Locating Europe

Abstract:

This paper describes the emerging European public space and identity, as it is built and exercised in educational spheres. Discussions on European public space are overlaid with assumptions and requisites of a shared identity and culture. I argue that the presumed inextricable link between such constructs as identities, cultures and political communities is neither tenable nor empirically suitable in the European case. My substantive examples come from an empirical analysis of history and civics school books, as well as public debates and conflicting claims surrounding education. As projected in educational spheres, European identity is a loose collection of civic ideals and principles, such as democracy, progress, equality and human rights. This assemblage of principles and their enactment is what affords the ties that bind in the European public space. European identity as it happens is not on course to replace the nation but reinterprets it as another repository of the same ideals and principles for which Europe stands. The nation still comes across as a source of identification but is no longer unique or commanding, far from its familiar self. The emerging Europe is a space for participation but it does not imply the existence of a European demos or polity in the conventional sense - based on consensus and uniformity. European public space is open to conflict and also creates its own conflicts. It includes multiple spheres and subjects, and is created through the activities of a growing contingent of social and political actors, who engage in the discourse of Europe and deploy strategic action, with or without institutionalised contact with the EU.