0343-0716-1.
At first glance, the concepts of utopia and daily life don't exactly make great bed fellows. Nonetheless, as indicated in the book's subtitle, it is the justification of this marriage that Michael Gardiner seeks to promote in this book and which brings together a number of different essays written over the past 20 years. The author is a professor of sociology at the University of Western Ontario and in his book he seeks to, “rethink the nature and the prospects of utopianism in a context where utopia is regarded widely to be at best quaintly anachronistic and at worst an unpleasant residue of past totalitarian horrors”. The title of his book is in fact borrowed from Walter Benjamin and his opposition to the “Strong Messianism” that provoked the disasters of the 20th century and which are currently fomenting all kinds of different fundamentalism. He particularly draws on thinkers such as Bakhtin, Merleau-Ponty, de Certeau, Debord, and Henri Lefebvre. These great thinkers were not all necessary defenders of the idea of utopia but the author argues that utopia and other forms of it are manifested in our daily lives and are helping to prepare the tomorrow's world. (PBo)