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Copyright of Brazilian Journal of Law & International Relations / Relações Internacionais no Mundo is the property of Relacoes Internacionais no Mundo and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In order to question the modernist common sense of mainstream sociology, epitomised today by the charge of methodological nationalism, this article offers an overall reading of Marcel Mauss's The Nation. Conceived during the Great War and written mainly in 1920, Mauss's work radically re-examined both the nation and nationalism from a regenerated sociological viewpoint centered on the relations between societies. Distinguishing between partial relations of exchange and total relations of encounter, Mauss came to discover the gift as a total social fact, seeing it as the traditional unconscious spring of the federative dynamics that had to be reactivated in Europe to associate its nations in a great 'Inter-nation' and avoid the risk of a new total war. The Nation, by reviving the original ambition of Émile Durkheim's sociology to be a way rethinking and reshaping the concepts and institutions of modernity, helps us explore the contradictions and pathologies involved in the concept and history of the nation, in a situation currently marked by the return of nationalism and the quest for a social Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relations between nationalism and religiosity are complex. Although many previous studies consider religion as a precursor of nationalism, Mitchell (2006) shows that in some contexts the relationship is a reciprocal one. The present approach focuses on the connection between nationalism and Christian religiosity in European countries. People who experience rapid social changes are more likely to reinforce their national identity by searching for stability and a new definition of self and of their own identity. Religion can provide content to the reinforced national identity, especially in the context of religious monopoly resulting in the formation of larger groups that have higher potential for political mobilization and are more likely to control more resources especially when they are supported by the state. The article uses survey data provided by European Values Survey (2000 wave) for the Christian population of 30 European societies. Multilevel regression analysis was used for the analysis. The results indicate a positive effect of nationalist ideology on religiosity in countries with higher level of religious concentration, but no special impact of nationalist ideology on religion was found in post-communist countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article provides an application of Alvin Gouldner's dialectic between Romanticism and Classicism to the constitutional process of European identity formation. Gouldner introduced his dialectical sociology in a critical attempt to destroy compulsive identification with any fixed idea of order. In an attempt to destroy compulsive identification with any Romantic or classical idea of Europe, this article shows how Europe's identity, as it has been represented in the Constitutional Treaty (CT), as well as in sociological works, is being shaped by predominant Romantic and classic thought structures and social movements. The central argument is that the dialectic between Romanticism and Classicism in Europe is most clearly observed in the debates about democracy, human rights and rule of law — the classical values that constitute the EU's entry criteria. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Treaties & Documents / Razprave in Gradivo is the property of Institut za Narodnostna Vprasanja and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The European continent, the motherland of nationalism, and the part of the world where political borders and different territorial and cultural identities are mostly interrelated, is now facing new challenges regarding how best to represent its numerous interests within one system. With the increase of international integration European countries began to devote greater attention to the development problems of their border areas that had to be helped to undertake certain functions in the international integration process. The fostering of a more balanced regional development also resulted in a strengthening of regional characteristics, which the new model could no longer ignore. Regional characteristics in turn have always been preserved in Europe by persistent historical and cultural elements of ethnic and linguistic variety. Therefore, it is not surprising that the process of European integration based on the new regional development model was accompanied by a parallel process of ethnic or regional awakening of minorities and other local communities. The key question for contemporary European (though of course this is not limited to Europe) political geography is, then, how the process summarised under the twin labels of social convergence and deterritorialisation will effect the persistent maintenance of regional identities and the corresponding divergence of regional spaces. Or, in other words: is the 'unity in diversity' European programme ever practicable and exportable on a world-wide scale or are we to be absorbed by a new global 'melting pot'? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of European identity cannot take its clues from national identity, neither in form nor in substance. I begin with an examination of the general sociological concept of identity in order to uncover its resources for a more complex understanding of European identity. I then ask to what extent Europe really needs a European identity, and on what levels an identity may be found: in the received cultural 'idea' of Europe, in the cultural practices of celebration and ritualization, and in the consciousness if its citizens. In the next section, I present some of the basic descriptive evidence on the individual sense of European identity as routinely surveyed by Eurobarometer. In the final part I sketch some of the current battlegrounds of European identity: its relation to national identity, the challenge posed to it by globalization, and the shifts towards new identity mixes or hybrid identities. I conclude that there is indeed a potential for hybridity, that there are carrier groups for it (e.g. border populations or migrants), but that its development depends on the old social question now taken to the new European level - finding a viable social contract. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the political upheaval of 1989, a political concept has regained its significance, an idea, it was thought, that belonged to the past: the idea of the nation as the basis of international order and the foundation of political self-determination. The re-emergence of the nation as a model of political order contradicts the vision that post-war European integration would culminate in complete transnational unification of Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the nature of European society. Europe's culture, economy, political constitution, unity, diversity, prospects, and destiny are closely scrutinized by various people. Europeans, like all westerners continue to be futuristic. This is the legacy of the powerful belief in progress that characterized one crucial and easily identifiable trait of the culture from the age of the enlightenment until yesterday. Europe may lose much of her identity when confronted with the consequences and ramifications of her own historical dynamics as recast, perfected, or transformed by the peoples who were the direct offshoots of her relentless global expansion. Globalization was a characteristically European creature during its early stages. Despite the hard facts of nationalism and national attachments, the diminution of European specificity and independence as a civilization has certainly been a cause of integration. The loss of European distinctiveness has spurred the development of European nationalism, or Europeanism, as a new form of collective identification. Europeanism has its own public pieties, sacred symbols, and loyalties. Sociology ought to be able to help Europeans to widen their citizenship without losing their profound attachments to their homelands and ethnogeny.