Ulrich Beck, Ulrich Bielefeld, Nikola Tietze

More justice through more Europe

An interview with Ulrich Beck
While discrepancies between EU member states can be overlooked during winwin
periods of growth, recession triggers xenophobic and antiEuropean reactions in
both rich and poor countries. In interview with Nikola Tietze and Ulrich Bielefeld for
Mittelweg 36, Ulrich Beck explains how inequality leaves the Union susceptible to
decay. Building on the sense of a common European destiny engendered by the
crisis, how can Europe be communicated as an opportunity for more power rather
than a threat to national sovereignty?

Mittelweg 36: What do the financial crisis and the nuclear energy crisis
represented by Fukushima mean for Europe?
Ulrich Beck: I'd see the dynamics and the
relevance of both events the financial crisis and
Fukushima in terms of my concept of the risk
society, or world risk society. The risk society is a
couldbesociety. The term risk refers to the
"couldbe", the anticipation of catastrophes in the
present. One has to differentiate here between the
future, of which we know nothing, and our
conception of the future, which is portrayed or
socially constructed as a global risk in the widest
sense. This catastrophic subjunctive is the typhoon
of events that broke into the centre of social
institutions and people's daily lives in the form of
the financial crisis (though not only that):
irregular, rooted neither in the constitution nor democracy, charged with
unacknowledged incomprehension, blowing away hitherto fixed points of
reference. As a result, the sense of a kind of community of destiny arises. This
is indicated by the abrupt downturns in the financial markets, whose turbulence
makes tangible the interconnectedness of different worlds. If Greece declares
bankruptcy, is that another sign that my pension in Germany is no longer safe?
What does "state bankruptcy" actually mean? For me? Who would have
thought that the banks, usually so arrogant, would ask the states for help, and
that the chronically hardup states would rush through measures enabling
astronomical sums to be placed at the disposal of these cathedrals of
capitalism? Today, it is universally taken for granted. That isn't to say that
people actually understand what it means to be joined by a common financial
destiny consisting of insecurity, incomprehension and the sense of
crossborder dependency. This anticipation of global risk works its way into
the very capillaries of daily life and, as I see it, is one of the major forms of
mobilization in the twentyfirst century. Everywhere these kinds of threat are
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perceived locally as cosmopolitan events creating an existential bond between

one's own life and everyone else's. Such events collide with the conceptual and
institutional framework that has so far delineated how we think about society
and politics. They challenge this framework from within and at the same time
encounter differing cultural conditions and contexts that lead to very contrary
cultural and political estimations of the risks.

