Debating the European Union

An interview with Cris Shore and Marc Abls

CRIS SHORE AND
MARC ABLS
Cris Shore is Professor of
Social Anthropology at the
University of Auckland, New
Zealand. His email is
c.shore@auckland.ac.nz
Marc Abls is Director of the
Laboratory for the
Anthropology of Social
Institutions and
Organizations (LAIOS),
CNRS, Paris. His email is
abeles@club-internet.fr

1. Preamble to The treaty

establishing a constitution
for Europe (European
Convention on the Future of
Europe, 2003), compiled by
Valry Giscard dEstaing,
President of the
Convention. It was adopted
by consensus by the
European Convention on 13
June and 10 July 2003,
submitted to the President
of the European Council in
Rome on 18 July 2003.
Since at the Brussels
summit (12-13 December
2003), Heads of State and
Government did not reach
an agreement on the final
text of the Constitution, the
IGC will continue in 2004
under the Irish Presidency
and it is anticipated that the
final version will be
adopted by the
Intergovernmental
Conference (IGC), after
which it has to be ratified
by the 15 current and 10
future Member States of the
European Union. For the
full document and
discussion see
http://europa.eu.int/futurum/
constitution/index_en.htm

10

Our constitution... is called a democracy because power is

in the hands not of a minority but of the greatest number.
Thucydides II, 37.1

In the context of the imminent enlargement of the

European Union on 1 May 2004 and the continuing
debate about the nature and role of the European Union
(EU), ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY invited Cris Shore and
Marc Abls, two specialists on the anthropology of
Europe, to give their opinions. Ed.
AT: You have worked extensively on EU-related issues. Tell
us about your research and principal findings in this area.
CS: My first fieldwork in the EU in 1992 explored the
European Communitys evolving cultural policy. The
principal finding was that European policy-makers were
actively engaged in inventing new symbols for
Europeanness through the ingenious use of EC-funded
cultural actions. Although typically denied, this instrumental use of cultural policy as a tool to promote the EUs
integrationist agenda bore striking parallels with the strategies and techniques used by national elites in the formation
of European nation-states during the 19th century. Marc
Abls (2000) has shrewdly observed that the EU suffers
from a paucity of rituals and symbols when compared to
Europes nation-states. However, this lack of symbols
underlies a more fundamental problem: the EUs chronic
lack of cultural legitimacy and popular consent. Despite
enormous advances towards economic and legal integration, there is still little tangible sense of belonging or shared
identity among the putative citizens of Europe. I concluded
that EU attempts to forge a European identity were primarily motivated by its search for legitimacy and its need to
create a European people (or demos) without which the
EUs political system will continue to be perceived as fundamentally undemocratic.
My later research focused on EU civil servants and the
organizational culture of the European Commission. My
guiding question was whether the EU had succeeded in creating within its own institutional heartlands the kind of
European identity and culture espoused in its literature. A
secondary aim was to test the hypothesis that once
appointed, EU civil servants would undergo a cognitive
change and become progressively more Europeanist in
their allegiance. As I discovered during fieldwork, the local
idiom for this process was the French term engrenage
(meaning gearing or enmeshing). I found that national
officials had indeed melded traditions to create a uniquely
complex institution a veritable culture of compromise as
Abls, Bellier and McDonald have variously portrayed it
(Abls et al. 1993, Abls & Bellier 1996, McDonald
1996). Just as Jean Monnet predicted, the Commissions
institutional structure has functioned as a laboratory for the
formation of a new type of European identity and subjectivity. However, I also discovered a more negative dimension to this. Those very qualities that were once encouraged
and esteemed in EU officers (Euro-idealism, political connections, flexibility, entrepreneurialism, distance from
national public, elitism, sense of lan etc.) had also given
rise to what insiders termed the Commissions parallel
system of administration, a system based on pragmatic
codes with little respect for due process. The consequences
of this were clearly evident in the 1999 Committee of

