Conferences

Making Europe/Making Europeans: The Ethnographic and the Everyday

April 10th-11th 2008
Center for European Studies Conference
UT Campus, Main Building, Room 212

Current discussions within European media outlets stage “Europe” in contradictory terms of both existential crisis and of emancipatory hope. On the one hand, there is an ideological crisis in transatlantic political relations with the USA (and in relation to the Near East) especially since the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq; a political crisis of legitimacy affecting the European Union (EU) especially since the failure to agree a new constitution; and a perceived cultural crisis of identity generated by discussions concerning migration and multiculturalism, often time referred to in apocalyptic tones as a supposed “clash of civilizations”. Indeed, some conservative commentators have recently gone as far as to suggest that we are now witnessing “the last days of Europe”.  Yet, on the other hand, Europe itself and the European Union in particular is imagined and projected as a counter-balance to American neo-liberal imperialist politics and as a (future) model for cosmopolitan, transnational citizenship based upon an expanded notion of social democracy and human rights.

But Europe is not just a discursive representation “out there”; it is an actual place of belonging for millions of people. While the European Union shapes the outlines for a future Europe and establishes common laws and regulations, Europe is more than a simple projection or an administrative process. Europe is at the same time formed by the everyday activities of its citizens who are engaged in making space and place; a contested space to live by and to struggle for; a place with which they can identify. European citizens live in nation states and in cities with diverse histories and futures, they construct landscapes and are concerned about the environment, and they produce hybrid sports and music cultures that often surpass (or bypass) static projections of a “common Europe”. The term “Europeanization” is one way to shift the focus towards the processual and performative character of a Europe that is characterized by a certain “unity through diversity”. Thus, Europe is not a singular static entity, but it is brought into being through diverse and often antagonistic social processes and cultural practices.

Making Europe/Making Europeans focuses on Europe and European citizenship as a performance and as a process in the making. We want to present the diverse European realities from a “grassroots” level, based on empirical studies and reflections on the level of face-to-face contacts and everyday activities. In other words to think critically about “the ethnographic” as a mode of enquiry and the “everyday” as an important site of understanding and theory generation. Our overall questions are:

• How does a Europe of citizens actually come into being?
• What does it mean to be European?
• What are the different ways in which Europe is both imagined and lived?
• And who is included in and who excluded from these imaginaries?

For more information, please contact:
The Center for European Studies at ces@austin.utexas.edu

The Center for European Studies wishes to thank our generous co-sponsors:

British Studies
Center for African and African American Studies
Center for Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Center for Women's and Gender Studies
College of Liberal Arts
DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service)
Department of American Studies
Department of Anthropology
Department of English
Department of French and Italian
Department of Geography
Department of Germanic Studies
Department of Government
Department of History
Department of Sociology
Population Research Center
Professor Veit Erlmann
School of Architecture
School of Music
Swedish Endowment