Introduction: writing the contemporary history of European solidarity

Abstract

This introduction outlines the possibilities and perspectives of a history of ‘European solidarity’. While – given the high frequency with which the term is used in contemporary political debate – this is most certainly a hot-button issue, the topic has long been neglected by researchers on the history of European integration and European ideas. The reasons for this lack of empirical studies lie in the vagueness and the normativity of the term. This introduction thus conceptualizes ‘European solidarity’ as an analytical tool for research and discusses three major approaches to its historicization: first, deconstructing ideas and discursive notions of ‘European solidarity’, a term that has been omnipresent in primary sources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; second, investigating concrete practices of ‘European solidarity’, for example in welfare-state policies or in the work of civil-society actors; third, looking at historical limits of ‘European solidarity’ which help to bring contesting perceptions and motives into view. Finally, the introduction addresses the question of the analytical benefits of a history of ‘European solidarity’: it points among other things to new periodizations that help to avoid a teleological orientation in European historiography, as well as to the detachment of the European integration process from the institutionalization of the European Communities.     

The euro crisis and European citizenship: The euro 2001–2012 – celebration or commemoration? (Respond to this article at http://www.therai.org.uk/at/debate)

The Eurozone crisis has highlighted the problems of European economic integration, but what effects is it having on social cohesion in the European Union? Using symbolic, historical and anthropological perspectives this article examines the relationship between the single currency and European citizenship. I argue that the roots of the crisis lie in the euro's origins. Economic and monetary union (EMU) was an assemblage of two very different rationales: one economic and based on neoliberal assumptions, the other political and geared towards forging social cohesion among Europeans. Binding Europe through a common currency was always a risky endeavour, placing heavy expectations on the identity‐effects of money. EU leaders also seemed curiously oblivious to the possible negative effects that weaknesses in the euro might have for European solidarity. Drawing on theories of money and its role as a technology of citizenship and symbolic boundary marker, I argue that the euro continues to symbolize European integration, only now it has come to symbolize the cleavages and tensions that divide Europe. Paradoxically, one effect of the Eurozone crisis is not fragmentation but an acceleration of the deepening of European economic governance. However, the centralization this entails imposes heavy costs on the EU's peripheral members and raises concerns about the future of democracy in Europe.     

Crises and policy responses within the political trilemma: Europe, 1929–36 and 2008–11

The recent debate on the Eurozone failed to appreciate a particular characteristic of European crisis experiences, namely their fundamentally political character. To make my argument, I borrow from Dani Rodrik (2000) the framework of a “political trilemma” between cross-border economic integration, national institutions and democracy (in the sense of mass politics) and discuss its relation to the more commonly known “macroeconomic trilemma” as well as some limitations of the framework. The recent experience of a European debt crisis and the experience of Europe's Great Depression can be interpreted as a “political trilemma”: both reflect the problem of designing effective policy responses to major economic shocks within the environment of deep economic integration across political boundaries and the regime choices that this involves. Within this framework I highlight some aspects of the 1930s that are informative to the policy choices in Europe today. Once we accept that some policy choices should be avoided, attention should be shifted to the remaining options and the obstacles that prevent their implementation, notably the challenge to transform democracy beyond national borders.     

Integrating Local and Regional in Pre-Contact Hawaiian Agriculture at Kahuku,Hawai‘i Island

ABSTRACT

The agricultural systems of the Hawaiian archipelago were some of the most intensive in the Pacific and this scale of intensity is well illustrated by the large agricultural landscapes of leeward Hawai‘i Island. Previous research in the area has centred on understanding the relationship between agriculture, political process, and large-scale environmental conditions. Much of this research has been oriented at the regional level, privileging discussion of elite management and oversight, with only limited investigation exploring farmer-centric adaptation at local scales. In this paper, we assess the integration of local and regional processes in Hawaiian agriculture using recent paired archaeological and ecological data from the Ka‘ū Field System as a case study. We demonstrate the presence of both general patterns previously identified in the archipelago and particular adaptations to the local environment of Kahuku ahupua‘a. In particular, we highlight targeted infrastructural developments that allowed for cultivation of what would otherwise be a difficult cultivation medium within the confines of a larger, likely regionally organised, field system constrained by general soil biogeochemical thresholds. We argue that such investigations provide an increased understanding on how these large-scale agricultural landscapes were formed by integration at multiple social and spatial scales.     

