Heikki Mikkeli charts the history of the idea of Europe and European identity. The first part introduces the various attempts to unify Europe from antiquity to the European Union. In the second part the relationship of Europe with America and Russia is considered, as well as the ambivalent role of Central Europe.

Discusses how a distinctive 'European' identity has grown over the centuries, especially with the EU.

A critical analysis of the idea of Europe and the limits and possibilities of a European identity in the broader perspective of history. This book argues that the crucial issue is the articulation of a new identity that is based on post-national citizenship rather than ambivalent notions of unity.

The end of the Soviet system and the transition to the market in Russia, coupled with the inexorable rise of nationalism, has brought to the fore the centuries-old debate about Russia's relationship with Europe. In Russia and the Idea of Europe Iver Neumann discusses whether the tensions between self-referencing romantic nationalist views and Europe-orientated liberal views can ever be resolved. Drawing on a wide range of Russian sources, Neumann outlines the argument as it has unfolded over the last two hundred years, showing how Russia is caught between the attraction of an economically, politically and socially more developed Europe, and the attraction of being able to play a European -style inperial role in less-developed Asia. Neumann argues that the process of delineating a European "other" from the Russian self is an active form of Russian identity formation. The Russian debate about Europe is also a debate about what Rusia is and should be.

The current attempt in European politics to develop a European identity makes scientific research about discourses on Europe especially relevant. This book takes an analytical gaze at philosophical and political attempts to conceptualise Europe from antiquity to the present and contributes to the understanding of how they are intertwined with the historical contexts in which they have been forged. The volume offers an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of ideas of and for Europe - historical concepts of Europe, Europe as seen from its peripheries and from outside, current concepts of European identity, European memorial culture and reflections on Europe's prospects - and is of special interest to anyone concerned with questions of European identity.

The two concepts at the centre of this book: Europe, and the Second World War, are constantly changing in public perception. Now that 'Europe' is an even more contested idea than ever, this volume informs the current discourse on European identity by analysing Europe's reaction to the tragedy, heroism and disgrace of the Second World War.

The series Religion and Society (RS) contributes to the exploration of religions as social systems- both in Western and non-Western societies; in particular, it examines religions in their differentiation from, and intersection with, other cultural systems, such as art, economy, law and politics. Due attention is given to paradigmatic case or comparative studies that exhibit a clear theoretical orientation with the empirical and historical data of religion and such aspects of religion as ritual, the religious imagination, constructions of tradition, iconography, or media. In addition, the formation of religious communities, their construction of identity, and their relation to society and the wider public are key issues of this series.

The field of international relations has recently witnessed a tremendous growth of interest in the theme of identity and its formation, construction, and deconstruction. In Uses of the Other, Iver B. Neumann demonstrates how thinking about identity in terms of the self and other may prove highly useful in the study of world politics. Neumann begins by tracing the four different paths along which this thinking has developed during this century -- ethnographic, psychological, Continental philosophical, and "Eastern excursion" -- and he shows how these blended at the margins of the discipline of international relations at the end of the 1980s. There follow several incisive readings of European identity formations on the all-European, regional, and national levels. The theme that draws these readings together is how "the East" is used as a sign of otherness at all three levels. Whereas previous studies framed this process as part of colonial and postcolonial developments, this book suggests that "Easternness" is also present as a marker in contemporary discourses about Russia, Turkey, Central Europe, and Bashkortostan, among others.

The Idea of Europe finds George Steiner reckoning with Europe from a number of different angles. “Europe,†? he writes, “is the place where Goethe’s garden almost borders on Buchenwald, where the house of Corneille abuts on the market-place in which Joan of Arc was hideously done to death.†? It is, in other words, a continent rich with contradiction, whose many tensions—cultural, social, political, economic, and religious—have for centuries conspired to pull it apart, even as it has become more and more unified. But what lies ahead for a continent whose borders are growing and economic might is strengthening, even as its cultural identity recedes? A continent where, in Steiner’s words, “young Englishmen choose to rank David Beckham high above Shakespeare and Darwin in their list of national treasures†?? This is the trajectory that Steiner explores so brilliantly in The Idea of Europe.

This book provides an unprecedented insight into the multiple ways through which citizens of 16 countries connect their own national identity to European identity.