Dissident Voices in Theorising Europe: Another Theory is Possible
Venue: Darwin Conference Suite 3, University of Kent
9am – 4pm, Monday 26 January 2015
Rationale and Aims of the Workshop
The past decade has witnessed a yawning chasm open between scholarly attempts to theorise European union and the political realities of the EU in crisis. The decade that has witnessed the ascendency of political systems analysis, neo-liberal assumptions of efficiency and Europeanisation studies within Europe has also seen the failure of intergovernmental attempts to reform the EU, economic crisis across Europe, and a collapse in popular support for the European project.
Dissenting voices that attempt to theorise Europe differently and advocate another European trajectory have been largely excluded and left unheard in mainstream discussions over the past decade of scholarship and analysis. Mainstream EU scholarship broadly accepts the premise that the EU is a neo-liberal, state-like political system and that Europeanisation is a one-way process. Dissident voices theorising Europe challenge these mainstream assumptions and adopt a variety of ontological, epistemological and methodological standpoints. What they share is their starting point that the study of Europe has a dominant set of discursive, intellectual and academic practices which they seek to challenge.
This workshop presents a set of draft papers for a prospective special issue of the Journal of Common Market Studies due for publication in 2016. The special issue presents an array of dissident perspectives. What they do is to open up different possibilities and understandings of the EU. The special issue is polyphonic in seeking a broad range of dissenting voices from different disciplinary and cultural settings.
More information and the workshop programme can be downloaded here.