Showing papers in "European Journal of Social Theory in 2008"
TL;DR: In this paper, a space-theoretical concept according to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices is developed, which opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception.
Abstract: It has become an academic self-evidence that space can only inadequately be conceptualized as a material or earth-bound base for social processes. This could commend a theoretical view of space as the outcome of action, which brings both social production practices and bodily deployment into focus. The action-theoretical perspective allows the constitution of space to be understood as taking place in perception. Not only are things alone perceived but also the relations between objects. This article develops a space-theoretical concept according to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices. This opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception, of social goods and human beings in their situated spatial order/ing. Exclusion and inclusion are accordingly comprehended in terms of perception of the attunement of places. With reference to Anthony Giddens, this article discusses how space can be understood as a duality of structural ordering and action elements.
217 citations
TL;DR: Despite the efforts to expunge race from the European political sphere, racism continues to define the sociality of Europe as mentioned in this paper, and the silence about race in Europe allows European states to declare themselves non-racist or even anti-racist, while at the same time continuing to imply an inherent European superiority, which determines both international relationships and relationships with those seen as ''in but not of Europe' within its domestic spheres.
Abstract: This article argues that, despite the efforts to expunge race from the European political sphere, racism continues to define the sociality of Europe. The post-war drive to replace race with other signifiers, such as culture or ethnicity, has done little to overcome the effects of the race idea, one less based on naturalist conceptions of hierarchical humanity, and more on fundamental conceptions of Europeanness and non-Europeanness. The silence about race in Europe allows European states to declare themselves non-racist, or even anti-racist, while at the same time continuing to imply an inherent European superiority, which determines both international relationships and relationships with those seen as `in but not of Europe' within its domestic spheres. The article concludes by asking what the repercussions of this are in the context of the contemporary discourse on cohesion and integration that replaces multiculturalism as a possible way of living together in a Europe always less homogeneous in reality than it is commonly imagined to be.
183 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the public significance of emotions, most specifically their role in constituting identity and community in the wake of political violence and trauma, and offers a conceptual engagement with processes of healing and reconciliation, showing that emotions are central to how societies experience and work through the legacy of catastrophe.
Abstract: This article examines the public significance of emotions, most specifically their role in constituting identity and community in the wake of political violence and trauma It offers a conceptual engagement with processes of healing and reconciliation, showing that emotions are central to how societies experience and work through the legacy of catastrophe In many instances, political actors deal with the legacy of trauma in restorative ways, by re-imposing the order that has been violated Emotions can in this way be directed by elites who are concerned with reinstating political stability and social control Healing often becomes more about retribution and revenge, rather than a long-term project begetting peace, collaboration and emotional catharsis The emotions triggered by trauma thus tend to perpetuate existing antagonisms, further entrenching the disingenuous perceptions of identity that may have created violence in the first place Surveying this process, this article suggests that scholars of politics and reconciliation need to be more attentive to the role emotion plays in shaping particular forms of community Doing so requires a systematic understanding not only of the feelings associated with first-hand experiences of trauma, but also of the manner in which these affective reactions can spread and generate collective emotions, thus producing new forms of antagonism Addressing this challenge, the authors explore how a more conscious and active appreciation of the whole spectrum of emotions — not only anger and fear, for instance, but also empathy, compassion and wonder — may facilitate more lasting and ingenuous forms of social healing and reconciliation
112 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the phenomenon of empathy and examine its manifestation in the context of encounters between victims/survivors of gross human rights violations and perpetrators who are perceived by victims or survivors as showing signs of remorse.
Abstract: This article explores the phenomenon of empathy and examines its manifestation in the context of encounters between victims/survivors of gross human rights violations and perpetrators who are perceived by victims/survivors as showing signs of remorse. The article considers the factors that mediate the development of empathy through, on the one hand, the examination of the external dynamics of victim-perpetrator encounters, and on the other, the analysis of the intrapsychic dynamics of these encounters. The article argues that the defining elements of empathic experience emerge within the relational, intersubjective realm of the victim-perpetrator encounter. The article engages an interdisciplinary dialogue between Emmanuel Levinas' ethics of responsibility for `the Other' and a psychoanalytic conceptualization of the capacity for empathy. It asserts that the emotional state of empathy shared by victims and perpetrators is a result of a pivotal turn to perspective taking and gaining an integrated view of t...
