Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T03:04:45.747Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

9 - Identity, Europe, and the world beyond public spheres

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 November 2014

Jeffrey T. Checkel
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Thomas Risse
Affiliation:
Freie Universität Berlin
Get access

Summary

Europeanized public spheres affect politics. This broad claim is accepted by all of the contributors to this book, even while they disagree on other issues: the precise extent of Europeanization in this area (a little or a lot); the way to measure public spheres (claims, frame, or discourse analysis); where precisely to look for such spheres (among elites and the quality media or a more bottom-up, civil-society view); and – finally – the politics being affected by them (party-political cleavages or identity politics). My purpose here is not to adjudicate among these disputes; the book’s opening chapter does an excellent job of highlighting and justifying them while persuasively demonstrating the common ground shared by all (see Chapter 1). Thus, the collection is a state-of-the-art treatment of the subject matter – European public spheres – in the best sense of that phrase: telling the reader what we have learned but also where our knowledge is incomplete or disputed.

My chapter continues with this last point, making three arguments about these loose ends. First, the workings of public spheres are ultimately claims about the ability of language and communication to shape politics. Elsewhere, however, such linguistic approaches have been supplemented by analysts arguing that institutions, power, and practice are important as well; a similar move seems absent in work on public spheres (see Chapter 8). The result is incomplete arguments – for example, on the relationship of public spheres to changes in European identity.

Type
Chapter
Information
European Public Spheres
Politics Is Back
, pp. 227 - 246
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×