Mittelweg 36: Is there a specifically European form of anticipation of risk, in

this case the anticipation of the financial crisis and Fukushima?
UB: In my view, there's a difference here between the financial crisis and the
nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The financial crisis can simply be
individualized in the national sense, i.e. ascribed to certain nations and national
spaces. We saw that happening in the Asian crisis, which everyone expected to
turn global but which then remained an Asian crisis after all. The Russian
crisis remained a Russian crisis, the Argentinian crisis an Argentinian one, and
so on. In contrast, the constantly reigniting "global" financial crisis is
characterized by the fact that it boomeranged back to the central country of
capitalism, the USA. It was therefore perceived as a global risk at least in
its initial stages. The states played at being saviours of the world and rushed to
help the banks, infecting themselves with the insolvency virus along the way,
and thus the global financial crisis is reascribed to nations not to Europe!
Today, southern European indiscipline is blamed, not the global financial
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crisis. In other words, the crisis is largely perceived within the national
horizon, although especially in Europe it reveals an ambiguity: in Greece,
Portugal, Spain and also in Italy, the crisis has to do with German, French,
British, and American banks and credit institutes; nevertheless, everyone
pretends it's merely a matter of the nation states and their particular problems
"the bankrupt Greeks". The rating agencies in particular employ this
principle of national accountability, thereby concealing the fact that the bailout
funds being directed to Greece et al. are also rescue packages for German,
French and US banks. To put it another way, the interconnectedness the
mixture exists, but the centre of attention is focused exclusively on national
governments and the questions that arise from them. This attitude sometimes
culminates in the idea that the financial crisis would be solved were Greece to
leave the eurozone or even the European Union. However, no consideration is
given to the consequences of such an exclusion on other nations or even the
European space as a whole.
This perfectly exemplifies the dilemma currently facing Europe. On the one
hand, there is the reality of Europeanization, in other words there is a close
institutional connection and coordination between the European countries and
Brussels. In the case of the financial crisis, that means transnational risk
redistribution in economic and banking sector. A similar picture emerges in
many other realms: in the realm of the law, of course, as the constituting factor
of Europe, as well as in the realm of culture, politics think of the European
borders. On the other hand, our actions are based on the perception that we live
within isolable containers of power. When things get rough, there emerges the
illusion that all problems can be solved by simply isolating the container of
power. "We'll manage this alone we Germans, we French, we
Luxembourgers". That's the slogan of Europe's demise.
Mittelweg 36: But how did Fukushima, a Japanese event, turn into a global
political event, a European event, even a German domestic political event?
UB: I understand the issue to be somewhat different in the case of Fukushima.
Here one can indeed see that an event in Japan, 8000 kilometres away, is able
to cause a change in German nuclear energy policy within just a few weeks. I'd
draw the following conclusions from this: first, the perception of risk such
as the risk of nuclear energy can no longer be limited to single countries.
Nuclear energy programmes have turned society into their laboratory and now
they have to accept the findings of that international laboratory. Second, the
equation that geographic distance equals social distance meaning that the
irrelevance of events grows in proportion to that event's geographical distance
can no longer automatically be applied. The idea that social proximity is
concurrent with geographical proximity and hence with territoriality, cultural
belonging, national identity and political system has generally turned out to be
questionable.
So, on the one hand, we have a process of debordering based on the medial
representation of risks, the "couldbe" catastrophe. On the other hand, this
process of debordering encounters different cultural and political contexts in
Europe. These global risks are seen as incalculable and are based, at least in
part, on incomprehension: since these kinds of inconceivable catastrophes
aren't supposed to occur, there isn't supposed to be any knowledge to be gained
from them. This results in cultural conflicts; a clash of risk cultures, you might
say. If you take climate change seriously, you live in a different world from the
person who sees it as an impertinent attack on the American way of life, or as a
new form of European imperialism. Whether a global risk is perceived and
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taken seriously as such depends, among other things, on whether there are
realistic alternatives for acting in response. For Germany (unlike many other
countries), entry into the renewable energies market was a viable alternative.
There was also agreement in Germany long before Fukushima to phase out
nuclear energy. A year ago, Angela Merkel tried to prolong this process, but
not really to end it. One can thus develop a conceptual tool kit to understand
the different cultural perceptions in Europe, America, Asia and so on. At the
end of the day, the German decision wasn't so much about pulling out of its
nuclear energy programme but about entering the renewable energies market,
which could bring Germany a huge competitive advantage in the coming years
and decades. In France, in contrast, Fukushima was perceived completely
differently; there the economy is almost entirely based on nuclear energy and
nuclear weapons belong to national confidence. It has to be noted, however,
that in all European countries the governments and industry adopted a very
different view from that of the population at large. Even in France, the
majority of the population, with the TV images of Fukushima still vivid in the
mind's eye, said they would prefer to withdraw from nuclear energy. It remains
to be seen what role this issue will play in the upcoming presidential elections.
Mittelweg 36: 1957 was the year not only of the Treaty of Rome the treaty
that established the European Economic Community but also of Euratom,
the treaty of the European Atomic Energy Community. Is Germany tendering
its resignation from European energy politics by dropping out of the nuclear
energy programme? Are we, in other words, witnessing a renationalization on
the part of Germany?
UB: Yes, that's one element at play in the German decision to abandon nuclear
energy. But there's another element that's also decisive for what's happening in
Germany at the moment: the end of nuclear power entails a farewell to one of
the symbols of first modernity the modernity that relied on technology and
technological progress as well as on social and political progress. Recall that
the CDU and FDP promoted their partial withdrawal from the nuclear
phaseout as a reckoning with the antiprogressivism of the SPD and the
Greens. That strategy has obviously backfired. Phasing out nuclear energy has
become attractive for all political parties as nuclear energy becomes more
expensive (more controls, insurance) and as renewable technologies become
cheaper (as they get better); in other words, phasing out promises future
markets worldwide and hence renewed political legitimacy.
As a member of the German government's ethics committee on the nuclear
phaseout, I advocated a European and even global perspective. Interesting is
that for Angela Merkel and I think this is part of the renationalization that
we are currently witnessing viz. Fukushima the central operative unit of
political decisions and their legitimation is the German state. In this context,
Europe plays only a supporting role. Established European contracts are taken
into account only in order to directly assert a certain policy, without
considering the consequences doing so might have for Europe. Yet any
European or cosmopolitan perspective must include asking what it means for
other countries if Germany withdraws from its nuclear energy programme.
This question should always be present in all considerations. The discussions
in the ethics committee were characterized by one theme: if we go ahead,
perhaps others will follow. After all, you can't demand that everyone goes
along with you. That would imply the dictatorship of the status quo.
Mittelweg 36: Le Monde saw in Germany's withdrawal from its nuclear
energy programme an economic policy similar to the one you describe:
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Germany, said the French paper, had put its hopes in the renewable energy
industry as early as twenty years ago, making it a leader in the field today.
Furthermore, unlike the UK or France, Germany preferred its own territory as
an industrial location. The combination of these factors was interpreted as
evidence that, by phasing out nuclear energy, Germany is aiming for economic
power and eventually economic dominance in Europe. In this light, the
German decision to withdraw from its nuclear energy program entails a
dangerous element of renationalization.
UB: Yes, definitely. The historical novelty of the European Union and its
success does indeed rest on having performed the miracle of turning enemies
into neighbours via economic interdependence. It's only during the last two or
three years that Germany has taken on a special position in the EU and, I
believe, begun heading in a new direction. After reunification in 1990, the
unification of Europe became Germany's top political goal. The German
constitution commits German politics to "serve world peace within a united
Europe". My impression is that this principle of the constitution is in danger of
being forgotten.
However, at the moment there are several factors at play inducing Germany to
take on a special role in Europe. One is the fact that crises such the financial
crisis or climate change and other global crises overstretch the EU as an
institutionalpolitical instrument. Europe has seen and survived many crises,
but for these it is not prepared. Its instruments are either inadequate or have
been disabled. As a result, power is again departing from Brussels if it ever
arrived and returning to the nationstates. The nationstates thereby obtain
the initiative, but not in equal measure, but rather with Germany as the
decisive economic power benefitting most. The times are over when the EU
constitution and European institutions and politics could be defined on the
basis of universal consensus. Now what's crucial is how the governments of
the member states perceive the new financial and political challenges. In this
situation, Germany becomes a central actor in Europe and from this position
can't avoid turning the political challenges, the shortcomings, as well as
extension of the European institutions into a political issue.
Mittelweg 36: But Europe has progressed so far in institutional terms
among other reasons because of supranational European law and the European
currency that its member states can't simply withdraw.
UB: Right. But to put it strongly the exceptionality of the financial
crisis doesn't give a damn about the law. In order to prevent a catastrophe of
unimaginable proportions (according to the general incomprehension, at any
rate), action needs to be taken as soon as possible involving inconceivable
sums of money. That means there's a lack of institutional political instruments
that would make it possible to turn the problems arising from Europeanization
into further steps towards Europeanization. Take the euro, for example a
currency that cannot be guaranteed and controlled by any one nationstate. Yet
there is neither a European financial regulatory body nor a European economic
government that keeps an eye on the consequences of the single currency. Up
to now Europe has been equated with Europeanization, in other words a
process. More precisely, it has been a process of crisis, in which every new
crisis has led to calls for the next step, which is subsequently introduced. That
process is currently being denied in Germany. Instead, we have a sort of
German euronationalism replacing the old deutschmark nationalism. The
economic norms, the handling of the currency and the idea of currency security
(the debt ceiling) all these are German terms, visions that boil down to a
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German Europe. Only under these conditions is the German government

