European Journal of Social Theory 12(4): 427–447

Copyright © 2009 Sage Publications: Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC

A Theory of Collective Identity

Making Sense of the Debate
on a ‘European Identity’
Klaus Eder
H U M B O L D T U N I V E R S I T Y, B E R L I N

Abstract
This article argues for a robust notion of collective identity which is not
reduced to a psychological conception of identity. In the first part, the
debate on the concept of identity raised by several authors is taken up crit-
ically with the intention of defending a strong sociological conception of
identity which by definition is a collective identity. The basic assumption is
that collective identities are narrative constructions which permit the control
of the boundaries of a network of actors. This theory is then applied to the
case of Europe, showing how identity markers are used to control the boun-
daries of a common space of communication. These markers are bound to
stories which those within such a space of communication share. Stories that
hold in their narrative structures social relations provide projects of control.
National identities are based on strong and exclusive stories. Europeaniza-
tion (among other parallel processes at the global level) opens this space of
boundary constructions and offers opportunities for national as well as sub-
national as well as transnational stories competing with each other to shape
European identity projects. The EU – this is the hypothesis – provides a case
in which different sites offer competing opportunities to continue old stories,
to start new stories or to import old stories from other sites, thus creating
a narrative network on top of the network of social relations that bind the
people in Europe together. European identity is therefore to be conceived
as a narrative network embedded in an emerging network of social relations
among the people living in Europe.

Key words
■ collective identity ■ European identity ■ narrative analysis ■ network

analysis ■ sociological theory

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428 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

Identity: A Contested Concept

Collective identity has been at the centre of attention in societies that were formed
in the course of the making of the nation-state. The nation, however, has not been
an exclusive focus. Collective identity can equally refer to cities, to regions, or to
groups such as political parties or even social movements. For some time, collec-
tive identity has also been an issue with regard to Europe where public debate is
increasingly concerned with the problem of a European identity that is seen as
lacking or as necessary. But why do societies, groups and even a union of nation-
states such as the EU need an identity? For a person, an identity allows them to
be recognized as something particular vis-à-vis others. But why do groups, up to
the nation and even transnational phenomena such as the EU, need an identity?
The argument in the following is that the distinction between the identity of
persons and the identity of groups and societies is an empirical one. Persons and
societies are cases of identities. Persons have an identity by positioning them-
selves relative to other persons and by giving to these relations a meaning that is
fixed in time. An identity guarantees being a person in the flux of time. The same
holds for groups: a group has an identity if it succeeds in defining itself vis-à-vis
other groups by attributing meaning to itself that is stable over time. Identity as
an analytical concept covers all these cases: identity emerges by linking past social
relations with those in the present. In some cases, even future social relations are
included; in this case, identity is linked to ideas of salvation or fate that include
future social relations in our present existence. All these ‘constructions’ emerge
within a specific type of social relations in the present and allow an interruption
of the permanent change of social relations, thus creating an identity in which
persons, groups or societies can see themselves and be seen by others as being
‘identical’ over time.
Everyday common sense in our society uses the concept of identity in a differ-
ent way; it sees identity is something that a person or a group has. Contrary to
this common sense, sociological sense sees the person or the group as a special
case of identity that has emerged in a highly particular type of social relations:
persons are transformed into individuals in social relations which are defined as
relations between ‘free and equal people’. This is the modernist form of social
relations of transforming persons into something that has an identity, i.e. indi-
viduals. This modernist form of social relations also transforms groups into
something that has a collective identity, i.e. into nations. In the historical move
from subjects to individuals and from kingdoms to nations, we can observe a
shift in the construction of identity. Identity is reconstructed since it refers to
a different type of social relations. In such social relations, identity becomes a
particular preoccupation of ‘individuals’ or ‘nations’, as the permanent work on
identity repair and identity confirmation shows.
As an analytical concept, identity denotes something that holds across all these
cases, providing stable meaning in the flux of social relations. Since identity in
this sociological usage refers to social relations, any kind of identity is by defin-
ition social. Individuals and nations in the society we live in constitute the two

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 429

poles of identity constructions.1 In-between, we have a series of social forms such

as couples, families, associations, classes, regions, or ethnic groups which can be
seen as intermediate cases of identity. The two poles of identity constructions are
not fixed, since changing social relations might produce forms of identity beyond
the nation, an issue that is at the core of the debate of European identity and
that makes this debate theoretically important.2
In the following, a theoretically robust notion of collective identity will be
presented. This task is carried out in the next section in a critique of the critical
statements on the concept of collective identity that have arisen in the past
decade. It consists of recuperating it from the fragments of the deconstruction of
this concept in recent theorizing. The constructive argument in this recuperation
effort is based on two assumptions. The first is that that processes of identity
construction vary with the complexity of social relations. The second assump-
tion is that processes of identity construction have a ‘narrative structure’. These
two theoretical moves then help to reassess the ongoing debate on the identity
of Europeans or of a ‘European identity’ which preoccupies elites, sometimes
people and which keeps active a rather significant part of the public debate and
increasingly scientific debate on ‘Europe’.
In an oft-cited paper, Brubaker and Cooper (Brubaker and Cooper, 2000)
made a strong attack on the concept of identity in the social sciences following
this lead. They make three strong arguments.
Their first criticism has been that reputed authors using the term do not really
need it.3 They use identity only as the marker of an intention (to be culturally
sensitive). Identity is not related to the social analysis that has been presented
elsewhere in their work. A second criticism of Brubaker and Cooper is that the
notion of collective identity necessarily implies some notion of primordialism.
Assuming that collective identity denotes something beyond shared values or
norms, then there must be something more substantial than this to justify its use.
The constructivist position starting with a non-essentialist position ends up in
essentialist notions of collective identity. Constructivism produces outcomes that
contradict its basic premises of fluidity and multiplicity. A third criticism is that
we already assume a groupist social ontology which forecloses the analytical grip
of the diversity of patterns of non-groupist social forms; we exclude by definition
the possibility of non-groupist social life, the possibility of living social relations
without claiming an identity. Yet the solutions which Brubaker and Cooper offer
do not resolve the problems addressed by them.
The first argument forces us to specify the added value of using the notion of
collective identity as an analytical category. This is an obvious postulate. Categor-
ical ornamenting or fashionable category-dropping should be avoided. We should
either propose a strict sociological notion or leave the concept to psychologists
who interpret identity as a phenomenon of the human mind. My proposal is that
we can make a strong sociological concept out of it as long as we do not confuse
it with psychological notions.
The second argument that some substantialism is implicit in constructivist
accounts of collective identity implies that substantialism is in some sense ‘bad’.

