Abstract
This book deals with the impact of national political cultures and languages on the progress of Social Europe. It is a timely endeavour since comparative researchers too often do not objectify their concepts, let alone the levels of abstraction upon which their comparisons are carried out. The use of technical and international English (Eurospeak) tends to disguise the fact that concepts are often taken out of their national contexts and ‘used to designate a reality of a phenomenon that is actually or only apparently identical’ (p. 83). Consequently, The Road to Social Europe, which is not only a social science contribution but also a political book written by a committed European, intends to give language and national political cultures the position they deserve in comparative research and politics. I fully recommend reading it. Part I offers a concise summary of the history of the European integration process and its social aspects and examines the governance of social protection and its distribution between the EU and its member states. Part II deals with sociological understandings of cultural diversity with emphasis on the dualism between universalism and culturalism and their implications for comparative research. Part III analyses the link between language and politics and argues for a new start for Social Europe by giving priority to languages. I will focus on Parts II and III.
Part II begins with the hypothesis that the social sciences are ‘uncomfortable with diversity’ (p. 65). Groundbreaking approaches such as that of the Regulation School or of Varieties of Capitalism have indeed not spent much time on constructing diversity and national cultures as an object of research. Yet Barbier does not follow the potentially interesting issue as to whether an account of culture and diversity can be built into these approaches. Instead, by elaborating on authors such as G. Sartori and B. Badie (p. 91), he identifies the levels of abstraction that need to be objectified and respected in comparative research and that are also compatible with territorial levels of comparison. At the first level common phenomena on huge scales are analysed, for example the global scale. The second level refers to ‘families of countries’ that share parts of their history and traditions such as the Nordic or English-speaking countries. The third level, the national, is the one where political cultures occur. According to Barbier (p. 91), these are, ‘in a certain sense, irreducibly singular’. The role of sub-national levels such as regional levels in the making of political traditions and cultures is mentioned but not really discussed.
Underlying Part III is the observation that every national society creates ‘its own, relatively closed world’. What we call ‘political culture’ is inscribed in a given political community as a ‘system of meanings embedded in history through collective practices’, which are more or less formally institutionalized and which have crucial significance for what is regarded as fair social protection (p. 105). Since politics is inseparable from national languages, even ‘globalized’ ideas and issues are reinterpreted and filtered nationally (and locally). The role of language as symbolic power (Bourdieu) is indeed rarely reflected in social policy research. The domination of English as the most important international media of communication reflects the hegemony of Anglo-Saxon capitalism on the global scale. It is one of the strengths of Barbier’s book to point to the problematic aspects of the use of international English. If comparative researchers do not dedicate sufficient attention to the ‘idiomatic, symbolic and communitarian fields that give a language its specific density’, they are at risk of unconsciously reducing society (and sociology) to its functional and mechanical aspects and of ignoring the important role that language plays in politics (p. 122). Too often, diversity across nations is lost through commonly used concepts. The use of the same words frequently disguises different meanings that are not identical in different national political cultures. Barbier demonstrates this using the examples of terms such as ‘social class’, ‘precarity’ or ‘social justice’. It would have been helpful to identify the social pre-conditions under which the export and import of terms from one language to another are unproblematic. The mere fact that most languages feature many loanwords and influence others is not necessarily a problem. Of interest and significance for comparative research are the power relations between countries and languages under which such linguistic exchanges take place. If the researcher considers the specific social background for the adoption of a term from one language to another and clarifies the historical and social differences in the use of a ‘common’ term – as Barbier does in the case of precarité and its recent export to the German-speaking world – meaningful comparisons are indeed possible.
Since language is so tied up with politics, Barbier concludes that the genuine language of ‘democratic politics … cannot be unique’ and that international English should not be more than a ‘code of functional communication’. Instead, he demands a ‘plural idiom’ and a substantial European initiative of cultural openness; the ERASMUS programme should not only cover students but also apprentices and unemployed young people. The teaching of languages and humanities should be made a top priority in education and a theme of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) (p. 154). The continuation and direction of The Road to Social Europe depends on the ‘development of widespread multilingualism’ – a conclusion that I read as an invitation to further debate.