IngentaConnect One Europe or many? Reflections on becoming European

Author: Hudson R.¹

Source: Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Volume 25, Number 4, December 2000 , pp. 409-426(18)

Publisher: Royal Geographical Society

Abstract:

Europe is being re-defined as a result of the combined effects of a complex set of processes. What sort of Europe is emerging from them? What criteria are being deployed to define Europe, Europeans and Europeanness and their respective boundaries? Such questions are considered via exploring a number of themes about and through Europe. They centre on the ways in which, and criteria by which, geo-political and economic spaces in Europe have been defined and divided. These practical cartographic processes are linked to changes in systems of, and the construction of new scales of, governance and regulation. As both supra-nationalism and the emergence of an EU ‘super-state’ and sub-nationalisms challenged the authority of the national state, new multi-scalar complex systems of governance and regulation resulted. These in turn are related to questions of singular and multiple identities, discussing these in the context of the possibilities for the emergence of a European civil society. Recognizing that the future map of Europe will not be determined by Europeans alone, the legacies of the division within Europe between NATO, the Warsaw Pact and neutral states and implications of the neo-imperialist geo-political ambitions of the USA state and military-industrial complex are then explored. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.

Keywords: Europe; uneven development; governance; identities; boundaries

Language: English

Document Type: Research article

Affiliations: 1: University of Durham, Department of Geography, Durham DH1 3LE