The power of inscription: Beyond social construction and deconstruction in European integration studies

Millennium: Journal of International Studies

Volumn 31, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 83-108

  Walters, William ^a  

^a CARLETON UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 1542331370     PISSN: 03058298     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/03058298020310010501     Document Type: Article

References (89)

1. For example, former Commission president, Walter Hallstein's 1972 book was published in English as Europe in the Making, trans. Charles Roeter (London: Allen & Unwin, 1972).
2. The volume of work developing themes of social construction in the social sciences is vast and I make no attempt to summarise it here. For a critical overview of the idea and application of social construction, as well as its relationship to the natural sciences, see Ian Hacking, The Social Construction of What? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
3. On social constructivism in IR, see Emmanuel Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground: Constructivism in World Politics', European Journal of International Relations 3, no. 3 (1997): 319-63
4. and Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
5. Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink compare the constructivist turn in IR to its impact within comparative politics in their 'Taking Stock: The Constructivist Research Program in International Relations and Comparative Politics', Annual Review of Political Science4 (2001): 391-416.
6. For further discussion of constructivist issues within comparative politics, see Marc Howard Ross, 'Culture and Identity in Comparative Political Analysis', in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture and Structure, eds. Mark Lichbach and Alan Zuckerman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 42-80.
7. See, for example, Stephan Stetter, 'Regulating Migration: Authority Delegation in Justice and Home Affairs', Journal of European Public Policy 7, no. 1 (2000): 80-103.
8. Bruno Latour, 'Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands', in Knowledge and Society: Studies in the Sociology of Culture Past and Present, eds. Henrika Kuklick and Elilzabeth Long (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1986), 6.
9. See, inter alia, Jeffrey Checkel, 'Social Construction and Integration', Journal of European Public Policy 6, no. 4 (1999): 545-60;
10. Thomas Christiansen, Knud Eirk Jørgensen, and Antje Wiener, 'The Social Construction of Europe', Journal of European Public Policy 6, no. 4 (1999): 528-44.
11. and other contributions to this special edition of JEPP which are now collected in Thomas Christiansen, Knud Erik Jørgensen, and Antje Wiener, eds., The Social Construction of Europe (London: Sage, 2001);
12. Markus Jachtenfuchs, Thomas Diez, and Sabine Jung, 'Which Europe? Conflicting Models of a Legitimate European Political Order', European Journal of International Relations 4, no. 4 (1998): 409-45;
13. and Knud Joergensen, ed., Reflective Approaches to European Governance (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997).
14. Adler, 'Seizing the Middle Ground'.
15. Christiansen, Jørgensen, and Wiener, 'The Social Construction of Europe', 528-29.
16. Christiansen, Jørgensen, and Wiener, 'The Social Construction of Europe', Ibid., 530.
17. Jachtenfuchs, Diez, and Jung, 'Which Europe?', 410.
18. Thomas Risse, Daniela Engelmann-Martin, Hans-Joachim Knopf, and Klaus Rosher, 'To Euro or Not to Euro? The EMU and Identity Politics in the European Union', European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 2 (1999): 147-87.
19. Thomas Risse, Daniela Engelmann-Martin, Hans-Joachim Knopf, and Klaus Rosher, European Journal of International Relations Ibid., 147.
20. Steve Smith, 'Social Constructivisms and European Studies: A Reflectivist Critique', Journal of European Public Policy 6, no. 4 (1999): 682-91.
21. Thomas Diez, 'Speaking "Europe": The Politics of Integration Discourse', Journal of European Public Policy 6, no. 4 (1999): 599.
22. But see also Jacques Derrida, The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe, trans. Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael B. Naas (Bloomington, IN: University of Indiana Press, 1992)
23. and Gerard Delanty, 'The Limits and Possibilities of a European Identity: A Critique of Cultural Essentialism', Philosophy and Social Criticism 21, no. 4 (1995): 15-36, where European identity is probed in terms of the problem of essentialism and exclusion. Some of the essays collected in Kelstrup and Williams, International Relations Theory, are also instructive on the possibility of a poststructuralist 'reading' of European integration.
24. Lene Hansen and Michael C. Williams, 'The Myths of Europe: Legitimacy, Community and the "Crisis" of the EU', Journal of Common Market Studies 37, no. 2 (1999): 233-49.
25. See Nikolas Rose, 'Inventiveness in Politics', Economy and Society 28, no. 3 (1999): 467-93. Rose develops a concept of 'etho-politics' which he uses to interrogate the rise of themes of identity, community, values, and lifestyle in contemporary political reason.
26. For example, Peter Katzenstein and his colleagues allege 'postmodernism falls clearly outside of the social science enterprise, and in international relations research it risks becoming self-referential and disengaged from the world, protests to the contrary notwithstanding'; Peter Katzenstein, Robert Keohane, and Stephen Krasner, 'International Organization and the Study of World Politics', International Organization 52 (1998): 678.
27. For a general defence of discourse analysis against allegations that it is not 'proper' social inquiry, see Jennifer Milliken, 'The Study of Discourse in International Relations: A Critique of Research and Methods', European Journal of International Relations 5, no. 2 (1999): 225-54.
