Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-5lx2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-27T16:47:43.252Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

From East Europeans to Europeans: shifting collective identities and symbolic boundaries in the New Europe*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 October 2004

PIOTR SZTOMPKA
Affiliation:
Institute of Sociology, Jagellonian University, Grodzka 52, 31-044 Cracow, Poland. E-mail: ussztomp@cyf-kr.edu.pl

Extract

On 1 May 2004, Europe changed. This date marks both a beginning and an end. The enlargement of the European Union signals the beginning of a new phase in the history of Western Europe, and, for the new members from Eastern Europe, the end of a long period of exclusion and separation. Commentaries on this epochal event usually focus on ‘hard’ institutional factors such as political rearrangements, legal coordination and economic readjustments, etc. I will focus more on the ‘soft’ cultural and human factors; what I consider to be the intangibles and imponderables of a new, emerging Europe. I am convinced that culture really matters in social life.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2004

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*Ortelius Lecture delivered in Antwerp in May 2004.