We Europeans?

William Uricchio

Description

We Europeans? explores the relationship between media and identity along the fault lines and fissures of the shifting ethnicities, religions, tastes, generations, and languages that make up contemporary Europe. Addressing topics such as film, television, public monuments, and the press, an international group of contributors reveal how European identity is shaped as the continent administratively consolidates. In essays that explore cultural homogenization, longed-for identities, and the fears surrounding transnational media, this volume uncovers the intricate interactions of history and memory as they inform the European present.

Sujets

• Media Studies
• Social Science
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Ethnic studies
• General officer
• General
• Cultural Studies
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841502847
• Langue: English

Extrait

We Europeans?
Media, Representations, Identities
The European Science Foundation (ESF) is an independent, non-governmental organisation of national research organisations.
Our strength lies in the membership and in our ability to bring together the different domains of European science in order to meet the scientific challenges of the future. ESF s membership currently includes 77 influential national funding agencies, research-performing agencies and academies from 30 nations as its contributing members.
Since its establishment in 1974, ESF, which has its headquarters in Strasbourg with offices in Brussels and Ostend, has assembled a host of research organisations that span all disciplines of science in Europe, to create a common platform for cross-border cooperation.
We are dedicated to supporting our members in promoting science, scientific research and science policy across Europe. Through its activities and instruments ESF has made major contributions to science in a global context. The ESF covers the following scientific domains:
Humanities
Life, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Medical Sciences
Physical and Engineering Sciences
Social Sciences
Marine Sciences
Nuclear Physics
Polar Sciences
Radio Astronomy Frequencies
Space Sciences
March 2008
We Europeans?
Media, Representations, Identities
Edited by
William Uricchio
Cover photo credit:
Olafur Eliasson
The weather project, 2003
The Unilever Series, Turbine Hall, Tate Modern, London
Monofrequency light, projection foil, haze machine, mirror foil, aluminium, scaffolding Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin; Tanya Bonakdar, New York;
Photo: Karin Becker




