Towards a European Society?

Boundaries, borders, barriers

Ronald Pohoryles, Saša Božić

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138220331
• eBook ISBN: 9781315413112
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In the aftermath of the Maastricht Treaty, Europe saw tremendous integration, but the last few years have seen a new power game between federalist and confederalist actors. Although the Lisbon Treaty increased the power of the federalist-inclined European Parliament, the politics of the European Council are marked by a confederalist approach that re-affirms the power of the individual member states. As the European Council gains in strength, it supports the idea that EU policies should act as a means to protect individual national interests rather than as a positive-sum game to the benefit of all member states. This 'national egoism' as a political strategy is paralleled by the rise of nationalism in many member states, as a result of which we are faced with an increase in social inequality due to unequal social rights and social exclusion of minorities, an increase of social control disguised as security policy, nostalgic cultural policies that emphasize the national cultural heritage, and migration control that threatens the Schengen Agreement.

These developments pose a challenge for European social science scholars, both theoretically and based on practical experience from their research activities. International cooperation has improved theoretical and methodological knowledge in a major way, and academic exchange and migration have led to innovation in science and research. Since academic communities support further internationalization and Europeanization, and are opposed to all types of barriers between the nation states, there is a need to theoretically, conceptually, and empirically research the idea of a 'European society'. This book was originally published as a special issue of Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research.

The making of European society: contesting methodological nationalism

Gerard Delanty

Department of Sociology, University of Sussex, Brighton, UK

The paper is concerned with the problem of “society” and in particular with the notion of “European society”. Rather than reject the possibility of society, it draws on theories of the social as networks. The thesis proposed is that the concept of society should rather be understood as a relational field of interconnections. It is argued that this is highly relevant to the analysis of Europe conceived of in terms of a society. This approach can be seen as an alternative to methodological nationalism. The paper applies a network conception of society to Europe with the emphasis on the nineteenth century. In this account, European society is not something that was produced by European integration. Rather than see European society as a recent development, it is argued that the field of tensions between capitalism and democracy constituted the major elements that shaped a European model of society.

Introduction

To what extent is it meaningful to speak of “European society”? Can the notion of society be applied to Europe? The idea that there is such a thing as a European society became a topic of debate in the 1990s. Much of this was connected in one way or another with developments linked to European integration whereby a social dimension was supposedly consolidating alongside a new political order. In the view of a number of theorists, including the present author, the process of European integration was moving in the direction of a post-national polity. While interpretations of what this entailed differed, there was clearly some justification for thinking that European integration was fundamentally transforming the nation state, if not abolishing it, as in the more extreme interpretations, at least considerably reducing its significance. Along with these developments of a largely political nature was a new concern with identity and culture. The idea of European identity suggested in some way that Europe was becoming a focus for identities. The notion of European culture was of course more established, though not necessarily challenging the existence of other expressions of culture. The increased salience of European cultural policy gave additional credence to the notion of Europe as more than an economic domain.

Against this background of economic, political and cultural change, the notion of a European society was not then entirely implausible. But what does it mean to speak of a European society? The answer in many ways depends on what is meant by the notion of “society” and too what is meant by “Europe.” The problem with the concept society undoubtedly resides in the fact that the word has different meanings, ranging from an association, social relations within a normatively ordered milieu or polity, a more general societal condition, such as “modern society.” In this latter designation is included the economy and state, while a more delimited conception of society refers to a social domain distinct from the state. This latter conception of society as defined against the state would include the notion civil society. In this paper it will not be possible to resolve these problems of different meanings of the term society. Instead, I shall leave open the definition of the notion of society to diverse interpretations. It is unavoidably a contested term (but so is almost every concept in the social sciences). Much of this confusion is due to very different applications of the notion of society. One such confusion is applying the category of national society to the transnational level.

The paper returns to the debate on Europe society, but seeks to answer the question in a different way from the issue of whether European integration is leading towards a European society. The approach taken in this paper is to place the notion of Europe as society in both a historical and a global context. Rather than look at the notion of European society in terms of European integration, the proposal is to view it in a longer historical context and, additionally, to situate it in a global context. Rather than to contrast “European society” to national society, it is rather to be seen in terms of a historical process of transformation in which national societies in Europe, and elsewhere, have themselves undergone major social change. Moreover, when viewed in a wider global context the shape of Europe as a society is more discernible than when viewed in terms of a relationship between the national and the Europe. This more historical sociological approach offers a wider and more fruitful lens through which to view the notion of Europe as a society.