Independent Experts report into allegations of nepotism,

fraud and mismanagement in the Commission. These findings invite us to rethink the concept of supranationalism
and view integration from a class and materialist perspective. What we are witnessing in the Commission is the transformation of a category into a group with its own
self-interests and political identity. The implications of an
increasingly unaccountable Brussels-based transnational
elite that is transforming itself from a class in itself to a
class for itself raises fundamental questions about the
future of democracy, citizenship and governance in Europe.
MA: From 1989 to 1992, I did field research on the
European Parliament. I think this was the first ever anthropological study of the EU, which at that time was still
known as the European Community. I undertook the study
of a European institution because, as a political anthropologist, I was interested in how politics is conducted at a
transnational level. How does it work in this kind of multicultural institution? Is it possible to create a new type of
public space, shared by people of different cultures,
speaking different languages, and with widely varying
national political histories? Looking at the European
Parliament, one is immediately struck by this cultural diversity; in some ways it is like a modern Tower of Babel. In
political debates, the fact that political groupings exist
within the European parliament does not automatically
result in mutually agreed positions. These positions are
often achieved through lengthy negotiations and compromise, reflecting the differences between national political
traditions that underlie any apparent similarity of parliamentary party orientation.
Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) learn the
meaning of cultural complexity in a very practical way, and
they are sometimes confronted with a difficult choice
between what is best for Europe and what is dictated by
their national affiliation. Political practice at the European
level is primarily based on compromise and negotiation. In
parliamentary committees or in the plenary sessions, there
is less of a confrontational atmosphere and more a sense of
perpetual negotiation between rival powers. MEPs become
experts in lobbying, bargaining and compromising. This
generalized culture of bargaining leads to a progressive loss
of political content, thereby obscuring the traditional oppositions which demarcate the political domain.
Another central issue is that of linguistic pluralism, and
the way that varying the language of negotiation tends to
neutralize political debate. Shifting from one official language to another is a constant reminder of the diversity of
traditions and histories which have formed the national
identities of member countries. These observations also
suggest that the process of deterritorialization does not necessarily facilitate the creation of a public space of debate in
the EU (Abls 1992). When I finished my study of the
European Parliament, I was invited by Commission officials to undertake research on the issue of identity among
European civil servants. This gave me opportunity to conduct fieldwork inside the European Commission in collaboration with Irne Bellier and Maryon McDonald (see
Abls, Bellier & Mc Donald 1993). My own research was
concentrated on the Directorates of Agriculture and
Regional Policy. I observed how, within the Commission,
intercultural contact may actually reinforce national barriers
rather than generate a common identity. The representation
of the Commission as a unified entity is challenged by the
emergence of a plurality of possible orders. Within the
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 2, APRIL 2004

GARLAND

Fig. 1. Cartoon by Garland

suggesting an evolutionary
progression from racism to
supranationalism.

2. Floating signifier is a
term used by Lvi-Strauss to
denote an idea which is
essential but at the same time
sufficiently vague that
merely invoking it has a
particularly powerful effect.
The concept is used as an
index, as something instantly
recognizable.

European Commission civil servants struggle with the loss

of references and the lack of an alternative representational
structure. However, the effects of cultural pluralism are not
only centrifugal. Learning relativism, as can be observed in
Community institutions, is one of the most interesting
aspects of the process of pluralization. It implies continual
questioning of methods, ways of thinking and management
practices which in a national context are assumed to be natural and legitimate, and are therefore rarely questioned.
Through the invocation of a Community interest and reference to the European idea, the consciousness of a
common belonging can be affirmed against what is established as alterity (that of nation-states as opposed to
Community) and as particularisms (national histories as
opposed to modernity). This works on two levels. It operates as a floating signifier, invoked from time to time or as
an operational reference.2 It also helps the European Union
to define itself vis--vis its member states. The idea of a
Community interest only makes sense with reference to the
future. This is the underlying paradigm of the European
political process. In this context, the notion of unification
has no meaning. Rather, we should think of it as a process
of harmonization, conceived as an endless quest whose goal
is never quite reached (Abls 1996). Furthermore,
Community interest has to be seen from the point of view of
the EU. For example, rather than distributing funds on the
basis of a compromise between the different member states,
the Commission presents a global plan with priorities set to
take into account the overall disparities between the
regions, without yielding to the demands of member states
which each seek to gain the maximum subsidy. Thus I dont
think that the idea of Community interest can be reduced to
a discourse of power, just as I dont think that the EU can be
reduced to the interest of its officials. Even Marx, writing on
the state and politics in The 18th Brumaire of Louis
Napolon, did not accept mechanistic explanations and conspiracy theories which reduced everthing to the actions of
an elite concerned only with its own interests.
Officers of the Commission, caught in a continuous
round of negotiation, responsible for managing an entity
deprived of territory, seem to national officials and other
interlocutors like a species of disconnected, rootless mutant,
whose actions can nevertheless influence the political evolution of member states. The culture of compromise generates a bizarre universe (Abls & Bellier 1996). No claim
to power is made, but the pursuit of harmonization and
rationalization is pushed to the limit.
AT: What, in your view, are the most important questions
for anthropologists to focus on in relation to the European
Union?
CS: Importance depends on ones perspective. My personal interests lie in the fields of political anthropology and
public policy. With that bias in mind, the key question

ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 2, APRIL 2004

anthropologists working on the EU might ask is what

exactly is the EU, and what is it for? (Or what does it
imagine it is for?) Interestingly, these questions also trouble
EU scholars and politicians. The result has been an industry
of theoretical posturing and neologisms purporting to capture the unrepresentable uniqueness of this hybrid political
entity: post-national formation, supranational polity,
sui generis, part-formed political system, multi-level
system of governance, a network of networks etc. As
Abls notes (2000: 35), Jacques Delors once famously
quipped that the European Union is un objet politique non
identifi (an unidentified political object). Yet this ambiguity is deliberate. It helps to avoid some uncomfortable
parallels and circumvents the awkward question of statehood: namely, is the EU becoming a state? At what point
do its growing powers (or competences) lead it from the
chrysalis of transnational governance to fully-fledged statehood? Some might argue that a political system that has its
own citizenship, single currency, central bank, integrated
economy, Court of Justice, draft Constitution, police and
security system and common army already qualifies as a
state, federal or otherwise.
Anthropologists could contribute valuable comparative
insights into the way this debate has been conducted (or discursively managed) in different EU member states. Why,
for example, are British government elites (unlike those in
continental Europe) so reluctant to engage in a proper
public debate over what Joschka Fischer (2000) termed the
political finality of the integration process, or to allow a
referendum on this major constitutional issue? If the EUs
project is not leading to a federal state, what is its political
trajectory? Here, recent anthropological perspectives on
state formation and governance can make a major contribution to our understanding of what is at stake (cf. Abrams
1998, Carter 1994).
Other key issues for anthropologists include demographic changes in Europe, the EUs aging population and
its implication for social service provision, immigration,
employment and mobility. The practicalities of integration
also raise fascinating questions about inter-cultural communication, diplomacy and translation. Equally important are
debates about regionalism, minorities, education, citizenship, and the future of the nation state, all of which increasingly reflect a European dimension.
MA: Europe means a change of scale, which as a consequence leads to the deterritorialization of Community practices. The clearest expression of this deterritorialization is
the nomadism of the members of the European Parliament,
who are always migrating between Strasbourg and Brussels,
if they are not at a meeting somewhere else in Europe. The
lack of a centre and the blurred boundaries make it difficult
for those who desperately seek some anchorage to establish
landmarks or any sense of identity.
Jacques Delors description of Europe as un objet politique non identifi has been echoed among political elites.
It reflects the tension that arises when the reality of a political process leading towards greater integration meets the
impossibility of offering any representation of a putative
completion of the European project. The failure to identify
what might be seen as a political Europe (a new sort of
nation-state? a federation? a post-national government?)
can be interpreted in two ways. For many politicians and
political scientists, this situation reflects only conjectural
difficulties, which can be overcome. But the anthropologist
must consider not only the difficulty of finding an adequate
term to designate the future shape of Europe, but also the
refusal to adopt a clear position on this point. In all the
speeches, reports and literature produced by EU political
actors, this indeterminacy has become commonplace.
In fact I think that what is happening today is a displacement of politics outside of the boundaries of the nation-state,
11