prepared to dip in to the German purse, closely guarded as it is by the
electorate, in order to put up the money for the European rescue package.
Mittelweg 36: Shifting the focus away from national governmental action
towards social mobilization against nuclear energy, could one say that in the
context of the Fukushima crisis there emerges a process of Europeanization
rather than of renationalization?
UB: Indeed. If you step back and pose the sociological question as to what
mobilization against nuclear energy through perception of risk means, one can
see a cosmopolitan element. Perceived interdependence leads to consternation
and sympathy as well as fear, hatred and selfisolation. However, one would
need to reconstruct how deeply consternation and sympathy actually ran in the
various national public spheres, and to what degree the expression of these
sentiments was comparable. I'm sure that there were differences. Nevertheless,
Fukushima, just like 9/11, the financial crisis and the many other crises over
the last twenty years, led to a cosmopolitan moment meaning that there
emerged the sense of a kind of new community of necessity, a direct
connection between one's own concerns and the questions that keep humanity
at bated breath, leading to opposing political mobilizations. This cosmopolitan
moment is in evidence not only in Europe, however, but also in Japan, South
America, China and the USA. I recently had a discussion with colleagues from
Chile, which has many nuclear power stations and where ending the nuclear
energy programme is currently unfeasible. Even there the population is
enormously mobilized. Hence the cosmopolitan element of Fukushima can be
seen beyond Europe and is evidenced by popular protests as well as
conciliatory governmental reactions.
Mittelweg 36: Is there too little institutionalization of the cosmopolitan
element in the EU, making a renationalization as you have described
possible? Or did cosmopolitan Europe grant too great a role to the
nationstates?
UB: It's my impression that today, after long phases of renationalization, the
cosmopolitan element has regained a stronger presence in the public sphere
both in party politics as well as the media. We have an odd situation in Europe:
if you take the criteria of institutional architecture into account, the European
Union is probably the most cosmopolitan structure there is. However, this
expressed neither in the consciousness nor in the actions of the people and
governments and obviously still rests on shaky ground. The discussion over a
European economic government is now being used to illustrate the claim that
the relationship between the European Union and its national member states
amounts to a zerosum game: the sovereignty granted to Europe by a
nationstate is lost by the state and won by the European centre. Here the EU
is misconstrued as a foreign state and not the combination of national
sovereignties. In order to understand the relationship of Europe and its nation
states, we need a new understanding of sovereignty. Because Europe does not
take power away it gives it to the nations. By internalizing the European
rules of play, the member states and only they! gain access to new
power options. They gain a voice in the European realm and far beyond, a
voice that counts. They can directly influence the results of European politics.
The solution to their "internal" national problems such as criminality,
migration, the environment, agricultural development and now the response to
the global financial crisis and the euro crisis ensues from the combined
power of the EU. Here it becomes clear what is obviously so hard to
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communicate: that Europe is the European answer to globalization, enabling it

