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The emergence of a European Identity has been a subject of continual discussion in the last ten or 15 years, as well in the social sciences as in the political and public debates. There are several reasons for it, and several approaches to the subject, but more or less all authors in the social sciences agree that a European identity and its emergence is closely linked to the legitimacy of the EU. Most agree also in one way or another, that the emergence of a European identity should go along with the further integration and democratisation process of the EU. The course will focus on one dimension of the emergence of European identity: its discursive construction in public debates.
After having discussed in the first section some basic texts and definitions on identity formation on the European as well as on the national level, and on the role discourse has in these processes, in the second part we will discuss several texts presenting examples of discourses on Europe. In the final session we will have a concluding look at the results of one special discourse on Europe, in the debate around the French referendum on the Constituional Treaty in 2005.
1. Habermas, Jürgen 2001: Why Europe needs a Constitution, New Left review 11, Sept./Oct. 2001, download: http://newleftreview.org/A2343
2. Anderson, Benedict 1993: Imagined Communities, Introduction
3. Hobsbawm, Eric J.: Nations and Nationalism since 1780
4. Giesen, Bernhard / Rauer, Valentin 2003: European Identity, visions of Europe, and historical memory, in: Maier, Matthias L. / Risse, Thomas (Hg.) 2003: Europeanization, Collective Identities and Public Discourse (IDNET) Final Report; download: http://www.atasp.de/downloads/030625_risse_idnet.pdf, p. 33 - 43
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