Abstract
The current volume proposes a fresh angle to the study of European identities, ‘Europe as modernity’ drawing from works carried out for a collaborative research project funded by the European Commission.1 The project, ‘Identities and Modernities in Europe (IME)’ investigates a wide range of definitions about ‘us, the Europeans’ in Bulgaria, Croatia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Turkey and the United Kingdom in order to answer the question: ‘What is it to be a European now?’ The consortium set out to look into this question with an assumption that ‘Europe’ (as shorthand for a collection of related concepts such as the idea of Europe, various processes of Europeanisation and European identity), national identity and modernisation are intricately enmeshed. As research progressed, it has emerged that ‘Europe as modernity’ would be an angle through which the entanglement of ‘Europe’, nations and modernity could be meaningfully investigated. The volume thus presents the outcomes of our collective endeavour, a collective reflection on the entanglement of ‘Europe’, nations and modernity — so far. This is not a definitive and final account of European identities; in fact there will never be a definitive account in social sciences for the social world is continuously evolving, manifesting itself in a number of, sometimes contradictory, ways. What is presented here therefore is an interim report, but this is an interim report that introduces a fresh angle to the study of Europeanisation and a critical assessment of this approach.
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© 2011 Atsuko Ichijo
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Ichijo, A. (2011). Introduction: Europe As Modernity. In: Ichijo, A. (eds) Europe, Nations and Modernity. Identities and Modernities in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230313897_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230313897_1
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