The Intriguing Intricacies of European Identities

Abstract

A Community of Europeans? Transnational Identities and Public Spheres. By Risse Thomas. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010. 287 pp., $24.95 paperback (ISBN-13: 978-0-801-47648-8). Among the increasing number of books that have emerged in the last few years in the field of European transnational identity research, A Community of Europeans? could become a classic. Thomas Risse, a distinguished International Relations professor at the Free University in Berlin who has headed a number of research programs on questions of identity and transnational governance over the past decade, delivers a sophisticated empirical analysis that not only provides evidence of the extent of transnational identification in Europe as measured by a variety of quantitative and qualitative indicators, but also specifically previews the consequences of these subtle transformations for the political arenas. In contrast to most other works dealing with the subject matter in a predominantly quantitative (McLaren 2006; Green 2007) or qualitative-conceptual manner (Demossier 2007; Katzenstein and Checkel 2009), his work blends both approaches in a way that fruitfully increases our understanding of the matter. In the introduction, the author contextualizes the fuzzy subjects of Europeanization, European Identity, and Public Spheres, and links these three concepts together: “Europeanized identities and European Public Spheres are closely linked, since European public discourses constitute spaces where collective identities are constructed as well as contested” (p. 5). Accordingly, the first chapter sets out …