Abls, Marc 2000. Virtual

Europe. In Wilson, T. &
Bellier, I. (eds) An
anthropology of the
European Union, pp.3152. Oxford: Berg.
1996. En attente
dEurope. Paris: Hachette.
& Bellier, Irene 1996. La
Commission Europenne:
Du compromis culturel
la culture politique du
compromis. Revue
Franaise de Science
Politique 46(3): 431-455.
, & McDonald,
Maryon 1993. An
anthropological approach
to the European
Commission.
Unpublished report for the
European Commission
Forward Studies Unit.
1992. La vie quotidienne
au Parlement europen.
Paris: Hachette.
Abrams, Philip 1998. Notes
on the difficulty of
studying the state. Journal
of Historical Sociology
1(1): 58-89.
Appadurai, Arjun 1996.
Modernity at large:
Cultural dimensions of
globalization.
Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
Bellier, Irne & Wilson,
Thomas 2000. Building,
imagining and
experiencing Europe. In
Bellier, I. & Wilson, T.
(eds) An anthropology of
the European Union, pp.127. Oxford: Berg.
Borneman, John 2003. Is the
United States Europes
Other? American
Ethnologist. 30(4): 487492.
& Fowler, Nick 1997.
Europeanization. Annual
Review of Anthropology
26: 487-514.
Carter, Donald 1994. The art
of the state: Difference
and other abstractions.
Journal of Historical
Sociology 7(1): 73-102.
Fischer, Joschka 2000.
Confederacy to
federation: Thoughts on
the finality of European
integration. Speech
delivered at Humboldt
University, Berlin, 12
May.
www.jeanmonnetprogram.
org/papers/00/joschka_fis
cher_en.rtf

12

a shift which needs to be considered beyond the typologies

of traditional political science. I use the concept of virtual
Europe in an attempt to demonstrate the specificity of a
process which is self-generated without really becoming
institutionalized in the classical form of a state. What is
interesting is that virtual Europe is self-generating from the
top, and seeks to create a citizenry from nothing. Cris Shore
is right to see this as a search for legitimacy on the part of
those who govern the EU, and there is also some justification for criticizing the practices of senior officials. But this
could be applied to other bureaucracies, national as well as
supranational. From the anthropological point of view, I am
more interested in the process itself and the elaboration of
concepts which could help us to analyse it. This is why I
have rejected the tendency of political science to flatten all
that is unique about the construction of Europe in their typological discourse.
The lack of tradition, together with the inability to grasp
its own past, make Europe unique compared to other kinds
of communities, especially those traditionally studied by
anthropologists. First, there is the problem of communicating a homogeneous vision of Europe and developing a
European citizenship (Shore 1993). Second, there is the lack
of European ritual and symbolism (Abls 1996). Third,
there is the permanent quest for a harmonization which
could be concretized in the production of common notions
and concepts. All these issues go to the core of what is
thought of as Europe-building (Shore 2000), and its structural failures and incompleteness. Europe has to be studied
as a process, not as a product (Borneman & Fowler 1997,
Bellier & Wilson 2000); it cannot be reified within the categories of community and identity. The impact of Europe in
terms of harmonization, and the way European political
practice has begun to influence national approaches to politics, reveals that, as an emerging unidentified political
object, Europe encroaches deeply into very old and perhaps obsolete perceptions of identity rooted in territory. It
suggests that deterritorialized Europe, virtual Europe
(Abls 2000), might not change peoples identity but might
radically alter their view of their own traditions. Even if
there is no word in the political vocabulary to describe
Europe (as post-national, supranational, post-state, or multigovernmental), it appears that Europe as an emerging form
generates significant changes in our conception of politics
and of identity.
AT: What are the implications of EU enlargement? How
might it affect the status of Europes ethnic minorities and
the Franco-German alliance?
CS: EU enlargement opens up a new phase of uncertainty
for the EU. The prospect of a Union of 450 million citizens
stretching from the Arctic to the Mediterranean and the
Atlantic to the Urals throws into question not only issues of
boundaries and borders (where does Europe begin and
end? Should Turkey be allowed in?), but the coherence of
the EU project itself. The traditional assumption that
Europes cultural unity resides in its shared Graeco-RomanChristian heritage is increasingly hard to sustain and
rightly so, as this was always an essentialist myth. Yet the
danger is that in its quest to construct a populist European
identity, Islam or the United States will be reified as
Europes salient Other. While the EU may aspire to the
ideals of inclusive multiculturalism, the dislocating effects
of fast capitalism unleashed by the rush towards integration have undoubtedly fuelled a revival of cultural fundamentalism (Stolcke 1995), integralism (Holmes 2000) and
essentialism (Grillo 2003). For Europes ethnic minorities
particularly third country nationals and economic
migrants from Mahgreb or former Soviet-bloc states the
result of these processes is often increased racism and xenophobia (Shore 1997a).