83 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a new perspective on contemporary debates about the transformations of work and employment, and their impacts on individuals and communities, by focusing on the writings of Christophe Dejours.
Abstract: This article aims to present a new perspective on contemporary debates about the transformations of work and employment, and their impacts on individuals and communities, by focusing on the writings of Christophe Dejours. Basically, the article attempts to show that Dejours' writings make a significant contribution to contemporary social theory. This might seem like an odd claim to make, since Dejours' main training was in psychoanalysis and his main activity is the clinical, psychiatric study of pathologies linked to work. However, in the course of his career, Dejours has greatly extended this initial clinical interest, and by integrating insights from philosophy and other social sciences, has developed a highly sophisticated and consistent theoretical model of work. Starting from a narrow psychopathological focus, Dejours has gradually developed a full-blown theoretical defence of the centrality of work. The article outlines the main features of Dejours' metapsychological model, and the structuring role...
61 citations
TL;DR: Shame and guilt are universal expe...How do experiences of shame and guilt shape or reflect the ways in which the vanquished are reconciled (or not) to the new world order established by the victors?
Abstract: How do experiences of shame and guilt shape or reflect the ways in which the vanquished are reconciled (or not) to the new world order established by the victors? Shame and guilt are universal expe...
34 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors discuss how to mobilize a traumatic national history on behalf of a less fractured polity, and how to gain closure over a past that bifurcates the nation and establishes (at least) two national histories.
Abstract: How to mobilize a traumatic national history on behalf of a less fractured polity? How to gain closure over a past that bifurcates the nation and establishes (at least) two national histories — his...
34 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on two post-national questions: is European identity constructed in the absence of an Other? Does Europe stand for the separation of the 'cultural' from the 'political'?
Abstract: Among scholars and intellectuals, Europe is often celebrated as a post-national space, i.e. a space built around cosmopolitan values rather than culturally and/or ethnically specific factors. This view is also often sketched in normative terms, being rarely based on what people actually think of this post-national Europe. The present article essays to fill this gap, by focusing on two post-national questions: is European identity constructed in the absence of an Other? Does Europe stand for the separation of the ‘cultural’ from the ‘political’? Relying on qualitative information collected in four regional case studies in Western Europe, this article maintains that the ‘post-national’ view finds expression also among people. Yet, it coexists with a ‘national’ view, which continues to shape how people see themselves and the world, Europe included. The paper argues that it is exactly in the interaction, at times contradictory, between these two views that the normative idea of Europe as a post-national space should be analyzed.
29 citations
TL;DR: The authors argued that anger represents an appropriate response to wilful harm and needs to be afforded a central role in any conception of justice, and argued that it is important to recognize the moral legitimacy of their anger.
Abstract: This article seeks to contest the frequently repeated assertion that anger poses the greatest threat to transitional societies moving from authoritarianism to democracy. Against suggestions that victims of past injustices should forswear their `negative emotions' lest they spark a renewed cycle of violence, it argues that it is important to recognize the moral legitimacy of their anger. While anger is notoriously (though contestably) vulnerable to excess and needs to be moderated in reference to shared norms of reasonableness, it represents an appropriate response to wilful harm and needs to be afforded a central role in any conception of justice.
26 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that the possibility of an antiontological and multicultural cosmopolitan European community will largely depend on how Europe answers the question of whether Turkey should be granted membership in the EU.
Abstract: The question of Turkey's membership in the EU has been the subject of debates about the cosmopolitan future of Europe. Using the concept of cosmopolitanism as developed by Beck, Habermas, and Delanty, this article argues that the possibility of an antiontological and multicultural cosmopolitan European community will largely depend on how Europe answers the question of whether Turkey should be granted membership in the EU. Turkey forces a debate on three crucial areas that are directly related to the cosmopolitan future of Europe: (a) Europe's geopolitical place in the global world, (b) postnational forms of a European public sphere, and (c) European identity. The potential for a multicultural and pluralistic cosmopolitanism is a two-way street, and while Turkey's membership will have a transformative impact on the EU, the membership process will also have a similar impact on Turkish democracy and modernity.
