European Collective Identity

europiuman journal of affectionate system http//est. sagepub. com/ A Theory of incarnate personal mortality operator operator Making adept of the Debate on a atomic number 63an identicalness Klaus Eder europiuman journal of accessible Theory 2009 12 427 DOI 10. 1177/1368431009345050 The online version of this article jack faeces be found at http//est. sagepub. com/ abducttent/12/4/427 Published by http//www. sagepublications. com Additional services and in gradeation for europiuman ledger of t land uper Theory fuck be found at Email Alerts http//est. sagepub. com/cgi/alertsSubscriptions http//est. sagepub. com/subscriptions Reprints http//www. sagepub. com/journalsReprints. nav Permissions http//www. sagepub. com/journalsPermissions. nav Citations http//est. sagepub. com/ playtent/12/4/427. refs. html Version of Record Nov 10, 2009 What is This? Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at salvia Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 europiuman Journal of amicable Theory 12(4) 427447 Copyright 2009 perspicacious Publications Los Angeles, London, brisk Delhi, Singapore and Washington DCA Theory of Collective Identity Making thought of the Debate on a atomic number 63an Identity Klaus Eder H U M B O L D T U N I V E R S I T Y, B E R L I N Abstr recreate This article argues for a robust spirit of bo crumpled identicalness operator which is non reduced to a psychological defraudceptionion of individuation. In the ? rst part, the disceptation on the inpatientcept of personal individuality raised by several authors is pushn up critic eithery with the intention of defending a satisfying sociological conception of individualism which by de? nition is a incarnate identicalness element.The basic self-reliance is that corporal identities be memorial looks which permit the control of the skirtaries of a net income of actors. This guess is then applied to the case of atomic number 63, showing how individuality markers argon ch aracter to control the boundaries of a vernacular distance of talk. These markers be bound to stories which those within much(prenominal) a dummy of communication sh atomic number 18. Stories that hold in their yarn coordinates amicable transaction leave alone regorges of control. guinea pig identities be found on strong and exclusive stories.atomic number 63anization (among new(prenominal) par each(prenominal)(prenominal)el cognitive operationes at the spherical level) opens this topographic assign of boundary shapeions and renders opportunities for landal as nearly as sub field as well as trans issue stories competing with each other to shape europiuman individuality visualizes. The EU this is the possibleness provides a case in which oppo come in come outs offer competing opportunities to continue old stories, to start impudently stories or to aftermath old stories from other sites, thus creating a taradiddle communicate on top of the profit of brotherly dealing that bind the great deal in atomic number 63 together.atomic number 63an personal individualism is thitherfore to be conceived as a narrative engagement embedded in an emerging intercommunicate of amicable traffic among the slew living in Europe. Key words joint identity European identity narrative analysis nedeucerk analysis sociological guess www. sagepublications. com DOI 10. 1177/1368431009345050 Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 428 European Journal of kindly Theory 12(4) Identity A Contested Concept Collective identity has been at the vegetable marrow of attention in societies that were diversityed in the feast of the make of the nation-state.The nation, however, has not been an exclusive focus. Collective identity com temper equ tout ensembley occupy to cities, to regions, or to groups much(prenominal) as policy-making parties or even well-disposed movements. For round time, embodied identity has as well been an make do with run crossways to Europe where public argue is increasely concerned with the paradox of a European identity that is seen as lacking or as necessity. exclusively why do societies, groups and even a union of nationstates much(prenominal) as the EU fate an identity? For a person, an identity tout ensembleows them to be recognized as nearlything exceptional vis-a-vis others. notwithstanding why do groups, up to the nation and even inter internal phenomena much(prenominal)(prenominal) as the EU, look at an identity? The wrinkle in the pursuance is that the differention surrounded by the identity of persons and the identity of groups and societies is an experimental unmatchable(a). Persons and societies ar cases of identities. Persons sustain an identity by positioning themselves congenator to other persons and by giving to these relatives a essence that is ? xed in time. An identity guarantees beingness a person in the ? ux of time.The same(p) holds for groups a group has an identity if it succeeds in de? ning itself vis-a-vis other groups by attri entirelying message to itself that is stable over time. Identity as an analytical concept covers all these cases identity come outs by standoffing past brotherly dealings with those in the endow. In approximately cases, even proximo accessible traffic atomic number 18 implicate in this case, identity is conjugate to subjects of salvation or fate that include early sociable relations in our present initiation. All these body grammatical grammatical constructions pop within a speci? type of genial relations in the present and allow an interruption of the ageless change of amicable relations, thus creating an identity in which persons, groups or societies dismiss see themselves and be seen by others as being identical over time. E reallyday common experience in our edict uses the concept of identity in a incompatible stylus it sees identity is something that a person or a group has. setback to this common instinct, sociological scent out sees the person or the group as a peculiar(prenominal) case of identity that has emerged in a passing particular type of affable relations persons be transformed into individuals in kindly relations which be de? ed as relations mingled with free and equal mint. This is the temperrnist form of genial relations of transforming persons into something that has an identity, i. e. individuals. This modernist form of cordial relations also transforms groups into something that has a bodied identity, i. e. into nations. In the historical move from subjects to individuals and from kingdoms to nations, we can ob dole out a shift in the construction of identity. Identity is reconstructed since it refers to a contrary type of fond relations.In much(prenominal) mixer relations, identity gets a particular preoccupation of individuals or nations, as the persiste nt work on identity repair and identity con? rmation shows. As an analytical concept, identity denotes something that holds across all these cases, providing stable heart in the ? ux of brotherly relations. Since identity in this sociological usage refers to social relations, any kind of identity is by de? nition social. Individuals and nations in the society we tolerate in symbolise the two Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012Eder A Theory of Collective Identity poles of identity constructions. 1 In- surrounded by, we shell out a leak a series of social forms such as couples, families, associations, classes, regions, or ethnic groups which can be seen as intermediate cases of identity. The two poles of identity constructions argon not ? xed, since changing social relations might produce forms of identity beyond the nation, an shorten that is at the core of the arguing of European identity and that makes this debate theory-basedly i mportant. 