Enlargement makes institutional reform imperative. A key

challenge will be how to accommodate the new member states
without bankrupting the Union. Most of the new and aspirant
countries have GDPs far below the EU average and will
qualify for major assistance from the EUs regional funds. The
contribution member states make to the EU budget will need
to be substantially increased, which will invariably generate
acrimony. At a more mundane level, enlargement poses huge
logistical problems for interpreters and translators in the
European parliament. The linguistic combinations will multiply exponentially. We may even see construction work
started on a new, larger parliament building.
Enlargement also places strains on the Franco-German
alliance, weakening Frances traditional dominance over the
Union (and at the same time strengthening Germanys economic influence), while forcing us to rethink the purpose
or telos- of European integration. Recent attempts to
deepen integration by constitutionalizing the acquis communautaire (the corpus of existing EU laws and treaties) and
imposing tight fiscal and borrowing constraints on Eurozone member states were initiated precisely because of fears
that an enlarged Union of 25 member states would be
unworkable and would inhibit momentum towards ever
closer integration. Germany and Frances refusal to abide by
the Stability and Growth Pact they had imposed on others
has inevitably fuelled resentment from smaller member
states who suspect that a two-speed Europe will mean that
different rules apply for the larger states.
Finally, enlargement presents problems for the European
vision. As originally conceived, the European idea was to
create supranational institutions that would bind Germany
and France together in a process that would make war
between them impossible. As Monnet described it, by transferring sovereignty over nuclear power, iron and steel production, France and Germany would be gripped in an
embrace so tight that neither side would be able to raise a
fist against the other. However, this narrative no longer animates or legitimizes the EU project. As Mark Leonard
(1998) suggests, the EU needs a new narrative to give it purpose and popularity.
MA: The inability to define what will be the ultimate
boundaries of Europe is symptomatic. Only a politically
integrated Europe could define the precise extent and limits
of European enlargement. The prospect of a completed
Europe does not fit with the spillover dynamics
(engrenage) idea developed by Jean Monnet and the EU pioneers (cf. Keohane and Hoffman 1991). Such a view would
mean a radical change in the global conception of Europebuilding. I think the majority of the member states prefer to
keep a margin of indeterminacy. For example, currently they
will not admit Turkey as part of Europe, but they are not
closing the door. This pragmatism which characterizes the
beginning of the 21st century could be summed up in the
French phrase On verra bien! (Well see!). Tomorrow is
another day. At the same time, as enlargement proceeds it
raises some very specific issues. How will regional inequalities be dealt with? What will it mean in terms of redistribution of wealth? Who will pay for increasing the structural
funds? For example, if more funding is given to the lessadvantaged Eastern European regions to ensure better integration, southern regions will receive less. But we already
know that the main contributors to the EU budget, such as
France and Germany, are reluctant to give more, since they
are also aware that it will be increasingly difficult to obtain
subsidies from the regional funds.
In addition to economic disparities, there is the issue of
religious and cultural heterogeneity. Despite the threat of a
revival of fundamentalisms, it is worth noting that the
enlargement may lead to identities becoming more fixed. It
will be interesting to see how educational programmes and
exchanges between the new and older member states will be
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 2, APRIL 2004

WWW.ERUOPA.EU.INT

Fig. 2. In December 2000 the

Council of Europe formally
accepted ten countries
Cyprus, the Czech Republic,
Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
Hungary, Malta, Poland,
Slovenia and Slovakia into
EU membership as of 1 May
2004, following approval by
current member states and
ratification by the electorate
in the candidate countries. A
Treaty of Accession (2003)
was signed in Athens on 16
April 2003. Bulgaria and
Romania are set to join in
2007. Turkey's progress
towards meeting the
accession criteria will be
assessed in 2004, with a
report and recommendation
to be issued before the end of
October. In December 2004
the Council of Europe will
decide on whether to open
accession negotiations with
Turkey.

