Showing papers in "European Journal of Social Theory in 2002"
TL;DR: The main characteristics of practice theory, a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others, are discussed in this paper.
Abstract: This article works out the main characteristics of `practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent.
4,669 citations
TL;DR: The authors analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globalization, and studies the transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures in the cross-culture memory transfer process.
Abstract: This article analyzes the distinctive forms that collective memories take in the age of globalization. It studies the transition from national to cosmopolitan memory cultures. Cosmopolitanism refer...
416 citations
TL;DR: The following is simultaneously an essay in sociological theory, in cultural sociology, and in the empirical reconstruction of postwar Western history as discussed by the authors ; it introduces and specifies a modi cation for the reconstruction of post-war Western history.
Abstract: The following is simultaneously an essay in sociological theory, in cultural sociology, and in the empirical reconstruction of postwar Western history. Per theory, it introduces and specifies a mod...
368 citations
TL;DR: The history of European identity is the history of a concept and a discourse as discussed by the authors, and it is an abstraction and a fiction without essential proportions, it is not an identity in the proper sense of the word.
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 proportions. 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.
180 citations
TL;DR: In this article, a critical systematization of current ideas of Europe as a cultural identity and on a fieldwork analysis of the nine European Cities of Culture (ECC) is presented.
Abstract: The EU has recently introduced a cultural policy. This includes symbolic initiatives, among which is the creation of the `European Cities of Culture' (ECC), that are a primary example of EU attempts at awakening European consciousness by promoting its symbols, while respecting the content of national cultures. This goes together with the realization that the idea of `Europe' as the foundation of an identity is key for the legitimization of the EU. This article addresses the question of European cultural identity as it is appropriated and shaped by the EU in the process of becoming an `imagined community'. It is grounded on a critical systematization of current ideas of Europe as a cultural identity and on a fieldwork analysis of the nine ECCs in 2000. The article argues that if we are to appreciate how Europe is imagined, it is important both to take EU symbolic initiatives seriously, and to try and grasp the specificity of these symbols and the peculiar conditions of their use.
140 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the concept of the public sphere is examined in order to disentangle various assumptions underlying the definition of the concept, and a different model is sketched that can be used to make sense of public debate held in European media, which is illustrated by applying it to the discourse developed on the issue of the EU enlargement in four weekly magazines.
Abstract: The central question of this article is how to deal (both theoretically and empirically) with the notion of the public sphere with reference to the EU. First the literature on the European public sphere is examined in order to disentangle various assumptions underlying the definition of the concept. Then, the concept of the public sphere is opened up by focusing on `public discourse' instead. Following from this change in perspective, a different model is sketched that can be used to make sense of the public debate held in European media. Finally, the proposed approach is illustrated by applying it to the discourse developed on the issue of the EU enlargement in four weekly magazines, namely Cambio 16 (Spanish), Elsevier (Dutch), the New Statesman (British), and der Spiegel (German).
131 citations
TL;DR: The significance of colonialism and decolonization for the dawning of European integration and their subsequent bearing on notions of European identity still constitute a largely unexplored field within research as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The significance of colonialism and decolonization for the dawning of European integration and their subsequent bearing on notions of European identity still constitute a largely unexplored field within research. In seeking to problematize and amend this state of things, this article embarks on charting a set of historical developments which provide a case for arguing that theoretical and empirical studies on the nexus of European integration and European identity need to pay much closer attention to questions pertaining to colonialism and decolonization. As such, the article seeks to offer a glimpse of what it takes to be a critical background against which scholarly debates on contemporary notions of European identity need to be considered. Such an approach, it is suggested, should be of particular value for research trying to come to terms with Brussels' current endeavour to foster a collective sense of European identity in the Union. In expanding on this exact point, the article also broaches the ques...