2 In the following, a speculatively robust image of bodied identity ordain e presented. This task is carried out in the next section in a critique of the critical statements on the concept of collective identity that founder arisen in the past decade. It consists of recuperating it from the fragments of the deconstructionism of this concept in new-fangled theorizing. The constructive literary argument in this recuperation effort is ground on two pre summationptuousnesss. The ? rst is that that processes of identity construction quit with the complexity of social relations. The hour assumption is that processes of identity construction throw away a narrative twist.These two theoretical moves then swear out to reassess the on passing play debate on the identity of Europeans or of a European identity which preoccupies elites, sometimes populate and which keeps active a sort of signi? cant part of the public debate and to a greater extent and more scienti? c debate on Europe. In an oft-cited paper, Brubaker and Cooper (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000) made a strong attack on the concept of identity in the social sciences following this lead. They make triple strong arguments. Their ? rst chiding has been that reputed authors victimisation the term do not really need it. They use identity nevertheless as the marker of an intention (to be ethnicly sensitive). Identity is not link to the social analysis that has been presented elsewhere in their work. A second criticism of Brubaker and Cooper is that the purpose of collective identity necessarily implies some judgment of primordialism. Assuming that collective identity denotes something beyond sh ard cherish or norms, then there must be something more substantial than this to give up its use. The constructivist position startle with a non-essentialist position ends up in essentialist notions of collective identity.Constructivism produces outcomes that contradict its basic premises o f ? uidity and multiplicity. A ternary criticism is that we already assume a groupist social ontology which forecloses the analytical grip of the innovation of patterns of non-groupist social forms we exclude by de? nition the possibility of non-groupist social life, the possibility of living social relations without claiming an identity. Yet the solutions which Brubaker and Cooper offer do not pick the fusss addressed by them. The ? rst argument forces us to specify the added value of using the notion of collective identity as an analytical category.This is an obvious postulate. unconditional ornamenting or fashionable category-dropping should be avoided. We should either propose a unmitigated sociological notion or leave the concept to psychologists who interpret identity as a phenomenon of the homophile mind. My design is that we can make a strong sociological concept out of it as immense as we do not confuse it with psychological notions. The second argument that some s ubstantialism is implicit in constructivist accounts of collective identity implies that substantialism is in some comprehend bad. Downloaded from est. sagepub. om at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 429 430 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) The implicit rejoinder of Brubaker et al. is that we should assume a world in which the social no longer necessitate an overarching naturalizing symbolism. However, there argon social situations in which primordialism does pop up. thence, the theoretical answer should be to light upon situations in which constructions of collective identity vary amongst primordialism and arti? cialism. The third argument against the groupist ontology raises the issue of the mechanism through which social actors get in touch to each other.Collective identities ar, the argument says, groupist ontologies which in fact they are. They are symbolic forms through which a world of social relations is mirrored. These ontologies represent and buil d a structure and are the force of social processes that can be reconstructed. Doing a instruction with such ontologies is missing the target of a theory of collective identities. Groupist ontologies become the more important, the more social interaction is mediated by heathenish techniques that take a crap sociality without the presence of the other. such forms of confirmatory sociality need a social rationalization that invokes the social. accordingly, we have to assume that there is something that they have in common beyond the co-presence of the others. The theoretical assumption that follows is that the thinker of collective identity emerges when ethnic techniques (such as bureaucratic formula, written texts, calculator interfaces) serve as interrupts of social interaction and come back indirect social interaction. To act beyond natural adheres, i. e. through cultural techniques, means to generate an creepion of social experience.The argument then is that there is an increasing need for such collective identities in complex societies when indirect social relations increase in number. To fo recumball the macro-theoretical argument The more a human society is differentiated, the more it needs a collective identity. The central hypothesis that derives from this assumption is that collective identities vary with the structure of the system of indirect social relations. The theory does not assume that collective identity is unitary, coherent. This is only hotshot way of organizing the social bind among people.Collective identity can also be fuzzy, aggregate. It is the variation of identities which contends explanation. The theory proposed explains this variation as being contingent on the structure of social relations among people. In other words, the internet structure linking a people shapes the construction of the identity of that cyberspace which then is used to reproduce this network structure. 4 Thus, collective identity constructions are a central building jam of social relations. Therefore, we should not give up the concept of collective identity, save make better use of it.Collective Identity Construction as Projects of Control Adding Narrative Structure to Evolutionary suffice The functionalist argument implicit in evolutionary theory signalises us that it is necessary to create bandages which oblige people to pay taxes, to send their kids to schools, or to die for their country. On a more abstract level, it says that I accept that things are done to me by others which I accept only by those with whom I Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity have a special social relation, a sense of some residential area.This common factor obliges people to accept the social norms imposed upon them. 5 The argument that collective identities are collective rationalizations of social relations points to the trans-psychological piece of collectiv e identities. The link mingled with identity and reality is to be constructed self-sufficient of psychological assumptions nigh human needs or motivations for collective identity. The psychological grounding may even turn out to be a variable that varies with the form of collective identities. This happens when groups turn toward outside fictional characters for a collective identity.As Pierre Nora argues Moins la memoire est vecu de linterieur, plus elle a besoin de supports exterieurs et de reperes tangibles dune existence qui ne vit plus qua travers eux (Nora, 1984 xxv). Collective identities are social constructions which use psychological needs and motives to provide an answer to the questions who do I kick the bucket to? or who do we belong to? Collective identities make use of such psychic fictional characters in speci? c social cons insureations. This happens regularly in social relations bound to concrete social interaction.It also happens in social relations that t ransgress the realm of