23 citations
TL;DR: Mitteleuropa is a discourse; it is not just a semantic term or a label to refer to a geopolitical region in which power and culture are interwined as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The political significance of Mitteleuropa has grown in that much of it is now within the EU. Mitteleuropa is a discourse; it is not just a semantic term or a label to refer to a geopolitical region in which power and culture are interwined. Although people may identify with it, it is not primarily a term of identity but a cultural mode of interpretation. It can be called, along with other concepts of Europe, a conflicting field of interpretation. The concept reflects a civilizational context based on imperial models of modernity and cosmopolitan cultural resonances. Europe is an ongoing cultural battleground and the idea of Mitteleuropa is a reminder of a shift to the margins and the emergence of a multiperspectival Europe along with new notions of geopolitical space and historical-time consciousness.
TL;DR: The notion of permanent critique has been defined as a methodology that underpins theoretical diagnoses of contemporary society, based on its linking norm, and has been a defining feature of the programme of critical social theory as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Immanent critique has been a defining feature of the programme of critical social theory. It is a methodology that underpins theoretical diagnoses of contemporary society, based on its linking norm...
TL;DR: The German term ''Mitteleuropa'' was coined to designate Central Europe at the time when the Habsburg monarchy exercised its domination over the Danube area and when the Eastern borders of the Reich proclaimed in 1871 were formed as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The German term `Mitteleuropa' was coined to designate Central Europe at the time when the Habsburg monarchy exercised its domination over the Danube area and when the Eastern borders of the Reich proclaimed in 1871 were formed, thus from the end of the eighteenth century to the end of the First World War Mitteleuropa constitutes an ambivalent `lieu de memoire', a notion in which Central Europe has invested its memory of the past and its identity: such a notion is negative when it brings to mind the mental map of German imperialism both exploited and perverted in the Third Reich; it is positive when it is interpreted as a federative idea, opening supranational perspectives associating the countries of German culture with Slavic peoples — the Hungarians, the Romanians — and with the Jews Since the formation of the `Habsburg myth' as a retrospective utopia of a defunct harmony of nationalities in the `third Europe' situated between Western Europe and the Russian world, the Austrian tradition has become th
TL;DR: The significance of such political and cultural diversity is, however, differently understood, and conceptualized, and not always sufficiently appreciated in distinct perceptions of Europe as discussed by the authors, even if a communitarian/unitarian vision of a single European identity seemed to prevail.
Abstract: Political and cultural diversity in contemporary Europe can be encountered on many levels and in a variety of forms. The significance of such political and cultural diversity is, however, differently understood, and conceptualized, and not always sufficiently appreciated in distinct perceptions of Europe. A variety of perceptions of Europe have played a role in the project of Eastern enlargement, even if a communitarian/unitarian vision of a single European identity seemed to prevail. Such a vision was not only promoted by Western European political forces, but also actively endorsed by some of the new-comers themselves, who, in a way, embedded the unitarian understanding of European identity in their local self-identification as `Central Europe'. A unitary vision of Europe was, however, at odds with a number of connotations associated with the myth of a distinct Central European identity as it had emerged in the 1980s. The article identifies three understandings of the idea of Central Europe as they have...