78 citations
TL;DR: Architecture has become an important discourse for new expressions of post-national identity in general and in particular for the emergence of a ''spatial' European identity'' as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Architecture has become an important discourse for new expressions of post-national identity in general and in particular for the emergence of a `spatial' European identity. No longer tied to the state to the same degree as in the period of nation-building, architecture has become a significant cultural expression of post-national identities within and beyond the nation-state. The article looks at four such discourses, first, taking the Millennium Dome in London and the Reichstag in Berlin, we show that architecture can express in a reflexive way contested and ambiguous national identities; second, the case of architecture in post-communist European societies illustrates the dual identity of architecture as a project of building and of re-building; third, the EU's search for a cultural form is discussed with respect to the architectural designs on the Euro banknotes; and finally the question of architecture as a relation to a lived space is considered with regard to cityscapes as yet another expression of a tendentially spatialized European identity.
76 citations
TL;DR: The question of whether social structures are efficacious can be tackled by examining how they are produced as mentioned in this paper, where roles and rules, and there are people, have the necessary powers to generate social worlds as products.
Abstract: The question of whether social structures are efficacious can be tackled by examining how they are produced. There are roles and rules, and there are people. Only the latter have the necessary powers to generate social worlds as products. Changing the social world can be achieved only by changing the rules and customs active people follow. Selectionist models of change also draw our attention to rules. Finally, there are obstacles to social change in `reductions' - the minute social practices that shape actual social orders.
51 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the tension between an understanding of Europe as purveyor of a certain kind of cultural, spiritual or religious identity and the more or less bureaucratic project of European construction undertaken in its name.
Abstract: This article explores the tension between an understanding of Europe as purveyor of a certain kind of cultural, spiritual or religious identity and the more or less bureaucratic project of European construction undertaken in its name. The central axis of this tension is the theoretical relationship between identity and legitimacy. The classical modern problem of nation-state building involves integrating the legitimating force of collective identity into the institutions of the state. How does the project of European construction respond to an analogous challenge? This article develops this theoretical question by turning to two canonical positions concerning the relation between institutional legitimacy and its cultural, spiritual or religious under-pinnings - Montesquieu and Weber. It then returns to the founding documents of the EU in order to interrogate the legitimacy of the EU in light of the concept of European identity.
48 citations
TL;DR: The origin of global non-state law as a sequence of recursive legal operations is an ''as if'' not only a founding myth as a self-observation of law, rather the legal fiction of concrete past operations as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Globalization processes imply the self-deconstruction of the hierarchy of legal norms. Thus, legal pluralism is no longer only an issue for legal sociology, but becomes a challenge for legal practice itself. Traditionally, rule making by `private regimes' has been subjugated under the hierarchical frame of the national constitution. When this frame breaks, then the new frame of legal institutions can only be heterarchical. The origin of global non-state law as a sequence of recursive legal operations is an `as if', not only a founding myth as a self-observation of law, rather the legal fiction of concrete past operations. This fiction, however, depends on social conditions outside legal institutions, on a historical configuration in which it is sufficiently plausible to assume that in earlier times, too, legal rules were applied.
TL;DR: The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Honneth, 1996a) as discussed by the authors is a seminal work in the field of self-realization.
Abstract: Axel Honneth, the successor of Jürgen Habermas at the Department of Philosophy, University of Frankfurt, has over the last decade written several important essays and a handful of comprehensive books in social philosophy and critical theory. At the centre of his work we find a new and insightful theory of the good life, that of human self-realization, which was completed in his path-breaking study The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts (Honneth, 1996a). Honneth’s approach can be summarized as follows: the possibility of realizing one’s needs and desires as a fully autonomous and individual being, that is, the possibility of identity formation, depends on the development of self-confidence, self-respect, and self-esteem. It is important to note that these three concepts serve as theoretical, technical concepts, and their meaning differs from our everyday usage (Zurn, 2000: 16). What is important to Honneth is that these three forms of relating to oneself can only be maintained in intersubjective, symmetrical and reciprocal relationships, since they ensure a successful life. Each form of self-relation is situated within three corresponding modes of recognition: (a) emotional support as experienced in primary relationships; (b) cognitive respect in legal relations; and (c) social esteem within a community of shared values. Therefore, violations of recognition patterns, withheld recognition or forms of disrespect such as abuse, denial of rights, exclusion, denigration and insult, can be viewed as distortions of the good life (Honneth, 1996b). Thus, Honneth is concerned with pointing out the disruptions, pathological distortions, everyday troubled identities and experiences of humiliation, suffering and injustice, ranging from the relatively harmless case of not greeting someone to the serious case of stigmatization (Honneth, 2000b: 27). The task is therefore, according to Honneth, to elucidate and diagnose those developmental processes that can be characterized as social pathologies (Honneth, 1996b: 370). Although Honneth’s work is primarily focused on social philosophy, it invites and inspires new sociological thinking. First, his recent appointment as director for the Institute for Social Research at Frankfurt University, whose work is primarily empirical, allows Honneth to situate and further develop his theory European Journal of Social Theory 5(2): 265–277
TL;DR: In the past twenty-five years, there has been an explosion of interest in nationalism and nationality in the social sciences - the past ten also in cultural studies as mentioned in this paper, but these two disciplinary areas define their objects of study differently, but both have recently started to converge in the pervasive use of the term "national identity", which in turn relies on the term 'cultural identity'.