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430 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

The implicit answer of Brubaker et al. is that we should assume a world in which
the social no longer needs an overarching naturalizing symbolism. However, there
are social situations in which primordialism does pop up. Thus, the theoretical
answer should be to identify situations in which constructions of collective iden-
tity vary between primordialism and artificialism.
The third argument against the ‘groupist ontology’ raises the issue of the
mechanism through which social actors relate to each other. Collective identities
are, the argument says, ‘groupist ontologies’ which in fact they are. They are
symbolic forms through which a world of social relations is mirrored. These
ontologies exist and have a structure and are the result of social processes that
can be reconstructed. Doing away with such ‘ontologies’ is missing the object of
a theory of collective identities. Groupist ontologies become the more import-
ant, the more social interaction is mediated by cultural techniques that establish
sociality without the presence of the other. Such forms of indirect sociality need
a social rationalization that invokes the social. Therefore, we have to assume that
there is something that they have in common beyond the co-presence of the
others. The theoretical assumption that follows is that the idea of collective
identity emerges when cultural techniques (such as bureaucratic formula, written
texts, computer interfaces) serve as interrupts of social interaction and generate
indirect social interaction. To act beyond natural bonds, i.e. through cultural
techniques, means to generate an abstraction of social experience.
The argument then is that there is an increasing need for such collective
identities in complex societies when indirect social relations increase in number.
To forestall the macro-theoretical argument: The more a human society is differ-
entiated, the more it needs a collective identity. The central hypothesis that derives
from this assumption is that collective identities vary with the structure of the
system of indirect social relations. The theory does not assume that collective
identity is unitary, coherent. This is only one way of organizing the social bond
among people. Collective identity can also be fuzzy, multiple. It is the variation
of identities which requires explanation. The theory proposed explains this vari-
ation as being contingent on the structure of social relations among people. In
other words, the network structure linking a people shapes the construction of
the identity of that network which then is used to reproduce this network struc-
ture.4 Thus, collective identity constructions are a central building block of social
relations. Therefore, we should not give up the concept of collective identity, but
make better use of it.

Collective Identity Construction as Projects of Control:

Adding Narrative Structure to Evolutionary Process

The functionalist argument implicit in evolutionary theory tells us that it is

necessary to create bonds which oblige people to pay taxes, to send their kids to
schools, or to die for their country. On a more abstract level, it says that I accept
that things are done to me by others which I accept only by those with whom I

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 431

have a special social relation, a sense of some community. This common factor
obliges people to accept the social norms imposed upon them.5
The argument that collective identities are collective rationalizations of social
relations points to the trans-psychological character of collective identities. The
link between identity and reality is to be constructed independent of psycho-
logical assumptions about human needs or motivations for collective identity.
The psychological grounding may even turn out to be a variable that varies with
the form of collective identities. This happens when groups turn toward outside
references for a collective identity. As Pierre Nora argues: ‘Moins la mémoire est
vécu de l’intérieur, plus elle a besoin de supports extérieurs et de repères tangibles
d’une existence qui ne vit plus qu’à travers eux’ (Nora, 1984: xxv).
Collective identities are social constructions which use psychological needs
and motives to provide an answer to the questions ‘who do I belong to?’ or ‘who
do we belong to?’ Collective identities make use of such psychic references in
specific social constellations. This happens regularly in social relations bound to
concrete social interaction. It also happens in social relations that transgress the
realm of social interaction such as constructions of national identity and produce
situations of ‘effervescence collective’, as Durkheim described it. The more in-
direct social relations are, the more important become social carriers such as texts
or songs or buildings which store collective identities. To the extent that collec-
tive identities are linked primarily to individuals in concrete interaction situations,
emotional ties such as the sense of pride and shame become important mechan-
isms for reproducing collective identities. To the extent that collective identities
are linked to objects as their carriers, these objects become carriers of generalized
emotions that are built into the object, into images or texts. Such generalized emo-
tions are embodied in what can be called ‘narratives’.
This argument thus takes seriously the emotional aspect of identity construc-
tions. There is something in the social relations that goes beyond the sense of
shared interests and reciprocal solidarity. But this does not imply a return to a
psychological notion of a sense of identity or of identification. It rather leads us
to think social relations in terms of shared meanings, i.e. narratives that people
share ‘emphatically’ with each other. This sense of narrative sharing has to do
with the sense of being part of a particular ‘we’. This can be called the ‘narrative
bond’ that emerges in some social relations (but not in all of our social relations).
Thus, a collective identity is a metaphor for a specific type of social relations that
are embedded in the last instance in a narrative network that is as dynamic as
the stories are that are produced and reproduced in ongoing social communica-
tion mediated by these social relations (Eder, 2007).6
Collective identities are analyzed as narrative networks that emerge in evolu-
tionary processes; the path of development of such networks is prescribed by the
structure of the narratives at play. The proposed theory argues that in complex
societies, strong collective identities will emerge and that the narratives people
share to live in this complex world will remain the basic building blocks of iden-
tities. The difference from the traditional world is that everybody lives through
and with an increasing number of narratives that mediate social relations. This

