About the book
In this book, Hans-Jörg Trenz introduces a sociological perspective on European integration by looking at different accounts of Europeanisation as society building. He describes how European integration has been powerfully launched in postwar Europe as a normative venture that comprises polity and society building; how it became ingrained in every-day life histories and experiences; how it was contested and confronted resistances; and, ultimately, how it went through its most severe crisis.
The book outlines four main themes or narratives of a sociology of European integration: first, the elite processes of identity construction and the framework of norms and ideas that carries such a construction; second, the socialization of European citizens, processes of banal Europeanism, and social transnationalism through everyday cross-border exchanges; third, the mobilization of resistance and Euroskepticism as a fundamental and collectively mobilized opposition to processes of Europeanization; and fourth, the political sociology of crisis, linked not only to financial turmoil but also, more fundamentally, to a legitimation crisis that affects Europe and the democratic nation-state.
Full info
Hans-Jörg Trenz
Narrating European Society: Towards a sociology of European integration
Lexington Books, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4985-2705-7