Legislating Cultural Change : Europe on the Eve of 1992

Politicians can negotiate currency disputes, redraw national boundaries, and raise trade tariffs but what unforeseen problems may be caused by the melding of societal boundaries and the lowering of cultural tariffs? Originating from a range of nationalities and ethnic groups, the contributors to this volume focus on cultural and social processes of European integration in 1992.

Looking at such key themes as culture, nation, community, and identity within a rapidly changing context, Cultural Change and the New Europe offers an important and necessary counterpoint to studies of political and economic integration.

This collection of original essays is the first to offer anthropological perspectives on the forces of international integration at work in the European Community (EC) as it creates a single European market.

This New Europe will be formed by the twelve member nations of the EC through the processes of economic integration, symbolized by the date 1992the last year before all barriers to the free movement of people, capital, goods, services, and information are removed.From one end of the EC to the other, from Ireland to Greece, the establishment of a truly common market by 1993 will have profound and dramatic impacts on the lives of all the ECs citizens. This new supranation of 350 million consumers will also constitute a new economic system, with both winners and losers.

Many in Europe see these economic initiatives as a prelude to political union.In this volume, anthropologists from Europe and North America provide analyses that go beyond local ethnographic case studies in order to explore how the processes of EC integration are affecting Europeans notions of their local, regional, and national cultural identities.

Many issues crucial to communities definitions of selfincluding those of citizenship, traditional culture, regional rights, and national sovereigntyare being challenged by agencies and governments that are attempting to forge a New Europe.

The ways these forces are perceived and acted upon at the local levels, in both the countryside and the cities, will be crucial to the success of the 1992 project and all subsequent attempts to integrate and unite Europe.