to regain political power to act internally and externally as a community of
nations. This is what can now once again be heard from the mouths of
prominent CDU politicians.
The conclusion is that the relationship between the EU and the nationstates
must not look like the relationship between nationstates, and must not be
thought as an "eitheror". Instead, it's about intermeshing and reciprocity, in
order to enhance and extend options for power and action. This becomes
particularly visible where countries that are not yet members of the EU but are
aiming for membership, such as Turkey, carry out a process of
selfEuropeanization even into the minutiae of their social and political
constitution. The influence of cosmopolitan Europe in the world at large and in
its immediate surroundings does not rest on political or military might, but on
the Europeanization of national interests. Hence there emerges a reflexive
connection between national interests and Europeanization. This connection
follows a logic of "aswellas", and that's new. Nevertheless, the reflexive
connection between national interests and Europeanization must be followed
up and reproduced in the public sphere, so that options for power and action
are extended for each individual. Take the example of Eurobonds: it can be
argued that German selfinterest is equivalent to European solidarity, since if
the euro collapses, the German economy will go down with it. The reflexive
amalgamation of national and European interests is, however, a complex
public process that varies according to the very different political traditions and
democratic forms of government in the European countries.
Mittelweg 36: Is the EU be unable to organize consent for its project when it
suffers losses because, unlike the nationstate, it can't claim solidarity and
doesn't build on community?
UB: Yes, in Europe, in each individual nation state, we've until now indeed
been able to apply the familiar metaphor that, as the pie grows, the size of each
piece of pie also grows. There has so far never been a negative distribution
situation to the degree we're witnessing now.
As I see it, a major deficit in sociology clearly emerges here. Processes of
inequality and also class dynamics are perceived at the nationstate level. It's
claimed than national processes of inequality and class dynamics remain the
central keys to understanding the dynamics of modern society both culturally
and politically. The EU, however, demonstrates its own, peculiar,
crossEuropean dynamics of inequality that penetrate through to the national
level. Everybody underestimated how politically explosive social inequality
would be for the EU. This pertains in two respects: first, the structural
composition of social inequality characterizing the European Union is different
to that of the USA, for example. To put it bluntly, in the USA there is
inequality among individuals, in the EU among nations. Second, the distinction
between creditor states and debtor states has become more acute as a result of
the global financial crisis. In the EU, that has led to the development of
antiEuropean and xenophobic reactions in both groups of countries.
The economist Branko Milanovic recently pointed out that, in 2007, after the
last round of EU enlargement (when Bulgaria and Romania became member
states), total inequality in the European Union, with its 27 member states,
equalled that in the United States of America, with its 50 states. However, the
structural composition of these inequalities is markedly different. Put simply,
the main characteristic of inequality in the EU is that the member states are
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unequal; they are either rich or poor. In the United States, the main
characteristic of inequality (independently of each state) is that individuals are
either rich or poor. Rich and poor individuals are not, in other words,
concentrated geographically, as they are in Europe, and wealth or poverty are
not assigned to individuals as their "national fate", but distributed across 50
states. The EU includes member states such as Luxembourg, one of the richest
countries in the world, as well as Romania, which is considered poor by
international standards. That means that even the poorest group of
Luxembourgers have a higher income than the richest group of Romanians. In
other words, Luxembourg's and Romania's distribution of inequality do not
overlap: Romania's income distribution ends where Luxembourg's begins. In
practice, this means that all Luxembourgers are richer than all Romanians.
This is a radical example, but it illustrates the peculiar structural composition
of European inequality among nations and the difficulties of making it visible
through a sociology of inequality that remains within the confines of
methodological nationalism. If you take the member state as your unit of
research, you automatically prioritize the individualization of social inequality
within the framework of the nation (as I also did for a long time).
One has to differentiate between two constellations here: first, the situation of a
Europe whose national economies are growing here inequalities among the
countries are cushioned by a winwin situation. But what happens when, under
the conditions of the global financial and economic crisis, the EU and hence all
the member states enter the conflict dynamics of a logic of negative
distribution? This is the second constellation. The bailout mechanism for
southern European countries has assisted the development of a logic of conflict
between the creditor and debtor countries. The creditor countries must
introduce austerity measures at home and therefore put the debtor countries on
the rack beyond the pain threshold. The debtor countries, on the other hand,
see themselves subjected to the dictate of the EU, injuring the national sense of
independence and pride. Both result in hatred of Europe being fostered in
Europe, since Europe appears to all involved as a conglomerate of impossible
demands. Hence the dramatic renationalizations mentioned previously.
There's a danger of a nationalism that is not so much aggressive as regressive.
It emanates from the fear of losing all sense of security, be it socioeconomic
or the mental security inherent in the national selfimage.
Mittelweg 36: The European Union differs from earlier states and empires that
celebrated their origins in myths and heroic victories in that it is a transnational
governmental institution born of the agony of defeat and the horror of the
Holocaust. Does the European "community of fate" retain its significance
today, when it's no longer a matter of war and peace, no longer a generational
experience?
UB: The existential threat posed by the financial crisis and euro crisis has once
again made Europeans aware that they don't just live in Germany, France, etc.,
but in Europe. Europe's youth is experiencing its "European fate" for the first
time. Better educated than ever before, young Europeans have high
expectations, only to encounter impending state bankruptcy and the collapse of
labour markets as a result of economic crisis. One in five Europeans under 25
is unemployed. Members of the academic precariat have pitched their tents and
are raising their voices, while everywhere from Spain and Portugal to Tunisia,
Egypt and Israel, youth protests are calling peacefully yet powerfully for social
justice. Europe and its youth are united in anger at a political establishment
that is rescuing banks with sums of money that exceed all powers of
imagination, gambling away the future of younger generations along the way.
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If the hopes of Europe's youth fall victim to the euro crisis, what future is there
for a Europe that keeps getting older?
Mittelweg 36: Has sociology failed to analyse European society from the
European point of view?
UB: Indeed, sociology has never really conducted a selfanalysis of this kind.
The new sociology of Europe lacks the European perspective, so that
sociological theory and research still falls back into the habits of
methodological nationalism. Given that legal and economic relationships in
Europe are intermeshed and can no longer be differentiated along national
lines, it is impossible to understand conflicts to do with inequality in Germany,
for example, without including the European dimension. It has become
absolutely necessary to use Europe as that unit of research previously defined
as the nation state. Otherwise, the paradox of a realexisting Europe without
Europeans remains the blind spot within the national perspective.
Mittelweg 36: How dangerous is the situation for Europe?
UB: Against this backdrop, I discern three overlapping processes that lead to
the emergence of a new danger Europe is posing to itself: first xenophobia,
second antisemitism and Islamophobia, and, third, hostility towards Europe.
Xenophobia is nothing new and is always there. We sociologists are relatively
unconcerned regarding antisemitism, so long as it remains contained within a
few fringe zones. This problem has nevertheless grown massively due to
hostility towards Islam. Critics of Islam have managed to present their
rejection of the religious backgrounds of certain migrant groups in Europe as a
kind of Enlightenmentinspired thinking. This is a paradoxical process that has
gripped mainstream society. In Germany, it is represented by the name Thilo
Sarrazin, but there are others. Under the conditions of crisis, we're witnessing
the growth, the overlap and the reciprocal aggravation of xenophobia,
antisemitism, Islamophobia, and hostility towards Europe. The result is that
support for Europe is receding substantially to an extent that I personally
couldn't have imagined.
Mittelweg 36: Combating xenophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia is to a
certain extent part of the EU's selfunderstanding, as can be discerned from the
various initiatives of the European Commission and institutions such as the
European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights. In terms of the politics of
memory, the EU focuses particularly on the history of national socialist crimes.
However, the Europe of today bears at least two further memories of political
violence the memory of colonialism and the memory of Stalinism. Why
doesn't the EU build on these three memories, which Dan Diner described as
mutually counteractive?
UB: Yes, that's the question. First, I see these three memories to be de facto
differently weighted. The colonial memory is least present in the EU
constitution. Yet there is insufficient attention paid both to the relevance that
the colonial countries had for the formation of Europe's nationstates as well
as the importance of the postcolonial countries for the development of the
European Union itself. The Holocaust and Stalinism are more clearly
accentuated. Yet colonial memory may have played a key role in the EU stance
towards the events of the Arab spring in Northern Africa. Beyond that, the
question arises as to why Europe's special position of representing three
memories is not being used as a source for new orientation and ideas for the
future. This question constantly plays on my mind, without my having reached
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a satisfactory conclusion.
My current diagnosis for Germany is merely an unshakeable love of the status
quo. On the one hand, we are one of the most dynamic industrial countries in
the world and also among the most reliant on the global market. On the other
hand, reunification obviously exhausted the need for change. A new, "without
me" attitude is taking hold of thought and action. Even in the sciences, the
theories about the liquefaction, even meltdown of social relations that have
been around for a while now receive only lukewarm attention despite the
permanence of highlevel intellectual debates being conducted here in
Germany. The key intellectuals in politics and the public sphere have reacted
to the intellectual and political departures being experienced in other parts of
the world with unbelievable indifference. Today's disoriented Germany,
heaving, sighing and fumbling in the dark, didn't come out of the blue. Our
Munich research group has used the theory of reflexive modernization and
world risk society to develop a figure of thought that by now has clearly
become an everyday experience: the victory of radicalized modernity creates
side effects that suspend the fundamentals and the coordinates of institutions as
well as of personal, individual lives, in doing so politicizing them. Suddenly,
burning questions arise: Europe what for? Is the financial crisis dislodging
democracy? What does family mean? I've tried to introduce this
cosmopolitanism sociologically and to differentiate between
"cosmopolitanism" as a normative and political theory and "cosmopolitization"
as de facto social development. Cosmopolitization in its many forms can be
described using the example of outsourcingcapitalism. This isn't just a
variation on globalization, but also a form of cosmopolitization, whereby the
workforce of the rich (i.e. European) countries experience their replaceability
and thus enter a direct relationship with the "global Other". This direct
relationship with the "global Other" is not one of interaction and discourse, but
a relationship that challenges workers' existential interest in secure
employment. Put bluntly, this leads to an economic enmity that is of great
everyday relevance for xenophobia, antisemitism and Islamophobia as well as
hostility towards Europe. This economic enmity is a form of cosmopolitization
without interaction or communication. It has nothing to do with philosophical
cosmopolitanism, and in fact is practically its opposite. It is still a new
relationship, one very relevant to reality, in which the "global Other" is present
across all borders to enter the very midst of our lives in Europe.
I'd hoped that my distinction between cosmopolitanism (norms) and
cosmopolitization (facts) would trigger a discussion of these developments,
particularly in Germany, where cosmopolitanism has a great tradition. The
classics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Kant, Heine, Goethe,
Schiller et al. debated how cosmopolitanism, patriotism and nationalism
related to one another. I'd imagined that this high culture, praised in Germany
at every opportunity, would provide a means to rethink Europe and Germany's
selfdescription as a nation in the global era in a new and surprising way.
However, I'm forced to recognize that this debate, which is being vividly
conducted in many other languages, is falling on deaf ears in Germany.
Mittelweg 36: What difference would an increase in democracy in the EU
for example by creating a more powerful European parliament have for the
European crisis? Is it a crisis of "not enough democracy", or is it something
entirely different?
UB: In many ways, the crisis has emerged from a deficit of democracy. This
deficit of democracy, however, shouldn't be understood only in an institutional
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sense, but also in the sense that the people feel cut off and partly steamrolled
by Europe. So far we've largely been dealing with a neoliberal interpretation of
Europe, meaning that the economic factors of the common market have
priority despite the existence of political institutions. The EU is dissolving
national labour markets along with their internal security and in doing so
exposing workers to new competition which brings me back to
cosmopolitization. In this sense, Europe poses a threat to the existential
situation of many working people without granting them the opportunity to
have a say or a chance to act in this matter. The trade unions are organized at
the national level and can't really intervene. If in doubt, the representatives of
the European Union prefer to let the markets prevail and interpret any
opposition to this merely as national resistance. In return, the people of Europe
feel like they aren't being taken seriously and can shift onto Europe neither the
sense of social security that they experienced in the nationstate nor the
perspectives of upward mobility that they associate with nationstate
democracies. It's therefore essential to think about a social Europe and how to
link up national welfare benefits with Europe. The workforce must be able to
see that the social securities of the national welfare states are not only being
dismantled but also being rebuilt and extended via Europe.
When discussing Europe and democracy, one also has to think about forms of
a European public sphere. "Create the Europe of the citizens now!" would be a
surprising and essential answer to the euro crisis. It's about initiating the
Europeanization of Europe from below, about diversity and
selfdetermination, about a political and cultural space in which citizens no
longer confront each other as disenfranchised enemies. For example, an
opportunity was missed by failing to put the draft of the European constitution
to the vote on the same day throughout the whole of the EU, and thus to
achieve a European result. Additionally, the condition that all European
decisions must be reached unanimously undermines the development of the
concept of a European public sphere. Unanimity is not reached at a family
meal, let alone in politics. A European democracy must include European
citizens' movements such as a movement supporting a European financial
transactions tax. Why not organize a European referendum on phasing out
nuclear energy? What we're lacking are political polls that encompass all of
Europe, that show that we're dealing with issues that can't be solved in the
national contexts alone, and hence that illustrate that Europe has a dimension
that enriches everyday life. Such polls necessarily include a battle of opinions.
However, even when the result is negative, they will have demonstrated that
Europe is not untouchable, but that it can be influenced and moulded by
concrete decisions.
Mittelweg 36: Developing the idea of a European public sphere implies
thinking about a European discourse. What might such a discourse look like
and how might it be conceptualized, given the multitude of languages along
with the recognition of this multitude?
UB: Translators are the new leading figures of the twentyfirst century and at
the same time probably also its proletariat. Indeed, we can no longer think the
European idea of a public sphere or the European idea of society within the
framework of national communities of language and solidarity. Europe is not
an extended family, where anonymous friendships develop out of a common
language. Not only consensus but also controversy can serve to unite the
European community, subsuming, as it does, other communities. This above
all includes controversy about the responsibility for political action and the
attribution of this responsibility, as we are currently experiencing in the debt
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crisis. Such a controversy is an open, public process. Pace Jrgen Habermas