developed.
Obviously the most complex challenge concerns the political future of Europe. It will be necessary to choose between
intensive and extensive integration of the different components. The extensive model would imply a sort of Europe
la carte, with countries grouped into an inner circle which
would share not only the same currency but also a common
international strategy and some common policy, and a more
peripheral group which would participate only in the
common market. The alternative, the intensive model, would
involve increasing integration of all the member states, and
would mean sharing the same rules and being governed by a
common set of economic and political institutions. As yet no
choice has been made: we are living under the regime of
what I have termed virtual Europe, and it will be difficult
to retain this indeterminacy in the long term.
AT: What about Europes role in the world its responsibilities towards the East, the Islamic world and Africa, its
neighbours? And its relation to NATO and the US?
CS: Economic giant, political pygmy was an epithet
traditionally applied to Germany, but it might also describe
the EU today. Many EU political leaders would like to
redress this and harbour visions of an EU superpower to
rival the US (which is increasingly how Washington sees it
[cf. Borneman 2003]). The unilateralist policies of the Bush
regime have increased the distance between the US and the
EU (or old Europe as Donald Rumsfeld provocatively put
it), fuelling a new wave of anti-Americanism. Yet despite
this growing concern to contain American power, a
European foreign and security policy worthy of the name
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 2, APRIL 2004

remains elusive and remote. The problem is that Europes

divergent national interests prevent it from acting collectively and decisively on the world stage, as the crises in
Bosnia and Iraq demonstrated. Contrary to EU official historiography, it is NATO, not the EU, that has guaranteed the
peace in Europe since 1948. Yet NATO today is doubly
undermined first by a US administration that chooses to
ignore it and flout international law, second by EU adventurists who wish to create a Euro-army and independent
military capability.
The question rarely asked is how the EU would behave if
it were a superpower. Economically speaking, it already is
and the record is not encouraging. The collapse of the
World Trade talks at Cancn was due largely to the intransigence of the EUs negotiators (notably Commissioner
Pascal Lamy) and the EUs continuing refusal to open up its
markets to Third World producers. The EU bears a great historical responsibility towards Africa, its neighbours and the
developing world, but here too, particularly in the fields of
immigration and asylum policy, its record is poor. In a
recent speech to the European Parliament, Kofi Annan
delivered a scathing attack on fortress Europe and its
dehumanizing policies towards immigrants that are
leading many to their deaths. Paradoxically, MEPs gave him
a standing ovation. That said, the EUs record on overseas
aid is good. However, those achievements are outweighed
by the damaging effects of its antiquated Common
Agricultural Policy.
MA: As an anthropologist, I dont claim to have any special competence in geopolitical matters. And this question
involves a shift from an analytical to what Max Weber has
13

Grillo, Ralph 2003. Cultural

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14

defined as a normative point of view. What can be observed

by any European citizen is the increasing competition
between Europe and United States. A politically and militarily integrated Europe would counterbalance the US hegemony. In one sense, European enlargement could reinforce
this hegemony because some of the countries which are
already EU members, as well as some of the newcomers
from Eastern Europe, seem to be simultaneously part of
Europe as an economic space and protected by NATO in a
geopolitical space, under US leadership. The tensions which
arose around the Iraq war highlighted a real divide between
those who are working to build European autonomy and
those who will always prefer the subordination of Europe to
US power. The issue of Europes responsibilities towards the
East, the Islamic world and Africa is, in my opinion, closely
connected to the question of its relations with the US.
Indeed, one can easily see how Europe could play a specific
role in these regions, provided that it is able to develop specific forms of cooperation and to assert its independence in
international policy and foreign affairs. The emergence of a
common European position in the WTO world trade negotiations (even if the media, particularly in the US, stressed the
failure of the Cancn talks) is a very important step towards
affirming the role of Europe as a global actor.

drawn up by Altiero Spinelli for the Committee of

Institutional Affairs of the European Parliament. This report
suggests an explicit federalist orientation, alongside reinforcement of the power of the European Parliament, but the
Draft Treaty has never been ratified by the member states.
What happened with the draft constitution reflects the same
difficulty. What is at stake is the acceptance by nation-states
of a supranational sovereignty. Until now, acceptance of
European dynamics was based on one unspoken condition:
that Europe would never be completed as a juridical and
political reality which could threaten political systems based
on the idea of national sovereignty. If we are to compare
what happened with the draft constitution and the rejection
of Spinellis proposal, we must bear in mind that today, with
the single market and the creation of a single currency, things
have changed dramatically. Virtual Europe has proved a
very efficient way of operating and of overcoming the various challenges to European integration. But there is now an
increasing need for European governance not only at the
economic level, but also in the context of globalization and
to meet the claims of US hegemony. I think that we have
entered a new period of Europe-building, and that the issue
of European power and European governance will be central
in the next years and over the coming decade.

