The Euroculture Introductory Reader

The collection of videos and texts/articles presented below serves as the introductory material for all Euroculture students within the Euroculture Consortium. It pertains to the diverse disciplinary and academic backgrounds of our students, as well as their unique cultural experiences. The purpose of these resources is to initiate a dialogue on the historical, political, and institutional development of Europe as a project. Additionally, we hope to spark your interest and provide you with an initial understanding of the distinctive "Euroculture approach". These videos and texts aim to offer you insights into the analytical methods and essential concepts that we employ to comprehend European politics, society, culture, and the ongoing processes of European integration through the Euroculture perspective.

Euroculture is not just a Master Programme. We also consider this network to be a learning community consisting of highly motivated academics, professionals, and students, all of whom have their own views on European Studies and what the 'Euroculture approach' might be. Therefore, this reader should not be seen as an exhaustive list of the kinds of materials that will be covered during the Euroculture programme, but rather as a teaser, exciting you with some of the ideas and concepts that our students and teachers find most interesting.

Below, you will find a series of academic texts. Each text is accompanied by a video by the person who suggested it. You can click on the person's name to watch the video. Some of the lecturers and students have added a written motivation to their proposed texts. We recommend scrolling down and reading them. Unfortunately, we cannot make these texts available on this webpage due to copyright reasons. You can consider searching for these texts as one of your first research assignments. We also encourage you to collaborate with your classmates when looking for these specific academic readings.

Table of Contents

  • Fischer, Frank. Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect: Participatory Governance in Sustainable Communities. Oxford University Press, 2017.

  • Grace Davie, "Religion, Secularity, and Secularization in Europe", in Grace Davie & Lucian N. Leustean (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 268-284.

  • Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995

  • Norman Davis, Europe. A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

  • ABU-LUGHOD, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.

  • R. I. Moore. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. (chapter 5, “A Persecuting Society,” 144–171)

  • Roger, Léa, Otjes, Simon & van der Veer, Harmen (2017). The financial crisis and the European Parliament: An analysis of the Two-Pack legislation. European Union Politics, 18, 560-580.

  • Baker, Paul. ‘“Bad Wigs and Screaming Mimis” Using Corpus-Assisted Techniques to Carry Out Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Trans People in the British Press’. In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, edited by Christopher Hart and Piotr Cap, 211–36. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014

Supplementary Reading List

In an interdisciplinary programme like Euroculture, you will be exposed to many different kinds of ideas, many of which may be unfamiliar to you. This is a natural part of the learning process in this programme, and you are not expected to be an expert on every subject. Nevertheless, you might feel the need to study up on readings from particular academic disciplines. For this purpose, we have a supplementary reading list that might help you as a starting point for further studies in a particular direction.

Download supplementary reading list: .pdf

Euroculture Introductory Reader: Texts and Videos

Senka Neuman-Stanivukovic

Ivekovic, Rada. "Transborder Translating." Eurozine, http://www.eurozine. com/transborder-translating (2005).

Julia Meyer

Fischer, Frank. Climate Crisis and the Democratic Prospect: Participatory Governance in Sustainable Communities. Oxford University Press, 2017.

Carolina Reyes Chávez

Gerard Delanty, Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1995

British sociologist Gerard Delanty argues in this book that Europe is an idea as much as a reality, that is, the concept of Europe is a social, historical, and cultural construct, constantly reinvented and modified through the ages. Putting the idea of Europe in a historical context will allow Delanty to explore the ways in which such an idea has been used and modified, and to explore the implications of those transformations.

Delanty argues against the ideal of an always-existent European spirit built on the base of freedom, democracy, and autonomy. Moreover, he proposes an ambivalence in the discourse of Europe, which, according to him, has been – and sometimes still is – about both inclusion and exclusion. Moreover, he states that contemporary discourses about “European unity” are very novel: “the critical and self-examining traditions in European culture have in fact rarely appealed to the idea of unity as their normative standpoint – the exception here being anti- fascist resistance” (p. 2).

