What are the common grounds? What does Europe look like?
Who are the Europeans? (and how does that matter for politics?)
Debates on whether or not there exists a European society turn on the question of who are the people in Europe who have a European identity. I present evidence to show that people who think of themselves as Europeans tend to be the most privileged strata of society: managers, professionals, white collar workers, educated people, and young people. Moreover, only about 12% of people in Europe mainly think of themselves as Europeans while 45% sometimes think of themselves as Europeans and 43% never think of themselves as Europeans. These numbers vary across societies. Much of the dynamics of European politics can be understood by which identity is provoked in a particular political situation. A majority of voters in most societies can sometimes share a European identity and favor European cooperation on a particular political issue. But, if those who sometimes think of themselves as Europeans view a political issue as a national issue, European wide cooperation is impossible. I discuss the issue of the "shallowness" of European identity, its relationship to social class, and the problems this presents to a more unified Europe.
Neil Fligstein is the Class of 1939 Chancellor's Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California. He is also the Director of the Center for Culture, Organizations, and Politics. His work has spanned many fields including economic sociology, organizations, political sociology, and social stratification. His most recent books include _The Architecture of Markets_ (Princeton University Press, 2001) and _Euroclash: The EU, European Identity, and the Future of Europe_ (Oxford, 2008). He is currently working on a book with Doug McAdam concerning the theory of fields. He has also just started an empirical project on the current financial meltdown.
Depicting a vision about Europe from a semi-external perspective
Visions are, in the sense posed by Nelson Goodman, forms of world making. Its fabric departs from former layers of visions. The substance of a “Brazilian view about Europe”, in avoiding essentialism, is dependent on the view about Brazil one departs from when thinking about the former subject. The same applies to the existential condition of being external to Europe. The experience of that exteriority is a sign of a distinction whose depth varies accordingly to the visions we may adhere. In that sense, visions about Brazil are at the outset of the Brazilian visions about Europe and this affects decisively the meaning of being an external observer of the European experience. The aim of the presentation is to depict a “semi-external” perspective in which “Europe” appears as an intellectual and political source and, at the same time, as a fortress guarded by zealous gatekeepers. In the first sense, some complementarities must be considered. In the second sense, we have to face the imposition of some dynamics of closure and distance. It doesn’t seem unsound to foresee a state of affairs in which the rigidities implied in the second sense may prevail. If such a pessimistic stance is allowed, intellectual and political countertendencies must be constructed.
Renato Lessa is Senior Professor of Political Philosophy at the Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Rio de Janeiro (Iuperj) and at the Universidade Federal Fluminense (Brazil). At Iuperj, he is the academic head of the Laboratorio de Estudos Hum(e)anos (www.estudoshumeanos.com), a branch of the Institute devoted to work on themes of political and public philosophy. He has been Senior Visiting Research Fellow at the Instituto de Ciências Sociais of the Universidade de Lisboa (several times since 2004) and at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (2005). He has been working, lecturing and publishing regularly on the presence of philosophical scepticism in the domain of political philosophy and on several themes of public philosophy (political representation, Holocaust Studies and democratization of scientific knowledge).
The Relevance of Sociology in Contemporary Africa's Crisis
Following the decade of African independence (1960s) - the honeymoon of self-governance- African economy and society have experienced major traumas leading to the talk of an African crisis. The crisis has been manifested in stalled growth and development; poor governance; major health problems and widespread conflicts and civil wars pushing economic development. Various explanations have been forwarded as causal factors and a number of solutions set out. In this paper I want to 1) situate the crisis, its aetiology and interrogate some of the prognoses; 2) argue that sociologists working on Africa have abdicated the task of understanding this crisis to economist and economists with serious consequences for our understanding of the causal factors and the solutions. Some tentative reasons will be noted for this resignation on the part of sociologists.
Professor Alfred Babatunde Zack-Williams, BA (Hons), MSc, PhD, is Professor of Sociology at the University of Central Lancashire, and has taught in universities in Nigeria. He is an internationally renowned academic, who has published extensively in the area of the political economy of Africa and the African Diaspora. He was President of the African Studies Association of the United Kingdom between 2006-2008; a member of the British Academy Africa Panel. He is on the editorial board of The Review of African Political Economy; The International Journal of African and Black Diaspora and Editorial Board Member Ethnicity and Inequalities in Health and Social Care. He is Network Chair of the European Social Science History Conference. His publications include: Tributors, Supporters and Merchant Capital: Mining and Underdevelopment in Sierra Leone, Avebury, 1995; Africa in Crisis: New Possibilities and New Challenges, with D. Frost & A. Thomson (eds.), Pluto Press, 2002; Africa Beyond the Post Colonial, with Ola Uduku (eds.), Ashgate, 2004; Structural Adjustment: Its Theory, Practice and Impact in Development, With G. Mohan, E. Brown, R. Milward, Routledge, 2000; The Politics of Transition: State and Development in Africa, with G. Mohan (eds.) James Currey & Heinemann, 2004; The Quest for Sustainable development and Peace: The 2007 Sierra Leone Elections, (ed), The Nordic African Institute, 2008. Professor Zack-Williams has recently completed a collection: Africa Mosaic, co-edited with Prof Ike Udogu to be published by Cambridge publishers 2009.