University of ThessalyDepartment of Planning and Regional DevelopmentGraduate Program in European Regional Development

StudiesFall Semester, 2010-11

Course:The Geography of European Integration: Economy,

Society and Institutions

Lecturers: Petrakos G., Camhis M., Kotios A., Topaloglou L., Bogiazides N.

Presentation 2:

European Society

Nick Bogiazides

European Society

Modernity – shift from community to society, gemeinschaft to gesellschaftIndustrial societyUrbanisationMass society, mass culture, overarching cultureShift from secondary to tertiary sector, from an emphasis on class position to

class perceptionThe above apply both West and East, Les Trente GlorieusesEmigration immigration, racism, multiculturalism, from assimilation to

integrationIdentity politics collective identity / regionalismFeminism, sexual emancipationSecular religion (Christian Democracy) division between Catholicism and

Protestantism supplanted by division between Christianity and IslamDoes economic integration necessarily imply social and cultural integrationPost-modernity and globalisation: is the former so important, is the latter such

a novelty

European Society

In the ‘concept of Europe’, in its permutations and complexity, inevitably inhere the traits of a European society extending beyond national and regional contingencies

Across the Continent, convergences and divergences abound. Yet these develop around some shared key societal elements cross-cutting deep post-war economic, political and ideological divisions as well as inherited pre-war national-cultural traditions.

European Society

Europe as the cauldron of ‘modernity’

European Society

Not just modernity in its narrow phenomenal manifestation - from industrialisation and electrification to the modern movement in the arts and the Bauhaus

But modernity in its essentialist sense of ‘denial of identity so as to secure survival’

In this sense, the first ‘modern’, as idealised by early twentieth century modernists, must be ‘Oύτις’

European Society

As denial of identity, modernity has its conceptual parallel in alienation

Be it through inclusion in mass society and the nation-state or ‘subsumption in the product’ and the value extracted, according to liberalism and marxism respectively, identity is lost and another is imposed or opted for, in order to ensure survival

European Society

Modernity therefore, in its essence as perennial shift between established identity and its denial, is inevitably premised on the pertinent efficacy of otherness

And, by extension, the inevitability of otherness and of the need to face up to it imbues modernity with its ‘categorical imperatives’

European Society

Modernity’s prime categorical imperative must be the shift from community to society (from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft)

In Brechtian terms, from Kleinstadt to Grossenstadt, from Augsburg to Berlin

European Society

Modernity’s prime categorical imperative must be the shift from community to society (from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft)

In Brechtian terms, from Kleinstadt to Grossenstadt, from Augsburg to Berlin

European Society

Industrialisation and the development of industrial society is another of modernity’s imperatives

The shift from agricultural to industrial production, and from handicrafts and manufactures to mass production and heavy industry affected all parts of Europe

European Society

A similar spatial shift has occurred regarding urbanisation.

The transition from rural village and market town to industrial city and supra-national metropolis has also affected all parts of the Continent, and continues to this day

European Society

Concomitant to industrialisation and urbanisation is the shift to mass society and mass culture

A shift that has not, however, abolished the distinction between a ‘high’ culture of the elite and a ‘low’ popular culture, or between national cultural perceptions and practices and a local / regional vernacular, often also referred to as ethnic culture

To this need be added the overarching encroachment of a ‘cosmopolitan’ culture originating from across the Atlantic, with the US media industry and the English language as its main battering rams

European Society

Since the war there has been, almost everywhere in Europe, an apparent shift from the secondary (industrial) sector to the tertiary (services) sector.

Yet, though this may be so at the objective level of the inanimate goods and services produced, at the subjective level of the living producers, the working people comprising all productive sectors are increasingly facing the strictures of secondary-sector type production, as, in operational pattern and organisational form, all sectors seem to converge to it.

European Society

Shift from class position to class perception, from structuralist to phenomenological approach

Hence also, shift from emphasis on collective identity to emphasis on individual / personal identity

European Society

The ‘Glorious Years’ (‘Les Trente Glorieuses’) apply equally West and East

European Society

Shift from net emigration to net immigration

From ethnic homogeneity and assimilation to multicultarism and integration

European Society

Multiculturalism fostering further identity politics

Feminisms, sexual emancipation

Yet some collective identities are also rediscovered and promoted through the different regionalisms

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Religion secularised

The return of Islam

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Open questions:

i) What the interdeterminations between economic and social, cultural and political integration? ii) Post-modernity and globalisation: is the former so important, is the latter such a novelty?