It is evident that the notion of Europe as a society does not make a great deal of sense if one presupposes the national societies as the main reference points for the notion of society (see Eder 2014; Fligstein 2008; Krossa 2009; O’Mahony 2014; Outhwaite 2008). Clearly there is more or less nothing comparable on a European scale to the traditional notions of French or British society. There is no common language or collective identity of equivalent nature, the European Union, while having many features of a state is not itself a nation state, and social relations are predominantly based on national forms of organisation. In these terms, then, Europe can be a society only in a very limited way, as in for example the notion of a “European social model” that could be associated with the EU. However this notion of a European society is at best opaque and there is not any likelihood for the immediate future of a European social order emerging from the EU. Rather than abandon the idea of whether there is such a thing as a European society, the question can be posed in a different way. If the notion of national society is questioned and an alternative conceptualisation of society put forward, it is possible to see things in a different light.

I begin by discussing the notion of “society” and propose a network conception of society as an alternative ontological and epistemological approach to the presumptions of methodological nationalism. The second section applies this notion to Europe in historical perspective with the emphasis on the nineteenth century. The third section discusses the relationship between capitalism and democracy as it evolved in the nineteenth century when, it is argued, that a European model of society took shape. The final section draws some conclusions with respect to the current situation.

Rethinking the question what is society?

Paradoxically the notion of European society arose at much the same as sociologists began to question the very notion of society as a meaningful category. In a diverse body of work influenced by postmodern theory, the idea of society is rejected as no longer relevant for the analysis of the present day. In these accounts, the notion of society is seen as a product of the age of the nation state while today, allegedly, new geopolitical configurations are rendering the nation state obsolete. Thus the presuppositions of the notion of society – the nation state and bounded conceptions of territory – are in question. Baudrillard was the first to advance a theory of the postmodern as one in which the very category of the social dissolved into hyperrealities of media. According to Urry (2000), the notion of society is superseded by a new order of mobilities. Society was a product of a settled and fixed world in contrast today when mobility is a new kind of reality. According to Latour (1993), the idea of society was from the beginning of the modern era constructed on the false premise that the social and the natural as divergent. In his account, social analysis must focus on the hybrid connectivity of material objects and social actors rather than exclusively on the later. Deleuzean approaches stress the centrality of assemblages.

This is not the place for a full review of these trends (see Arsensault 2011; Gane 2004; Halewood 2014; Outhwaite 2005). In the present context it will suffice to note that what these approaches – with the exception of Baudrillard – draw attention to is a new conception of society in terms of networks. This would appear to be the more significant outcome of theories of the end of the social. Indeed, this notion is the basis of Castell’s work on the information age and his theory of the rise of the network society (Castells 1996). Now, while Castell’s, like other network theorists, tends to see the salience of networks in relation to globalisation, which in turn is seen as a product of the age of the Internet and information technology, an alternative approach would see networks as the basis of the possibility of society rather than leading to its demise. This is the notion of society that I would like to highlight as relevant to the analysis of Europe conceived of in terms of a society. In these terms, and from a more historical perspective, it was dense and expanding networks of communication in several spheres – trade, the arts, science, industry, diplomacy – that made possible the formation of European societies and shaped Europe itself. Networks are fields of interconnectivity. The idea was also integral to Bourdieu’s notion of fields, as sites of exchange. However, in much broader terms networks can be seen as the web of relations that constitute societies. In classical sociology Simmel had a similar idea when he wrote about the “web of group affiliations.” While Simmel adopted a micro perspective based on the small group, which has been reflected in later studies on social networks (Granovetter 1973), the notion of the network is highly relevant to the macro-analysis of large-scale social processes. Networks, which can be formal or informal, are heterogeneous sets of relationships between nodes. They are social structures that both enable social action and also constrain it. As with all forms of social organisation they are based on logics of inclusion and exclusion. Network based forms of organisation are particularly flexible in that they can adjust to changing circumstances.

The tendency in recent theorising on networks since Castells and Latour is to see the networks as new kinds of social organisation and related to technological innovation. Thus the nation state is supposedly based on hierarchy while the new shape of the state is akin to that of a network. In this view, information technology makes possible the ascendancy of networked-based social organisation over hierarchical ones. Now, while there is clearly some evidence in support of this view, which is particularly pertinent to the analysis of recent social movements, it restricts the application of networks to contemporary society. The result is both an over-emphasis on networks – for instance the criticism of Castells’s work on the information age that is downplays hierarchy – and a neglect of the formative influences of networks in the making of modern society. While Latour was of course centrally concerned with the de-naturalising of modernity, the focus of his work was mostly in relation to the nature/society problematic and not the macro-level analysis of the modern state, economy and society more generally.