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432 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

also increases the contingency of the developmental path prescribed by narrative

networks.
National identity constructions are the last instance of a collective identity
with a clear path prescription, the making of nation-states. National identities
do what collective identities do in general: they are stories that combine a series
of events in texts, songs and images which some people recognize as being part
of their particular we, i.e. as a collective identity. In addition, national identity
constructions have succeeded in imposing themselves as a hegemonic identity
in a territorially bounded political community. This exclusiveness is built into a
story which links people defined as citizens of a political community. This story
is transmitted to and learned by new generations, practised in national rituals
and objectified in songs (anthems) and images (flags). Counter-stories exist in
those political communities in which two hegemonic stories compete (such as
Belgium or Canada). Yet even in these cases, the two stories are often aligned in
one national story, told in different languages.
This national solution is increasingly contested. Narratives appear which tell
different stories about who we are. The problem is the co-existence of many hege-
monic stories. This creates not only a practical problem but also a theoretical
problem: How to conceive the narrative network underlying a political commu-
nity in a situation where we have many narratives floating around and referring
to it? The case in point is Europe.7

Making Sense of a ‘European identity’

From Identification with Europe to European Identity

Constructions
Research on collective identity construction in Europe is dominated by some
variants of the social identity paradigm. Social identity theory claims that iden-
tifications have group-specific effects in terms of distance and proximity. This
paradigm is useful because it allows us to use existing survey data which measure
the degree to which people start to be ‘proud’ of their ‘institutions’ (at least to
trust them) and ‘identify’ with Europe (conceived in political or cultural terms)
(Kohli, 2000). Another way is to emphasize symbols of state power, such as a
flag, a hymn, a representative building, or the memory of a successful political
act such as the act of unification which can be represented in a flag (with 15
stars) which are made the object of ‘knowledge’ or ‘identification’ with Europe.
Taking such indicators at face value requires assuming that strong identifications
and good knowledge imply strong identities.8 But it is a long way from identi-
fications to identities and there is no necessary parallelism between strong iden-
tifications and strong identities. A collective identity is different from what is
measured when we look at the degree of identification with a predefined set of
symbols. Such research tells us about the feedback effect on the individual level
in the process of collective identity construction. It tells us nothing about the

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 433

mechanisms of identity construction that might provoke such feedback effects.

Such research does not make theoretical sense of collective identity construction
in Europe.9
The substantive result of the research on identification with symbolic repre-
sentations of European political institutions is that they continuously show a weak
sense of belonging with regard to Europe, much less than exists in the nation-
state. The political community as a legal space with rights and duties does not
provoke identification, which means that they lack meaning beyond national
culture.10 Since the basis of strong identification with political symbols is depen-
dent upon the culture within which they make sense, research has turned to
cultural symbols in order to find something that is worth identifying with in
Europe. This search was guided by the theoretical expectation that what makes
national symbols worthy of identification also holds for European symbols. Some
people looked for this meaning in some kind of republican idea of Europe. Others
were searching for it in some kind of cultural idea of Europe. Interestingly
enough, this debate reproduces the classic debate on the making of a nation over
a republican conception of the nation and a cultural conception of the nation
(Brubaker, 1992; Giesen, 2001).
While searching for a European identity in terms of identification with Europe,
the space of communication in the EU expands. Something is happening that
does not show up in the surveys. The problem is therefore to figure out how this
expanding space is filled with new symbols that provide a sense of the limitations
of that space. This sense of limitation is not necessarily linked to the symbolic
representations of the European political institutions or of a particular European
culture.11 This sense is rather emerging in the course of constructing increasingly
dense networks of social relations in Europe that need a collective identity as a
project of their control.
The proposal is to look not at political or cultural symbols but at stories that
emerge in the making of a network of social relations among those living in
Europe. There are at least three ways of telling such stories in Europe which are
not reducible to the national tool-kit for constructing collective identities. There
is a story based on a successful process of unification, i.e. the story of the Euro-
pean integration process as a successful economic and political project, which is
the basis of a European citizenship narrative. This is the story of the making of
a rich, yet socially responsible continent, the story of an economic yet social
Europe. There is another story that emerges from the memory of a murderous
past of Europe. The space of communication based on shared memory is a poten-
tial source of strong feelings. Stories telling a shared past constitute boundaries
with high emotional value. There is finally a story that relates to Europe as an
experiment in hybrid collective identities, not as a ‘melting pot’, but as a ‘diver-
sity pot’, which is a story in the making. The three stories, the story of a success-
ful common market as a citizenship narrative, the cultural story of a shared past
and the story of a ‘new’ social bond of diversity emerging in Europe might
produce present-day feedback effects in the mind of Europeans – but to do so
they first have to have emerged as stories.

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434 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

What binds Europeans into a network of social relations at the European level
does not show up in established research. It only provides some indications of
individual resonance to what is asked in the questionnaires which themselves
rely on the model of the old European nation-states. Collective identity remains
hidden in the black box of aggregated individual responses. Their answers are
like remote effects of processes working behind the backs of these individuals.
To excavate more systematically the symbolic forms in which emerging identifi-
cations with Europe make sense and grow is the task ahead.

