The focus of this project was the diversity and plurality of cultural orientations and, moreover, ever-shifting cultural practices within Europe. Historical ruptures challenge continuities and instability coexist with stabiity.
Perceptions of social inequality at a European level were behind the initiation of this project. An important question was whether the emergence, interpretations and regulations of social inequalities is transformed by new centre-periphery structures in the EU. The project addressed the tension in the fact that EU is an economy but not a polity, a market but not a state. The focus was on the tension that emerges when social disintegration in the wake of market integration cannot be matched by redistributive politics to adjust for inequalities however they are defined.
To connect Bo Stråth’s research interests with those of the PhD researchers working with him at the EUI, they organized several seminar series initiated by the researchers as a joint venture. The focus was on theory and methodology questions connected to the practices of historians. There were often invited guests to broaden their intellectual input.
Under this heading are the outlines and programmes of six conferences/workshops at the EUI between 2000 and 2006. They deal with Europe's unity and internal divisions and the role of the nation-states and their citizenships in European integration. Other teams are the connection between religion and modernity and the meaning of Europe.
This project studied innovatively the European public sphere. It questioned the prevailing conceptualisation of public spheres as nationally bounded and developing together with the nation state. It proposed an alternative, networked, and fluid conception of the public sphere that captures best the dynamic nature of the European public sphere, or indeed any public sphere in the 21st century.
Four workshops between 1998 and 2006 explored the connections, overlaps, and demarcations between art and history,fiction and fact. There was a particular focus on film.
The four conferences here were organized 2004-2006 within the framework of Bo Stråth's and Peter Wagner's research project "Europe's Cultural Heritage Reconsidered. Rupture and Continuity in European Culural Orientations" at the EUI.
Here are the details about ten conferences and workshops between 1998 and 2006 at the EUI organized in the fanework of several projects exploring the preconditions of a social Europe and the economy as a polity from a historical perspective.
Here are two seminar series in the framework of Bo Stråth's and Peter Wagner's project EUI Europe's Cultural Heritage Reconsidered: Rupture and Continuity in European Cultural Orientations.
The Political Constitution of Contemporary Capitalism Christian Joerges, Bo Stråth and Peter Wagner (eds.),The Economy as a Polity. London: Cavendish Press 2005. Abstract The debate about so-called economic globalisation has reached a new phase. In the face of...
