The Saga of Europeanisation: On the Narrative Construction of a European Society

Abstract

Europeanisation has become a fashionable term used by scholars from various disciplines. Within the European studies community, the notion of Europeanisation is variably applied to investigate long-term historical transformation, a change of political culture and identities or the impact of European law and policies. Apart from its analytical use, there is a narrative element in academic accounts of Europeanisation as a story of social change and integration. From this latter perspective, Europeanisation research is about ways of imagining a transnational European society. To understand how the academic and common sense use of the notion of Europeanisation is narratively embedded in accounts of the social integration of European society, the particular storylines along which Europeanisation research unfolds need to be unravelled. Narratives are used as collective imaginations of the social bonds that bind people together and tell how society constitutes itself (Eder 2006, 2010, 2013). Narratives of European society building compete with existing narratives that imagine the social bonds of national societies or postulate the bonds of a global or world society. Accounts of Europeanisation, therefore, typically navigate between the local, the national, the European and the global. They interpret our diverse pasts, propose specific balances of a ‘unity in diversity’ of contemporary culture, politics and society, and design paths for our common future.