TL;DR: In the wake of the Iraq war of 2003, and in response to the European reaction to the war, a number of prominent European intellectuals launched a new debate on Europe's identity and in particular Europe's cultural identity as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the wake of the Iraq war of 2003, and in response to the European reaction to the war, a number of prominent European intellectuals launched a new debate on Europe's identity, and in particular ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore the agencies of the transmission of knowledge through which the Balkans became familiar with the West, focusing on how concepts about 'us' and the 'other', cultural and social self-definitions were historically mediated by concepts of Europe.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to interrogate the current mainstream interpretation of the relations between the Balkans and the West by exploring the agencies of the transmission of knowledge through which the Balkans became familiar with the West. Interest is focused on how concepts about 'us' and the 'other', cultural and social self-definitions were historically mediated by concepts of Europe. Issues of cultural transfer form a point of departure, in this sense suggesting that Balkan visions of Europe cannot be understood as simply mirroring the representations of the Western hegemonic discourse about the Balkans. In order to understand these visions, more attention needs to be paid to local and regional dynamics in the production of ideologies and self-narrations.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the intellectual evolution of Jeffrey Alexander's work, from early attempts in rethinking the theoretical logic of sociology to his latest pragmatic turn in terms of a theory of social performance, and explain the points of agreement and European Journal of Social Theory 11(4): 523-542
Abstract: Traditionally, sociologists have referred to the study of culture that concerns their discipline as ‘sociology of culture’. Since the mid-1980s Jeffrey Alexander has been turning the discipline on its feet, coining a new term: ‘cultural sociology’. The purpose of this upheaval is to redefine the sociological understanding of meaning in relation to social action as well as to rework both meaning and social action as categories for social research in general (see Alexander, 2007). Alexander’s work seeks to construct above and beyond Parsons’ theoretical edifice. This implies that, for Alexander, culture is a structure analytically different and autonomous from society, which is, in turn, understood as the internal environment of action. Consequently, Alexander regards culture as an ‘independent variable’ for sociological analysis (Alexander and Smith, 2003). His rethinking of culture stresses the need for a new sub-discipline within sociology, while reinvigorating other fields such as politics, economics or law due to its emphasis on the creative and performative character of meaning. In this sense, Alexander’s ‘strong program’ in cultural sociology, is also a strong bet for the social sciences. In the last two decades cultural sociology has become an increasingly institutionalized field within American sociology. Alexander has played a major role in advancing his own theoretical paradigm while shaping generations of graduate students under its workings. It is no wonder that the ‘strong program in cultural sociology’ is an unvarying reference among different schools of cultural analysis (Kurasawa, 2004). Alexander’s work has been the object of several critical reviews generating as much adhesion as rejection (i.e. Collins, 1985; Colomy and Turner 1998; Emirbayer, 2004; Fuhrman, 1986; Inglis et al., 2006; Joas, 2005; Kurasawa, 2004; McLennan, 2004, 2005; Mouzelis, 1999; Poggi, 1983; Wallace, 1984). In the present interview Jeffrey Alexander discusses the intellectual evolution of his work, from early attempts in rethinking the theoretical logic of sociology to his latest pragmatic turn in terms of a theory of social performance. Moreover, he contextualizes his cultural sociology and explains the points of agreement and European Journal of Social Theory 11(4): 523–542
TL;DR: The recent resurgence of scholarly interest in Stoic ethics and psychology has shown why the Enlightenment modern reason/passion dichotomy is deeply misleading as mentioned in this paper, and why the Stoics themselves argue that the emotions are not antithetical to reason, but are themselves forms of evaluative judgement and insight.
Abstract: The articles collected here all share a concern with investigating the emotional foundations required to establish stable liberal democracies in the face of past conflicts and social divisions that systematically denied or destroyed liberal values of political equality and individual liberty. This broad concern with the emotional foundations of political order has a long history in Western philosophy, stretching back to Plato’s claim that the just city is based on an education that carefully calibrates its citizens’ anger (thymos) and extinguishes their sense of tragic grief or compassion (eleos). Plato’s political philosophy understood the regulation of the emotions as central to the bios politikos (not the bios theoretikos), and conceived political questions of justice and order as inseparable from the normative evaluation of specific emotions. However, classical political philosophy not only shows why the emotions are central to political theories of order and community; its account of the emotions as a type of cognition, most forcefully developed by the Greek and Roman Stoics, directly informs contemporary debates about the public role of the emotions. The Stoic theory of the emotions challenges the Kantian assumption that emotions or passions are merely thoughtless or irrational impulses (Nussbaum, 2001b: vii). The recent resurgence of scholarly interest in Stoic ethics and psychology has shown why the Enlightenment modern reason/passion dichotomy is deeply misleading. On the Stoic account, pity grief, fear and anger are, in fact, particular types of belief. As Martha Nussbaum shows, the Stoics powerfully and persuasively argue that the emotions are not antithetical to reason, but are themselves forms of evaluative judgement and insight. According to the Stoics, far from being blind impulses empty of any thought-content, mere ‘pushes’ or ‘pulls’, all emotions entail high evaluations of aspects of the world that we do not fully control (Nussbaum, 2001a: 4–25). Anger and grief, for example, are responses to damages that we have suffered, and these responses express the value we invest in what the Stoics call ‘external goods’. Emotions register the vulnerability we experience when we tie our ‘happiness’ (or more precisely, eudaimonia) to the possession of uncontrollable ‘external goods’, which include material goods and social attachments. Though the Stoics themselves counselled us to free ourselves from all vulnerabilities, and that doing so required extirpating the emotions, we do not have to share this anti-tragic normative perspective to make use of their theory of the emotions (Nussbaum, European Journal of Social Theory 11(3): 283–297
TL;DR: In this article, Habermas is shown to offer a discriminating interpretation of learning processes that need to guide political democracy in a fast globalizing world, and the far-reaching agenda of his programme for a globalized and democratized welfare project is underlined.