and his consensus theory, I believe that what constitutes Europe is dissent and
conflict about what makes up Europe.
Mittelweg 36: You once wrote that Europe needs a "dialogic imagination".
Does that mean we have to look for a narrative of dialogic imagining rather
than a new idea of the public sphere? Who should and may take part in such
dialogic imagining?
UB: I believe it's more sensible to answer this question not in the sense of
universalism, not with a master plan, but normatively. Where does dialogic
imagining occur in Europe? Which conflicts emerge therein? Take as an
example the family or even romantic relationships. We think of the family as
fairly homogeneous and tend to understand it as a national family bowing
to the holy trinity of common passport, common mother tongue, common
domicile. This, however, is increasingly becoming a figment of the
imagination, since more and more people are loving and living on a European
scale or in cosmopolitan forms of family and partnership. In Germany, every
third child under five grows up in a binational family. Given this backdrop,
one ought to ask how far a "dialogic imagination" can develop in such life
circumstances, or if it fails to develop why that should be and what problems
arise in the process. In our book Fernliebe ("Long distance love"), Elisabeth
BeckGernsheim and I discovered that even where individuals are willing to
conduct their family, partnership and love lives across borders, either on the
basis of their hopes or their concrete romantic and sexual relationships, this
choice turns into a constant obstacle course of national rules and suspicions.
Nevertheless, it's here that potential spaces for dialogic imagination emerge.
Mittelweg 36: Are the European Human Rights Court in Strasbourg or the
European Parliament of the EU places for dialogic imagining?
UB: That is an empirical question. My initial response would be that European
law and the European Court provide institutionalized spaces for dialogic
imagination, which national law and national constitutional courts do not.
European law is, in my eyes, one of the most avantgarde and most
cosmopolitan actors in Europe, because it constitutes the EU. However, it
remains to be seen whether the national courts will assert themselves with the
argument that European law endangers democracy. Dialogic imagination takes
place in very different ways in political parties as well. Feeling the pressure of
the crisis, it seems to me that the European voices are collecting around the
finance minister of the current German government, Wolfgang Schuble. In
any case, he is trying to find a European and dialogic wording for German
interests. Maybe Merkel will now make her European volteface, following
from the energy turnaround. The Greens also provide examples of European
voices for example Daniel CohnBendit, Cem zdemir or Jrgen Trittin.
It's one of my hopes that we are witnessing a generational phenomenon here. It
remains to be seen whether those who have experienced Europe in their
education, their relationships or partnerships and who take multilingualism for
granted, will be better able to live a dialogic imagination.
Mittelweg 36: Could one forward the theory that the conflicts currently being
waged in the context of the finance crisis and against the background of
Fukushima are an expression of existing European society? From this point of
view, the processes of renationalization that we mentioned before are signs of
an extended struggle for a European society and its form.

