Editors' Introduction: Cultural Spaces in Europe

Abstract

This special issue reflects, and seeks to contribute to, two recent developments within social science. The first is a growing, if belated, recognition of the significance of Europeanization - however problematic the notion (Jachtenfuchs and Kohler-Koch 2004), and of EU integration in particular, for the ways in which we model and seek to explain state formation and societal development. While the tendency, of sociology especially, to equate 'society' with national society, and thus with the boundaries of the nation state, has been criticized for some time and the weaknesses of 'methodological nationalism' (Beck and Schnaider 2006) acknowledged, Europeanization appears to provide a clear example of the limits of the conceptual apparatus that we have inherited from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The second development is the growing recognition of the importance of spatial aspects of social relations, thanks largely to contributions from geographers and from urban studies. There is, of course, also a more immediate and political context for our discussion. On the one hand the EU's eastward enlargement (the accession of Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 being the latest step) and the ongoing debate on the 'Turkish question' have opened up a set of concerns regarding cultural roots, borders, identities, belonging, and citizenship. On the other hand, there is a renewed sense of crisis following the French and Dutch referenda 'no' to the proposed EU Constitution (see, Nicolaidis 2005).