From Normative Claims to the Analytical Description of

Collective Identities in Europe
A second strand of research on a European identity which is based on a norma-
tive approach does not fare any better than the socio-psychological approach.
The basic argument is that a democratic Europe needs a people conscious of itself
as a people. This argument has been formulated as the ‘demos’-problem. A demos
is the constituent of a democratic polity (the ‘people’), and as such it needs a
collective identity that goes beyond the idea of a people as just a bunch of private
interests. Democracy in Europe needs a people with an idea about themselves
that links them beyond private egoistic interests. Ideally the bond should be so
strong that it accepts redistributive measures by political institutions. This bond
could even be conceived as something that motivates people to die for the poli-
tical community they live in.12 To die for a symbolic bond is simply a mode of
sharing which mobilizes the strongest possible emotions. With such a normative
standard in mind, collective identities are classifiable as varying between the poles
of being weak and being strong in terms of emotional attachment to a good thing.
We could translate this normative argument into the conceptual framework
of the theory proposed above and provide a sociological instead of a normative
argument. Arguing that European collective identity is so far a weak identity
simply says that the story of the common market does not suffice to control the
boundaries of a space of communication linking free and equal individuals into
a political community. It is argued that ‘Europe’ needs a different story than that
of exchanging goods through the medium of money (i.e. the Euro). Euro coins
provide a story for delimiting a common symbolic space which involves people
in their being rational individuals seeking their own advantages. It needs more,
a story which tells people that they are citizens of a political community. And
maybe it even needs a still stronger identity since it must generate a sense of a
particular responsibility and recognition of the other European citizens which
goes beyond recognizing them as co-citizens. This argument, however, has always
troubled normative democratic theory since it produces a further problem that
is hard to tackle within classic political theory: that those following universal-
izable rules for each other need a special sense to connect to some (those who
are members of community) and less to others (those who are not members of
the political community). This special sense is no longer based on universalistic
arguments, but on narrative images.

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 435

The normative debate helped to denounce the idea of a common market as

a mode of living together; it gave power to political institutions which started to
engage in fostering and making a European identity. What this identity finally
implies remained rather imprecise: beyond the acceptance of political institu-
tions, this debate produced more dissent than consensus on what a European
identity should look like. The debate therefore remains inconclusive.
Rather than taking this debate as an explanation of identity construction, it
can be taken as a series of events in the process of identity constructions that is
going on within and outside these normative debates which are used to construct
a particular narrative as a special (even chosen) people. Normative arguments are
a part of narratives; they are embedded in narrative clauses that convey meaning
to argumentative debates (Eder, in press). Normative debates are therefore an
important part of the process of identity construction, part of an ongoing story
that is produced in arguing about Europe.

The Reference Object of a European Collective Identity

Making theoretical sense of collective identities that have emerged and are
continuing to crystallize in the course of European integration is a sociological
programme directed at and against socio-psychological and normative approaches
to European identity. Sociological approaches tell us whether, how and to what
extent identity markers emerge in social processes that are situated in time and
space. Normative discourses on collective identity are part of collective identities,
explicit justifications of the boundaries of a network of social relations. Norma-
tive conceptions of a European identity are therefore part of the phenomenon
that needs an explanation. The same holds for social-psychological approaches.
To find another starting point to analyze ongoing processes of identity
construction in Europe is to take Europe as an empty signifier. It could mean
anything ranging from the identification with a culture to a geographical unity
ranging from the Atlantic to the Urals or to a unity that coincides with the legal
realm of the European Union or to a unity that is defined by membership in the
Council of Europe. We could take such ‘ideas’ as proxies for a Europe to be taken
as a reference object of collective identity. Thus we could talk about a cultural
Europe, a geographical Europe, a Europe of Human Rights, and a political
Europe. Thus Europe is decomposed into a series of ‘Europes’ (in the plural)
specified by an adjective. Nevertheless, the problem of the construction of the
thing to which a European identity refers remains.
Collective identities refer to a space of communication, the boundaries of
which vary with what is communicated. This is an implication of the theoretical
assumption that collective identities are constructed through stories. Stories that
link people vary with the communicative network which they constitute. Thus,
the reference object of collective identities is a network of communication with
boundaries which are identified and controlled by an identity. Networks of
communication generate identities as a project of control of their boundaries
(White, 1992).

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436 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

The boundaries of Europe could be defined – following the national model

– by political boundaries. In that case the legally defined space of the European
Union is the referent for a collective identity. Legal definitions are grounded in
stories that link people in that space in a particular way, mainly as citizens in that
network. This network develops social relations as connections between citizens
that can vary from dense to loose relationships. The trend is so far toward increas-
ing density, measured by the increasing number of legal regulations that impinge
upon the life of European citizens. This legal definition of a network of social
relations corresponds to attempts to define a political control project: linking the
citizens in a political identity and thus controlling the boundaries of a legal space.
This very specific condition (legal rules as based on stories that bind) generates
political identities as a project of control of the boundaries of the European poli-
tical community.
The story of this project is the European citizenship story which competes
necessarily with the national citizenship story. National citizenship is the result
of a long process of historical concept formation in which national identity
emerged, integrating social and cultural differences under a new concept: citizen-
ship (Somers, 1995). This same concept is now used to make a European identity:
inventing the European citizen as the narrative core of a European identity.13 To
indicate the difference, some adjectives have been used to mark the difference of
European and national identity such as the idea of cosmopolitan citizenship. Yet
there is no way to avoid national citizenship stories from adopting cosmopoli-
tanism as one of their elements. Cosmopolitanism fits just as well into the story
of national as well as European citizenship. This story, since its beginning, has
exclusively been tied to nationally defined networks of social actors. Thus there
is an inherent difficulty with constructions of a collective identity based on the
citizenship story.
This citizenship story is enriched by reference to the Common Market and
to a Social Europe. Both are connected like two sides of the one coin and their
combination often serves as a possible particularity of Europe that distinguishes
it from the rest of the world. This object is integrated into the European citizen-
ship story: the story of a successful process of European integration which trans-
formed foes into friends, which transformed war into wealth and freedom (i.e.,
the ‘four freedoms’). It is further supported by defining the role of this EU-
Europe in the outer world, i.e. to define Europe as an actor with a clear role in
the world.14
A second reference object is European culture, mainly defined as its tradi-
tions. The substance of this European culture is itself contested. Europe is rather
a battlefield of cultural images that confronts the cultural traditions that have
shaped Europe. This is the particular ‘cultural heritage’ of Europe. It finds it in
its ‘values’ which are opposed to the values cherished in other cultures. These
Others are, however, shifting objects: the non-European world is projected on
some particular Others, sometimes on the ‘East’, sometimes on the ‘Orient’,
sometimes on ‘America’. Distinguishing a European culture from such Others is
a strategy for the foundation of a story about a European Self, i.e. a collective
identity.