Delanty’s book, especially Chapter 1, has been chosen for the introductory reader because it poses a simple, yet powerful idea: Europe “means different things to different people in different contexts” (p. 3). This gives place to complex and deep implications, such as the challenging idea that what “Europe” designates can change and has changed according not only to the time and place but to who has defined it and, more important, with what purpose. Even more challenging is the core idea behind Delanty’s thinking: how the idea of Europe forges new geopolitical realities, since a definition of reality is normally linked to power interests.

Finally, Delanty reflects on the theoretical considerations to analyze Europe as an idea, including concepts such as identity, ideology, discourse, the imposition of otherness, colonialism, universalism, and essentialism. He links his arguments to the theory of cultural reproduction to connect the idea of Europe to “five discourses which can be seen as its crystallisations: the discourse of Christendom, the Enlightenment discourse of civilisation, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century discourse of culture, the Cold War discourse after 1945 and the contemporary conflict between the discourses of Fortress Europe and that of a Social or Citizens’ Europe” (pp. 13–14).

As a Euroculture student, the proposed text had a mighty impact on my academic formation, since it made me aware of how the historical processes shaping ideas can lead to very specific power relations and vice versa. Moreover, it challenged me to think about how the idea of Europe keeps evolving and impacting our everyday lives. As the whole Euroculture programme has been, at least for me, about training my thinking to ask myself questions about the implications of the idea of Europe in several dimensions – social, political, cultural, even environmental – Delanty’s text meant the base to start deconstructing something that I had always taken for granted: Europe, and all the preconceptions I had about it

Martin Nykvist

Grace Davie, "Religion, Secularity, and Secularization in Europe", in Grace Davie & Lucian N. Leustean (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022, pp. 268-284.

Over the last three decades, Grace Davie has published extensively on the place of religion in European society. She has focused particularly on religion in Britain, but the article “Religion, Secularity, and Secularization in Europe” reflects her wider interest in European as well as global religiosity.

In other publications, Davie has questioned scholars such as Steve Bruce, who argue that secularization is the result of modernization. She has done so and continues to do so in the article in question, by pointing to developments in both Europe and beyond, often claiming that Europe is the “exceptional case”. What she means by this is that from a global perspective, Europe has seen a rate of secularization that is not at hand in any other part of the world. The obvious example is the rapid growth of Christianity, not least in its charismatic form, in the Global South. Europe is also often compared to the United States, where religion continues to have a large influence on people’s beliefs and behaviours.

Simultaneously, Davie is eager to point out differences between different countries and parts of Europe when it comes to secularization. For example, Davie has been living and working in Sweden, which is often described as “the most secular country in the world”. In the World Values Survey, Sweden and the rest of the Protestant Europe is indeed often the extreme on the Inglehart-Welzel World Cultural Map, which means it has the highest scores when it comes to secular-rational and self-expression values (https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp). The situation is rather different in many parts of Catholic and Orthodox Europe, where religion tends to be more important to the inhabitants.

Adding to this, the religious demography of both Europe and the globe has changed considerably over the last century. In the early twentieth century, two thirds of the world’s Christians lived in Europe; a number that today is below one fourth. In the latter part of the century, Europe also became religiously pluralistic, not least with growing Muslim communities. This has sparked debates about, among other things, religious expressions in the public sphere, central to political discussions throughout Europe.

Understanding the exception that Europe constitutes when it comes to religion as well as the religious diversity that exists therein is an important aspect of Euroculture.

Matteo Redaelli

Baumann, Zygmunt. ”On Glocalization: or Globalization for some, Localization for some Others.” Thesis Eleven 54 (1998): 37-49. https://doi.org/10.1177/0725513698054000004

The decision to immerse myself in the pages of "On Glocalization: or Globalization for some, Localization for some Others" by the renowned sociologist and cultural theorist, Sigmund Baumann, was an appropriate choice as a Euroculture student. I am always craving for texts that offer a profound and comprehensive understanding of complex societal phenomena and affect Europe and the rest of the globe. Baumann's reputation precedes him, and his ability to shed light on various sociological, political, and cultural issues makes this publication an irresistible choice and a perfect match for the Euroculture curriculum.

