European Puzzle

The twin concepts of “Culture” and “Identity” are inescapable in any discussion of European Integration and yet over the last ten years their meaning has become increasingly contested. By combining an anthropological and political perspective, the authors challenge the traditional boundaries within the issue of the construction of Europe. In the first part, historians and anthropologists from various national traditions discuss the process of the construction of Europe and its implications for cultural identities. The second section examines a number of topics at the core of the process of Europeanization and presents up-to-date information on each of these issues: political parties, regions, football, cities, the Euro, ethnicity, heritage and European cinema. Emphasis is be placed on the political structuring of cultural identities by contrasting top-down and bottom-up processes that define the tensions between the unity and diversity of the European Community.

This book examines the impact of ancient DNA research and scientific evidence on our understanding of the emergence of Indo-European languages in prehistory. Offering cutting-edge contributions from an international team of scholars, it considers the driving forces behind the Indo-European migrations during the 3rd and 2nd millenia BC. The volume explores the rise of the world's first pastoral nomads the Yamnaya Culture in the Russian Pontic steppe including their social organization, expansions, and the transition from nomadism to semi-sedentism when entering Europe. It also traces the chariot conquest in the late Bronze Age and its impact on the expansion of the Indo-Iranian languages into Central Asia. In the final section, the volumes consider the development of hierarchical societies and the origins of slavery. A landmark synthesis of recent, exciting discoveries, the book also includes an extensive theoretical discussion regarding the integration of linguistics, genetics, and archaeology, and the importance of interdisciplinary research in the study of ancient migration.

The twin concepts of "Culture" and "Identity" are inescapable in any discussion of European Integration and yet over the last ten years their meaning has become increasingly contested. By combining an anthropological and political perspective, the authors challenge the traditional boundaries within the issue of the construction of Europe. In the first part, historians and anthropologists from various national traditions discuss the process of the construction of Europe and its implications for cultural identities. The second section examines a number of topics at the core of the process of Europeanization and presents up-to-date information on each of these issues: political parties, regions, football, cities, the Euro, ethnicity, heritage and European cinema. Emphasis is be placed on the political structuring of cultural identities by contrasting top-down and bottom-up processes that define the tensions between the unity and diversity of the European Community.

A volume on labour productivity in Europe in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. It provides rationales for recent productivity trends in France, the UK, Germany, and Spain, and analyses policy responses to the crisis and how these have affected post-recession outcomes.

The "European Revolution" of 1989 has not only brought about dramatic and far-reaching changes in the social structure of East and West European countries, but also in the social sciences. This volume is an attempt to evaluate how sociology has been affected by this dramatic event and how it has developed in the post-revolutionary period in some selected European countries. Ten eminent representatives of sociology from Austria, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Great Britain, Poland, and Scandinavia were presented with a set of questions which served as a common guideline for their contributions. Their answers can be summarized in the observation of the "interrelated diversity" of sociology in Europe today. The high heterogeneity and fragmentation, typical of contemporary sociological thought in Europe, are interrelated by a high degree of institutionalization and integration of sociology in the European university system. In addition, two prominent scholars from non-European countries, Japan and the US, present their views on sociology in Europe from outside. They declare the end of the period of one-sided flows of reception in sociology and foresee a strengthening of a two-way exchange between European and non-European social scientists in the twenty-first century

Is there too much inequality? We are witnessing for the first time in many decades a vigorous public debate in the United States and many European countries as to whether income inequality is approaching unjustifiable levels. The financial crisis has drawn special attention to remuneration at financial firms, as well as other more broadly based increases in inequality, and the pendulum may well have swung back toward attitudes favoring strengthened regulations. It is against this background of shifting public and political views about income inequality that the Roland Berger Foundation decided to solicit the opinions of U. S. and European political, business, and labor leaders by partnering with the Stanford Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality. This initiative, led by a diverse team of five authors, sought to cast light on how prominent European and U. S. leaders are making sense of rising inequality. The objective was not to provide yet another scholarly tome on inequality, or another analysis of how the general public views inequality. We are already awash in such analyses. What we don’t know, and what we have sought to offer, is a window into how senior leaders view this historic moment. In the summer of 2009, we interviewed thirteen political, business, and labor leaders and presented these interviews in their original form.

Overthrowing communism in 1989 and joining the European Union in 2004, the Polish people hold loyalties to region, country and now continent – even as the definition of what it means to be ‘European’ remains unclear. Paying particular attention to those who came of age in the earliest years of the neoliberal and democratic transformations, this book uses the life-story narratives of rural and urban southern Poles to reveal how ‘being European’ is considered a fundamental component of ‘being Polish’ while participants are simultaneously ‘becoming European’. Ultimately, this study demonstrates how the EU is regarded as both an idea and an instrument, and how ordinary citizens make choices that influence the shape of European identity and the legitimacy of its institutions.