Abstract: According ta many of his critics, Habermas is so preoccupied with ‘old normative maps’ that he cannot really help us chart our options in a fast globalizing world. The following article contests aspects of this familiar critique. The argument is developed in three stages. First, some misapprehensions are targeted. No unreconstructed liberal, Habermas is shown to offer a discriminating interpretation of learning processes that need to guide political democracy in a global context. The far-reaching agenda of Habermas’s programme for a globalized and democratized welfare project is underlined. Next, Habermas’s attempt to bring forward the normative resources of liberal democratic histories is contrasted with Ulrich Beck’s normative avant-gardism. This latter is shown to be a mere semblance of radicalism that serves go legitimate the triumph of ode particular axis within modernization processes. Finally, the article explores a dilemma that faces Habermas’s attempt ho use the potentials of a particular cultural tradition as the normative grounds for a globally extended democracy. Habermas wends to avoid reducing critical theory to the mere affirmation of certain parochial cultural choices and no tries to find grounds for establishing the universal resonance of these normative contents. The last section looks into the ideological character of this attempt and considers an alternative way in which the inter-cultural significance of democratic Enlightenment commitments might be tested.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare the Mitteleuropa visions of Friedrich List and Friedrich Naumann, two liberal thinkers from two different centuries, and demonstrate how fragile the connection is between free trade and democracy.
Abstract: This article compares the Mitteleuropa visions of Friedrich List and Friedrich Naumann, two liberal thinkers from two different centuries. Their conceptualizations demonstrate how fragile the connection is between free trade and democracy. Friedrich List was a liberal thinker in pre-revolutionary Germany who was very interested in the question of how to create a political economy based on a strong nation-state. List stretched the concept of Mitteleuropa to include an area from the Baltic and the North Sea to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea in the south. List was a typical liberal of that time with a belief in the combination of free trade, democracy and nationalism. Friedrich Naumann's goal was to reconcile the categories of state and economy, the Emperor and the working class, German and Slavic populations, understood as opposites by many in the debate of his time. The task he set himself was to reconcile these opposites and connect them to liberal thoughts about constitution and democracy. His utmost goal was to unify the national and the social, the Kaiser and the Volk. On this point, Naumann failed, as we know. As we also know, other forces then took up his search for ways to unite the national and the social.
TL;DR: The idea of Mitteleuropa developed as both a political and scientific concept, a project and a reality in German Geopolitics as discussed by the authors, and it can be seen as a way of understanding politics, nature and culture.
Abstract: The idea of Mitteleuropa began to gain momentum in the German geopolitical science of the beginning of the twentieth century. German geopolitics, which became famous through the works of Karl Haushofer, had set out a geographical and political notion of Mitteleuropa that supported a political project based on German expansion. As such, Mitteleuropa developed as both a political and scientific concept, a project and a `reality'. With an analysis of the core elements defining the term Mitteleuropa one can begin to appreciate the characteristics that differentiate it from other geographical concepts, as well as the features which some conservative authors have promoted following the geopolitical scientists. As a `geopolitical idea', Mitteleuropa can be shown to designate a way of understanding politics, nature and culture, or more specifically, their relationship.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors show that instead of rationality, Coleman's psychological starting point was existential insecurity, and instead of the alleged mechanism of the maximization of utility, actors choose to conform to peer values and norms in order to alleviate insecurity.