One of the most compelling factors driving my interest in Baumann's publications is the promise of a rich perspective. Baumann has an exceptional capacity to explore and connect diverse concepts and theories, explaining the intricate web of relationships and phenomena that shape the contemporary world. The prospect of gaining multidimensional insights into globalization (and a better understanding of the much more overlooked phenomenon of “glocalization”) was adventure that I was eager to take part to.

Moreover, as a Euroculture student, I find the text to be ideally suited to my academic pursuits. The text not only examines the broader global context but also offers a lens through which to analyze the role of Europe within this dichotomy Globalization/Glocalization. Baumann's approach encourages readers to move beyond simplistic interpretations of globalization. As I delved into this text, I encountered much room to design small yet specific and promising research projects to enrich the academic discourse.

In a rapidly changing world, understanding the dynamics of globalization and its side effects, like what he defines as “glocalization” is essential. Baumann's work can serve as a compass, guiding through the complexities of our interconnected reality. It equips with the intellectual tools to critically analyze the multifaceted interactions between the global and the local, empowering the student to address and research real-world challenges.

Ultimately, I would warmly suggest this reading to perspective Euroculture students. It gives you an hefty foretaste of the topics that the students will treat and research during the Euroculture academic journey.

Natasza Styczyńska

Norman Davis, Europe. A History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996

Suvanshkriti Singh

Abu-Lughod, Lila. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013.

Do Muslim Women Need Saving? by Lila Abu-Lughod is a lucid and thoroughgoing primer on one of the biggest challenges facing Europe today: How do we ethically think about those whom we construct as our Others? The author is an anthropologist who has spent much of her time in the field with rural women from northern Africa; she uses her extensive experience to highlight the problems of evaluating brown, specifically Muslim, lives against the ideals of white liberal feminist ideals.

Abu-Lughod’s aim is to challenge the “common Western story of the hapless Muslim woman oppressed by her culture” without downplaying the “specific dilemmas and hardships they face in particular places and times.” For her, reducing the challenges that women in non-Western societies face to their culture is an insulting and dangerous oversimplification. It ignores the very real socio-economic and political structural factors that many Muslim women themselves identify as the primary issue; it rationalises American and European interventions in places like South Asia and the Middle East, which more often than not makes life more difficult for the women it was intended to help; most important, it prevents Western liberal progressives, the primary target audience of the book, from recognising that their own politics are not an objective gold standard but also a product of the contingencies which inform their lives.

Structurally, the book is slim but brilliant. It elucidates the rhetoric that allows white liberal feminists and progressives to construct Muslim women as helpless and in need of Western protection. The American justification that the invasion of Afghanistan was “for women” is frequently alluded to as the most prominent example of this rhetoric. She goes on to unequivocally dismantle the arguments the rhetoric relies on to justify itself, while also analysing the mechanisms through which it propagates. The range of Abbu-Lughod’s references is vast, and the theoretical grounding of her own arguments quite solid. There follows an analysis of how this rhetoric shapes and affects Muslim women’s social and political negotiations of their own needs. However, it is the final chapter, on the limitations of the language of rights, alternate ways of imagining feminine (and feminist) emancipation, and the true nature of the responsibility incumbent upon white liberal feminists/progressives  that is the book’s greatest takeaway.

I found this book simultaneously inspirational and comforting, and for many reasons. It aligns with my personal politics as a pacifist, and manages to make a philosophically sound argument for pacifism as an ethical political choice. As a migrant South Asian woman greatly influenced by and involved in Western culture, it puts into perspective my status as an outsider in a predominantly white society. It allowed me to relate to theory experiential differences in the way I think about and practise my feminism. It also made me aware of some latent imperialistic and two-dimensional inclinations in my way of thinking about women’s lives within my native society — for instance, how I, as a literate, urban woman, evaluated the lives of illiterate, rural women. This experience of being made to face the flaws in my own reasoning and behaviour was by far the most challenging aspect of the book, but by the same token, also the most beneficial. Finally, the book made for a great point of departure in my thinking about what I hope my dissertation will eventually be about: the experiences of urban citizenship among migrant women of colour in Europe.

Given the intense debate currently gripping Europe about the integration of Muslims — a debate from which women's voices are often missing, even as their concerns are appropriated as symbols — this text offers a sophisticated and empathetic call to interrogate the terms of public debate.

