Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-hgkh8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T07:22:18.450Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

6 - From Hammer and Sickle to Crescent

Religion and European Identity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 July 2013

Chiara Bottici
Affiliation:
New School for Social Research, New York
Benoît Challand
Affiliation:
New York University
Get access

Summary

In Inventing Europe: Idea, Identity, Reality, Delanty (1995: vii) complained that, whereas many works dealt with the “Orient” as an invention of Europe, almost nothing existed on the idea of “Europe”: In his view, the common political roof embodied by the European Communities and the European Union was a construction in need of critical reassessment. More than fifteen years have passed since his seminal book was published, and many authors have taken up the challenge of understanding the meaning of “Europe” and how it was historically and thematically constructed to reinforce a sense of cohesion beyond national allegiances (Shore 2000; Passerini 2003; Stråth 2000a,b; Joas and Wiegandt 2005; Molho and Ramada Curto 2007; Persson and Stråth 2007).

In the course of this book, we have focused on myths and practices of collective remembrance as sites for the construction of a European identity. In doing so, we have alluded to the importance of religion, particularly in the last “sequences of Europe” emerging in European textbooks (Chapter 5). In this concluding chapter, we further analyze this point. As we discussed in Chapter 5, “Europe” began as a political project aimed at creating a sense of common identity in the aftermath of the Second World War, first designed around economic issues (in the early 1950s), then progressively enlarged to include other more political items, and merging finally into a single Union in 1993. The creation of this supranational entity has involved the establishment of an increasing array of domains in which Europeans are invited to feel part of a community of fate (Schicksalsgemeinschaft), including attempts to adopt a draft European Constitution in 2004.

Type
Chapter
Information
Imagining Europe
Myth, Memory, and Identity
, pp. 145 - 166
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×