Abstract: James S. Coleman was the major proponent of rational choice theory. This article challenges the traditional reading of his work by showing that under the explicit theory of rational choice lay a latent non-rational theory of action. The article shows that instead of rationality, Coleman's psychological starting point was existential insecurity; that instead of the alleged mechanism of the maximization of utility, actors choose to conform to peer values and norms in order to alleviate insecurity; and that the optimal setting for action is provided by intimate and dense communities, rather than unregulated free markets. These three non-rational presuppositions are analyzed and it is suggested that they are crucial for understanding Coleman's assessment of modernity, social change and his call for the rational reconstruction of society.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors elaborate the theoretical foundations of a political counter-hypothesis to urban globalization, clarifying the different historical and normative conceptions of institutional structure and agency in the urban context.
Abstract: While political economic perspectives of urban globalization tend to generalize the economic pressures upon socio-political transformations of cities, recent European research has stressed the institutional context of urban collective action. However, the structural bias of the European city model merely complements the criticized economization by a culturalist essentialization of urbanity, and thus fails to conceptualize political agency. In order to elaborate the theoretical foundations of a political counterhypothesis to urban globalization, this article clarifies the different historical and normative conceptions of institutional structure and agency in the urban context. Most research of cities implies — more or less implicitly — a common urban ideal which associates centrality with a local integration potential of plural societies. However, distinguishing between a historically embedded empirical category, a normative model of public space, and an analytical ideal-type of political agency helps to o...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors provide a description, an analysis and an explanation of Mitteleuropa and other closely related concepts, such as East-Central Europe, and outline the future directions in which the concept will change.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to provide a description, an analysis and an explanation of Mitteleuropa and of other closely related concepts, such as East-Central Europe. The first section briefly addresses the broad historiographical issues. The second addresses the more strictly political and intellectual history of the concept in the period between 1975 and 1989 while the third section will describe the evolution of the concept after the end of the Cold War. The final part outlines the future directions in which the concept will change.
TL;DR: This paper explored the uses of tragedy as a mode of analysis in international relations, where actors are portrayed as acting ethically, but through their deeds they bring about consequences that are contrary to the values in the name of which the deeds were undertaken.
Abstract: This article explores the uses of tragedy as a mode of analysis in international relations. In tragic analyses, actors are portrayed as acting ethically, but through their deeds they bring about consequences that are contrary to the values in the name of which the deeds were undertaken. The good deeds bring about ethically obnoxious consequences. The article demonstrates how tragic analyses can be made of the actions of collective actors such as states and nations. Examples from Rhodesia, South Africa and the Balkans are used to demonstrate this. Tragic stories elicit sympathy for the protagonists. Such accounts are compared with rival accounts of the same acts, in terms of `just war theory', for example, which accounts do not generate sympathy but call forth emotions of outrage and condemnation. Finally, a case is made for the use of the tragic form of analysis in international affairs. Such analyses highlight the tensions and contradictions between rival social practices and point the way towards politi...
TL;DR: Alessandro Ferrara, a former student of John Searle and Neil Smelser at Berkeley in the late 1970s, of Jürgen Habermas in Frankfurt subsequently, and now Professor of Political Philosophy in Rome, is one of the best-known Italian social and political theorists, a vital contributor to what has been called the third generation of Critical Theory as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Alessandro Ferrara, a former student of John Searle and Neil Smelser at Berkeley in the late 1970s, of Jürgen Habermas in Frankfurt subsequently, and now Professor of Political Philosophy in Rome, is one of the best-known Italian social and political theorists, a vital contributor to what has been called the third generation of Critical Theory.1 His intellectual programme entails the elaboration of a post-metaphysical approach able to maintain forms of non-foundationalist universalism beyond the plurality of available interpretive frameworks. That involves retrieving elements of universalism that emerge from what he calls the ‘tradition of authenticity’, a lineage that runs from Rousseau, through to Schiller, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger, constituting a neglected variety of modernity overshadowed by the dominant ‘tradition of autonomy’. Looking for bridges, Ferrara has found some building-blocks in Kant’s reflective judgement and Simmel’s exemplary (rather than generalizing) universalism. There are affinities with recent approaches theorizing varieties of modernities, especially as Ferrara’s work points to the