Democracy Equality Culture Beyond the Nation State
TRANS
EUROPA
P.12: Saskia Sassen: Global Challenges for the city
P.18: Interview with Rosi Braidotti
P.6: Candido Grzybowski: Citizens’ Political Participation
Some of what are usually understood as global governance challenges are increasingly becoming particularly concrete and urgent in cities. This is part of a larger disassembling of all-encompassing formats, notably the nationstate and the inter-state system.
A life in transit, Rosi Braidotti has explored the notion of “nomadism”, which has become the key concept for the development of an extremely original research, varying from poststructuralism, to the history of feminism.
The institutionalization of the democratic state is not sufficient for democracy to penetrate all social relations and guarantee the basic rights of citizenship to all people. One of the funders of the World Social Forum reasons on new forms of participation.
ISSN 2041-6245
Who said solidarity? ‘T
ogether since 1957’, read three years ago the European Union logo celebrating 50 years since the founding treaty of the Union. The soundbites late last year, with the celebration of the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, were of course again of unity, of fraternity rediscovered. ‘Solidarity’ is the European trademark, a sure-fire motif of every discourse by a politician at the European level, whether it be to colleagues in
the European parliament, to heads of state, or, more rarely, to citizens themselves. At the European level almost everything has to be covered by a veneer of solidarity, whether it demonstrates any togetherness or not. Thus recently the almost total refusal of the German state to provide any assistance to the Greek state in the context of their sovereign debt crisis without the IMF providing the funds could still be called a ‘guarantee of solidarity’ amongst the European community. The Greek situation was
only a higher profile example of exactly the same thing experience with Latvia last year in the height of the financial crisis, where the same IMF remedies of austerity were imposed. The Greek example proved that Euro membership makes no difference to the kind of ‘togetherness’ that is applied. Considering the quite different situation of many migrants without a state in Europe, one also asks whether the trademark is in fact one of protectionism and privilege, rather than solidarity.
As with all political words when they are appropriated by political elites, ‘solidarity’ has come to have an ambiguous meaning, and one begins to ask if it is shared responsibility that is being called for, or shared evasion, shared guilt. One also must ask who is called on to show solidarity. Most often in the European rhetoric it is the leaders of European states. The relevant ‘togetherness’ is that of states, and yet recent events have shown once again that the unity of the European council (the meeting of the heads of
ISSUE 9 MAY 10 £3.00 | 3.00 www.euroalter.com ALSO INCLUDING:
P.14: Richard Sennet: Flexible City of Strangers P.10: ULRICH BECK: INTERVIEW P.24: Ursula Biemann: X-Mission
Joakim Eskildsen The Roma Journeys 6 March - 18 April Noorderlicht Photogallery www.noorderlicht.com
European member states) is no guarantee of what would normally be understood as mutual support or fraternity. For as long as national leaders remain answerable to national publics, and those national publics, because of the remaining national institutions, national public spheres, and national economic interests, see their own wellbeing as in competition with other citizens from other countries, the rhetoric of European togetherness will remain a veneer, to disguise the ways in which our common destinies are being