*** MARK DUBRULLE, GABRIEL FRAGNIERE (Eds.): Identités culturelles et citoyenneté européenne. Diversité et unité dans la construction démocratique de l'Europe. 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 ). "Europe des cultures" series, No. 1. 2009, 151 pp, €25-90. ISBN 978-90-5201-455-5.
How far does local identity fit with European interests? This was the key question in six regional conferences organised by international organisation 'Forum Europe des Cultures' in 2005 and 2006 that works to get culture (in the sense of cultural identity) centre stage in the European integration process. This book reports on the process in a series of essays highlighting the functional connection between the assertion of local and/or regional identities and the emergence of European citizenship.
"The Europeanisation of Europeans has yet to take place," observes Mark Van de Voorde in his essay, and this will no doubt be confirmed, unfortunately, in the European elections this month. Why such apathy? Although many Europeans have stopped identifying with what the European Union has turned into, isn't that because "Europe as a political inspiration and a community of values has been overshadowed by the common market"? The problem, agrees Gabriel Fragnière, is that countries gave the European Community power over coal, steel, economic issues and a big border-free market, followed by the single currency, whereas culture remained strictly in the hands of the nation state. The "community life" caused by integration has given rise, according to the erstwhile rector of the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, to cultural changes and a fundamental change of mindset in Europe, leading to a pluriculturalism arising from the assertion of differences, from the decentralisation of cultures trapped in their own territory. Alongside this, there is multiculturalism arising from a "need of others to be different in order to be better placed to become oneself," the respect of others hence becoming "a key part of self-assertion". Fragnière argues that a revolution is under way: "Traditional, national societies that have built up over the course of time around the idea of protected territories, ethnic groups and sometimes races, with their own exclusive language and culture, nations under the authority of a sovereign state power, have reached such a degree of internal complexity and external openness to others that they will automatically be projected, as if against their will, into this new multiculturalism." In a way, the revolutionary concept of "European citizenship" introduced by the Maastricht Treaty has led Member States to shoot themselves in the foot because European citizenship has the merit of substantially reducing (if not ending) the "intellectual and ontological confusion between three notions - identity, nationality and citizenship." It is clear that the very idea of European citizenship allows politics to cross new mental barriers. The state in the form it has been created in recent centuries will get its fingers burned: having agreed to transfer some of its traditional powers to the supranational level, it will also have to adjust to an ever greater extent at "infranational" level to increasing demands for autonomy, recognition of separate identity and decentralisation, even as "demands for great citizen involvement at supranational or transnational level become frequent, in the name of the rights of the new European citizens, rights which traditional nation states will no longer control." This is what is going on through the unification of Europe, argues Gabriel Fragnière, adding that the true cultural challenge to the EU "is the introduction of a new form of humanism that makes diversity the fundamental issue that brings people together," and therefore the new culture of Europe is to become a true "Community of Values".
Radical transformations at foot in the European Union are considered in many ways. The Bruges conference focussed on defence of the Flemish language (which was the focus of Flemish renewal in Belgium), an experience compared with the situation in Catalonia in Spain. There is an article by former Belgian prime minister Mark Eyskens, who adapts the adage of Auguste Vermeylen that "We have to be Flemish in order to become Europeans." Today, one century later, it would make more sense to reverse this: "We have to be Europeans to remain Flemings," argues Mark Eyskens. In his view, "Outside Europe, there is no safe place for small communities, or large communities for that matter, because Europe is a living body which, through its institutions, provides communities with the chance to live out their identity and their sense of belonging in a harmonious manner, providing them with an opportunity to experience their diversity and their equivalence, their particular nature and their universalism." In Rennes, the focus was on the social and political aspects of what people in Brittany in France see as being their own way of "living together". In Strasbourg, the key question was how the Alsace region could "come a fully European region with one foot - France and the other foot in Germany, but also (…) being neither French nor German". The conferences in Santarém, Corfu and Brussels looked at keeping ones own identity in the European Union, cultural tourism mocking national borders, and the snowballing of multicultural society in large urban areas.
Michel Theys
*** SAMUEL SALZBORN: Geteilte Erinnerung. Die deutsch-tschechischen Beziehungen und die sudetendeutsche Vergangenheit. Peter Lang (1 Moostrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3471727 - email: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). "Die Deutschen und das östliche Europa. Studien und Quellen" series, No. 3. 2008, 134 pp. Price: €25.70. ISBN 978-3-631-57308-2.
This book analyses relations between Germany and the Czech Republic from the viewpoint of the past history of the Germans in Sudetenland. The relations between the two reveal divergences in memory and recollections of this point of their common history, during which the Sudeten minority played a key role. The author makes a critical analysis of past history and expresses the theory that history is recounted differently in both countries. His main thesis is that the German Sudetens have interpreted their history in a stark manner, complicating the prospect of a constructive future for relations between the two countries. Using a series of case studies, the book considers ethnicity, ethnic identity, European Union enlargement to the east, and political history as reported in the media, all from the angle of German-Czech Republic relations.
(EPi)
*** STEFANIA SLAVU: Die Osterweiterung der Europäischen Union. Eine Analyse des EU-Beitritts Rumäniens. Peter Lang (see above). "Kölner Schriften zu Recht und Staat" series, No. 38. 2008, 261 pp, €48-10. ISBN 978-3-631-57994-7.
