European Ideas and Identities is concerned with the meaning and limits of 'Europe' broadly conceived as shared belief, culture, law and community. Central themes of our research at the moment include:
(i) Philosophy of Europe
What are the terms through which we should understand what it means to be European? What are the limits of Europe? Are they exclusively geographical or are they perhaps teleological, and ultimately global? The philosophy of Europe takes the European world as its 'object', but conceives this as akin to an event (the coming into being and holding sway of a distinctive world) and not simply a set or chain of intraworldy, historical occurrences that mark a particular, regional political culture; it is an event which is not over, and which informs the localisation of the being, the "somewhere where we are", of every European. In the philosophy of Europe we analyse the basic 'schemata' of this world in its various forms and figures.
(ii) Diversity and Community
Departing from the methodological individualism and behavioural approaches that characterise much of social science, we are interested in the cultural and community construction of identity, outcomes and predictability. We proceed from two key assumptions: (1) that individuals and communities are faced with making choices between incommensurable values and perspectives, where there is no uniquely rational or right way of living and seeing; and (2) that communities (be they social, political, economic or cultural) provide important mechanisms for resolving such collisions of values or visions and for the construction of certainty amid the uncertainty bred of the freedom to choose. We are interested in exploring the hard choices individuals must make between competing claims (e.g. for freedom and for certainty or belonging) and the diverse normative and institutional frameworks (e.g. different conceptions of citizenship or human and minority rights) they employ to make such difficult decisions.
(iii) European Democracy and Constitutionalism
Politics and rule-making in contemporary Europe extends far beyond the institutions of the parliamentary sphere. Our research looks at the wider social and legal context of decision-making, examining such themes as the socio-cultural constraints on constitutional rule, the place of ideas, ideology and contestation, and the ways legal-political change is experienced in everyday life.
We welcome doctoral and post-doctoral applications in these and related areas.
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European Ideas and Identities Highlights
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NEW PUBLICATIONS
Jonathan White (2011), Political Allegiance after European Integration
Decades of co-rule have left EU citizens with attachments more complex than labels like 'European' or 'national identity' would suggest. But what kind of ties should we be looking for? How can they be studied, and where does their democratic significance lie?
This book combines a conceptual elaboration of the political bond with a sociological study of commonsense suppositions, based on interviews with groups of taxi-drivers in Germany, Britain and the Czech Republic. The author investigates allegiance not in directly-solicited views on European matters but in the expectations and reference-points evoked spontaneously in political discussion. A willingness to take the transnational view on many issues is clear. But how those issues are understood raises doubts about their European dimensions and scepticism about the possibilities for addressing them. Without changes in the way politics is conceived, arguments for the European polity are likely to ring hollow, and with them the formal ties of EU citizenship.
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Publications
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Simon Glendinning (2011)
"Europe, for example"
LEQS Paper No 31, March 2011
Jonathan White (2010)
"Europe in Political Imagination"
Journal of Common Market Studies Vol 48 (4), pp. 1005-1038
Jonathan White (2010)
"Europe and the Common"
Political Studies Vol 58 (1), pp.104-122
Damian Chalmers (2009)
"Gauging the Cumbersomeness of EU Law "
Current Legal Problems Vol 62 (forthcoming)
Marco Dani (2009)
"Constitutionalism and Dissonances: Has Europe Paid Off Its Debt to Functionalism?"
European Law Journal Vol 15, No 3, pp. 324–350
Simon Glendinning (2009)
"Japheth's World: The Rise of Secularism and the Revival of Religion Today"
The European Legacy, Journal of the International Society for the Study of European Ideas Vol 14, No 4, pp. 409-426
Jennifer Jackson Preece (2008)
"Democracy, Minority Rights and Plural Societies: Plus ça Change?"
Sociology Compass , Vol 2(2), pp. 609–624
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