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UB: Yes. That's shown by the youth protests in European cities, as I said, or by
the fact that the future of Europe has by now become headline news. Amidst
the awareness of the crisis, signs emerge of a change of level and perspective.
The discussion, in which the alternatives are presented in almost too clearcut
a fashion, is clearly about Europe as a whole including national societies
and nationstates. In this regard, Europe is essentially taking shape against its
will. Returning to the consequences of the risks facing Europe and their
representation, here we can witness the cosmopolitan imperative posed to
Europe as well as to Germany. This is "cooperate or bust". Cooperation will
transcend competition, lack of it will lead to failure. There are two processes
that are, in a sense, running simultaneously and counter to each other: one
moment everything appears to be moving towards renationalization and, as a
result, powers are being withdrawn from Europe and reclaimed at the national
level. The next moment everything turns around and starts moving towards
Europeanization again, following the realization that renationalization is
causing us to become a danger to ourselves. Merkel's policies have so far
seesawed in this way. First the chancellor emphasized Germany's national
interest with an eye to local elections, then she followed it up with European
solutions. We are indeed dealing with two intermeshed processes:
renationalization and Europeanization, or cosmopolitization processes
with open ends. At least we can say that we are living in highly political times!
Mittelweg 36: According to your cosmopolitan approach, differences between
nationstates, groups and persons are not the problem but the solution. One
can counter that with the observation that the EU's Europeanizing dynamics is
thanks to its ability to guarantee legal equality and the promise of equal living
standards for all EU citizens. How far is the recognition of differences between
nationstates, groups and persons even viable for the EU?
UB: First, let me recall that I see cosmopolitanism as one of many possible
social approaches to alterity. There is racism, which leads to essentialization,
hierarchization and the clear valuation of the differences between groups. On
the other end of the scale there is universalism, which claims absolute equality
among humans undoubtedly one of the great achievements in the history of
mankind, but which effectively devalues or even ignores the peculiarities of
mankind, in the shadow of its own viewpoint as it were. This leads to serious
problems. The same advantages and disadvantages also apply to the
universalistic model of Europe. The ideal can be a restrengthening of the
nationstates via the mutually exclusive alliance of nationalisms with
controlled boundaries, within which patriots fight against the "system Islam".
Then there is nationalism, which defines equality within national confines and
places alterity essentially on the outside. This view is shared by the proponents
of a nationalist Europe. Multiculturalism, in turn, places alterities sidebyside
as homogeneous cultures or nations. Cosmopolitanism, finally, can be
considered a specific synthesis of these different variations of the social
attitude towards difference. My model of a cosmopolitan Europe certainly
requires a minimum of universalism, of equality. However, in contrast to a
universalistic Europe, it places the dialogic imagination the recognition and
inclusion of the voices of the excluded Other at the centre. Unlike the idea
of a federal Europe, the cosmopolitan perspective aims not for the dissolution
of nations, but for their continuation with a new significance; the cosmopolitan
perspective assumes a minimal universalism and still presupposes the
recognition of the Other internally and externally.
I believe that the problem you define in your question concerns not the
relationship of equality and recognition of diversity, but clarifies the
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cosmopolitizing dimension of the comparability that is developing in Europe.

