[Rezension zu:] Jaro Stacul, Christina Moutsou and Helen Kopnina, eds.: Crossing European boundaries: beyond conventional geographic categories. New directions in anthropology series. New York: Berghahn Books, 2006. x + 238 pp. illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. $ 65 (cloth), ISBN 9781845451509

  • The articles in this volume represent anthropological approaches to the study of external and internal boundaries in Europe. The authors raise fascinating methodological and empirical questions by approaching European societies from the perspective of a discipline usually working on the basis of greater cultural distance between scholars and the objects of their research. Moreover, the volume tackles a subject usually understood as a political project and a political problem, E.U. Europe, in an original non-political-science perspective. The volume's case studies are all based on bottom-up views of Europe, with fieldwork the methodology of choice. The first articles focus on institutions. Cris Shore and Daniela Baratieri's article focuses on the ambivalent results of attempts by European schools, which cater mainly to Eurocrats in Brussels and Luxemburg, to replace nationalism with a sense of European identity or nationhood, while Gregory Feldman discusses Estonian programs for the integration of Russian-speakers and Davide Però addresses the position of Italy's left-wing parties and public to the "new immigration." While these essays argue that "Europe" may not be as destructive to national (institutional) boundaries or the nation state as is often supposed, the next block of articles tackles migration across boundaries in a more conventional perspective, focusing on particular immigrant groups. Helen Kopnina discusses Russians in London and Amsterdam, while Christina Moutsou focuses upon immigrants in Brussels and Jacqueline Waldren examines Bosnians in Mallorca. To me, the case study of Turkish migrants in West Berlin by Sabine Mannitz is particularly intriguing, because it uses the peculiar experience of a lesson on Jews' fate in the Holocaust in which the teacher cast immigrants as permanent outsiders in Germany to explore pupils' sense of boundaries, and the East-German West-German divide appeared to loom much larger for immigrants than that between foreigners and Germans. The last section focuses on concrete and contested boundaries in European states and towns: William F. Kelleher, Jr. discusses Northern Ireland, Greek towns are the focus of Venetia Evergeti and Eleftheria Deltsou's article and South Tyrol is examined by Jaro Stacul. The volume makes for diverse and diversifying reading, and can only be highly recommended to anyone interested in innovative perspectives on the fate of the European project.

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Metadaten
Author:Andreas FahrmeirGND
URN:urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-49127
URL:http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12579
Parent Title (German):H-German, H-Net Reviews
Publisher:Mich
Place of publication:East Lansing
Document Type:Review
Language:English
Date of Publication (online):2007/10/12
Year of first Publication:2006
Publishing Institution:Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg
Release Date:2007/10/12
Volume:2006
Issue:12579
Page Number:2
First Page:1
Last Page:2
Note:
Copyright © 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
Source:H-Net Reviews, H-German (November, 2006). - http://www.h-net.msu.edu/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=46591171306128
HeBIS-PPN:191399051
Institutes:Philosophie und Geschichtswissenschaften / Geschichtswissenschaften
Dewey Decimal Classification:9 Geschichte und Geografie / 94 Geschichte Europas / 940 Geschichte Europas
Licence (German):License LogoDeutsches Urheberrecht