Abstract: The past twenty-five years have seen an explosion of interest in nationalism and nationality in the social sciences - the past ten also in cultural studies. These two disciplinary areas define their objects of study differently, but both have recently started to converge in the pervasive use of the term 'national identity', which in turn relies on the term 'cultural identity'. Although theoretical complications entailed by the use of 'identity' as a concept have been noted, the theorization of identity as culture has occurred almost by default, with the term 'culture' merely designating what needs to be explained, and the inherent circularity of 'cultural identity' as a category remaining unaddressed. The two approaches differ in their understanding of the crucial categories of 'culture' and 'politics' in their accounts of nation and national identity. Cultural studies accounts focus on politics in terms of cultural politics, and thus fail to take on board important aspects of the social science accounts which they take as standard reference points. Both approaches ultimately rely upon 'culture' as an all-inclusive category of social subjectivity, which remains undertheorized in both approaches, albeit in significantly contrasting ways. The place of culture in recent work on European identity functions differently, and provides a useful counterpoint to these difficulties.
TL;DR: The authors identify five competing ways of understanding the meaning of belonging to, or being a citizen of, a given polity and propose a set of analytical tools for understanding competing conceptions of political membership.
Abstract: This article presents a new set of analytical tools for understanding competing conceptions of political membership. Controversies concerning nationality and citizenship are often seen as products of conflict between `civic' and `ethnic' visions. However, the conceptual roots of current discussions and disagreements about political membership are actually more complicated than this might suggest. After examining the dichotomy of civic and ethnic and its limitations, this article identifies five competing ways of understanding the meaning of belonging to, or being a citizen of, a given polity. Political membership may be understood and discussed as a matter of descent from common biological ancestors, cultural attachment, or identification with particular political principles. Alternatively, it may also be imagined either as an exchange of rights for duties or as a benefit granted to those contributing materially to the community. Each of these conceptions figures significantly in current political and int...
TL;DR: The Dynamics of Religious Organizations: The Extravisation of the Sacred and Other Essays, trans. Simon Lee as discussed by the authors, 2000, xii + 188pp, inc. index, £14.99, ISBN 0746514892 (pbk)
Abstract: Danièle Hervieu-Léger, Religion as a Chain of Memory, trans. Simon Lee. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000, x + 204pp. inc. index, £50, ISBN 0745620469 (hbk); £15.99, ISBN 0745620477 (pbk) Phillip E. Hammond, The Dynamics of Religious Organizations: The Extravisation of the Sacred and Other Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000, xvi + 197pp. inc. index, £40, ISBN 0198297629 (hbk) David Lyon, Jesus in Disneyland: Religion in Postmodern Times. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000, xii + 188pp. inc. index, £14.99, ISBN 0746514892 (pbk)
TL;DR: The evolution of modern political systems has been consistently theorized as a ''transition'' as mentioned in this paper, whether to a ''liberal'' or a ''people's'' democracy, and it has been elaborated within Marxism as the 'transition to commun...
Abstract: Whether to a `liberal' or a `people's' democracy, the evolution of modern political systems has been consistently theorized as a `transition'. Elaborated within Marxism as the `transition to commun...