social interaction such as constructions of subject field identity and produce situations of effervescence collective, as Durkheim expound it. The more indirect social relations are, the more important become social carriers such as texts or songs or buildings which store collective identities. To the extent that collective identities are linked primarily to individuals in concrete interaction situations, wound up ties such as the sense of pride and outrage become important mechanisms for reproducing collective identities.To the extent that collective identities are linked to objects as their carriers, these objects become carriers of commonplaceized emotions that are built into the object, into images or texts. Such generalized emotions are embodied in what can be called narratives. This argument thus takes seriously the emotional aspect of identity constructions. There is something in the social relations that goes beyond the sense of shared interests a nd interchangeable solidarity. But this does not imply a return to a psychological notion of a sense of identity or of identi? cation. It rather leads us to theorize social relations in terms of hared meanings, i. e. narratives that people share in spades with each other. This sense of narrative sharing has to do with the sense of being part of a particular we. This can be called the narrative bond that emerges in some social relations (but not in all of our social relations). Thus, a collective identity is a metaphor for a speci? c type of social relations that are embedded in the closing curtain instance in a narrative network that is as dynamic as the stories are that are produced and reproduced in ongoing social communication mediated by these social relations (Eder, 2007). Collective identities are study as narrative networks that emerge in evolutionary processes the agency of development of such networks is prescribed by the structure of the narratives at play. The propos ed theory argues that in complex societies, strong collective identities testament emerge and that the narratives people share to conk out in this complex world allow continue the basic building blocks of identities. The discrimination from the traditional world is that everybody lives through and with an increasing number of narratives that mediate social relations. ThisDownloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 431 432 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) also increases the contingency of the developmental means prescribed by narrative networks. National identity constructions are the last instance of a collective identity with a out-of-doors runway prescription, the making of nation-states. National identities do what collective identities do in general they are stories that combine a series of events in texts, songs and images which some people recognize as being part of their particular we, i. . as a collective identity. In addition , national identity constructions have succeeded in courtly themselves as a hegemonic identity in a territorially bound governmental comm concord. This exclusiveness is built into a twaddle which links people de? ned as citizens of a governmental comm consent. This report is transmitted to and learned by new generations, practised in national rituals and objecti? ed in songs (anthems) and images (? ags). Counter-stories exist in those political communities in which two hegemonic stories compete (such as Belgium or Canada).Yet even in these cases, the two stories are often aligned in one national novel, told in different languages. This national solution is increasingly oppose. Narratives appear which tell different stories nigh who we are. The problem is the co-existence of many an(prenominal) hegemonic stories. This creates not only a practical problem but also a theoretical problem How to conceive the narrative network underlying a political community in a situation wher e we have many narratives ? oating around and referring to it? The case in point is Europe. 7 Making finger of a European identityFrom Identi? cation with Europe to European Identity Constructions query on collective identity construction in Europe is rule by some variants of the social identity look-a want. Social identity theory claims that identi? cations have group-speci? c effects in terms of distance and proximity. This paradigm is useful because it allows us to use existing survey data which assess the degree to which people start to be proud of their institutions (at least to swear them) and identify with Europe (conceived in political or cultural terms) (Kohli, 2000).Another way is to emphasize symbols of state power, such as a ? ag, a hymn, a representative building, or the memory of a prosperous political act such as the act of uni? cation which can be represented in a ? ag (with 15 stars) which are made the object of cognition or identi? cation with Europe. Taking such indicators at face value requires assuming that strong identi? cations and good knowledge imply strong identities. 8 But it is a long way from identi? cations to identities and there is no necessary agreement amidst strong identi? cations and strong identities.A collective identity is different from what is calculated when we look at the degree of identi? cation with a prede? ned set of symbols. Such enquiry tells us just to the highest degree the feedback effect on the individual level in the process of collective identity construction. It tells us nothing about the Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity mechanisms of identity construction that might provoke such feedback effects. Such re appear does not make theoretical sense of collective identity construction in Europe. 9The substantive result of the research on identi? cation with symbolic representations of European political institutions i s that they continuously show a weak sense of belonging with regard to Europe, much less than exists in the nationstate. The political community as a legal lay with rights and duties does not provoke identi? cation, which means that they lack meaning beyond national nuance. 10 Since the basis of strong identi? cation with political symbols is unfree upon the enculturation within which they make sense, research has turned to cultural symbols in order to ? d something that is worth identifying with in Europe. This search was guided by the theoretical expectation that what makes national symbols worthy of identi? cation also holds for European symbols. or so people looked for this meaning in some kind of republican opinion of Europe. Others were searching for it in some kind of cultural idea of Europe. interestingly enough, this debate reproduces the classic debate on the making of a nation over a republican conception of the nation and a cultural conception of the nation (Brubak er, 1992 Giesen, 2001).While searching for a European identity in terms of identi? cation with Europe, the space of communication in the EU expands. Something is happening that does not show up in the surveys. The problem is therefore to ? gure out how this expanding space is ? lled with new symbols that provide a sense of the limitations of that space. This sense of limitation is not necessarily linked to the symbolic representations of the European political institutions or of a particular European culture. 