Cosmopolitan EuropeEurope is Europe's last remaining realistic political utopia. But Europe remains to be understood and conceptualized. This historically unique form of international community cannot be explained in terms of the traditional concepts of politics and the state, which remain trapped in the straightjacket of methodological nationalism. Thus, if we are to understand cosmopolitan Europe, we must radically rethink the conventional categories of social and political analysis. Just as the Peace of Westphalia brought the religious civil wars of the seventeenth century to an end through the separation of church and state, so too the separation of state and nation represents the appropriate response to the horrors of the twentieth century. And just as the secular state makes the exercise of different religions possible, so too cosmopolitan Europe must guarantee the coexistence of different ethnic, religious and political forms of life across national borders based on the principle of cosmopolitan tolerance. The task the authors have set themselves in this book is nothing less than to rethink Europe as an idea and a reality. It represents an attempt to understand the process of Europeanization in light of the theory of reflexive modernization and thereby to redefine it at both the theoretical and the political level. This book completes Ulrich Beck's trilogy on 'cosmopolitan realism', the volumes of which complement each other and can be read independently. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the key social and political developments of our time. |
Contents
Introduction The European Malaise and Why the Idea of Cosmopolitan Europe Could Overcome It | 1 |
The Reflexive Modernization of Europe | 28 |
Cosmopolitan Empire Statehood and Political Authority in the Process of Europeanization | 50 |
European Social Space On the Social Dynamics of Variable Borders | 94 |
Strategies of European Cosmopolitanization | 136 |
Inequality and Recognition EuropeWide Social Conflicts and their Political Dynamics | 171 |
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actors Beck become both/and citizens Cold War Community concept conflicts constitution cooperation cosmopolitan democracy cosmopolitan Europe cosmopolitan realism cultural dangers decision-making decisions democracy democratic differentiated integration dynamic eastern enlargement economic either/or ethnic Euro Europe’s European civil society European Commission European cosmopolitanism European Empire European integration European level European Parliament European politics European project European society European Union example external forms German global political global risks governments hence identity inequality interdependence Iraq War legitimacy logic Maastricht Treaty means meta-power game methodological nationalism military mobility nation-state national societies neoliberal norms perception perspective political authority possible postmodern precisely principle problems process of European question recognition reflexive modernization regional research on Europe role second modernity sense side effects social solidarity sovereignty strategies structure supranational supranational institutions supranationalism terrorist theory threat tion transformation transnational transnationalization Treaty Ulrich Beck world risk society