Antonín Kalous

R. I. Moore. The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950–1250. 2nd ed. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007. (chapter 5, “A Persecuting Society,” 144–171)

In Euroculture, our primary focus is on contemporary European society and European countries within a broader global context. While examining the wider context often involves considering the entire world, Europe’s own historical trajectory offers valuable insights into its formation and the development of its distinctive characteristics. Although historical focus usually centres on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, delving deeper into earlier periods remains crucial and enlightening.

In his book The Formation of a Persecuting Society, R. I. Moore delves into the concept of a persecuting society, which emerged from the transformation of medieval Europe – once characterized by relative tolerance and diversity – into a society bound by strict rules and guidelines. Moore’s analysis reveals a complex interplay of political, religious, and social factors that contributed to the marginalization of groups such as heretics, conveniently used as scapegoats to consolidate power structures and promote social cohesion. While Moore does not speak of continuous persecution, he highlights the presence of underlying strategies that could be employed whenever deemed necessary. Understanding these societal strategies is crucial for detecting and preventing their resurgence in European society.

Although Euroculture primarily focuses on contemporary society, it is essential to acknowledge the lengthy development of European society, with political and religious forces shaping enduring schemes and approaches ingrained in the fabric of the society and considered normative. Thus, Moore’s book, particularly this chapter, does not merely address “heretics” and marginalized groups but rather examines the society as a whole. As a medievalist, I do not contend that everything hinges on medieval history, but it serves as an illustrative example of how historical processes often have deep roots. The persecutory culture of medieval Western Europe is now understood, yet its echoes persist through attempts to marginalize diverse groups based on arbitrary accusations rooted in “traditional values” and identification of the majority with various standardised characteristics. These readily available persecution strategies underscore the importance of connecting academic research in medieval history to present-day society, leading to stimulating insights and a better understanding of contemporary society. By studying historical patterns, we can better comprehend the recurring dynamics that shape our world today.

Maureen Lakeman

Baker, Paul. ‘“Bad Wigs and Screaming Mimis” Using Corpus-Assisted Techniques to Carry Out Critical Discourse Analysis of the Representation of Trans People in the British Press’. In Contemporary Critical Discourse Studies, edited by Christopher Hart and Piotr Cap, 211–36. London ; New York: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2014.

I came across this text while researching for my IP paper, in which I compared the representation of trans people and rights in two British newspapers on a specific case. I particularly liked the analysis of certain words, phrases, or punctuation and how these being used even in slightly different ways can completely change the meaning and representation of a text. This text is a quantitative approach in a field in which I have no knowledge (linguistics), which meant I was unfamiliar with terminology and methods used. I had to be realistic in what I could understand and focus on the parts of the text which could be helpful for my IP paper. The main focus is that of gender identity and how words/phrases can be used in certain ways to have a positive or negative connotation, which I feel is important in the general Euroculture context. It is also an example of how a quantitative text can compliment a qualitative text (my IP paper).

Simon Fink

Roger, Léa, Otjes, Simon & van der Veer, Harmen (2017). The financial crisis and the European Parliament: An analysis of the Two-Pack legislation. European Union Politics, 18, 560-580..

This text is really full of interesting arguments and empirics. The text studies how conflict in the European Parliament (EP) is structured, and it does so in three different ways. So it is basically three articles in one. The article studies the important question how conflict in the EP is structured: is it left-right, or pro/anti integration, or is it a grand coalition? All three are plausible hypotheses. The interesting answer is: The conflict structure changes over the course of the legislative process. Hence, what conflict structure we see depends on the legislative stage we are in. It is challenging, because it is a very dense text: The article uses three methods to study conflict: Voting patterns, debates in the parliamentary committee, and interviews with key players to find out what happens before the committee meetings. So basically, it is three articles in one. The article is a worthy Euroculture text because it is an empirical study of how the EU works as a democradcy. If you think that the EU may have a democratic deficit, and if you think that the European Parliament might be the institution that can address this deficit, then this article is for you, because it systematically shows how political conflict in the EP works.