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 437

The difficulties with such a reference object which is taken as unique, clear
and well-bounded lead to a third reference object based on the assumption that
a European Self has never existed. Europe has many different cultures that have
co-existed for centuries; this refers not only to the different national cultures that
come together in Europe; it also refers to the Arab and Jewish and other Eastern
cultures that have had and still have a strong impact on what we consider to be
part of Europe, which are equally inside and outside of a European culture. And,
finally, Europe has added the cultures of the Others in the course of migration
movements over past decades which again cannot be assimilated without having
an impact on Europe’s culture. Thus, reducing the reference object of a European
culture to its ‘values’ or ‘cultural heritage’ is a simplification which does not take
into account the contradictory cultural orientations and the contestations about
their ‘Europeanness’ in present-day Europe.
What kind of story can be told about this diversity of a European culture? We
can imagine a story about the many cultures and the forms in which they have
encountered each other and shaped the course of cultural change in Europe.
There are stories in Europe, in Southern Europe, stories about the co-existence
of Arab and Norman culture, of Jewish and Christian culture, of Mongols and
‘gypsies’ in Europe. These stories often tell terrible tales which does not mean
that the end of the story is hell. Thus it seems to be an open story, which can be
continued and which is fostered in a Europe where these different cultures again
clash – yet under different conditions from the past. Which collective identity is
mobilized depends on the story that is chosen to identify the boundaries of a
network of social relations that bind ‘Europeans’, i.e. those living in Europe and
fighting for its cultural orientation, to each other.
The three basic stories, the story of a common market and a Social Europe
embedded in the story of a European citizenship, the story of a unique Euro-
pean culture, and the story of a hybrid Europe are incompatible. They will not
coincide in terms of constructing a clear boundary; rather, they construct differ-
ent boundaries. They tell about different ‘Europes’ (in the plural). Thus, Euro-
pean identity emerges as something with varying boundaries, depending upon
which story we tell. Whether there is an overall story connecting these stories
and transforming them into one ‘European story’ depends upon a series of
restrictive conditions. According to the theoretical model presented above, this
has to do, first, with the evolution of networks of social relations in Europe, and
then with the structural properties of these different stories which determine
their narrative connectivity. The question could be answered in the positive to
the extent that Europe develops social relations in which the economic, legal and
cultural boundaries coincide, as was the case in national societies.15 Such homo-
geneity of the economic, cultural and the political dimension is not given in the
European context. Europe is characterized by the non-coincidence of these
different boundaries. Taking Europe as a unique culture disembedded from its
political institutional framework goes beyond the national model yet keeps the
assumption of a homogeneous culture. Taking Europe as a hybrid form of social
relations gives up even the assumption of clear cultural boundaries of a Europe
in search of its identity.

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438 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

Looking at European identity as a project of control of a European society,

the assumption resulting from the ‘evolutionary’ part of the theory presented
above is that in a European society being more than any other society in need of
a collective identity, we have to expect emergent patterns of constructing a collec-
tive identity in the context of culturally non-congruent multiple networks of
social relations. Whether there will be a story of the three stories thus becomes
a new issue for research.
The first observation is that the multiplicity of networks of social relations
evolving in Europe allows more stories to flow within these networks. Since such
systems are composed of loosely coupled partial networks, the narrative media-
tion of the loose coupling of a diversity of networks of social relations becomes
the focal problem of these networks of social relations. Since coupling is – as the
theory claims – mediated by narrative meaning, the issue of how stories can link
such networks of social relations and generate an identity of these networks is
the key problem. Since social relations in such systems are held together by a
multiplicity of stories, the solution of one hegemonic story no longer works.
Europe is confronted with coordinating at least three hegemonic stories.
In the following, these three model stories for constructing a collective identity
for Europe are discussed more systematically. The idea is to distinguish three
formal network structures of social relations on which projects of defining an
identity for Europe are built. These will be distinguished as supranational, post-
national, and transnational identity constructions of Europe. Three stories can
be related to these model identities. They are used to make sense of these
constructions and provide the collective resonance that can absorb floating iden-
tifications in Europe. Supranational identity constructions make use of the plot
of the ‘Jean Monnet success story’. Postnational identity constructions follow the
plot of ‘And they will live in peace together forever’. Transnational identity
constructions finally work with the plot of a ‘broker Europe’.16 These three stories
provide narratives with which different models of networks of social relations,
i.e. different types of societies, can be produced and reproduced. These elements
are organized in a specific sequence which gives narrative meaning to these
elements. Thus identities can be analyzed as being more than a series of identi-
fications with a market, a polity or a culture; they can be analyzed as a specific
sequential pattern of organizing such identifications into a coherent whole which
is a story.

Models of Collective Identities in Europe

The first model story links national stories directly to a supranational story.
National stories become part of a network of stories which has a ‘star struc-
ture’: national stories are linked to a centre which constitutes the connection
between national stories via this centre, without direct links between the units
of this narrative network. It is only via the centre that the national identities are
integrated into a higher one. This does not require direct links between the

