Content area
Full Text
Books reviewed:
Europe, Nations and Modernity
Atsuko Ichijo (ed.) (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 232 pp.,
ISBN 978-0230301436
;
The Evolution of European Identities: Biographical Approaches
Robert Miller and Graham Day (eds.) (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 307 pp.,
ISBN 978-0230302563
;
Perceptions of Europe: A Comparative Sociology of European Attitudes
Daniel Gaxie, Nicolas Hubé and Jay Rowell (eds.) (Colchester, ECPR Press, 2011), 272 pp.,
ISBN 978-1907301155
Studies of European identity have often been based on empirical research using statistical methods to analyse data, but recent years have seen a turn to qualitative approaches. The three books under review here - all published in 2011 and 2012 - build on qualitative research projects of the study of European identity and citizens' perception of Europe, the European Union and European integration.
Europe, Nations and Modernity , edited by Atsuko Ichijo, is based on the research project 'Identities and Modernities in Europe', which ran from May 2009 till April 2012 and was funded by the European Commission. It asks what it means to be European today, and bases this question on theoretical links between Europe and European integration, national identity and the different national paths into modernity. European integration is treated as a new step of modernity, and national discourses are scrutinised in altogether nine case studies on Turkey, France, Germany, Hungary, Greece, Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland and the United Kingdom. By applying this 'Europe as modernity' framework, the project strives to forego the common confrontation of national and European identity as either/or concepts.
Instead the contributions follow the theory of multiple modernities, a theory that holds that modernisation is not linear and homogenous, but hinges on a country-specific way of perceiving its own national identity. Therefore, modernisation must be studied in the plural. This concept is applied from different disciplinary backgrounds. The case studies encompass historical, sociological as well as political science studies that mainly use existing literature on modernisation, identity formation and Europeanisation and expert interviews with members of the political and intellectual elites. The results do indeed provide evidence of different conceptions of European identity and modernity, as a nation's specific way into modernity appears to lead to a specific form of nationalism and, thus, national identity.
Three prototypes are distilled from the case studies constituted by...