28. Latour, 'Visualization and Cognition', 6.
29. Nigel Thrift, 'It's the Little Things', in Geopolitical Traditions: A Century of Geopolitical Thought, eds. Klaus Dodds and David Atkinson (London: Routledge, 2000), 380.
30. Ibid.
31. Mark Laffey and Jutta Weldes, 'Beyond Belief: Ideas and Symbolic Technologies in the Study of International Relations', European Journal of International Relations 3, no. 2 (1997): 194.
32. Stephen Greenblatt, Marvellous Possessions: The Wonder of the New World (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 12.
33. Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose, 'Governing Economic Life', Economy and Society 19, no. 1 (1990): 1-31
34. and Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller, 'Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government', British Journal of Sociology 43, no. 2 (1992): 172-205.
35. Michel Foucault, 'Governmentality', in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, eds. Graham Burchell, Colin Gordon, and Peter Miller, trans. Rosi Braidotti (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 87-104.
36. Bruno Latour, 'Visualization and Cognition'; 'The Powers of Association', in Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge?, ed. John Law (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), 264-280.
37. and Science in Action (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
38. Rose and Miller, 'Political Power Beyond the State', 182.
39. Rose and Miller, 'Political Power Beyond the State', Ibid., 185.
40. Latour, 'Visualization and Cognition', 29.
41. Rose and Miller, 'Political Power Beyond the State', 185.
42. It should be noted that Latour is wary of labelling his approach 'materialist' since he wishes to move beyond the materialist/idealist dichotomy in the social sciences. Instead, he writes of an approach that is 'empirical through and through'; Latour, 'Visualization and Cognition', 3.
43. For example, John Torpey demonstrates how histories of mundane objects like the passport can offer new perspectives on questions of state formation, citizenship and much else. See his excellent The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
44. A similar genealogy of the visa remains to be written, but see Bente Bo, 'The Use of Visa Requirements as a Regulatory Instrument for the Restriction of Migration', in Regulation of Migration: International Experiences, eds. Anita Böcker, et al. (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1998), 191-202.
45. JHA is a rapidly evolving area of European integration. The following is a very incomplete survey, somewhat skewed towards questions of migration, of some of the notable contributions on this subject. See Damian Chalmers, 'Free Movement of Persons and Securitization', in European Union: Towards a European Polity?, ed. Damian Chalmers (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), 101-49;
46. Monica den Boer, 'Moving Between Bogus and Bona Fide: The Policing of Inclusion and Exclusion in Europe', in Migration and European Integration: The Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion, eds. Robert Miles and Dietrich Thränhardt (London: Pinter, 1995), 92-111
47. and 'Justice and Home Affairs', in Policy-Making in the European Union, eds. Helen Wallace and William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 389-410;
48. Desmond Dinan, Ever Closer Union? An Introduction to European Integration, 2d ed. (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1999), 439-51;
49. Andrew Ceddes, Immigration and European Integration: Towards Fortress Europe? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999);
50. Elsbeth Guild, The Developing Immigration and Asylum Policies of the European Union: Adopted Conventions, Resolutions, Recommendations, Decisions, and Conclusions (The Hague: Kluwer Law International, 1996);
51. and Jeff Huysmans, 'Migrants as a Security Problem: Dangers of "Securitizing" Societal Issues', in Migration and European Integration: Dynamics of Inclusion and Exclusion, eds. Robert Miles and Dietrich Thränhardt (London: Pinter, 1995), 53-72
52. and 'The European Union and the Securitization of Migration', Journal of Common Market Studies 38, no. 5 (2000): 751-77.
53. Antje Wiener, 'Situating Decisions: The Puzzle of the British 'No' to Schengen' (paper presented at the Colloquium on European Integration, Institute for Political Science, University of Hannover, 9 February 1999) [http://www.soz.uni-hannover.de/eu/wiener.htm.] (16 April 2002).
54. Ole Wæver, 'Securitization and Descecuritization', in On Security, ed. Ronald D. Lipschutz (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 46-86.
55. Huysmans, 'Migrants as a Security Problem', 65.
56. See also Bigo, 'The European Internal Security Field', 161-173
57. and 'Sécurité et immigration: vers une gouvemmentalité par l'inquiétude?' Cultures et Conflits 31, no. 32 (1998): 13-38.
58. Sec Thomas Risse-Kappen, 'Exploring the Nature of the Beast: International Relations Theory and Comparative Policy Analysis Meet the European Union', Journal of Common Market Studies 34, no. 1 (1996): 53-79.
59. Council of the European Union, Directorate General H1, Action Plan to Improve the Control of Immigration, 10017/00, 4 July 2000, 3, emphasis in original, [http://register.consilium.eu.int/isoregister/frames/introshfsEN.htm] (16 April 2002). Concerns over the state of information exchange within CIREFI-which includes an early warning system regarding the smuggling of humans into the EU-crystallised with the Dover tragedy in June 2000. This saw 58 Chinese migrants die from asphyxiation as they were being smuggled into Britain from Holland in the back of a sealed truck.
