The Idea of Europe: Cultural Legacies, Transnational Imaginings, and the Nation-State
Author(s)
Kumar, Krishan
Abstract
Europe has always been a promise, an ideal, even an ideology, as much as it has been an achieved reality. Its legacies have been ambivalent. They have included a tradition of assimilation and cultural pluralism that militates against any strict delimitation of boundaries, whether ethnic or territorial. Europe also gave rise to the nation-state, which has in some cases meant the hardening of boundaries and attempts at homogeneity, but has also meant the incorporation of beliefs and values that confer considerable power on groups to shape their own identities and to establish varying relationships with the dominant culture. These include precisely the notions of human and civic rights that transnational theorists wish to derive from international organizations.