First Published in the UK in 2008 by Intellect Books, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2008 by Intellect Books, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright 2008 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Changing Media, Changing Europe Series Editors: Peter Golding and Ib Bondebjerg Cover Design: Gabriel Solomons Copy Editor: Laura Booth Typesetting: Mac Style, Beverley, E. Yorkshire
ISBN 978-1-84150-207-6 EISBN 978-1-84150-284-7
Printed and bound by Gutenberg Press, Malta.
C ONTENTS
Foreword
Acknowledgements
We Europeans? Media, Representations, Identities
William Uricchio
Imaginary Americas in Europe s Public Space
Rob Kroes
Towns in Search of Identity
Roger Odin
Getting Away and Going Home: The Visual Experience of the Exile as Tourist
Karin Becker
Exiles and Ethnographers: An Essay
Philip Schlesinger
Imperialism, Self-inflicted? On the Americanizations of Television in Europe
J r me Bourdon
Media and Cultural Diversity in Europe
Kevin Robins
Meanings of Money: The Euro as a Sign of Value and of Cultural Identity
Johan Forn s
Nation, Boundaries and Otherness in European Films of Voyage
Maria Rovisco
The Media and the Symbolic Geographies of Europe: The Case of Yugoslavia
Sabina Mihelj
Sicilian Film Productions: Between Europe and the Mediterranean Islands
Giuliana Muscio
Contributors Notes
F OREWORD
This volume is the product of a major programme under the title Changing Media - Changing Europe supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF). This programme was the first to be sponsored by both the Social Sciences and the Humanities Standing Committees of the ESF, and this unique cross-disciplinary organization reflects the very broad and central concerns which have shaped the Programme s work. As co-chairpersons of the Programme it was our great delight to bring together many of the very best scholars from across the continent, but also across the disciplinary divides which so often fragment our work, to enable stimulating, innovative, and profoundly important debates addressed to understanding some of the most fundamental and critical aspects of contemporary social and cultural life.
The study of the media in Europe forces us to try to understand the major institutions which foster understanding and participation in modern societies. At the same time we have to recognize that these societies themselves are undergoing vital changes, as political associations and alliances, demographic structures, the worlds of work, leisure, domestic life, mobility, education, politics and communications themselves are all undergoing important transformations. Part of that understanding, of course, requires us not to be too readily seduced by the magnitude and brilliance of technological changes into assuming that social changes must comprehensively follow. A study of the changing media in Europe, therefore, is indeed a study of changing Europe. Research on media is closely linked to questions of economic and technological growth and expansion, but also to questions of public policy and the state, and more broadly to social, economic and cultural issues.
To investigate these very large debates the Programme was organised around four key questions. The first deals with the tension between citizenship and consumerism, that is the relation between media, the public sphere and the market; the challenges facing the media, cultural policy and the public service media in Europe. The second area of work focuses on the dichotomy and relation between culture and commerce, and the conflict in media policy caught between cultural aspirations and commercial imperatives. The third question deals with the problems of convergence and fragmentation in relation to the development of media technology on a global and European level. This leads to questions about the concepts of the information society, the network society etc., and to a focus on new media such as the internet and multimedia, and the impact of these new media on society, culture, and our work, education and everyday life. The fourth field of inquiry is concerned with media and cultural identities and the relationship between processes of homogenization and diversity. This explores the role of media in everyday life, questions of gender, ethnicity, lifestyle, social differences, and cultural identities in relation to both media audiences and media content.
In each of the books arising from this exciting Programme we expect readers to learn something new, but above all to be provoked into fresh thinking, understanding and inquiry, about how the media and Europe are both changing in novel, profound, and far reaching ways that bring us to the heart of research and discussion about society and culture in the twenty-first century.
Ib Bondebjerg Peter Golding
A CKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Collaborative projects of this kind emerge not only because of the efforts of their authors, but because of the participation of many others who create the conditions necessary for such projects to prosper. Thanks are due in the first place to the European Science Foundation and particularly the Standing Committees for the Social Sciences and for the Humanities. This project emerges from an interdisciplinary programme entitled Changing Media, Changing Europe , which sought to advance networking among European scholars researching various aspects of the mass media. Initiated by Peter Golding and Ib Bondebjerg, the programme enabled cross-disciplinary, transnational, and inter-generational collaborations that have blossomed not only into a series of publications, but into robust professional networks and lasting friendships.
I would like to thank the leaders of the project s other teams - Jostein Gripsrud, Peter Ludes, and Els de Bens - for their insights and support. And I would especially like to thank Ib Bondebjerg, whose wisdom and interventions helped to make herding cats not only possible, but pleasurable.
Special thanks are due as well to the many individuals who aided us on our site visits.
Whether informants, who helped us to design our programme and visits, or specialists who shared their insights with us, or media makers who enabled us to listen and see in new ways these people were invaluable to the project s success. Their efforts permeate and inform the pages that follow.
Heather Owen provided unflagging logistical support, text editing, and humour, enlivening even the most mundane transactions. Melanie Harrison and her team at Intellect Books struck precisely the right balance between professionalism and patience as they coaxed this book into existence.
Most of all, I would like to thank the participants of Team Four - the authors of the essays included in this volume as well as Daniel Dayan, Kirsten Drotner, Sonia Livingstone, Mirca Madianou, Dominique Mehl, Ulrike Meinhof, and Roberta Pearson, and for too short a time, Carmelo Gartaonaindi and Liesbet van Zoonen. Our five years of semi-annual meetings, collaborative explorations, and late night discussions provided, for me at least, an intellectual and emotional substance too often absent from the professional routines of everyday university life.
I am grateful to our team member Karin Becker for taking the cover photo, and to her and Martina Kupiak for arranging permission to use the image of Olafur Eliasson s 2003 Tate Modern installation, The Weather Project.
Finally, an acknowledgement of a very different nature: the essays heterogeneous citation systems reflect the academic and national traditions of their authors. Although the redactional default tends towards the uniform, this gesture underscores the concern with identity so central to the project.
William Uricchio Cambridge/Utrecht
W E E UROPEANS ? M EDIA , R EPRESENTATIONS , I DENTITIES
William Uricchio
The volume in your hand is the result of a unique constellation of factors. It draws on the