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 439

national stories. The meaning of national stories is dependent upon their rela-
tionship to the centre: the closer to the centre, the more it provides elements of
an emerging European story; the further from the centre, the more such elements
become irrelevant. Thus there is permanent struggle going on in which the link
to the emerging story is contested.
This particular network structure can be called a supranational story since it
relies on the emergence of a distinct story of something that is decoupled from
national stories. This supranational story is the becoming story of Europe which
so far has only a brief history (60 years). It can be extended by adding precursors,
either in the twenties of the last century, or in the course of the nineteenth century.
Sites for constructing such a centre-oriented network are especially Brussels
and Strasbourg. The Council of Europe is trying to tell such a supranational
story, defining the boundaries of Europe in a larger perspective than a more
closed EU story does. Rituals of enacting this EU story are European summits,
European days, giving meaning to Europe’s flag and anthem.
A case for such a supranational story is the story of Jean Monnet as the
founding father of United Europe, which can have a more efficiency-oriented
version, a version tending towards some idea of moral and political excellence of
European politics, or a version of a common European culture that is defended
and kept by European institutions. Also counter-narratives add to this supra-
national story. The critique of an Empire Europe, mobilizations against Fortress
Europe or the general critique of Brussels as a site of arrogance of power con-
tribute to the making of a supranational story of Europe.
The second model story is based on a particular mode of linking national
stories. National stories are networked through direct links which do not crys-
tallize around a centre. European identity appears as a network of national net-
works. This emerging network minimizes the distances between the parts of the
network (maximizing its geodetic distances) and follows the pattern of a ‘clique
structure’.
This clique network structure produces postnational identity as its control
project. Postnational identity is the added value of merging national stories into
shared stories. The distances between the national stories in Europe vary, yet their
interaction forces them to position themselves in relation to other national stories
without ending up in isolation from some or all of these other stories.
The story that is told about Europe is then a story in which the relations
between national stories and their actors are at stake. Winners and losers, heroes
and perpetrators of the recent past and of the present are related, change position
and try to find a new position in an emerging European script. Germans and
Austrians are repositioned as well as Poles or Hungarians; Italians and French
have to struggle to position their heroes in this emerging postnational script.
Euro-scepticism and Euro-affirmativism spread across the national heroes. Euro-
scepticism is no longer connected only to the English and affirmativism is no
longer the domain of the Germans. The emerging story turns into a postnational
story where national actors try to relate their proper stories to those of the others
by looking for a position in a postnational plot in Europe.

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440 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

Sites for staging this star-structured network are WWII rituals and Holocaust
rituals where a European story is enacted. European film rituals or European
soccer games provide an analogous opportunity to define a social relation between
Europeans that makes narrative sense beyond the nation.
A case for such a postnational identity is retelling the story of the winners of
WWII by including the losers. Another case is the Holocaust, a traumatic story
linking victims and perpetrators across nations. It also appears in counter-
narratives of a Eurosceptic Europe which mobilizes the losers of Europeanization
across national boundaries in Europe in favour of the nation as the exclusive site
for solidarity.17
The third model story can be identified which describes Europe as a site in
which cultural differences cut across national differences, thus creating a different
structure of cleavages among the people in Europe. This third model is based on
networks of groups interacting across national borders and creating a unity out
of an increasing diversity of national and non-national elements. This network
structure differs from the others in the sense that it does not provide direct inter-
active links between its parts, yet produces an ordered network of social relations.
It is a network integrated by the structural equivalence of the positions of groups
of actors. Indigenous and immigrant and migrating people are related to each
other as claiming or occupying structurally equivalent positions in an emerging
European society.
Such a transnational story fosters the narrative of hybridity, the equal partici-
pation in a diversity of cultures in Europe. Sites for such transnational relations
fostering hybrid collective identities are particular places in Europe where hybrid-
ity has been lived for some time. Cases are the commemoration of hybrid cultures
in Southern Spain, Southern Italy, Sicily and Turkey or Europe or the commem-
oration of Europe’s Abrahamic past fostered by the re-entry of the Islamic and
the Jewish story into Europe’s Christian story. Stories of hybrid Europe are
narrated as model cases for a Europe where distinct religious traditions succeeded
in living together in peace and reciprocal enrichment. The Jewish story is seen
as an instance of brokerage between Europe and the Other of Europe in a way
similar to the Islamic story which can be seen as a bridge between Europe and
the Other of Europe. There exist also counter-narratives of a transnational Europe
which is ‘tribal Europe’, the idea of a Europe based on primordial ties that precede
concrete interaction ties and which claim structural equivalence on the basis of
some constructed common origin.
Such hybrid constructions reposition Europe and its Other in a way that
transgresses the basic assumptions of the first two models. The first two models
still assume a core substance defining Europe that is realized in social relations
of communication and understanding. The third model provides a model story
in which cleavages and unbridgeable differences undermine the search for a
coherent ‘good story’, for the simple story plot of a good Europe. Yet there is
still a story to tell, i.e. the story of the art of living together. This art requires
competent reflexive actors, engaging in demanding performances which do not
presuppose understanding but take understanding as a rare and happy moment
in a series of permanent misunderstandings.

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 441

Transnational identity as a project of control of networks of social relations

that engage in permanent crossovers is embedded in a story which makes itself
the object of a story: it is reflexive storytelling. It combines many and different
stories and mixes them in an unforeseeable way. Europe provides a site for such
reflexive storytelling which is increasingly used for hybrid constructions: a Euro-
pean Islam, a European Jewry, a European Christianity, a European secularism
and universalism which emerge from the encounter and hybridization of tradi-
tions and cultures inside and outside Europe. Europe in this sense is an experi-
mental site for a collective identity that differs in all respects from historical
experience.

European Identity as a Case of Transnational Identity

Construction

Europe has more than one story. At the same time, this society has developed a
discourse about itself in which it thematizes itself stating that it has so many
stories that bind and separate. Thus, European society is an ideal case for
studying the link between increasing complexity and the search for narrative
bonds.
How are these stories combined? Is there a story of the stories, a meta-story
to tell in Europe? A meta-story that might gain hegemonic status as the national
story did in the modern nation-state. This question cannot be answered in an
affirmative way. The answer has to be decomposed into the sequential ordering
of these stories and their points of contact. We have to look at the temporal
dimension of the use of this tool-kit in which some boundaries of what consti-
tutes Europe have been left aside, while others have gained in prominence and
older ones have been reframed. We have to deal with a dynamic process that
accompanies the construction of Europe as a political community from its begin-
ning. The creation of a narrative network is a process exhibiting sequential
patterns and generating constraints on reproducing the social relations created
so far. In this sense, collective identity is a process of creating a space of social
relations which never ends.
Yet it is possible for the analytical observer to block the future of such processes
in a thought experiment and describe in which sense the future to come can be
fixed. The idea of the nation has succeeded in blocking the future of collective
identity construction for a long time. The temptation to fix it forever has ended
in a series of national civil wars and ethnic cleansings which undermined this
process of telling one story with a fixed end. The process of creating a collective
identity in Europe in the same vein would end up in two analogous bottlenecks:
the first is that it would be premature to block the process of organizing social
relations in terms of one collective identity because there are many collective
identities that are used to structure an unsettled space of social relations; the
second is that blocking the future might in principle be counter-productive since
it would create high identitarian conflicts over which boundary has to be recog-
nized and which not.