necessity of interrogating modernity’s different variants in terms of their implications and possibilities for the construction of contemporary identities. In this interview, Ferrara responds to questions on European identity, which he finds particularly interesting for his approach precisely because, as he says at the beginning, it is both in fieri and impossible, or better, unavailable: something that is not actually likely to be built (or destroyed for that matter), according to an individual plan, political or otherwise. This is why European identity, like any identity, calls into question authenticity, the ‘autocongruence of a symbolic whole embedded in an individual, a group or an abstract entity’, as Ferrara reminds us in closing the interview. In the middle, the answers open up a ‘hermeneutic reconstruction’ – rather than an impossible definition looking for a European essence – of major aspects of European identity. These are traced in recent developments that have pushed forward the process of European integration, and especially as they are embedded in fundamental texts such as the unratified Constitutional European Journal of Social Theory 11(3): 421–437
TL;DR: The history of post-war Europe, the EU and the European generation is in many ways a success story, compared with the past bloody and national history of a strongly divided Europe as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: It is an impressive group of authors from many disciplines and countries that Fossum and Schlesinger have brought together is this very timely book with theories, models and analysis of the many aspects of Europeanization and communication inside Europe and the European Union (EU). The history of post-war Europe, the EU and the European generation is in many ways a success story, compared with the past bloody and national history of a strongly divided Europe. However, the development right now, as the editors also reflect upon in the introduction, seems to be at a crossroad where the expansion of the EU demands new structures and procedures, but where at the same time the public support for a grander and more ambitious vision of a unified and expanded European democracy does not seem to produce popular support on a national level.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore some aspects of the significance of Simone Weil's work for the question of reconciliation and suggest that Weil does not have readily available a proper conception in this context of our status as political agents.
Abstract: The aim of this article is to explore some aspects of the significance of Simone Weil's work for the question of reconciliation. Focusing on Weil's notion of power, and investigating its plausibility, the article argues that her thinking is less useful than is sometimes supposed for grounding a cosmopolitan ethic. It further argues that Weil's philosophical outlook, with its emphasis on loving everything that happens as an expression of God's will, is in danger of being incapable of taking seriously others' suffering. By picking up on the themes of punishment and forgiveness in her work, it is contended that she does not have readily available a proper conception in this context of our status as political agents. However, it is suggested that there is to be found a more promising line on reconciliation in her work in the notion of luck, and that this concept is one that, more generally, may have a more important role to play in understanding reconciliation than is often supposed.
TL;DR: Etzioni's From Empire to Community (FETC) as discussed by the authors is an overview of his last book, Security First, which is concerned with formulating a would-be agenda for a new US foreign policy.
Abstract: ‘In short, ask not what international order you desire, but what international order you can achieve.’ This quote is from a recent article (2007), in which Amitai Etzioni offers an overview of his last book, Security First, which is concerned with formulating a would-be agenda for a new US foreign policy. As a strongly pragmatic and ‘applied’ work, Security First is frankly written from the standpoint of US interests. Nonetheless, its overtly one-sided arguments are supposed to draw on a more unbiased theoretical framework, which would be the one offered by From Empire to Community (hereafter: FETC). FETC therefore, had the purpose of answering the preliminary question: ‘Where do we go from here?’ (see preface, p. xi). In this sense, FETC adopts an alleged ‘new approach to international relations’ that consists of an attempt to extend the communitarian point of view from the domestic to the global level. As the title suggests, FETC ’s fundamental argument is that some tangible features are available, while some others are to be promoted, to make the world order (currently an empire led by the US) resemble a global community. In turn, Security First addresses the ultimate pragmatic issue, namely how the US ought to act so as to promote its interests in a way consistent with the development of such a new world order. If things were like that, the two books would have to be regarded as succeeding steps within a single, plain expository design. This is precisely the sense of the sentence quoted above: whereas FETC was committed to tell us what we all (both US and non-US citizens) could reasonably desire as a global common good, Security First shows the way through which the US should contribute to achieving it. In a few words, the author would have shifted the standpoint from the first to the second book: already the preface of Security First addresses the basic issue, namely the ‘profound changes in American foreign policy’ which more than ever are called for. (Etzioni even points to the presence of a ‘subplot’ of the book European Journal of Social Theory 11(1): 125–133