60. It is not just through reports to CIREFI that European-wide data on irregular immigration is collected. Following the JHA Council meeting of 19 March 1998, the Commission's statistical service, Eurostat, is responsible for collecting data on behalf of CIREFI. See Council of the European Union, DG H1, CIREFI Work Programme, 9928/00, 30 June 2000.
61. See, for example, Dietrich Rueschemeyer and Theda Skocpol, eds., States, Social Knowledge, and the Origins of Modern Social Policies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
62. The Schengen acquis has been published in the Official Journal of the European Communities 43, L239 (2000): 1-473.
63. Malcolm Anderson, Frontiers: Territory and State Formation in the Modern World (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 184.
64. Latour, 'The Powers of Association', 275.
65. Ibid.
66. Council of the European Union, DG H1, Coordinated Deployment of Document Advisors: Standard Mission Report, 9179/00, 7 June 2000, 2.
67. Ibid.
68. Latour, Science in Action, 131.
69. Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (London: Sage, 1999), 193.
70. Mitchell Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society Ibid., 194.
71. For example, see Michael Power, 'The Audit Society', In Accounting as a Social and Institutional Practice, eds. Anthony Hopwood and Peter Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 299-316.
72. Commission of the European Communities, Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament, Scoreboard to Review Progress on the Creation of an Area of 'Freedom, Security and Justice' in the European Union, COM(2000)167, 24 March 2000, 5.
73. Dean, Governmentality, 169.
74. Commission of the European Communities, Scoreboard to Review Progress on the Creation of an Area of 'Freedom, Security and Justice', 4.
75. Richard Bellamy and Alex Warleigh, 'From an Ethics of Integration to an Ethics of Participation: Citizenship and the Future of the European Union', Millennium: Journal of International Studies 27, no. 3 (1998), 447-70.
76. Another technology mediating the relationship of the European public(s) to the integration project is the Commission's public opinion survey, the Eurobarometer. Again, this is a practice whose results are routinely used by scholars. Yet, its status as a governmental technology has not been seriously considered. Eurobarometer could be seen as a technology that has helped make Europe's national publics into durable, comparable entities. With its regular surveys of public awareness and attitudes regarding the EU, this polling machine has also made. European integration into a site of subjective knowledge. For an introduction to the history and output of Eurobarometer, see Karl-Heinz Reif and Ronald Inglehart, eds., Eurobarometer, the Dynamics of European Public Opinion: Essays in Honour of Jacques-René Rabier (London: Macmillan, 1991).
77. Future research might fruitfully consider the place of the Eurobarometer within the genealogy of public opinion which Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose have outlined. See their fascinating 'Do the Social Sciences Create Phenomena? The Example of Public Opinion Research', British Journal of Sociology 50, no. 3 (1999): 367-96.
78. Commission of the European Communities, Scoreboard to Review Progress on the Creation of an Area of 'Freedom, Security and Justice', 4.
79. One exception here is the research stimulated by debates about the EU's 'legitimacy' crisis. Anthony Smith, for example, has suggested that a part of the EU's problem is that, unlike the old nations of Europe, it lacks a strong 'mythic past' that could legitimate its political identity. But Lene Hansen and Michael Williams suggest that, on the contrary, early functionalist integration was embedded in mythic ideas of progress and rationality, and that this helped to give integration its nonpolitical, technical appearance. See, respectively, Anthony D. Smith, 'National Identity and the Idea of European Unity', International Affairs 68, no. 1 (1992): 55-76
80. and Hansen and Williams, 'The Myths of Europe', 233-49.
81. Wæver, 'European Security Identities', 122.
82. Representatives of human rights-related NGOs, interviews by author, Brussels, 12-22 February 2001.
83. Kevin Featherstone, 'Jean Monnet and the "Democratic Deficit" in the European Union', Journal of Common Market Studies 32, no. 2 (1994): 149-70.
84. I am grateful to Wendy Larner for pointing out the significance of airports as a site of European regulation.
85. Decision of the Executive Committee of 22 December 1994 introducing and applying the Schengen agreements in airports and aerodromes (SCH/Com-ex (94)17 rev.4). This decision constitutes a part of the Schengen acquis which, following the Treaty of Amsterdam, has been integrated into the EU. See Council of the European Union, 'The Schengen Acquis', 170.
86. Ibid.
87. The reports of the missions to inspect the readiness of airports in newly-joined, or associated states make fascinating reading. They detail the rationality concerning many security technologies and precautions-from the positioning of surveillance cameras to the precise location of inspection booths. For example, the authorities in Reykjavik's Keflavik airport have been told to ensure that the gaps above the glass walls separating the international and domestic zones be sealed to prevent any passing of documents. See Council of the European Union DG H1, Additional Evaluation Visits in the Two Danish and Two Norwegian Seaports and at the Airports of the Five Nordic States, 6178/00, 12 February 2001.
88. Council of the European Union, 'The Schengen Acquis', 170, my emphasis.
89. Cris Shore, Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (London: Routledge, 2000), 64.