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The Construction of European Identity: From Nation State to the European Union

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Abstract

This chapter deals with a few aspects which illustrate the basic context of European identity and discusses the development of national identity into European identity European identity. In this chapter, I try to combine different scientific disciplines, such as social anthropology, political science, political economy, European studies and linguistics, in order to approach European identity in an interdisciplinary context and specifically, as a supranational identity that is created by political elites. Hence, in this chapter, I mention some basic theories of nationalism and national identity that I consider necessary to the study of European identity. Thereafter, I focus on the nation state, its crises and its replacement by post-national regimes, such as the European Union, given that European identity, from my viewpoint, is directly linked to state and suprastate apparatuses. Moreover, I refer to different approaches to European identity (transnational, post-national, etc.), and present a classification of those approaches, and refer to studies on the discursive construction of national and European identities.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    According to Weiss and Wodak an interdisciplinary approach can be adopted if a context is understood not as a specific setting in space/time or situational framework but rather as something that requires a more comprehensive theoretical explanation in order to be examined (Weiss and Wodak 2003, p. 21).

  2. 2.

    See, for instance, studies by Smith (1988, 1989, 1991, 1995), Hobsbawm (1992), Gellner (1983), Delanty and O’Mahony (2002), Brubaker (2004), Castells (2004), and Todorov (2008).

  3. 3.

    This term was used to describe the accession of ten states to the EU in May 2004. Those were eight East European states (Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovenia) plus Malta and Cyprus.

  4. 4.

    Here, I should mention that the concept of nation is not the only one that unifies the members of a group and at the same time distinguishes ‘us’ from ‘them’. The concepts of race and ethnicity also classify human groups (Kallis 2011). Moreover, ethnicity ‘underpins one of the most significant and popular forms of nationalism – ethnic nationalism’ (Kallis 2011, p. 131). In this study, I decided to focus on the nation and its links to the nation state in order to illustrate the political and institutional construction of boundaries and the development of national identity into supranational identity.

  5. 5.

    For instance, Anna Triandafyllidou (1998) describes how the Greek government used the ‘Macedonian issue’ and Greek national identity in a period of social struggle in Greece.

  6. 6.

    According to Heer and Wodak (2008), collective memory may be characterized as a collection of traces of events that are important for the historical sequence of a particular group and which are linked to respective groups' national identity (pp. 4–5).

  7. 7.

    Wodak et al. (2009), Wodak and de Cillia (2007), and Wodak (2009).

  8. 8.

    See Wodak (2009), Wodak et al. (2009), and Van Leewen and Wodak (1999).

  9. 9.

    Henceforth referred to as KWNS.

  10. 10.

    The KWNS underwent a crisis in the 1970s and 1980s (Jessop 2002).

  11. 11.

    Here it is obvious that I am not referring to the current financial crisis, but to the crisis of the late 1970s and the 1980s, and the enforcement of the European Union. In my view, nowadays, the financial crisis is more a crisis of the eurozone—a supranational institution that has led to a sociopolitical crisis among its members and not a crisis of separate nation states.

  12. 12.

    Henceforth referred to as SWPR.

  13. 13.

    Henceforth referred to as the EU.

  14. 14.

    See studies by Abeles (2000), Black and Shore (1994), Brubaker (2004), and Strath (2006) that focus on the meaning of common symbols for the creation of a common European culture which unifies European residents who do not share a common history and memories.

  15. 15.

    Eurobarometer data, National and European identities, EU average 1992–2004, ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/cf/index_en.cfm.

  16. 16.

    See Abeles (2000), Fligstein (2008), Fligstein et al. (2012), Strath (2002), Risse (2010), Smith (1995), Triandafyllidou and Wodak (2003), Billig (1995), Checkel and Katzenstein (2009), Brubacker (2000, 2004), Black and Shore (1994), and Todorov (2008).

  17. 17.

    Here I need to explain that I do not see ‘culture’ as synonymous with ‘civilization’ or material objects. I prefer a ‘cognitive’ definition of ‘culture’. Geertz himself offers a classical or ‘cognitive’ definition of culture, as: ‘…an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life’ (Geertz 1973, p. 89).

  18. 18.

    New Left Review, 11, September–October 2001.

  19. 19.

    See Wodak (2004, 2007, 2009), Krzyzanowski (2005, 2010), Krzyzanowski and Oberhuber (2007), and Weiss (2002).

  20. 20.

    Krzyzanowski (2005).

  21. 21.

    Wodak (2009) and Weiss (2002).

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  1. Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens, Greece

    Salomi Boukala

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Boukala, S. (2019). The Construction of European Identity: From Nation State to the European Union. In: European Identity and the Representation of Islam in the Mainstream Press. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93314-6_2

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