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442 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

When we block the making of a European story, then we see something that
is more artificial than any of those that have managed to provide the narrative
network for social relations such as ideas of ‘nation’, ‘empire’, ‘lineage’ or ‘caste’.
Terms such as hybrid identity are fashionable and point to the temporary and
unstable mix of different stories controlling the boundaries of a space of commu-
nication. Europe has a moving boundary which depends on the story we mobilize.
To give precedence to the political story is an unwarranted move. Political iden-
tities compete with other stories. The emerging competition of political and
cultural stories in the debate on the link between politics and religion is an indi-
cator of a moving link. The link between the economic story and the cultural
story is equally dynamic as the fights about a neo-liberal economy and social
economy show (Boltanski and Chiapello, 1999).
A European narrative is a dynamic combination of different stories that will
produce a dynamic form of collective identity, i.e. favour a permanent process
of constructing and reconstructing a European identity. To reduce it to a neo-
liberal or a cosmopolitan or a traumatic identity misses the emergent property
of their parallel existence. This is still a highly abstract conclusion yet it points
to the basically temporal character of identity constructions which vary in terms
of their openness toward the future.
Collective identities emerging from such processes are increasingly multi-
dimensional and multilayered. Stories by which identities are constructed do not
simply co-exist but rather influence each other and produce emergent properties
through multiple forms of recombination. Evolutionary theory proposes ‘recom-
bination’ as a result of processes of generating new elements (stories) and their
selection in the course of building up social relations among human beings. It,
however, has nothing to say on how such recombination works. This is an open
space that is to be filled. Theoretically speaking, we have to expect structural
restrictions and opportunities for stories to combine or to separate. Instead of
identifying ‘collective identities’ as entities, we should see identities as evolution-
ary products of processes in which stories are combined and recombined.
Europe is an ideal case for such a theoretical perspective: Europe produces
stories about itself in the permanent confrontation with stories about the Other
which again produces effects in the Other who produces his own stories by
looking at the first as the Other (the case in point is the reciprocal storytelling
that takes place between Europe and Turkey or Europe and Russia). Such recip-
rocal storytelling produces shifting identities in which permanent identity muta-
tion takes place. These processes can be halted by political identities with the risk
of entering into identitarian struggles with cultural identities. They can be halted
by cultural identities with the risk of entering into conflict with political identi-
ties. And economic identities can try to block the future while provoking poli-
tical and cultural identities. What could emerge is a story of conflicting stories,
a reflexive meta-story in which we tell each other about the futile attempts to
block the future. But this is mere speculation.

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 443

Conclusion

The debate on European collective identity so far has not been able to establish
a systematic link between the forms of collective identity constructions and the
networks of social relations in which this process is embedded. Thus, theorizing
European identity has lost its empirical foundation. This loss has been compen-
sated for in two ways: by a thin theoretical strategy which is to reduce the issue
of collective identity to the issue of the extent of identification with Europe, or
by a thick theoretical strategy which uses nation-building as the model for collec-
tive identity construction in Europe. The thin strategy does not tackle collective
identity constructions since identifications are elements of collective identity
construction, but not its organizing core. The thick strategy assumes that Europe
will develop in a way analogous to the national story, which is an unwarranted
assumption. Variations in public pride or identification with Europe as measured
in surveys indicate the resonance of a people to stories that serve for identity
construction. A collective identity might produce identifications, and thick iden-
tities produce a lot of strong identifications. But collective identity is not the
result of identifications, it is rather the object to which identifications refer. The
explanation of the construction of collective identity must therefore be sought
independent of the identifications that it produces.
The proposal made in this article has been to analyze the construction of
collective identities in Europe by looking at the sites where debates on its identity
take place. The market has been mainly devalued and even denounced as a site
for a collective identity, in spite of the fact that the success story of the Common
Market would have offered a good institutional starting point.18 The central
debate on a European identity focuses on a politically defined collective identity,
such as the discourse on constitutional patriotism in Europe or on a secular legal
culture in Europe such as the one represented in the Council of Europe.
However, the cultural symbols mobilized by this Council are universal values that
not only the people in Europe share. This reduces boundary controlling effects
and undermines the construction of a strong collective identity. Another variant
is the claim that an ethical self-understanding is binding those living in the EU
together (Kantner, 2006).19 These arguments are not explanations of processes
of identity constructions, but elements in stories providing projects of control of
the boundaries of ‘Europe’.
Thus, we have several sites in which stories circulate that compete for hegem-
ony in the process of collective identity construction in Europe. Its social basis
is a society that constitutes itself in overlapping circles. These networks no longer
coincide as they do in the national situation. Thus, the social embedding of
identity constructions poses a new theoretical problem: the idea of a society that
consists of partially overlapping networks of people. Each of these networks has
its own stories that compete to represent each of these networks. This produces
a dynamic of identity construction which needs analytical description and theor-
etical explanation. Analytically we have to understand the complex interplay of
many stories circulating in partially overlapping networks. And we have to identify