So far we have witnessed and evaluated inequality within the framework of the
nation state, and were able to ignore differences as external differences.
National borders institutionalize incomparability, so that for the German point
of view the income of a skilled worker in Africa or the UK becomes irrelevant.
The EU qualifies this function of borders. This leads to increased
comparability, while at the same time the conditions for equality are being
created. Take the development and determination of the income for EU
parliamentarians: until 2009, the EU member states were responsible for the
remuneration of their EU parliamentarians, which led to radically different
salaries being paid out for doing the same thing. In 2004, Italian MEPs
received a gross income of about 11,000 Euro, their German counterparts
about 7000 Euro, and their eastern European colleagues only a fraction of that
sum. For a long time, it was understood that the national parliamentarians'
remuneration could not be compared. However, the mere existence of the
European parliament created comparability. It thus made the differences
between the parliamentarians visible and at the same time introduced the
necessary condition to initiate equality. The uniform regulation for European
members of parliament, introduced in 2009, fixed parliamentarians' salary at
38.5 per cent of the basic salary of a European Court judge and made these
salaries part of the budget of the European parliament. This example shows
how national authorization of differences is being relativized and will, I
propose, fall apart. This process increasingly politicizes differences and
inequalities within Europe. From a sociological point of view, it is important to
recognize this, since it is possible that the differences and inequalities
themselves are not on the rise at all and may even be receding, yet are
nevertheless becoming a more pressing topic. I therefore believe that the
relationship between equality and the recognition of diversity contains major
sources of conflict. How this relationship is to be formulated in cosmopolitan
Europe has yet to be answered.
Mittelweg 36: Who should guarantee the specific proportion of recognition of
diversity and equality in the EU?
UB: If one avoids seeing Europe as an institutionalizing nationstate that
imposes equality and at the same time wants to provide for Europe's national
identities, two processes will have to be separated and dealt with at the
institutional level. The first of these regards the distribution of recognition. In
the nationstate, the majority is the measure of what is recognized and what is
not, as can be clearly discerned in questions surrounding the national
integration of immigrants. In Europe, the distribution of recognition is
completely unclear and cannot be translated into a distribution of material
goods, such as educational opportunities or similar. The distribution of
material goods, secondly, must be defined in separation from the distribution
of recognition. That leads to the question of how much inequality is viable for
a cosmopolitan Europe that relies primarily on the recognition of differences.
Answering this is one of the key issues of the development of a social Europe.
Mittelweg 36: How and where should sociologists observe European society?
So far, you have pointed out the specifically European inequality structures
and discrepancies between states and regions, as well as associated migration
and mobility. Do you see further topics for a sociology of European society?
UB: When Edgar Grande and I wrote the book about cosmopolitan Europe, we
asked ourselves where it is possible to experience and observe Europe as a
society beyond its institutional form. Our answer was: in the life contexts of
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European families having defined European families as having parents

