Critique internationale - Content
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Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization. Cultural, Economic and Political Change in 43 Countries, Princeton (NJ), Princeton University Press, 1997, X-444 pages.
Strange (Susan), Mad Money, Manchester University Press, 1998, 212 pages.
Giddens (Anthony), The Third Way. The Renewal of Social Democracy, Londres, Polity Press, 1998, IV-166 pages.
Dakhlia (Jocelyne), Le Divan des rois. Le politique et le religieux dans l’islam, Paris, Aubier, coll. historique, 1998, 427 pages.
Maley (William), ed., Fundamentalism Reborn ? Afghanistan and the Taleban, Londres, Hurst and Co., 1998, XII-253 pages.
Ijaz (Hussain), Kashmir Dispute. An International Law Perspective, Islamabad, Quaid-i-Azam University, 1998, 309 pages.
LomnitzAdler (Larissa), Melnick (Ana), La cultura política chilena y los partidos de centro. Una explicación antropológica, Santiago, Fondo de cultura económica, 1998, 261 pages.
[The intercourse of state and community in the "East"]
The debate between the liberal individualists and the communitarians relies on an impoverished concept of community. The emphasis on the nation as a political community suggests that other, so-called primordial, forms of communities are not legitimate because of their inherent conservatism and intolerance. In the East, and especially in India because of Gandhi, the nationalists have valued the old community as embodying spiritual values, in contrast to the materialist West. This approach prevented them from conceptualising the modern state, as it emerged in non-Western parts of the world, with its developmental agenda and its obsessive enumeration and classification of the population. A case-study of a slum of Calcutta shows that communities are constructions which take shape in relation to the state, while negotiating with its agencies and bargaining with their main asset : their number.
[An assessment of the Czechoslovakian divorce. Transitions to democracy and nation-state building]
The partition of Czechoslovakia can be explained from four points of view. First, Czechs and Slovaks did not share a common historical memory. Second, they had a different relationship to modernisation. Third, the state remained highly centralised because of the Czechs' Jacobin inclination. Four, politicians instrumentalised ethno-nationalist issues in the framework of the post-communist electoral competition. While the choice of the Czechs seemed to be justified by their successful transition to a market economy and their gradual integration into the European Union, the 1998 elections showed that the régime had not been that successful, either economically or politically. In Slovakia, which had previously suffered from a democratic deficit and an obsessive nationalism, the electoral defeat of Meciar points to a more progressive political path, and one more acceptable to the EU.
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[Quota hoppers. European fisheries between territory and market]
European fishermen still have a representation of their activity which is predominantly linked to national and local communities. The Common Fisheries Policy of the EU has taken into account this territorial representation in its main rules. From the eighties onwards, the territorial logic has nevertheless been challenged by free market rules, which have in particular enabled shipowners from Spain and the Netherlands to run vessels and use national catch quotas of other EU countries (France and the UK) - a practice known among British fishermen as quota hopping. This practice illustrates the contradictions within the EU between the territorial legacy of an economic activity and a process of deterritorialization induced by the liberal market norm. Quota hoppers are increasingly able to bypass states in using the institutional resources offered by the EU
[The legal Europe]
The study of the European integration process is characterized by a mutual indifference between legal and social sciences analyses. Although there has recently been an upsurge of interest in legal integration, law often remains treated as a separate field, clearly cut from the economic or political spheres. The fact is, however, that a variety of agents - public institutions as well as corporate actors or individuals - have used the legal battleground and particularly the Court of Justice to push forward their interests, thus contributing to a process of " formation " of Europe through the use of the law.
[Italy's grand European manoeuvres]
In its push to be among the founders of the euro, the Italian government has imposed great sacrifices on the population without meeting strong opposition because it has instrumentally used the popularity of European integration. But compliance with the convergence criteria has deprived the government of financial resources and budgetary autonomy - and consequently of all capacity to alleviate the worsening living conditions of the unemployed and of the poor, concentrated in the Mezzogiorno. The Italian welfare system, which worked reasonably well as long as economic growth was high and North and South maintained a sufficient degree of political and economic complementarity, no longer works. However an acceleration of the process of European integration - if it leads towards a social Europe - may contribute to the renovation of the Italian welfare system
["European public space" : a (too) distant gaze] Thus far, the legitimation of European integration has given rise to little sociological research. Worse still, dominant theorisations of this object seriously under-estimate the social dimension of such a process. Three analytical dangers are present in this " long distance " approach to research : an insufficiently interrogative research " posture ", too much weight given to the political dimension of legitimation and an unsatisfactory distinction between public and private spheres. An alternative perspective can be proposed, within which the fragmented nature of Europe is problematised and more bottom-up methodologies become necessary. From this angle, Europe's impact upon territorial belonging and political legitimacy needs to be studied through closer examination of slowly evolving social representations and practices.