11 This sense is rather emerging in the bloodline of constructing increasingly dense networks of social elations in Europe that need a collective identity as a project of their control. The plan is to look not at political or cultural symbols but at stories that emerge in the making of a network of social relations among those living in Europe. There are at least three ways of congress such stories in Europe which are not reducible to the national tool-kit for constructing collective identities. There is a horizontal surface based on a lucky process of uni? cation, i. e. the tier of the European integration process as a successful economic and political project, which is the basis of a European citizenship narrative.This is the yarn of the making of a rich, hitherto socially responsible continent, the tier of an economic yet social Europe. There is another narration that emerges from the memory of a murderous past of Europe. The space of communication based on shared memory is a possible source of strong feelings. Stories telling a shared past constitute boundaries with high emotional value. There is ? nally a taradiddle that relates to Europe as an experiment in intercrossed collective identities, not as a melting pot, but as a diversity pot, which is a business relationship in the making.The three stories, the base of a successful common foodstuff as a citizenship narrative, the cultural base of a shared past and the story of a new soc ial bond of diversity emerging in Europe might produce con unorthodox feedback effects in the mind of Europeans but to do so they ? rst have to have emerged as stories. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 433 434 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) What binds Europeans into a network of social relations at the European level does not show up in found research.It only provides some indications of individual resonance to what is asked in the questionnaires which themselves rely on the cast of the old European nation-states. Collective identity remains isolated in the black box of aggregated individual responses. Their answers are like remote effects of processes working behind the backs of these individuals. To excavate more consistently the symbolic forms in which emerging identi? cations with Europe make sense and uprise is the task ahead. From normative Claims to the Analytical Description ofCollective Identities in Europe A secon d strand of research on a European identity which is based on a normative approach does not number any better than the socio-psychological approach. The basic argument is that a democratic Europe needs a people conscious of itself as a people. This argument has been formulated as the demos-problem. A demos is the constituent of a democratic ordinance (the people), and as such it needs a collective identity that goes beyond the idea of a people as just a bunch of private interests.Democracy in Europe needs a people with an idea about themselves that links them beyond private egoistic interests. ideally the bond should be so strong that it accepts redistributive measures by political institutions. This bond could even be conceived as something that motivates people to die for the political community they live in. 12 To die for a symbolic bond is obviously a mode of sharing which mobilizes the strongest possible emotions. With such a normative standard in mind, collective identitie s are classi? ble as varying betwixt the poles of being weak and being strong in terms of emotional attachment to a good thing. We could translate this normative argument into the conceptual framework of the theory proposed above and provide a sociological sort of of a normative argument. Arguing that European collective identity is so furthest a weak identity barely says that the story of the common market does not suf? ce to control the boundaries of a space of communication linking free and equal individuals into a political community.It is argued that Europe needs a different story than that of exchanging goods through the medium of money (i. e. the Euro). Euro coins provide a story for delimiting a common symbolic space which involves people in their being rational individuals seeking their own advantages. It needs more, a story which tells people that they are citizens of a political community. And maybe it even needs a still stronger identity since it must generate a sens e of a particular responsibility and recognition of the other European itizens which goes beyond recognizing them as co-citizens. This argument, however, has always troubled normative democratic theory since it produces a besides problem that is hard to tackle within classic political theory that those following universalizable rules for each other need a special sense to connect to some (those who are members of community) and less to others (those who are not members of the political community). This special sense is no longer based on universalistic arguments, but on narrative images. Downloaded from est. agepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity The normative debate helped to mark the idea of a common market as a mode of living together it gave power to political institutions which started to engage in breeding and making a European identity. What this identity ? nally implies remained rather imprecise beyond the acceptance o f political institutions, this debate produced more dissent than consensus on what a European identity should look like. The debate therefore remains inconclusive.Rather than fetching this debate as an explanation of identity construction, it can be taken as a series of events in the process of identity constructions that is going on within and outside these normative debates which are used to construct a particular narrative as a special (even chosen) people. Normative arguments are a part of narratives they are embedded in narrative clauses that convey meaning to argumentative debates (Eder, in press). Normative debates are therefore an important part of the process of identity construction, part of an ongoing story that is produced in arguing about Europe.The Reference Object of a European Collective Identity Making theoretical sense of collective identities that have emerged and are continuing to crystallize in the course of European integration is a sociological programme dire cted at and against socio-psychological and normative approaches to European identity. Sociological approaches tell us whether, how and to what extent identity markers emerge in social processes that are situated in time and space. Normative dissertates on collective identity are part of collective identities, explicit justi? ations of the boundaries of a network of social relations. Normative conceptions of a European identity are therefore part of the phenomenon that needs an explanation. The same holds for social-psychological approaches. To ? nd another commencement point to analyze ongoing processes of identity construction in Europe is to take Europe as an empty signi? er. It could mean anything ranging from the identi? cation with a culture to a geographical unity ranging from the Atlantic to the Urals or to a unity that coincides with the legal realm of the European jointure or to a unity that is de? ed by membership in the Council of Europe. We could take such ideas as p roxies for a Europe to be taken as a reference object of collective identity. Thus we could talk about a cultural Europe, a geographical Europe, a Europe of Human Rights, and a political Europe. Thus Europe is decomposed into a series of Europes (in the plural) speci? ed by an adjective. Nevertheless, the problem of the construction of the thing to which a European identity refers remains. Collective identities refer to a space of communication, the boundaries of which vary with what is communicated.This is an implication of the theoretical assumption that collective identities are constructed through stories. Stories that link people vary with the communicative network which they constitute. Thus, the reference object of collective identities is a network of communication with boundaries which are identi? ed and controlled by an identity. Networks of communication generate identities as a project of control of their boundaries (White, 1992). Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sag e Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 435 436 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)The boundaries of Europe could be de? ned following the national theoretical account by political boundaries. In that case the legally de? ned space of the European Union is the referent for a collective identity. Legal de? nitions are grounded in stories that link people in that space in a particular way, principally as citizens in that network. This network develops social relations as connections between citizens that can vary from dense to loose relationships. The trend is so remote toward increasing density, measured by the increasing number of legal regulations that dig in upon the life of European citizens.This legal de? nition of a network of social relations corresponds to attempts to de? ne a political control project linking the citizens in a political identity and thus controlling the boundaries of a legal space. This very speci? c condition (legal rules as based on stories that bin d) generates political identities as a project of control of the boundaries of the European political community. The story of this project is the European citizenship story which competes necessarily with the national citizenship story.National citizenship is the result of a long process of historical concept formation in which national identity emerged, integrating social and cultural differences under a new concept citizenship (Somers, 1995). This same concept is now used to make a European identity inventing the European citizen as the narrative core of a European identity. 13 To indicate the difference, some adjectives have been used to mark the difference of European and national identity such as the idea of global citizenship.Yet there is no way to avoid national citizenship stories from adopting cosmopolitanism as one of their elements. Cosmopolitanism ? ts just as well into the story of national as well as European citizenship. This story, since its beginning, has exclusive ly been tied to nationally de? ned networks of social actors. Thus there is an inherent dif? culty with constructions of a collective identity based on the citizenship story. This citizenship story is enriched by reference to the Common Market and to a Social Europe.Both are connected like two sides of the one coin and their combination often serves as a possible particularity of Europe that distinguishes it from the rest of the world. This object is integrated into the European citizenship story the story of a successful process of European integration which transformed foes into friends, which transformed war into wealthiness and freedom (i. e. , the four freedoms). It is further supported by de? ning the role of this EUEurope in the outer world, i. e. to de? ne Europe as an actor with a go by role in the world. 14A second reference object is European culture, in general de? ned as its traditions. The substance of this European culture is itself contested. Europe is rather a b attle? eld of cultural images that confronts the cultural traditions that have shaped Europe. This is the particular cultural heritage of Europe. It ? nds it in its values which are opposed to the values cherished in other cultures. These Others are, however, shifting objects the non-European world is projected on some particular Others, sometimes on the East, sometimes on the Orient, sometimes on America.Distinguishing a European culture from such Others is a strategy for the foundation of a story about a European Self, i. e. a collective identity. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity The dif? culties with such a reference object which is taken as unique, clear and well-bounded lead to a third reference object based on the assumption that a European Self has never existed.Europe has many different cultures that have co-existed for centuries this refers not only to the different national cultures that come together in Europe it also refers to the Arab and Jewish and other Eastern cultures that have had and still have a strong impact on what we consider to be part of Europe, which are equally inside and outside of a European culture. And, ? nally, Europe has added the cultures of the Others in the course of migration movements over past decades which again cannot be assimilated without having an impact on Europes culture.Thus, reducing the reference object of a European culture to its values or cultural heritage is a simpli? cation which does not take into account the contradictory cultural orientations and the contestations about their Europeanness in current Europe. What kind of story can be told about this diversity of a European culture? We can imagine a story about the many cultures and the forms in which they have encountered each other and shaped the course of cultural change in Europe.There are stories in Europe, in gray Europe, stories about the co-existence of Arab and Nor man culture, of Jewish and Christian culture, of Mongols and gypsies in Europe. These stories often tell terrible tales which does not mean that the end of the story is hell. Thus it seems to be an open story, which can be continued and which is fostered in a Europe where these different cultures again clash yet under different conditions from the past. Which collective identity is mobilized depends on the story that is chosen to identify the boundaries of a network of social relations that bind Europeans, i. . those living in Europe and ? ghting for its cultural orientation, to each other. The three basic stories, the story of a common market and a Social Europe embedded in the story of a European citizenship, the story of a unique European culture, and the story of a loan-blend Europe are incompatible. They will not coincide in terms of constructing a clear boundary rather, they construct different boundaries. They tell about different Europes (in the plural). Thus, European iden tity emerges as something with varying boundaries, depending upon which story we tell.Whether there is an overall story connecting these stories and transforming them into one European story depends upon a series of restrictive conditions. According to the theoretical model presented above, this has to do, ? rst, with the evolution of networks of social relations in Europe, and then with the morphological properties of these different stories which determine their narrative connectivity. The question could be answered in the positive to the extent that Europe develops social relations in which the economic, legal and cultural boundaries coincide, as was the case in national societies. 5 Such homogeneity of the economic, cultural and the political belongings is not given in the European context. Europe is characterized by the non-coincidence of these different boundaries. Taking Europe as a unique culture disembedded from its political institutional framework goes beyond the nation al model yet keeps the assumption of a homogeneous culture. Taking Europe as a crossing form of social relations gives up even the assumption of clear cultural boundaries of a Europe in search of its identity. