Suchergebnisse

In its political discourse, the European Union balances Christian heritage, the secularization of European societies, liberal values and Europe's culturally and religiously diverse contemporary reality. This article explores how the European Union narrates the story of Europe and the role of Christianity in this narrative. This exploration is based on two qualitative case studies focusing on key heritage and history initiatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament: the European Heritage Label and the House of European History. The article argues that issues related to Christianity become easier to handle for the European Union when they are dealt with as memory, tradition and cultural heritage – and thus linked to the history of Europe.

The European Commission has recently identified cultural heritage as a focus area for EU cultural diplomacy. The article explores EU cultural diplomacy that deals with cultural heritage and develops the concept of heritage diplomacy based on a critical discourse analysis of interviews with EU officials and heritage practitioners working at sites awarded with the European Heritage Label. What do these actors mean by cultural diplomacy and how do they understand the role and potential of cultural heritage for it and with what effects? The analysis indicates that heritage diplomacy means different things for EU officials and heritage practitioners. Their discourses on the uses of cultural heritage for diplomacy constructs certain understandings of cultural heritage and heritage diplomacy, and the power relations between these understandings. ; peerReviewed

Various studies have indicated how notions and (mis)interpretations of national history, heritage, and culture are utilized by diverse populist and extremist political parties in Europe. However, scholars have less explored how the idea of a common European history, heritage, and culture are used by these parties to justify their xenophobic, anti-immigration, anti-globalization, and monoculturalist political attitudes and the defense of 'us'. This chapter focuses on this question by examining the political rhetoric of the Finns Party, the core populist party in Finland. The data consists of selected texts discussing broadly the topics of the EU, Europe, nation, identity, and/or culture, published in the party newspaper between 2004 and 2017. The data is examined using critical discourse analysis by focusing on the notions and interpretations of a common European history, heritage, and culture as political tools in the party rhetoric. The analysis brings out how the texts in the party newspaper picture Europe as a cultural and value-based community sharing a common Christian heritage, traditions, and moral norms, particularly when a threat towards 'us' is experienced as coming from outside Europe's imagined geographical or cultural borders. The notions and interpretations of a common European history, heritage, and culture form a powerful tool of exclusion when they are perceived as a sphere of meanings that cannot be identified with without having generational or ethnic ties to it. Appeals to a common European history, heritage, and culture function as rhetorical mechanisms through which others can be discussed with a vocabulary that veils the prejudiced or discriminative connotations. ; peerReviewed

The European Union (EU) has been criticised for a lack of imageries and sites of memory that nation-states have traditionally utilised in their identity-building. The EU, along with other actors, has responded to this iconographic deficit with memory and heritage initiatives and branding campaigns. This article explores how this deficit is dealt with in the European Quarter in Brussels by enlivening it through cultural regeneration and creating narratives that link Europe's and the EU's past with the present. The article utilises hermeneutic phenomenological approach combining observation and interpretation of diverse place-making practices, such as monuments, memorials, public artworks, history plaques, and naming of administration buildings, with close reading of the EU's marketing and promotional material. It examines how a feeling of belonging to Europe and the EU is advanced in the Quarter and how it is sought to be turned into a European collective place. The article indicates how the Quarter's politics of belonging ignores various layers of meanings related to its history and present. The Quarter's invitation to belong is selective as its narratives focus on male actors and ignore colonial references and today's multi-ethnic reality in the neighbourhood. ; peerReviewed

Lähdesmäki analyses the heritage-policy discourses of the EU and the Council of Europe. She particularly discusses how these institutions deal with the challenges the idea of heritage faces in today's Europe and the opportunities that these may present to respond to these challenges. The analysis shows how the EU and the Council of Europe seek to reconcile heritage-related conflicts by approaching heritage as a space for civil participation, interaction, intercultural dialogue, and conversation about divergent values and narrations of the past. However, their policy discourses often relay on a static and materialist notion of heritage. This kind of discourse maintains geographical, cultural, political, socio-economic, and religious power hierarchies and an exclusive understanding of a common European cultural heritage. ; peerReviewed

Along with the European Union's (EU) increased interest in a common European culture and past, narration as a means to create and communicate about them has gained new momentum. By applying the Discourse-Mythological Approach, I explore how the EU narrates the story of the origins of EU Europe in two recent EU heritage/history initiatives. The analysis brought out three storylines in the mythmaking of EU Europe. While the first storyline emphasizes temporal continuity, shared cultural roots, and preservation and transmission of a common legacy, the second focuses on the idea of a break and a rebirth of a civic/political community. The third storyline highlighting founding figures and key heroes functions as a mediator between these two narratives. The founding myths seek to justify the political aims of the EU, that is, strengthening European unification and multilevel integration, and presenting these aims as choiceless and morally and ethically legitimated. ; peerReviewed