TL;DR: The question of whether social structures are efficacious can be tackled by examining how they are produced as discussed by the authors, where roles and rules and people are identified as the necessary powers to generate social worlds as products.
Abstract: The question of whether social structures are efficacious can be tackled by examining how they are produced. There are roles and rules, and there are people. Only the latter have the necessary powers to generate social worlds as products. Changing the social world can be achieved only by changing the rules and customs active people follow. Selectionist models of change also draw our attention to rules. Finally, there are obstacles to social change in 'reductions' - the minute social practices that shape actual social orders.
TL;DR: Baudrillard as mentioned in this paper argued that the universal is not the universal; rather, they are opposed, and because of globalization the universal faces the same destiny of particularities, if not worse.
Abstract: One of the most vivid images of Europe today – Europe as culture and identity, struggling to (re)discover its own culture and identity – is found in America, an essay by Jean Baudrillard (Verso, 1989). Even if this text affirms the difficulty of finding ‘a European spirit and culture, a European dynamism’ (p. 83), the outline of America is traced by a gaze that defines itself, repeatedly, as European. After all, it does not come as a surprise that, amid the contemporary wealth of studies on Europe, the latter is unveiled by a study on its most relevant Other. This is what theories of identity hold: that identity is built on distinction from the Other. Yet here is a reversal: the Other is delineated, whereas the Self, Europe, is left at the margins, just as it is secondary in a process of globalization led by America. Modernity, sometimes defined as the brainchild of Europe, has now moved away, because its ultimate product, globalization, is elsewhere. However, as Baudrillard states in this interview, not even America can claim to be the creator of globalization. Globalization has no single creator and its real locus is, clearly, the world. It is an irresistible process, too often reduced to its economic side, that brings about the erosion of differences. Baudrillard’s analysis is subtle: it is not a matter of the disappearance of differences (or, as he says elsewhere, of the Real), but the erosion of their strength, of their reciprocal incommensurability. This is connected to another distinction often overlooked: the global is not the universal; rather, they are opposed, and because of globalization the universal faces the same destiny of particularities, if not worse. Europe, too, is swept away, as the universal coincides with Europe and with Europe’s predicament, having been embodied in the idea of nation. The themes of Europe and globalization lead Baudrillard to some reflections on the destiny of culture. The double erosion produced by globalization, both of the universal and of particularities – between which Europe does not seem able to find an alternative strategy – has important consequences for culture. Culture becomes a kind of universal language, a common denominator. That is, it becomes something totally different from an anthropological idea of culture. Baudrillard does not hide the violence and conflict implied by the idea of culture as specificity and difference, but he also points to the subtler and devastating violence of its contrary, of hyperculture, of indifference. In this interview, European Journal of Social Theory 5(4): 521–530
TL;DR: The authors take up, but in a different key, an argument of postmodernists that the over-rationalized conception of society tends to ignore important phenomena such as those belonging to the symb...
Abstract: This article takes up, but in a different key, an argument of postmodernists that the over-rationalized conception of society tends to ignore important phenomena such as those belonging to the symb...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors trace the development from the cultural representation of pain as the embodiment of moral strife in the early modern novel to contemporary images of pain and suffering in medicine, the mass media and film.
Abstract: Max Weber is noted for his analysis of the `specific and peculiar rationalism' of western culture. However, his diagnosis of a life disenchanted by reason draws attention to his lesser known formulations of the problem of theodicy - the problem of reconciling pain and misfortune with moral expectations of the world. Weber suggests that cultural responses to this problem change with the increasingly secular rationalization of life. The present paper traces this development from the cultural representation of pain as the embodiment of moral strife in the early modern novel to contemporary images of pain and suffering in medicine, the mass media and film. The comparison suggests that late modernity is confronted by an `inverse' problem of theodicy, in which representations of pain and suffering are disassociated from ethical and political contexts and the quest for meaning within a human frame.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide a general, theoretical reflection on the decline of the normative dimension in post-modern societies, which results in a profound misunderstanding of the subjective and unitary character of society and social action.