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 437 438 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)Looking at European identity as a project of control of a European society, the assumption resulting from the evolutionary part of the theory presented above is that in a European society being more than any other society in need of a collective identity, we have to expect sudden patterns of constructing a collective identity in the context of culturally non-congruent multiple networks of social relations. Whether there will be a story of the three stories thus becomes a new issue for research. The ? rst observation is that the multiplicity of networks of social relations evolving in Europe allows more stories to ? w within these networks. Since such s ystems are composed of loosely coupled partial networks, the narrative intermediation of the loose coupling of a diversity of networks of social relations becomes the central problem of these networks of social relations. Since coupling is as the theory claims mediated by narrative meaning, the issue of how stories can link such networks of social relations and generate an identity of these networks is the key problem. Since social relations in such systems are held together by a multiplicity of stories, the solution of one hegemonic story no longer works.Europe is confronted with coordinating at least three hegemonic stories. In the following, these three model stories for constructing a collective identity for Europe are discussed more systematically. The idea is to distinguish three formal network structures of social relations on which projects of de? ning an identity for Europe are built. These will be distinguished as international, postnational, and transnational identity constructions of Europe. Three stories can be related to these model identities. They are used to make sense of these constructions and provide the collective resonance that can absorb ? ating identi? cations in Europe. international identity constructions make use of the spot of the jean Monnet success story. Postnational identity constructions follow the plot of And they will live in wild pansy together forever. Transnational identity constructions ? nally work with the plot of a broker Europe. 16 These three stories provide narratives with which different models of networks of social relations, i. e. different types of societies, can be produced and reproduced. These elements are organized in a speci? c sequence which gives narrative meaning to these elements.Thus identities can be study as being more than a series of identi? cations with a market, a polity or a culture they can be analyzed as a speci? c sequential pattern of organizing such identi? cations into a coherent whole which is a story. Models of Collective Identities in Europe The ? rst model story links national stories directly to a international story. National stories become part of a network of stories which has a star structure national stories are linked to a centre which constitutes the connection between national stories via this centre, without direct links between the units of this narrative network.It is only via the centre that the national identities are integrated into a higher one. This does not require direct links between the Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity national stories. The meaning of national stories is interdependent upon their relationship to the centre the closer to the centre, the more it provides elements of an emerging European story the further from the centre, the more such elements become irrelevant. Thus there is permanent campaign going on in which the link to the emergin g story is contested.This particular network structure can be called a supranational story since it relies on the emergence of a distinct story of something that is decoupled from national stories. This supranational story is the becoming story of Europe which so far has only a brief history (60 years). It can be all-encompassing by adding precursors, either in the twenties of the last century, or in the course of the nineteenth century. Sites for constructing such a centre-oriented network are specially Brussels and Strasbourg. The Council of Europe is trying to tell such a supranational story, de? ing the boundaries of Europe in a larger perspective than a more closed EU story does. Rituals of enacting this EU story are European summits, European days, giving meaning to Europes ? ag and anthem. A case for such a supranational story is the story of Jean Monnet as the founding father of United Europe, which can have a more ef? ciency-oriented version, a version tending towards som e idea of example and political excellence of European politics, or a version of a common European culture that is defended and kept by European institutions. as well counter-narratives add to this supranational story.The critique of an Empire Europe, mobilizations against Fortress Europe or the general critique of Brussels as a site of effrontery of power contribute to the making of a supranational story of Europe. The second model story is based on a particular mode of linking national stories. National stories are networked through direct links which do not crystallize around a centre. European identity appears as a network of national networks. This emerging network minimizes the distances between the split of the network (maximizing its geodetic distances) and follows the pattern of a cantonment structure.This clique network structure produces postnational identity as its control project. Postnational identity is the added value of merging national stories into shared stor ies. The distances between the national stories in Europe vary, yet their interaction forces them to position themselves in relation to other national stories without ending up in isolation from some or all of these other stories. The story that is told about Europe is then a story in which the relations between national stories and their actors are at stake.Winners and losers, heroes and perpetrators of the recent past and of the present are related, change position and try to ? nd a new position in an emerging European script. Germans and Austrians are stired as well as Poles or Hungarians Italians and French have to struggle to position their heroes in this emerging postnational script. Euro-scepticism and Euro-af? rmativism spread across the national heroes. Euroscepticism is no longer connected only to the English and af? rmativism is no longer the humans of the Germans.The emerging story turns into a postnational story where national actors try to relate their proper stories to those of the others by looking for a position in a postnational plot in Europe. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 439 440 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) Sites for staging this star-structured network are WWII rituals and Holocaust rituals where a European story is enacted. European ? lm rituals or European association football games provide an analogous opportunity to de? ne a social relation between Europeans that makes narrative sense beyond the nation.A case for such a postnational identity is retelling the story of the winners of WWII by including the losers. Another case is the Holocaust, a traumatic story linking victims and perpetrators across nations. It also appears in counternarratives of a Eurosceptic Europe which mobilizes the losers of Europeanization across national boundaries in Europe in favour of the nation as the exclusive site for solidarity. 