The latest wave of European integration process, cultural Europeanization, includes complex processes, such as the attempts to create a shared European memory that would transcend national interpretations of the past. The cultural Europeanization can be perceived as a narrative operation: in it the EU, Europe, and Europeanness are given meanings and made sense of through narrativization. The article investigates the EU's attempts to create a shared European memory by analyzing the exhibition narrative of the Parlamentarium, the visitors' center of the European Parliament. The analysis indicates how the construction of an official shared European memory is operationalized through textual and narrative devices such as intertextuality and the pending narrative structure. I argue that the EU's memory texts are performative narratives which do not only describe a shared European memory in a particular way but also position the receivers as active agents in the story of the EU–Europe and invite them to produce it on their own initiative. ; peerReviewed

European cultural heritage is discussed with affective rhetoric in current European Union (EU) policy discourse. How does affect contribute to the meaning-making of a European cultural heritage and how are the workings of affect used by the EU to promote certain meanings of heritage and effect thereupon? The analysis focuses on recent promotional videos of sites awarded with the European Heritage Label by the EU. In the videos, affective textual, visual, audible, and narrative tropes intertwine with the tropes of EU policy rhetoric, increasing its capacity to impact and 'move' the receivers. The ethos of a European cultural heritage in the videos is based on a paradox: the history of the several sites is in various ways intertwined with extreme agony, violence, hatred, oppression, and injustice. However, the stories of the sites in the videos turn their legacy into a positive ethos of conquering these negative extremes and cherishing their positive opposites: freedom, justice, solidarity, and peace. The affectivity of the videos prepares the receivers to adopt their political aim: support for the EU and European integration. The analysis indicates how affect has a key role in producing an impression of the irrefutability and choicelessness of EU politics. ; peerReviewed

The idea of a common European cultural heritage is frequently referred to in the political discourses and practices of the EU. The idea of a European cultural heritage elevates the ideas of ownership and inheritance beyond the local, regional, or national frameworks and transforms the heritage sites and objects into a 'common good' belonging to all Europeans and into a source of a common European cultural identity. Scholars have debated the possibility of a common European cultural heritage, and in case such could exist, what it could be grounded upon. Critical scholars have asked what might be the trans-border European dimension of heritage that goes beyond the mere sum of national, regional, or local icons, or questioned the possibility of common European heritage practices due to the lack of a singular European people. Some scholars have, however, found a possible common ground for a European cultural heritage for example in urbanity, European cities and their historical environment, and the styles and movements of art and architecture. Functions and uses of the idea of European cultural heritage and the contexts in which it becomes important and meaningful have changed over the course of time and are constantly transforming. The recent societal, political, and cultural changes in Europe have influenced the notions on heritage and made the concept of a common European cultural heritage more problematic. What is a European cultural heritage and how has it been approached in recent scholarly discussions? How can a European cultural heritage be made sense of in relation to the ideas of universalism, cosmopolitanism, particularism, transnationalism, translocalism, transculturalism, and pan-Europeanism? The paper aims to clarify the meanings of a European cultural heritage and critically discuss the problematic related to its foundations. ; peerReviewed

The EU has recently launched several initiatives that aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The notion of a European cultural heritage in EU policy discourse is extremely abstract, referring to various ideas and values detached from physical locations or places. Nevertheless the EU initiatives put the abstract policy discourse into practice and concretize its notions about a European cultural heritage. A common strategy in this practice is 'placing heritage' – affixing the idea of a European cultural heritage to certain places in order to turn them into specific European heritage sites. The materialisation of a European cultural heritage and the production of physical European heritage sites are crucial elements in the policy through which the EU seeks to govern both the actors and the meanings of heritage. On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of diverse policy documents and informational and promotional material, this article presents five strategies of 'placing heritage' used in the EU initiatives. In addition, the article presents a theoretical model of circulation of the tangible and intangible dimensions of heritage in the EU heritage policy discourse and discusses the EU's political intents included in the practices of 'placing heritage'. ; peerReviewed

Cultural heritage is an idea and a concept repeatedly brought up in current EU policy discourse. In recent years the European Commission has launched several initiatives which aim to foster the idea of a common European cultural heritage. The idea is also often referred to in scholarly discussion. There has been vivid discussion in academia about the possibility of a European cultural heritage and what it could be grounded upon. What is a European cultural heritage? How has it been explicated and defined in recent EU policy discourse and scholarly discussion? Through qualitative content analysis of diverse EU policy documents and selected scholarly publications, the article clarifies the multifaceted meanings of a European cultural heritage, compares the similarities and differences between the political and scholarly notions of it, and discusses the interaction and interrelatedness of political and scholarly discussions about a European cultural heritage. As a result, the article brings out diverse phenomena, such as values, events, personalities, styles, architecture, urbanity, borders, a conflicting past, and the EU integration process, through which a European cultural heritage has been defined and presents these definitions categorized on the basis of the tangible, intangible, communal, and spatial dimensions of heritage. ; peerReviewed