AT: The draft EU constitution has been hotly debated.

What are your views on this?
CS: The debate around the EU constitution produced
much heat, but little light. Indeed, given the level of public
confusion, the draft constitution was probably not debated
enough. In the UK, voters were constantly told by their government that the EU constitution was unimportant. Jack
Straw and other ministers insisted that it was a mere
tidying-up exercise. To audiences on the continent, the EU
constitution was portrayed very differently. Giscard
dEstaing, the former French President who chaired the
Constitutional Convention that produced the draft, even
compared that assemblys deliberations to those of the
drafters of the United States Constitution at the Convention
of 1789 in Philadelphia. The President of France and the
German Chancellor declared jointly in November 2001 that
the Convention was a vital step in the historic European
integration process that should create a federation of
nation states. These statements went down well with
German and French audiences. In Britain they provoked a
frenzy of accusations in the right-wing press that the UKs
existence as an independent sovereign state is under threat.
Is the EU constitution therefore a mere simplification of
existing treaties, or a step towards the United States of
Europe? My reading suggests the latter. The
Constitution shall have primacy over the laws of the
Member States (Article 10); the Member States shall
exercise their competence to the extent that the Union has
not exercised, or has decided to cease exercising, its competence (Article 11); Member States shall actively and
unreservedly support the Unions foreign and security
policy (Article 15). These articles define the balance of
power between Brussels and the nation-states, and de facto
and de jure they will transform the EU into a single state
(federal, post-colonial, or whatever one chooses to call it).
In the end it was the row over voting weights for Poland and
Spain that captured the headlines, but that, sadly, was a
diversion that allowed the main provisions of the draft constitution to pass without comment.
MA: Here again Jacques Delors definition of Europe as
an unidentified political object is particularly apposite. This
is not the first time that European constitutionalists and
politicians have attempted to complete the institutional
design of Europe. The most noteworthy attempt to propose
an overall structure for the EU was a report entitled Reform
of Treaties and Achievement of European Union (1982),

AT: How would you sum up the anthropology of Europe

as practised in the past, and where it might go in the future?
CS: I would distinguish between anthropology in Europe
(which includes the tradition of European ethnographic and
folklore studies), and the anthropology of Europe, which
addresses more geopolitical and historical issues, including
European modernity, the history of the idea of Europe, and
the project (and ideology) of European integration. In both
these areas Europeanists have made a substantial contribution to anthropological theory and methods (for example, in
debates on patron-client relations and class, political movements, nationalism and modern states, borders, ethnicity
and disputes, the politics of language, identity formation,
transitional societies, and EU institutions, to mention but
a few). In future, I believe European anthropology will
become less spatially fixed and more EU-focused, not least
because the EU has become such a pervasive factor in
everyday European life. For me, the process of
Europeanization (Borneman & Fowler 1997, Bellier &
Wilson 2000), and the cultural relations and social patterns
it generates, are among the key research issues for the
anthropology of Europe today
MA: I think everybody would agree that in Europe, as in
the rest of the world, we dont practise anthropology today as
we did two or three decades ago. As a consequence of globalization, anthropologys traditional object has been completely
redefined. It is no longer the study of the Other; there is no
longer a great divide between them and us, between the
periphery and the centre. This means that the anthropology of
Europe, as of other cultural areas (a concept which needs to be
critically reconsidered), has to review its concepts and
methods (Marcus 1998, Holmes 2000). In Europe, as in more
exotic regions, there was a real fascination with rural communities, traditions, symbols and perennial values. You could say
that the European field was exoticized and folklorized. The
emergence of urban anthropology, and the increased awareness of change and conflict, have transformed anthropological
approaches to Europe. Anthropologists have to focus on the
global production of locality and post-national formations
(Appadurai 1996). Europe-building can be thought of as a
laboratory in which experiments are conducted into new perspectives in post-national politics and the difficulties of
inventing, if not a people, at least an idea of what a new kind
of multicultural public sphere might look like. Understanding
this emerging unidentified object represents a true challenge
for anthropologists. !
ANTHROPOLOGY TODAY VOL 20 NO 2, APRIL 2004