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444 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

when and where stories can be linked with other stories, by identifying the
structural restrictions and opportunities for the connectivity of stories. Thus, we
can take seriously the idea of Europe as a multilayered society of partially over-
lapping networks in which a plurality of stories is circulating and a new story of
stories can be created and narrated. For the time being, we have to reckon with
a plurality of projects of collective identities in Europe which vary in their
combination in time. This plurality might turn out to be an advantage: instead
of imposing a hegemonic ‘grand narrative’, Europe can live with a diversity of
stories that need only one property: to offer nodes as docking stations for other
stories. Thus storytelling in Europe will be an open process, capable of taking up
new stories without assimilating them. The only criterion that counts is: to be
able to continue to tell a story.
Identity is a contested concept – this was the observation at the beginning.
The end of the theoretical story is the observation that Europe is a space with
contested stories and that it is through contestation that stories that bind can be
told. In this space the links between stories will multiply and connect many other
stories that so far nobody considered to be part of Europe. The emergence of a
new society in Europe and the temporary blocking of its future in terms of
constructing a plurality of European collective identities form the phenomenon
that we have to understand. This makes the analysis of a ‘European identity’ a
demanding theoretical, methodological and empirical task.
The conclusions to be drawn from the foregoing discussion are recipes for
further research. For the moment I see four such proposals for organizing
research on collective identity in the context of Europe and for generalizing from
this context to some model of collective identity beyond the nation:
• Identifying sites and stories of the narrative network that emerges in Europe.
• Identifying the story structure organizing this narrative network.
• Describing this narrative network as a project of control of social relations
(and its boundaries) in Europe.
• Explaining the turning points in the evolution of the narrative network by
the social relations between people, regions, civil society organizations,
economic organizations and finally nation-states that emerge in the course
of Europeanization.
By applying these proposals we do not need psychological assumptions such as
a minimum of ‘identifications with Europe’ in order to see ‘identity’ in Europe
and explain its emergence and evolution. If there is a collective identity, then
identification will come – more or less, depending on social structures that
develop in the emerging society in Europe.

Notes

1 I leave aside the idea of humankind as an identity construction beyond the nation
since it leads to the other pole of the identity of individuals. Humankind is the sum
of such individuals. Whether the idea of cosmopolitan identity goes beyond this
aggregate notion of individual identity has to be seen.

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 Eder A Theory of Collective Identity 445

2 Forms of identity beyond the individual are another theme which is raised in the
context of debates on ‘subjectivity’.
3 The authors cite Tilly (1995), Somers (1994, 1995) and Calhoun (1994).
4 This also implies an argument against psychological theories that see collective
identity as something that people need to identify with. I rather take a Durkheimian
view seeing collective identity as a social fact imposed upon us and forcing us to
identify with (the success being variable).
5 This argument takes up the problem of the non-normative foundations of obliga-
tions. This again raises the infinite regress of asking where solidarities come from.
To avoid this infinite regress, they are taken as being functional for creating networks
of social relations without social interaction.
6 In Eder (2000), I tried to treat identity construction as a process of contestation in
protest groups which provide a quasi-natural laboratory for the making of a group
out of boundaries. In Eder (2006) Europe is taken as a space of communication
linking networks of social relations and story production.
7 This point has also been made by Ash (2007) who argues that Europe ‘should’
combine a series of stories that distinguishes it from the national member states.
8 From this theoretical perspective, a series of practical and basic research studies has
been carried out. The Commission has organized its own database on this basis
(European Commission, 2000). Bruter (2005) has provided an interesting account
of what he calls collective identity construction from below which means to
construct European identity by aggregating individual preferences and opinions on
Europe.
9 There is also a methodological problem with such surveys since they provoke answers
to questions people might not really ask themselves. This is the well-known critical
argument of Bourdieu (1980) against survey research. The argument has been well
supported empirically by Champagne (1988).
10 Here the idea of constitutional patriotism has tried to give such a cultural meaning
to a legal space. So far this has not worked as the Eurosceptic sentiments have shown
in recent years.
11 This is an empirical statement issue that research on a European public sphere has
generally corroborated. This is not yet an empirical claim regarding the ‘normative
quality’ or ‘identitarian quality’ of that sphere. For a more elaborate attempt to make
sense of that space, see Eder (2007).
12 It is obvious that such arguments follow the lead given by the strong link between
democratic statehood and national identity, claiming that only nation-states so far
have been able to realize robust democratic structures.
13 See the contributions to Eder and Giesen (2001) which point to this ambivalence.
The high investment of the EU (DG XII) in citizenship research in the past ten years
is another indication of the attempt to foster European citizenship as a shared belief
(and story) in Europe.
14 This external dimension of a European identity has become a focus of much recent
research on European identity. See the contributions to Cederman (2001), the
research of Kantner et al. (2009) which emphasized the role of defence and foreign
relations in constructing a ‘European identity’. See also Risse and Grabowsky (2008)
who see foreign policy as the key to generating a European identity.
15 This also holds for the United States. They share a common language which Europe
does not. Constructing an identity under such conditions is thus more demanding
than is the case in the USA.
16 This proposal follows in part a typology that has been proposed by Ifversen (2008:
127).

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446 European Journal of Social Theory 12(4)

17 This does not exclude the synchronic emergence of a global story of losers of glob-
alization – yet the interesting case here is that Europe is a case for a ‘regional story’
that still maximizes its distances to the IS story or other stories outside the EU and
Europe.
18 Such arguments can be found in arguments about the Euro as a common symbol
for market exchange or in ideas about the EU as a symbolically loaded marketized
world (Risse et al., 1999).
19 This approach has developed a series of variants. The most visible has become the
idea of a deliberative Europe as the core of its cultural foundation or even its collec-
tive identity. See as a good example the contributions to Eriksen (2005).

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■ Klaus Eder is Professor of Sociology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin,

where he teaches comparative macrosociology with particular emphasis on the
sociology of culture and political sociology. His more recent publications concen-
trate on sociological theory, public sphere, symbolic power, citizenship and social
movements. Recent publications are (with Willfried Spohn (eds) Collective Memory
and European Identity: The Effects of Integration and Enlargement (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2005). Address: Institute of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Berlin,
Universitätsstr. 3b, 10099 Berlin, Germany. [email: [email protected]] ■

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