from different countries or as having developed and maintaining family
networks that cross generational borders. We were expecting to find, for
example, multilingualism, background differences and similar factors, which
would not be identified as European within the families themselves, but would
indicates traces of the experience of a European society in the family.
However, it was impossible to carry out this approach empirically. The given
data are organized by nation state. Even European data is based on national
state surveys. To think within a transnational dimension of "as well as"
contradicts the categories and practices of the data set, however it is
indispensable for the analysis of the experience of European society at any
level, not only that of the family.
As long as sociology bases its data collection and theory development
(implicitly) on nationalism, it is still imprisoned by the nationstate. It should
not ignore the national construction, such as national family laws, but it should
investigate where and how people act, and thus create structures that deviate
from the national construction and create a new reality, for example in
families. In this regard, a sociology of European society would also include a
sociology of European families or a sociology of European education, and
would address the strongly promoted mobility of the Erasmus generation and
its results. Instead, we have a sociology of education that pertains to Germany,
the UK, etc., which might even enter into national comparisons, but which
only touches indirectly on the transnational forms of life, educational
biographies and careers of mobility. European mobility, however, is rare as a
category of research in European sociology.
Social theory has also largely neglected the topic of Europe. This topic, even in
comparison with other globalregional powers, for example, the US, China
and Brazil, enables new concepts and insights from a certain socialtheoretical
point of view, namely that of cosmopolitan sociology. It is strange that
sociology which gained significance in the nineteenth century and as a
matter of course has analysed national societies and researched the institutions
of the nationstate in relation to the term society has been able to distance
itself so little from nationalism. The entirety of our terminology demonstrates
the ignorance about Europe inherent in sociological theory. Sociological theory
still builds on the idea that the nationstate and the national society are a unit.
Global society is attached to this unit as "the enlarged nation and nationstate".
The national viewpoint might still recognize regional structures between
national and global society, regarding the social as national, international and
then global. The historically new and hitherto uncomprehended political aspect
of the European Union is, on the one hand, the connection of national societies
and European law, and the national, but intermeshed governments on the other.
This aspect disappears out of social theory's line of sight. Hence the complex
structure that is Europe remains to be discovered by social theory.
Mittelweg 36: How should a policy that is structurally European be shaped in
a situation where Europe no longer means a winwin situation, in order to
counter the danger that, as you described above, Europe poses to itself? Who
could advocate and advance such a policy?
UB: What characterized Ostpolitik in the divided Germany of the 1970s could
and ought to constitute presentday European policy in the face of the
financial crisis: a policy of unification across borders. Why was the unification
with the GDR, massively costly though it was, such a matter of course? Why,
on the other hand, is the economic integration of debtor countries such as
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Greece and Portugal so frowned upon? This isn't just about who foots the bill.
It's about rethinking and redesigning the future of Europe and its position in
the world. The introduction of Eurobonds would not be a betrayal of German
interests. The path towards a union of solidarity reflects, like the recognition of
the OderNeisse border in its time, wellconsidered German interests. It is an
expression of EuropeanGerman Realpolitik. Why should Europe not
introduce a financial transaction tax? It wouldn't do anyone any serious harm,
not even the banks. It would, however benefit all member states and open
financial opportunities for action for a social and ecological Europe able to
grant its workforce the promise of security through Europe and hence take
up a cause of particular importance to young Europeans.
While Ostpolitik of the 1970s had the slogan "change by rapprochement",
today's slogan could be "more justice through more Europe". Just as many
vilified talk of the normalization of relations with the Communist block as
treason, so today the demand for "more Europe!" is a slap in the face of
national confidence. Merkel's politics of toandfroandbackandforth
might be excellent preparation for a future Social DemocraticGreen Party
project. As soon as the SPD and the Greens manage to convey the idea that a
social Europe is more than just an introverted scrooge, but citing Hegel
an historical necessity, even the SPD will regain popularity and start winning
elections. This, however, depends on its courage to openly declare European
policy its main project, like Ostpolitik was some forty years ago.

This interview was conducted in the late summer of 2011.

Published 20111229
Original in German
Translation by Nadja Kinsky
Contribution by Mittelweg 36
First published in Mittelweg 36 6/2011 (German version); Eurozine (English version)
Ulrich Beck / Mittelweg 36
Eurozine

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