Post–Socialist Borderland: Promoting or Challenging the Enlarged European Union?

The formerly socialist East European countries have undergone extensive political and territorial changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989. This transformation has largely been associated with two simultaneous developments in the post–socialist states: nationalisation and European integration. The concept of post–socialist borderland underlines the scope and effect of post–socialist identity politics in the countries applying for EU membership, and also points at the dramatically changing political map of Europe.
In discussions about the ongoing European integration, stability is expected to emerge through inclusive arrangements. It has generally been thought that political accommodation is not at issue at the future internal or external borders of the EU. However, the European enlargement project faces severe problems as nationalization and European integration represent contradictory tendencies in post–socialist democratisation and European stabilisation.
This article discusses the role that borderlands play in balancing between national and European goals. The evolving European integration is examined from the vantage point of the states applying for membership. Particular attention is paid to the contextual basis of political argumentation, the structural politics of the European Union, and the nationally sensitive elements of the nation–state. The example of the Estonian/Russian borderlands represents a 'post–socialist' condition, within which old loyalties of the past meet contemporary socio–economic and political realities, threats and future expectations. These issues seem to influence considerably the formation of 'common European goals' in the enlarged European Union.     

“Masters in Our Native Place”: The politics of Latvian national parks on the road from Communism to “Europe”

On May 1, 2004, eight formerly Communist countries in Central and Eastern Europe consummated their long-desired “return to Europe” by joining the European Union (EU). While popular perceptions of the east European environment center on nightmarish images of pollution hotspots, Communism also bequeathed a wealth of relatively untouched nature that supports far more biological diversity than can be found in Western Europe. The enlargement represents a biodiversity bonanza for the EU, but millions of humans inhabit the post-Communist countryside, too, tending cultural landscapes rich with local and national meanings. EU accession has thus raised profound questions about post-Communist nature management. Should priority be given to biodiversity conservation at the continental scale, or to maintaining peopled landscapes and traditional land-use patterns? This article examines the confrontation between global and local understandings of nature through a case study of two Western-supported initiatives in national park management in Latvia in the late 1990s. Some Latvians, seeing hope for national development only through an internationalist embrace of globalization and regional integration, appropriated the Western narratives of biodiversity and rural economic diversification. But others resisted these narratives as threatening to agrarian notions of the value of rural landscapes: notions rooted in a potent agrarian discourse of national identity. What internationalists saw as a savvy embrace of the globalization of nature, agrarians denounced as a sort of self-imposed neo-colonialism.     

Habermas’s Theological Turn and European Integration

Abstract

Jürgen Habermas’s recent work is defined by two trends: an engagement with the realm of the sacred and a concern for the future of the European Union. Despite the apparent lack of connection between these themes, I argue that the early history of European integration has important implications for Habermas’s conclusions about the place of faith in public life. Although Habermas’s work on religion suggests that the sacred contains important normative resources for postsecular democracies, he continues to bar explicitly religious justifications from discourse within state institutions. I question this exclusion of faith by reconstructing the role that political Catholicism played in the foundation of the European project. By focusing on two of the most important actors involved in the creation of the first European Community, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, I show how explicitly religious reasons can broaden political perspectives, resulting in the creation of new, inclusive, postnational forms of communal life. Pushing Habermas to accept the implications of his theological turn, I argue that pluralistic, nondogmatic and nonauthoritarian religious claims should be allowed to enter into the formal public sphere through a discursively determined interpretation of secular translation.     

