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College aantekeningen Wetenschapsfilosofie Voor Europese Studies
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Aantekeningen hoorcolleges/lectures wetenschapsfilosofie (Philosophy of the Humanities Area Studies)
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Wetenschapsfilosofie 2 – Aantekeningen teksten hoorcollegesWeek 1: Chris Rumford – The Stuff of European Studies
1 European studies is neither in need of reinvention, nor does its existence need to be
justified. What is required, it is argued – and this is the prime task of this handbook – is for it
to achieve a greater degree of visibility and ultimately recognition.
European studies does not possess the status, visibility, and profile that it deserves, and this
does limit the contribution that it can make to the study of contemporary Europe.
2 It is a book about contemporary Europe and how we might study it, and the study of EU
integration is situated in the context of Europe’s transformations.
I can offer five good reasons why we need a healthy and robust European studies to sit
alongside the more established integration studies (with the aim of enriching both) 1)
European studies offers multidisciplinary, whereas integration studies tend to be dominated
by political scientists and international relations (IR) scholars; 2) Studying Europe should be
seen as important as studying EU integration (the constructiveness of Europe, and its
meaning to different people at different times and in different places; to explore its multiple
constructions, meanings, histories, and geographies)
3 3) There is a wealth of literature which does not conform to the norms and expectation of
EU studies, but which makes a significant contribution to our understanding of Europe; 4)
Understand Europe’s changing role in world politics needs to be prioritized (global
framework);
4 5) connected with 4: European studies is much more concerned to study processes rather
than institutions.
5 European studies has been well served in recent years by a range of publications which
have given expression to the idea that it is more important to study Europe, broadly
conceived, than a narrow reading of integration. However, the author of such publications
do not necessarily see themselves contributing to a common project (they situation
themselves primarily in relation to a disciplinary literature).
6 There are parallels between the situation sociologists find themselves in and developments
within the field of European historical studies, where the EU studies/European studies
division is reproduced.
7 Jan Zielonka Europe as Empire: 1) the commitment to recast Europe and thereby move the
study of integration away from the familiar statist template; 2) the determination on the
part of the author to challenge some assumptions dear to many political scientists who study
the EU; 3) the perspective on Europe which requires him to study the transformation of
Europe through the lens of EU enlargement which he believes ‘cannot be treated as a
footnote to the study of European integration’.
8 Argument by ZIelonka: the EU is not becoming like a state, but it is takin on the form of an
empire (its polycentric system of governance means that it can be likened to ‘ a neo-
medieval empire’).
‘The current plurality of different forms of governance, legal, structures, economic zones of
transactions, and cultural identities is striking and bears a remarkable resemblance to the
situation in medieval Europe’. A second main reason why the EU is neo-medieval is the
system of governance, particularly as it extends beyond the EU’s borders (‘soft borders in
flux’). The argument is that the external boundaries of the EU are not marked by sharp
differences in levels of economic and political development. The EU and non-EU countries
form something like a continuum.
, 9 Walters and Haahr Governing Europe: the book explores the processes which have shaped
the way the EU governs in key areas and, central to this, the ways in which Europe has been
constructed as a domain which is amenable to governance. Their project is ‘to investigate
the “how” of European government’, ‘how it is able to govern extended social and economic
spaces without possessing anything like the administrative apparatus or financial capacity of
a nation-state’.
Three reasons why this book is a major contribution to European studies: 1) it reframes the
question of the EU-as-state emphasizing that ‘European integration can be reframed in
terms of the governmentalization of Europe’; 2) it emphasizes that in order to govern Europe
in this way Europe has to first be constituted as a governable entity; 3) Walters and Haahr
introduce a new political science perspective to bear on issues at the heart of understanding
contemporary Europe and in doing so throw fresh light on familiar territory.
10 Jensen and Richardson Making European Space: aim of the book is to ‘reveal the
discourse of ‘Europe as a monotopia’ as an organizing set of idea that looks upon the
European Union territory within a single, overarching rationality of making ‘one space’,
made possible by seamless networks enabling frictionless mobility’. The term monotopia is a
critical response to what the authors see as the ‘hegemonic vision of EU space’.
11 Jensen and Richardson’s book is significant because it places issues surrounding
‘integration’ in a very different context: the construction of European space .their work
contributes to the project of recasting the core concerns of EU integration studies,
broadening them and developing a multidisciplinary approach. The book encourages us to
rethinking questions of power and territorial identity through the lens of mobility.
To this end the handbook takes seriously the question ‘How should we study Europe?’ The
handbook also aims to make the case for why it is important to study Europe broadly, rather
than reproduce the more narrow focus on the EU.
12 Multidisciplinary also point to the need to conceive Europe broadly; a combination of
history, sociology, geography, and cultural studies will militate against a narrow and
exclusive reading of Europe as the product of post-war ‘integration’.
Week 2: Etienne Balibar – We, the People of Europe? Reflections on Transnational Citizenship
1 The term border is extremely rich in significations. One of my hypotheses is that it is
undergoing a profound change in meaning. The borders of new sociopolitical entities, in
which an attempt is being made to preserve all the functions of the sovereignty of the state,
are no longer entirely situated at the outer limit of territories; they are dispersed a little
everywhere, wherever the movement of information, people, and thing is happening and is
controlled But it is also one of my hypotheses that the zones called peripheral, where
secular and religious cultures confront one another, where differences in economic
prosperity become more pronounced and strained, constitute the melting pot for the
formation of a people (demos), without which there is no citizenship (politeia) in the sense
that this term has acquired since antiquity in the democratic tradition.
2 In this sense, border areas – zones, countries, and cities – are not marginal to the
constitutions of a public sphere but rather are at the center.
Or, more exactly, the notion of a center confronts us with a choice. In connection with
states, it means the concentration of power, the localization of virtual or real governing
authorities.
3 In reality, what is at stake here is the definition of the modes of inclusion and exclusion in
the European sphere, as a “public sphere” of bureaucracy and of relations of force but also a
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