The application of networks to macro-level analysis in Europe is very fruitful in accounting for major societal transformation in a longer historical perspective and, additionally, in regard to a global contextualisation of such process. While technological innovation is not the primary force, it is an important element and one that is not reduced to the advent of the information age. The historical application of network analysis has been relatively limited, though often employed in historical studies (see Collins 1998; Gould 2003). The thesis advanced in this paper is that societal formation is based on networks as forms of social organisation. A key aspect of networks that is crucial in explaining their capacity to bring about social change is that they facilitate communication. Networks are both based on and make possible conduits of communication between otherwise different centres. The notion of networks offers an important corrective to the core concepts in classical sociological theory that account for the making of modern society.

In classical sociological theory societies are based on logics of social integration and differentiation. As in the sociology of Durkheim, differentiation – the division of labour – is a key feature of modern society. Modern societies are characterised by ever greater pluralisation in culture, institutions, state, law, etc. Along with differentiation, as is well known, Durkheim drew attention to forms of integration based on solidarity, and noted the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity with the latter based on social cooperation between heterogeneous units. Whether Durkheim had the nation state in mind or a larger entity, such as Europe, is a matter of some debate. He was primarily concerned with the analysis of modernity than particular modern societies such as France or Germany. This too was the case with Weber and Marx in their studies on capitalism. The notions of differentiation and integration are key concepts in accounting for the shape of modern societies and are also highly relevant in accounting for the impact of European integration, which itself is a form of integration, albeit one that has largely taken the form of what Habermas (1987) has termed system integration in contrast to, what Durkheim had in mind, namely social integration. Indeed, the clash of both these two kinds of integration has been expressed in the form of major crises, whether national or transnational. One of the paradoxes of modern society, as Luhmann has also noted, is that it produces both integration and at the same time differentiation. This is the case with Europeanisation as much as it is with nation state formation.

In accounting for the rise and expansion of logics of differentiation and integration classical sociological theory did not give much attention to the mechanisms by which such processes unfolded. This is the advantage of network analysis. There are in fact two advantages in this respect, and ontological one and a methodological one. If we view the social itself as not merely a reality in itself, as in Durkheim, or a phenomenological construction, but as a field of relationships it suggests quite a different conception of what it means to speak of society. The conventional assumption is that society is a nation and is defined by a state and thus is more or less coeval with the nation state. As argued by Beck and others, this ontological predominance of the nation state must be rejected, even if the notion of the nation state is not itself in question (Beck and Sznaider 2006). Although Beck believes classical sociology was based on methodological nationalism and needs to be overcome by methodological cosmopolitanism, an alternative reading of classical sociology is that it was not in fact at all based on methodological nationalism (Chernilo 2006). The basic notion of society in much of classical sociology is that the social is a reality in itself and is not derivative of something else, such as a nation. However, such conceptions of the social did not go much further than recognition of society as a generative reality.

Conceiving of the social as a network affords a deeper level of analysis and one that had, additionally, important methodological implications. It is as noted the best alternative conceptualisation of society in terms other than of national societies. It draws attention to the connections between societies rather than conceiving of societies as ontologically separate. Recent developments in global and in transnational history have given increased relevance to such a perspective (Haupt and Kocha 2009; Rosenberg 2012). Indeed, the connections between societies are often more significant than those that consolidate national societies. Such levels of interconnectivity are all the more relevant when it comes to central and Eastern Europe and to Europe more generally prior to the eighteenth century. It should be noted that such forms of connectivity extend beyond Europe to the wider world as a result of colonialism and global trade and as well as other encounters.

There is one additional aspect to the concept of society that must be mentioned. As best formulated in the writings of Castoriadis, the notion of society also contains an imaginary dimension in that the social is also a projection into the future. For Touraine, writing from a social movement perspective, the notion of the social – which he favours over the notion of society – is also about struggle. The social is expressed in movement. All societies were based on one dominant movement which sought to create a new kind of society. This is an important corrective to the received notion of society in classical sociology which since Comte privileged order – both analytically and normatively – over change. Today the challenge is how to comprehend change, transformation, rupture, multi-directional movements, diversity, conflict, etc. The notion of society is one such way. However, it cannot be formulated in a way that reifies movement, plurality, change. On the other side of the coin, there are also dangers of an overly normative conception of society.

The formation of European society: a reconstruction

Looking at the formation of Europe over a longer time scale is fraught with many difficulties and which are complicated further when the focus is European society. Such accounts inevitably have to address the relationship between unity and diversity a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Introduction: Reconsidering ‘European Society’
• 1. The making of European society: contesting methodological nationalism
• 2. Gezi Park and EuroMaidan: social movements at the borders
• 3. Towards a (“thick”, “thin”, or “parallel”) European society? Understanding the dynamics of European multiplicity
• 4. EU ideology
• 5. Cross-border partnership – the impact of institutions on creating the borderland communities (the case of Spree-Neisse-Bober Euroregion)
• 6. Policy-making on science in society between Europeanization and core–periphery divide
• Index