Landscape as a Medium for Integration in Design Practice: The Case of Flanders,Belgium

The twenty-first century has seen a remarkable revival of interest in landscape by disciplines of spatial design, such as landscape architecture, urban design and architecture. Inspired by the principles of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), several authors have suggested extending the concept of landscape into a metaphor for inclusive multiplicity and pluralism in design and planning. However, the implementation of the ELC is rather complex as it deliberately contains no methodological or practical guidelines. In this paper, we explore whether or not the holistic approach towards landscape in the spirit of the ELC actually affects Flemish design in practice. To this end, we study interviewees' perspectives on the use of landscape in design and their experiences with it by means of a qualitative interpretive research design with multiple triangulation of data collection methods. First, we present the perspectives of the study on landscape as a medium to facilitate integration in design projects, by discussing four separate topics where this is the case. Second, we conceptualize the integration of landscape in spatial design as an expertise which can be obtained by spatial designers, regardless of their disciplinary background through awareness-raising, training and education.     

On the Subject of the “Unified” Geography (Landscape and Ethnos,VI)

A theory of ethnogenesis is advanced, associating stability of ethnic communities with homogeneous landscapes and ethnic change leading to the formation of new communities with heterogeneous landscapes. The ethnic aspect of population, unlike the social and political aspects, is found to be a function of geographical factors. The study of the interplay between ethnic man and the environment does not require an integration of the geographic disciplines but can be investigated within the framework of a special discipline, say, ethnology within geography.     

Palimpsests of Progress: Erasing the Past and Rewriting the Future in Developing Societies—Case Studies of Singapore and Jakarta

The former colonial port cities of Southeast Asia are complex in both their landscapes and their collective memories. Centuries of European imperial domination have left a mark on their townscapes and, more so in some cases than in others, on their contemporary political and social cultures. During the colonial period, the integration of these port cities into global trade networks also fostered inter‐ and intra‐regional migration and, thus, the development of complex cultural mixes in their demographic composition. In recent decades, and following the attainment of political independence, this region has experienced spectacular economic growth and the development of a range of nationalisms, both of which have had a considerable impact on the recent transformation of their (capital) cityscapes. Singapore and Jakarta are presented here as case studies of the ways in which economic, political and cultural forces have interacted to produce cityscapes in which elements of the past are variously eliminated, hidden, privileged, integrated and/or reinvented.     

Urban Political Ecology, Justice and the Politics of Scale

This and the subsequent papers in this special issue set out the contours of Marxian urban political ecology and call for greater research attention to a neglected field of critical research that, given its political importance, requires urgent attention. Notwithstanding the important contributions of other critical perspectives on urban ecology, Marxist urban political ecology provides an integrated and relational approach that helps untangle the interconnected economic, political, social and ecological processes that together go to form highly uneven and deeply unjust urban landscapes. Because the power-laden socioecological relations that shape the formation of urban environments constantly shift between groups of actors and scales, historical-geographical insights into these ever-changing urban configurations are necessary for the sake of considering the future of radical political-ecological urban strategies. The social production of urban environments is gaining recognition within radical and historical-materialist geography. The political programme, then, of urban political ecology is to enhance the democratic content of socioenvironmental construction by identifying the strategies through which a more equitable distribution of social power and a more inclusive mode of environmental production can be achieved.     

Brexit or Bremain: what future for the UK's European diplomatic strategy?

A major public debate on the costs and benefits of the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union is presently under way. The outcome of the referendum on 23 June 2016 will be a pivotal moment in determining whether the EU has a future as a component of the UK's European diplomatic strategy or whether there is a major recalibration of how the UK relates to Europe and more widely of its role within international relations. Since accession to the European Economic Community the UK has evolved an uncodified, multipronged European diplomatic strategy. This has involved the UK seeking to reinforce its approach of shaping the security of the continent, preserving a leading diplomatic role for the UK in managing the international relations of Europe, and to maximize British trade and investment opportunities through a broadening and deepening of Europe as an economically liberal part of the global political economy. Since accession the UK's European diplomatic strategy has also been to use membership of the EU to facilitate the enhancement of its international influence, primarily as a vehicle for leveraging and amplifying broader national foreign and security policy objectives. The strategy has been consistent irrespective of which party has formed the government in the UK. Increasing domestic political difficulties with the process of European integration have now directly impacted on this European strategy with a referendum commitment. Whether a vote for a Brexit or a Bremain, the UK will be confronted with challenges for its future European strategy.     

