The Myth of a Supranational European Identity
(CSU, Fullerton)
The creation of a European identity to displace those of its national ones in the emerging supranational entity called the European Union has been an ideal, but not something supported by the historical trajectory of the economic foundations. Some thinkers say the foundations of an industrialized economy responsible in creating national identities out of several ethnic entities from an agriculturally based economy of feudalism can operate to form a supranational one out of several national ones. Identity construction has historically been a dynamic process that has witnessed changes throughout feudalism, industrialization and now post-industrialization. The same mechanism bred from industrialization that required national borders in protecting domestic industries no longer influence the contemporary or future global landscape to the same degree as in the past. While uniformity was the striving element in achieving a national identity and supports the legitimization of the nation state, the post-industrial period is not bound to the same social order. The post-industrial period does not rely on a uniform mobilized workforce to engage in manufacturing to the same degree as in industrialization. In other words, the largest sector of employment in the post-industrial era is based on knowledge industries: engineering, scientific research, information technology, etc. Those knowledge based industries require imagination and are much less dependant upon a uniform workforce functioning in lock step with each other. This type of social order is conducive to diversity, multiple languages and multilayered identities. A globalized economy of the post-industrial era no longer needs national borders to the same level as in the past to protect domestic industries since manufacturing is not the largest sector of the economy. Instead, the free movement of people, capital and ideas are what sustains a globalized economy. The notion of a supranational European identity will not arise by the same mechanism of national identity formation, where smaller identities were conglomerated into larger ones, but based on a new social order that encourages diversity and multi-layered identities. So, being European will likely be in conjunction to national, regional and local identities and not as a replacement of those.