Analysing the enlargement of the European Union eastwards, this book focusses on the accession to Romania to the EU club. The question of Europe's future is raised against the backdrop of the French and Dutch referendums that voted 'no' to the draft constitutional treaty, and the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish in a different referendum. The oft-attempted reorganisation of European integration leads the author to question the future prospects for the EU in terms of the constitution and global affairs. After a chronology of rounds of EU enlargement, the study explains how the recent rounds of enlargement were prepared. In Stefania Slavu's opinion, the most recent round of enlargement and the possible membership of Turkey and Croatia in the future may complicate the consolidation of the integration process. The author examines the inevitable reforms to be pursued and makes suggestions about the direction the EU should take to prevent the EU turning into a first class and a second class Europe.
(EPi)
*** TUNDE PUSKAS: "We Belong to Them". Narratives of Belonging, Homeland and Nationhood in Territorial and Non-Territorial Minority Settings. Presses Interuniversitaires Européennes / Peter Lang (see above). "Multiple Europes" series, No. 43. 2009, 309 pp, €32-90. ISBN 978-90-5201-477-7.
The ethnic and cultural belonging of immigrant minorities has always existed in some form since the beginning of humanity. Irrespective of their origin, immigrants have tended to move to the same area, where they can find familiarity in the middle of the unknown and find themselves in the midst of people sharing the same values. A range of immigrant populations integrate into the host society but many people find it difficult to adapt and therefore seek out the company of their fellow immigrants in order to create a new version of life back 'home' in places like "Chinatown" or "Little Italy," or even outright ghettos. The author is a Hungarian academic who works in societal sciences and carries out research into immigration at Lidköping University in Sweden. Tünde Puskás examines in this interesting research how connections are built up and how ethnic and national identity is created, how it evolves and how it sometimes reinvents itself. The author focusses on the Hungarian communities in Sweden and Slovakia, looking at whether this sense of belonging is shared by both groups of Hungarian exiles or whether it varies, depending on the host country, and is therefore constructed in reaction to the milieu in which individuals find themselves. The study looks at concepts like modes of ethnic and national identification, ethnicity as a way of seeing, thinking and acting, and how a host country exacerbates or eases the need for belonging to a different identity. Much of the book is given over to accounts by the individuals concerned, providing an empirical basis through which further research into the phenomenon could be carried out in the future.
(NDu)
*** TADEUSZ BUKSINSKI (Ed.): Democracy in Western and Post-Communist Countries. Peter Lang (see above). "Dia-Logos" series, No. 10. 2009, 370 pp, €52-80. ISBN 978-3-631-58543-6.
Since the collapse of the Iron Curtain, the countries of central and Eastern Europe have been in the process of introducing democracy and the process has not yet been completed. To begin with, many people thought the new democracies would be unstable or even impossible to set up in lands with a Communist past. The process is continuing to take root, however, and grow stronger, leading to a raft of long-desired improvements for the people concerned. How do things stand today? To what extent do central and East Europe democracies resemble Western European democracies? How can the new democracies learn from the problems and specificities of the old and vice versa? These are some of the questions answered in this comparative study managed by the Director of the Philosophy Department of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poland. The contributors are academics from Austria, the Czech Republic, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, who examine the situation in these new democracies, highlighting common characteristics of ex-Communist states that explain not only the directions taken in the move towards democracy but also explain many of the clashes and rumblings at EU level as well. The book also looks at the new oligarchies and the growth of corruption in the new democracies, the market radicalism and its impact at institutional level and the growing popularity of populism. This is a very useful book for anyone in academia wanting to promote democracy and help ensure progress in the European constitutional process.
(NDu)
*** GABRIELE BUDACH, JURGEN ERFURT, MELANIE KUNKEL (Eds.): Ecoles plurilingues - multilingual schools: Konzepte, Institutionen und Akteure. Internationale Perspektiven. Editions Peter Lang (see above). "Sprache, Mehrsprachiegkeit und soziales Wandel" series, No. 8. 2008, 150 pp, €64. ISBN 978-3-631-56876-7.
In a Europe without internal borders where the free circulation of individuals and the freedom to settle in another Member State has become commonplace, education systems are facing what is largely a new problem - that of a multiplicity of languages. Education used to be organised with little thought for languages of other areas or countries but immigration and the Schengen Agreements are confronting schools with a new challenge. As globalisation and information exchange gains pace, European countries tend to adapt only very slowly and often want to retain "cultural homogeneity" and therefore a single language in the education system. With newcomers arriving from all four corners of the planet, however, this "mono-linguistics" no longer fits and the idea is being examined ever more seriously of setting up multilingual schools. Academic language experts have examined the issue in several countries in Europe and report back on the various experiences of learning and teaching in more than one language in this book. The essays are in English, French or German and examine Austria, Sweden, Spain and the United Kingdom, describing the situation in each country, outlining successes and failures, and outlining underlying issues (often due to a collective subconscious which is still very attached to the idea of a nation) that stand in the way of an expansion of teaching in more than one language. The authors pay particular attention to the range of 'mutual immersion' experiments in a series of European and North American schools.
(NDu)