Performing security: The imaginative geographies of current US strategy

Political geographers have recently focused their attention on the performative nature and imaginative geographies of US security strategies. This work has illuminated a number of mechanisms through which geographical knowledge has been interpreted and reformulated to support specific political agendas. This paper builds upon and develops the insights of these recent studies, arguing that current US security strategies are constructed around a policy of integration, whereby states are encouraged, through a range of measures, to mesh with attitudes and perspectives on the world. It assesses the ways in which these integration strategies are being performed, through an analysis of US National Security Strategy documents, the works of writers such as Kagan and Barnett, and the imaginative geographies and popular geopolitical representations of the US and its enemies. This paper contends that these practices combine to produce the effects that they name, bringing to life an imaginary geography that mirrors and supports the particular logics of the US-led ‘war on terror’.     

Spaces of Utopia and Dystopia: Landscaping the Contemporary City

Some of the most recent literature within urban studies gives the distinct impression that the contemporary city now constitutes an intensely uneven patchwork of utopian and dystopian spaces that are, to all intents and purposes, physically proximate but institutionally estranged. For instance, so–called edge cities (Garreau, 1991) have been heralded as a new Eden for the information age. Meanwhile tenderly manicured urban villages, gated estates and fashionably gentrified inner–city enclaves are all being furiously marketed as idyllic landscapes to ensure a variety of lifestyle fantasies. Such lifestyles are offered additional expression beyond the home, as renaissance sites in many downtowns afford city stakeholders the pleasurable freedoms one might ordinarily associate with urban civic life. None–the–less, strict assurances are given about how these privatized domiciliary and commercialized 'public' spaces are suitably excluded from the real and imagined threats of another fiercely hostile, dystopian environment 'out there'. This is captured in a number of (largely US) perspectives which warn of a 'fortified' or 'revanchist' urban landscape, characterized by mounting social and political unrest and pockmarked with marginal interstices: derelict industrial sites, concentrated hyperghettos, and peripheral shanty towns where the poor and the homeless are increasingly shunted. Our paper offers a review of some key debates in urban geography, planning and urban politics in order to examine this patchwork–quilt urbanism, In doing so, it seeks to uncover some of the key processes through which contemporary urban landscapes of utopia and dystopia come to exist in the way they do.     

Spaces of Utopia and Dystopia: Landscaping the Contemporary City

Some of the most recent literature within urban studies gives the distinct impression that the contemporary city now constitutes an intensely uneven patchwork of utopian and dystopian spaces that are, to all intents and purposes, physically proximate but institutionally estranged. For instance, so–called edge cities (Garreau, 1991) have been heralded as a new Eden for the information age. Meanwhile tenderly manicured urban villages, gated estates and fashionably gentrified inner–city enclaves are all being furiously marketed as idyllic landscapes to ensure a variety of lifestyle fantasies. Such lifestyles are offered additional expression beyond the home, as renaissance sites in many downtowns afford city stakeholders the pleasurable freedoms one might ordinarily associate with urban civic life. None–the–less, strict assurances are given about how these privatized domiciliary and commercialized 'public' spaces are suitably excluded from the real and imagined threats of another fiercely hostile, dystopian environment 'out there'. This is captured in a number of (largely US) perspectives which warn of a 'fortified' or 'revanchist' urban landscape, characterized by mounting social and political unrest and pockmarked with marginal interstices: derelict industrial sites, concentrated hyperghettos, and peripheral shanty towns where the poor and the homeless are increasingly shunted. Our paper offers a review of some key debates in urban geography, planning and urban politics in order to examine this patchwork–quilt urbanism, In doing so, it seeks to uncover some of the key processes through which contemporary urban landscapes of utopia and dystopia come to exist in the way they do.     

