The Question of Europe - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1859841422 ISBN 13: 9781859841426

Publisher: Verso Books, 1997

Synopsis

Contemporary European politics seems to be gripped by a stifling conformism, an uninspiring uniformity of outlook which afflicts all the major parties. However, if there is one issue which does divide-though with the fault-lines within just as much as between right and left-it is the question of Europe, the future of the Union.
But, for all the heat generated by the debate between Eurosceptics and Europhiles, and the vivid claims and counterclaims about federalism or the fate of national sovereignty, there is widespread public confusion about what is at issue-partly because of the opaque nature of the Community's institutions, and partly because much that is written on the subject is jargon or officalese.
The Question of Europe offers an antidote, by collecting some of the liveliest and sharpest commentary on Europe, across the full political spectrum, from leading authorities in the study of history, economics, philosophy, culture and sociology. Eminent German, Italian, French, Swedish and Irish writers are included, as well as key figures from Britain and the US. Looking paranormically at the past, present and future of integration, The Question of Europe brings polemic and scholarship together to offer us a new way of approaching the Union.

About this title

About the Authors

Perry Anderson is the author of, among other books, Spectrum, Lineages of the Absolutist State, Passages from Antiquity to Feudalism, Considerations on Western Marxism, English Questions, The Origins of Postmodernity, and The New Old World. He taught History at UCLA for thirty years and is on the editorial board of New Left Review.

Peter Gowan (1946-2009) taught international relations for many years at London Metropolitan University. He was the author of The Global Gamble and A Calculus of Power, co-editor of The Question of Europe, cofounder of the journal Labour Focus on Eastern Europe, and a longstanding member of the editorial board of New Left Review-who published an interview with Peter Gowan along with an obituary in Sept-Oct 2009.

Göran Therborn is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Cambridge. His works have been published in at least twenty-four languages and include Inequalities of the World; Asia and Europe in Globalization; and Between Sex and Power.

Guy Standing is director of the Socio-Economic Programme of the International Labour Organisation. He directed the ILO's technical programme in Eastern Europe in the early 1990s and was an advisor to the South African government in 1995-96. He has written extensively on labour market and social policy issues.

Jürgen Habermas was born in 1929, and grew up in Gummersbach, Germany. He was educated at the Universities of Gottingen, Bonn, and Zurich, after which he worked for a while as a freelance journalist. In 1956 he became Adorno's assistant at the University of Frankfurt. From 1961 to 1964 he taught philosophy in Heidelberg, and from 1964 to 1971, philosophy and sociology in Frankfurt. From 1971 to 1983 he was Director of the Max Planck Institute for Research into the Life Conditions of the Scientific-Technical World, in Sternberg. Among his influential publications in English are: Knowledge and Human Interests (1971), Theory and Practice (1973), The Theory of Communicative Action (1984/1987), and Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action (1990).

Edition details

• Publisher: Verso Books
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1859841422
• ISBN 13: 9781859841426
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 416
• Editor: Gowan Peter, Anderson Perry