Sociology of Europeanization

Sebastian M. Büttner, Monika Eigmüller, Susann Worschech, Sebastian M. Büttner, Monika Eigmüller, Susann Worschech

• Publisher: De Gruyter Oldenbourg
• Year: 2022
• Topic: Social Sciences
• eBook ISBN:
  9783110673838
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Die Bände dieser von Rainer Schützeichel † (Universität Bielefeld) herausgegebenen Reihe befassen sich interdisziplinär mit aktuellen gesellschaftlichen und wissenschaftlichen Problemlagen. Aufgrund ihres modularen Aufbaus eignen sie sich nicht nur als grundlegende und umfassende wissenschaftliche Einführungen, sondern auch als Lehrbücher in der universitären Lehre.

Part I: Introduction

1 Sociology of Europeanization: An Introduction

Susann Worschech

Monika Eigmüller

Sebastian M. Büttner

When, a century ago, Max Weber defined sociology as a science that “attempts the interpretive understanding of social action in order thereby to arrive at a causal explanation of its course and effects […]” (Weber & Heydebrand 1999), his key analytical focus was the capitalist nation state and the social consequences of its advancing consolidation. And not without cause: Weber and his contemporaries were deeply fascinated by the growing entanglement of capitalist economics, democratic political systems, and increasingly powerful and efficient bureaucracies in the early 20th century. One core question for intellectuals of that time was how modern nation states and national societies developed vis-à-vis new institutions, and the resultant emergence of new interaction patterns, social identities, and socio-structural features.

A century later, the nation state itself underwent a massive transformation in and beyond Europe, due to increasing internationalization and globalization on the one hand, and far-reaching European integration on the other hand that has led to the establishment of the European Union (EU). Propelled by international political arrangements and new institutional settings, such as freedom of movement and permeable borders between EU member states, European integration gave rise to new (supranational) political and institutional orders – i.e., developments that led scholars to interpret ‘Europeanization’ mainly in terms of the impact of EU-level politics on national political processes in European countries (Börzel & Risse 2003; Vink 2003). Yet the process of European integration has not only led to the emergence of a new supranational layer of government, that is mainly represented by ‘the European Union’; it has also spurred, in fact, the ‘Europeanization’ of national institutions and social structures in EU member states (Bach 2008; Mau & Verwiebe 2010). In contrast to the understanding of Europeanization as a domestic adaptation of political structures to EU processes, this second set of issues – the Europeanization of societal change, and the question of how local, regional, national, and transnational social action can shape societies within a European and Europe-wide framework – have only gained serious scholarly attention in the past two decades. For contemporary political sociologists, the challenge is to comprehensively explain the course and effects of social action within the context of Europeanization. A sociological perspective of Europeanization as both a top-down and bottom-up process of social change and transformation is one that considers the construction, dissemination, and institutionalization of both formal and informal norms, institutions, and lifestyles at different levels of society (Radaelli 2003).

While it only recently emerged as a relevant sub-discipline of sociology, the Sociology of Europeanization has its own developmental history. The scholarship of modernization, transformation and social change has tended to adopt a longue-durée perspective and a European focus when looking at processes and events.¹ Increasingly established in intellectual debates since the age of Enlightenment, the idea of political and societal modernization – which emerged more or less in parallel to the rise of nation states, national economies, and new social orders in Eastern and Western Europe in the 20^th century – has long been a major point of reference for sociology. The very concept of modernization, therefore, is inherently linked to the concept of Europeanization and to ‘becoming European’. Underpinning this understanding of a (Western) European societal role model is the often proclaimed ‘return to Europe’ of post-socialist countries in Central and Eastern Europe after 1989–1991. The implicit connection between Europeanization and modernization is further reflected in critical studies on (post-)colonialism (Boatcă 2006; see also Chapter 5 in this volume) and in processes such as the development of individualization and the emergence of post-modernity or post-democracy. Consequently, sociological perspectives on Europeanization offer far more than a mere societal background in political and economic integration. We also distinctly reflect ideas and interpretations that shaped the evolution of Europe and our contemporary understandings of Europe, European society, and Europeanization.

Today, the Sociology of Europeanization has its own major research foci and perspectives. Eigmüller and Mau (2010) have outlined the following two major approaches being fundamental to the Sociology of Europeanization: The first approach focuses on comparative analyses of a specific social situation within the context of European regions, states, or territories; it derives from classic social structure analysis, which has been a core subdiscipline of sociology since its beginnings. It implies a scale-shift of classical macrosociology (which was and still is oriented towards the nation state) towards the comparative analysis of cases within a supranational entity. The second approach involves a sociological exploration of the emergence of new European societal constellations – that is, in short, the exploration and reflection of the emergence of a European society. Examining linkages and interactions among European individuals, societies, and/or states to find out whether and how European identities, belongings, and collective action can take shape, this second approach rests on an understanding of Europeanization that differs fundamentally from the first one. Rather than juxtaposing individual (often national) cases, this second approach explores the particular ‘transnational’ or ‘European’ factors in light of current changes and transformations of European society. While the first approach might compare social inequality in two European regions or societies, for example, the second perspective can illuminate how and to what extent ‘Europeanization’ leads to new societal formations and constellations (like cross-border networks of social welfare, the rise of new NGOs in border cities, or new networks and communities of cross-border work migration). In this sense, the second perspective of Europeanization studies moves away from a particular “methodological nationalism” (Beck & Grande 2007: 94f.) that has predominated in sociology and especially in sociological conceptions of what makes up a ‘society’ until recently.

Against this background, we propose that the Sociology of Europeanization focuses on three major elements constituting the social world and therefore underpinning much of sociological analysis: institutions, interaction, and interpretation. All three of these factors can be approached from either a comparative or a transnational perspective. While the former marks a scale-shift of sociological analysis from the regional or national to the supranational level, the latter can be identified as an approach that stresses the European (or transnational) elements of societal formation. Table 1.1 outlines this classification:

Table 1.1:Sociology of Europeanization: Objects and approaches.

	Comparative Perspective: Scale Shift	Transnational Perspective: Transformation
Institutions	Institutional settings in selected regions or countries often affected by the European level	Transnational institutions and governance; new structures or institutional settings
Interaction	Networks, action patterns and social organization with reference to Europe	Emergence of new social configurations, networks, patterns; transformation of (national) societies and social patterns
Interpretation	Habitus, identities, interpretations, and frames on European issues from a domestic perspective	Transnational habitus, identities, interpretations, and frames as new social dynamics across borders linked with Europe/Europeanization

Based on this systematization, two insights in the field and history of the Sociology of Europeanization merit some comment here. First, institutions, interaction and interpretation represent different angl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Where and What is Europe: Spatial, Cultural, and Socio-historical Perspectives
• Part III: Dynamics of Europeanization: Core Dimensions of Institution-Building
• Part IV: An Emerging European Society: Institutions, Structures, and Interactions
• Part V: Conflictual Dynamics: Cleavages, Civil Society, and Social Movements
• Index