Re-Envisioning Tarascan Temporalities and Landscapes: Historical Being,Archaeological Representation,and Futurity in Past Social Processes

We apply a phenomenological perspective on landscape and geographic information system (GIS) applications in order to theorize how human perception and agency were likely implicated in processes of the formation of the late pre-Hispanic Tarascan State of West Central Mexico. The relatedness of landscape features in space or place-based perception has been well theorized; here, we further consider the relationality of places through time. In the changing landscape of the Lake Pátzcuaro Basin, the demographic and political core of the Tarascan State, temporality must have been vitally important to inhabitants of the basin. Utilizing GIS, we construct not only map-based analyses of the changing environment but also create viewsheds of past landscapes in order to see what past inhabitants of the basin would have seen in order to demonstrate that temporality would have been easily mapped in the landscape and its features. Finally, we discuss the role of temporality and cultural memory in an embodied landscape to model the various lake levels that past peoples could have anticipated through time based on their perceptions and memories.     

Sovereignty for security?: the discourse of sovereignty in Estonia

This investigation of the construction and operationalisation of state sovereignty in Estonia specifies how international integration is constituted in the Estonian sovereignty discourse, particularly how the inside and the outside of the state are demarcated in that discourse. The focus on this post-Soviet European Union applicant state is significant because if we understand sovereignty as a discourse, its political functions are inseparable from the specific context in which the inside and the outside of the state are constructed. Broadening the empirical scope of the constructivist international relations and critical geopolitics research on sovereignty therefore also enables me to substantiate and elaborate arguments made in that research.The Estonian sovereignty discourse hinges on the question as to whether or not international integration strengthens Estonia’s national security against the Russian threat. Different assumptions and positions on that issue make possible a highly selective deployment of pro- and contra-EU arguments that promulgate Estonia as European while minimising the influence of foreign institutions on Estonia’s citizenship and minority rights policies. While eagerly pursuing EU and NATO memberships, Estonia is not passively adopting but selectively appropriating political rhetoric and practices from these organisations. Concerns about the loss of sovereignty in Estonia are not examples of mere ignorance or irrational fear of changes, as is conventionally assumed, but are integral to, and reinforced by, the ways in which international integration is framed in political debates.     

‘Globalization with hardware’: ITER’s fusion of technology,policy, and politics

This article explores the history of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), a fusion energy megaproject currently being built in southern France. It examines three main aspects of the project’s history, focusing largely on the European research community’s perspective. First, it explores how European scientists and science managers constructed a transnational research community around fusion energy after 1960 that was part of Europe’s larger technological integration. This article also expands Gabrielle Hecht’s concept of ‘technopolitics’ to the larger international dimension and explores how the political environment of the late Cold War and the post‐9/11 era helped shape ITER’s history, sometimes in ways not entirely within researchers’ control. Finally, this essay considers ITER as a technological project that gradually became globalized. At various stages in the project’s 30‐year history, we discover processes whereby national borders became less important while social, economic, legal and technological linkages created a shared social space for fusion research on an expanding scale.     

The business case for a free trade agreement between the European Union and Australia

ABSTRACT

The free trade agreement (FTA) between Australia and the European Union holds the promise of strengthened political collaboration and increasing economic integration. Both Australia and the European Union note increasing bilateral trade and investment. Oftentimes, data does not take current trends in global-value-chain participation for intermediary goods and services movements into account. Behind this sit the cross-border strategies and activities of business entities, whether multinationals or large, small or medium-sized enterprises. This article provides an in-depth investigation of the premise stemming from an FTA for Australian business. What advantages can politics hope to support through a business perspective? What is the global-value-chain part of the story, and what are the business challenges ahead? How can economic policy help shape this FTA to foster a productive bilateral business environment in a geopolitical and geoeconomic context in which regionalisation has taken on new momentum? Specific focus is given to the analysis of the higher education sector and to agriculture. These are two of the leading sectors in this FTA debate. Generating business value means setting negotiation agendas to target tariff and non-tariff barriers to counterbalance ambiguity in the conditions that shape the global business environment.