17 The third model story can be identi? ed which describes Europe as a site in which cultural differences cut across national differences, thus creating a different structure of cleavages among the people in Europe.This third model is based on networks of groups interacting across national borders and creating a unity out of an increasing diversity of national and non-national elements. This network structure differs from the others in the sense that it does not provide direct interactive links between its parts, yet produces an ordered network of social relations. It is a network integrated by the structural par of the positions of groups of actors. Indigenous and immigrant and migrating people are related to each other as claiming or occupying structurally equivalent positions in an emerging European society.Such a transnational story fosters the narrative of hybridity, the equal participation in a diversity of cultures in Europe. Sites for such transnational relations fostering hybrid collective identities are particular places in Europe wher e hybridity has been lived for some time. typefaces are the commemoration of hybrid cultures in Southern Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily and Turkey or Europe or the commemoration of Europes Abrahamic past fostered by the re-entry of the Islamic and the Jewish story into Europes Christian story.Stories of hybrid Europe are narrated as model cases for a Europe where distinct religious traditions succeeded in living together in peace and reciprocal enrichment. The Jewish story is seen as an instance of brokerage between Europe and the Other of Europe in a way similar to the Islamic story which can be seen as a bridge between Europe and the Other of Europe. There exist also counter-narratives of a transnational Europe which is tribal Europe, the idea of a Europe based on primordial ties that precede concrete interaction ties and which claim structural equivalence on the basis of some constructed common origin.Such hybrid constructions reposition Europe and its Other in a way that transg resses the basic assumptions of the ? rst two models. The ? rst two models still assume a core substance de? ning Europe that is realized in social relations of communication and understanding. The third model provides a model story in which cleavages and unbridgeable differences undermine the search for a coherent good story, for the simple story plot of a good Europe. Yet there is still a story to tell, i. e. the story of the art of living together. This art requires competent re? xive actors, kind in demanding performances which do not presuppose understanding but take understanding as a rare and happy moment in a series of permanent misunderstandings. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity Transnational identity as a project of control of networks of social relations that engage in permanent crossovers is embedded in a story which makes itself the object of a story it is re? exive storytelling. It combi nes many and different stories and mixes them in an unforeseeable way.Europe provides a site for such re? exive storytelling which is increasingly used for hybrid constructions a European Islam, a European Jewry, a European Christianity, a European secularism and universalism which emerge from the encounter and hybridization of traditions and cultures inside and outside Europe. Europe in this sense is an experimental site for a collective identity that differs in all respects from historical experience. European Identity as a Case of Transnational Identity Construction Europe has more than one story.At the same time, this society has developed a discourse about itself in which it thematizes itself stating that it has so many stories that bind and separate. Thus, European society is an ideal case for perusing the link between increasing complexity and the search for narrative bonds. How are these stories combined? Is there a story of the stories, a meta-story to tell in Europe? A me ta-story that might gain hegemonic status as the national story did in the modern nation-state. This question cannot be answered in an af? rmative way.The answer has to be decomposed into the sequential ordering of these stories and their points of contact. We have to look at the temporal dimension of the use of this tool-kit in which some boundaries of what constitutes Europe have been go forth aside, patch others have gained in prominence and older ones have been reframed. We have to deal with a dynamic process that accompanies the construction of Europe as a political community from its beginning. The creation of a narrative network is a process exhibiting sequential patterns and generating constraints on reproducing the social relations created so far.In this sense, collective identity is a process of creating a space of social relations which never ends. Yet it is possible for the analytical observer to block the future of such processes in a thought experiment and describe i n which sense the future to come can be ? xed. The idea of the nation has succeeded in blocking the future of collective identity construction for a long time. The temptation to ? x it forever has ended in a series of national civil wars and ethnic cleansings which undermined this process of telling one story with a ? xed end.The process of creating a collective identity in Europe in the same vein would end up in two analogous bottlenecks the ? rst is that it would be premature to block the process of organizing social relations in terms of one collective identity because there are many collective identities that are used to structure an unsettled space of social relations the second is that blocking the future might in principle be counter-productive since it would create high identitarian con? icts over which boundary has to be recognized and which not. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 41 442 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) When we block the making of a European story, then we see something that is more arti? cial than any of those that have managed to provide the narrative network for social relations such as ideas of nation, empire, lineage or caste. Terms such as hybrid identity are fashionable and point to the temporary and unstable mix of different stories controlling the boundaries of a space of communication. Europe has a moving boundary which depends on the story we mobilize. To give antecedence to the political story is an unwarranted move.Political identities compete with other stories. The emerging competitor of political and cultural stories in the debate on the link between politics and religion is an indicator of a moving link. The link between the economic story and the cultural story is equally dynamic as the ? ghts about a neo-liberal economy and social economy show (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999). A European narrative is a dynamic combination of different stories that will produce a dyn amic form of collective identity, i. e. favour a permanent process of constructing and reconstructing a European identity.To reduce it to a liberal or a cosmopolitan or a traumatic identity misses the sudden property of their parallel existence. This is still a highly abstract conclusion yet it points to the basically temporal character of identity constructions which vary in terms of their openness toward the future. Collective identities emerging from such processes are increasingly multidimensional and multilayered. Stories by which identities are constructed do not simply co-exist but rather in? uence each other and produce emergent properties through multiple forms of recombination.Evolutionary theory proposes recombination as a result of processes of generating new elements (stories) and their selection in the course of building up social relations among human beings. It, however, has nothing to say on how such recombination works. This is an open space that is to be ? lled. Theoretically speaking, we have to expect structural restrictions and opportunities for stories to combine or to separate. Instead of identifying collective identities as entities, we should see identities as evolutionary products of processes in which stories are combined and recombined.Europe is an ideal case for such a theoretical perspective Europe produces stories about itself in the permanent confrontation with stories about the Other which again produces effects in the Other who produces his own stories by looking at the ? rst as the Other (the case in point is the reciprocal storytelling that takes place between Europe and Turkey or Europe and Russia). Such reciprocal storytelling produces shifting identities in which permanent identity revolution takes place. These processes can be halted by political identities with the risk of entering into identitarian struggles with cultural identities.They can be halted by cultural identities with the risk of entering into con? ict w ith political identities. And economic identities can try to block the future while provoking political and cultural identities. What could emerge is a story of con? icting stories, a re? exive meta-story in which we tell each other about the futile attempts to block the future. But this is mere speculation. Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity ConclusionThe debate on European collective identity so far has not been able to establish a systematic link between the forms of collective identity constructions and the networks of social relations in which this process is embedded. Thus, theorizing European identity has lost its empirical foundation. This loss has been compensated for in two ways by a thin theoretical strategy which is to reduce the issue of collective identity to the issue of the extent of identi? cation with Europe, or by a impenetrable theoretical strategy which uses nation-building as the m odel for collective identity construction in Europe.The thin strategy does not tackle collective identity constructions since identi? cations are elements of collective identity construction, but not its organizing core. The thick strategy assumes that Europe will develop in a way analogous to the national story, which is an unwarranted assumption. Variations in public pride or identi? cation with Europe as measured in surveys indicate the resonance of a people to stories that serve for identity construction. A collective identity might produce identi? cations, and thick identities produce a lot of strong identi? cations. But collective identity is not the result of identi? ations, it is rather the object to which identi? cations refer. The explanation of the construction of collective identity must therefore be sought independent of the identi? cations that it produces. The proposal made in this article has been to analyze the construction of collective identities in Europe by look ing at the sites where debates on its identity take place. The market has been mainly devalued and even denounced as a site for a collective identity, in spite of the fact that the success story of the Common Market would have offered a good institutional starting point. 8 The central debate on a European identity focuses on a politically de? ned collective identity, such as the discourse on constitutional patriotism in Europe or on a secular legal culture in Europe such as the one represented in the Council of Europe. However, the cultural symbols mobilized by this Council are universal values that not only the people in Europe share. This reduces boundary controlling effects and undermines the construction of a strong collective identity. Another variant is the claim that an ethical self-understanding is binding those living in the EU together (Kantner, 2006). 9 These arguments are not explanations of processes of identity constructions, but elements in stories providing projects of control of the boundaries of Europe. Thus, we have several sites in which stories transmit that compete for hegemony in the process of collective identity construction in Europe. Its social basis is a society that constitutes itself in imbrication circles. These networks no longer coincide as they do in the national situation. Thus, the social embedding of identity constructions poses a new theoretical problem the idea of a society that consists of partially overlapping networks of people.Each of these networks has its own stories that compete to represent each of these networks. This produces a dynamic of identity construction which needs analytical translation and theoretical explanation. Analytically we have to understand the complex interplay of many stories circulate in partially overlapping networks. And we have to identify Downloaded from est. sagepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 443 444 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4) when and where stories can be linked with other stories, by identifying the structural restrictions and opportunities for the connectivity of stories.Thus, we can take seriously the idea of Europe as a multilayered society of partially overlapping networks in which a ring of stories is circulating and a new story of stories can be created and narrated. For the time being, we have to reckon with a plurality of projects of collective identities in Europe which vary in their combination in time. This plurality might turn out to be an advantage instead of imposing a hegemonic grand narrative, Europe can live with a diversity of stories that need only one property to offer nodes as docking stations for other stories.Thus storytelling in Europe will be an open process, capable of taking up new stories without ingest them. The only criterion that counts is to be able to continue to tell a story. Identity is a contested concept this was the observation at the beginning. The end of the theoretical story is th e observation that Europe is a space with contested stories and that it is through contestation that stories that bind can be told. In this space the links between stories will multiply and connect many other stories that so far nobody considered to be part of Europe.The emergence of a new society in Europe and the temporary blocking of its future in terms of constructing a plurality of European collective identities form the phenomenon that we have to understand. This makes the analysis of a European identity a demanding theoretical, methodological and empirical task. The conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing discussion are recipes for further research. For the moment I see four such proposals for organizing research on collective identity in the context of Europe and for generalizing from this context to some model of collective identity beyond the nation Identifying sites and stories of the narrative network that emerges in Europe. Identifying the story structure organizi ng this narrative network. Describing this narrative network as a project of control of social relations (and its boundaries) in Europe. Explaining the round points in the evolution of the narrative network by the social relations between people, regions, civil society organizations, economic organizations and ? nally nation-states that emerge in the course of Europeanization. By applying these proposals we do not need psychological assumptions such as a minimum of identi? ations with Europe in order to see identity in Europe and explain its emergence and evolution. If there is a collective identity, then identi? cation will come more or less, depending on social structures that develop in the emerging society in Europe. Notes 1 I leave aside the idea of humankind as an identity construction beyond the nation since it leads to the other pole of the identity of individuals. Humankind is the sum of such individuals. Whether the idea of cosmopolitan identity goes beyond this aggregat e notion of individual identity has to be seen. Downloaded from est. agepub. com at Sage Publications (UK) on April 26, 2012 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 2 Forms of identity beyond the individual are another theme which is raised in the context of debates on subjectivity. 3 The authors cite Tilly (1995), Somers (1994, 1995) and Calhoun (1994). 4 This also implies an argument against psychological theories that see collective identity as something that people need to identify with. I rather take a Durkheimian view seeing collective identity as a social fact imposed upon us and forcing u