Narrating European Society

Trenz’s sociology of European integration opens new avenues for studying Europe and invites us to rethink standard academic paradigms. The book traces the unfounded hopes and premature fears of the European Union. It analyses both the arguments of those who tried to build an integrated continent and of those who tried to resist this. While he does not want us to read his book as a history of decay, he has the courage of imagining the unthinkable: the collapse of the European Union and the subsequent disintegration. The EU may well be in crisis, but Trenz’s book demonstrates that European studies are thriving. -- Jan Zielonka, St. Antony's College
This book is an important step forward in European Studies. It addresses the world in which European politics takes place: the world of the people living in Europe. Instead of taking this social world for granted, looking at people as objects to be controlled and governed, it takes serious the idea of people as agents who engage in making sense of living in Europe. Working through an enormous amount of literature, Trenz offers a challenging new sociological view on Europe: Europe not as an object of more or less well placed political engineering, but as a narratively constructed space in which ideas, arguments and stories for and against Europe circulate, thus generating a social space without a finalité, yet full of dissensus, conflicts, destructive actions and actions of repair. The idea of organizing this space along four narratives created by policy makers, scientists, and the media provides the frame for a “discursive” theory of society as a foundation for European studies. -- Klaus Eder, Humboldt University of Berlin
This is a timely book as European integration is considered doomed by a series of crises. Hans-Jörg Trenz finally asks the right questions: Whether we are citizens or students, what does the EU mean for us "in real life"? How can we make sense of past enthusiasms, current skepticism and the on-going processes of integration through actual relations across Europe between individuals and groups? This book provides us with insightful analytical tools to understand European integration relying on updated classical sociology and state-of-the-art empirical comparative projects. -- Virginie Guiraudon, Sciences Po Center for European Studies