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Abstract
Drawing on Thomas Kuhn's seminal analysis, this article argues that mainstream EUropean integration theories such as neo-functionalism and intergovernmentalism are unified by underlying ontological, epistemological and methodological assumptions – thus – conform to the same scientific paradigm. This means that while opening up opportunities for study of some aspects of EUropean integration, simultaneous closure occurs so that other aspects remain under-explored. The value of identifying this effect is to enable researchers to sound out complementary approaches and paradigms to overcome said limitations and elicit new insights. Adopting a focus on discourse as a means, as well as identity formation as a form of integration, Eder's attempt to transcend transactionalism's omission to focus on content and functions rather than density of transactions is a laudable example of this endeavour. However, it can be argued that he reproduces several of the mainstream integration theories' paradigmatic assumptions. Flood's account of political myth goes beyond such limitations. Usefully supplemented by a structural rather than normative understanding of ideology and extended beyond historico-ideological content, this approach allows for the study of the identity-endowing and integrating function of implicitly or explicitly ideologically marked narratives that establish what it means to be EUropean. Although tentative steps towards this focus of study exist in EUropean studies, more rigorous theorising and extensive empirical research are needed.
Notes
All references to European studies, European integration and European integration theories, as well as European identity are used here with caution due to the fact that the terms are conventional ones that do not draw attention to the fact that most studies in this field, the processes described as integration and by means of integration theory, as well as the identity understood as European are concerned not with a wide conceptual–geographical notion of Europe, but mainly with the European Union. In order to avoid contributing to the normalising effect that uncritical use of these terms has, and the resulting unquestioning perpetuation of the ‘colonisation of Europe’ by the European Union (Boedeltje & van Houtum, Citation2008), the terms EUropean studies, EUropean integration, EUropean integration theory and EUropean identity are used in this article.
UACES Student Forum conference ‘New frontiers in European studies’, held at the University of Surrey, Guildford, UK, on 30 June and 1 July 2011.
Research seminar held at King's College London on 26 January 2011 under the title ‘A contribution to the critique of integration theory’. The speaker was Magnus Ryner from Oxford Brookes University. His critique mainly involved exposing said established set of theories as a paradigm from the perspective of international political economy. Drawing inspiration from that presentation, the author's combined interest in EUropean identity, Wittgenstein's concept of ‘language games’ and in discursive construction more generally, which had made it clear that mainstream integration theories were both limited in their insights and conformed to rules of their own, led to this article.
Here the term refers to the grammatical function of a word rather than a scientific paradigm, but it is no coincidence that the term is the same, for both refer to a relationship of alternative rather than complementarity – be it of words in linguistic structures or scientific paradigms in meaning structures that enable knowledge generation.
He overlooks, however, that the contractual nature of these rules does not overcome the arbitrariness of criteria of eligibility for membership.
Here it may be of advantage to draw readers' attention to the often ill-understood, related yet distinct, nature of social constructionism and social constructivism. Social constructionism can be seen to refer to an ontological outlook, a sociological conception of ‘reality’, ‘world’ (Kuhn, Citation1970) or ‘imaginary’ (see Calhoun, Citation2002) that social interaction affords meaning or gives rise to. In contrast, social constructivism can be understood as epistemological in nature and referring to individuals' psychological, cognitive processes in constructing concepts and understandings that enable them to make sense of and, in turn, act in the ‘world’. Clearly, these two processes are closely linked in practice in a relationship of mutual contingency and continuous debate, affirmation or adaptation.
Attention is drawn here to a useful distinction regarding social construction. It is explained in an early attempt by Diez Citation(2001) to outline the uses of the social constructionist approach to studies of the EU: Constructive realism assumes that, even though constructed, there is a world or reality ‘out there’. In contrast to classical positivist approaches, however, it cannot be directly observed and made sense of, but can only be known or made knowable by means of the meaning systems of language (i.e., discursive social interaction). Constructive idealism, in contrast, assumes that it is the fact that there are actors engaged in the linguistic construction of reality that brings it into being.
In this guise, myths are similar to so-called historical memories of the past, which is the reason that the latter have received so much attention in the context of studies of national or quasi-national identities. However, the innocent notion of historical memories or historiography is misleading as ideological marking necessarily happens when such narratives are mobilised for political purposes. For this reason the term myth is chosen here.
Some may argue that this is not the point of academic work, but in view of the fact that a lot of academic engagement with the European Union is actively engaged in or lends itself to legitimising it, this cannot be considered a problematic proposition.
A research project on the latter is currently in progress.