Abstract: This article provides a general, theoretical reflection on the decline of the normative dimension in postmodern societies. Modern societies were the first to recognize themselves as societies, that is, to reflect explicitly on the normative basis of their constitution. With the decline of modernity, societal integration, which was based in part on the collective solidarity borne of an idea of Justice, has dissolved into merely `social' forms of integration, legitimized in terms of a claim to operational perfection. At a purely epistemological level, this results in a profound misunderstanding of the subjective and unitary character of society and social action. The article ends in a plea for the recovery of a reflection on values, understood not just as a change in values, but as a change in the relation to values, necessary to confront the irreducible plurality of the world.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed Europe's position in the world in relation to a specification of globalization into five global processes, whereby Europe stands out as the central node of global flows of trade and capital and as the region of uniquely high transnational entanglements, as an area of transnational normativity.
Abstract: Europe's position in the world is analyzed in relation to a specification of globalization into five global processes, whereby Europe stands out as the central node of global flows of trade and capital and as the region of uniquely high transnational entanglements, as an area of transnational normativity. The historical background and inter-relation of foreign trade and trans-polity law within Europe, both in early modern social theory and in post-Second World War institution-building, are highlighted, as well as the spread of European law to other continents. The concepts of position, role, and identity should be distinguished. This historical and current position of Europe in the world is little expressed in the roles that contemporary European leaders want to play and in contemporary formulations of European heritage and identity. This is due partly to a nostalgic misjudgment by former great power politicians, but largely because of the delimited position of conventional trade and law in Europe, and of the actual but untheorized transformation of trading traditions into socially embedded trade and of the legal tradition into democratic international normativity. It is finally argued that these European practices of trade and law in fact correspond to many current critical views on global trade and global governance
TL;DR: The Breakdown of the University of Montréal as mentioned in this paper was the best piece of non-fiction in the French language for the year 1995 and won the Canadian Governor General's Award for the best nonfiction in French.
Abstract: The following essay is taken from Michel Freitag’s book Le naufrage de l’université, which could be translated as The Breakdown of the University. Typically, the book is subtitled ‘Essays in Political Epistemology’; and as one reads the book one realizes that the breakdown concerns less the university, than what he terms the universitas, the universal, unitary dimension that necessarily underlies any collective belonging. A difficult, philosophical work, the book nonetheless won the prestigious Canadian Governor General’s Award for the best piece of nonfiction in the French language for the year 1995. That such an honor was bestowed on this work says something about la société québecoise. But it also confirmed what was already widely recognized: that Michel Freitag has been, for some time now, Quebec’s foremost social theorist. Born in 1935 in Switzerland, and with degrees in law and political economy, as well as a doctorate in sociology, he has taught since 1971 (until his recent retirement) in the sociology department of the Université du Québec à Montréal (better known by its acronym UQAM). He has authored a number of other books, the most important of which are the two volumes of Dialectique et société, the first of which is titled Introduction à une théorie générale de symbolique, and the second Culture, pouvoir, contrôle. Les modes de reproduction formels de la société. Other volumes are promised for the future.1 Michel Freitag is also the founder, animateur, editor and regular author of the journal Société, which has been publishing, since the late 1980s, articles of a very high and highly theoretical caliber, many of them by those who were once his students.2 It would be only a slight exaggeration to claim that he has been at the center of a social theory movement in Quebec, one that has been called l’École de Montréal. When reading Michel’s work, one is immediately struck by the fact that he is extremely well versed in the classical theoretical traditions, both sociological and philosophical – and uncompromisingly so. Not only does he acknowledge the influence of these traditions, he works with their questions, uses their language and builds on their reflections. In effect, he believes that they are not just relevant to, but indispensable for a deepened understanding of our present condition. In this essay the debt to Hannah Arendt and her critique of the ‘rise of the social’ is immediately acknowledged. Yet as one reads further, one cannot but be struck by the resonance with the Frankfurt school, the ‘dissolution of society into the social’, with its critique of positivism both as method and ideology, being easily translatable into the terms of the ‘eclipse of reason’. At the same time it is hard to imagine society being described as ‘an a priori subjective and self-identical European Journal of Social Theory 5(2): 171–173