Polity-Construction or How the European Union is (De-)Legitimised: A Discursive Political Sociology Perspective

The paper, presented at the 28th Council for European Studies conference in Lisbon/ISCE on 29 July, 2022, introduces a ‘discursive political sociology perspective’ that combines the theory of meaning-constitution developed in linguistically informed discourse studies with Bour-dieusian political sociology and the political theory of polity-building. It shifts attention from outcome (legitimacy) to process (legitimation) and from identification with existing EU institutions to discourse practices that only establish the means of communicating and cognizing EU politics in its potential and postnational character.

Kutter, A., Barnickel, C., & Dück, E. (2022). Editorial. Covid-19 and the reconfiguration of the political

This editorial introduces to the collection of blog posts on discourses of Covid-19 that were published in the first special issue of the Crisis Discourse Blog. The authors of the blog posts explore the repercussions the pandemic has had on ‘the political’, on what constitutes our political struggle and political identities in the pandemic era. They observe that Covid-19 has left a legacy in the ways in which we communicate, do and imagine politics.

Research network ‘Peripheralities’

The research network ‘Peripheralities’ that has grown out of the Marie-Curie project ‘Reconfigurations’ brings together researchers that investigate peripheries, peripherisation and peripheral subjectivities in a transdisciplinary fashion. Participants combine conceptual and analytical perspectives on peripheries from sociology, human geography, discourse studies, postcolonial studies, political economy and economic history.

Crisis and crisis narratives in Southwest Europe. Workshop for participants of the regional meeting of Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes

In the past decade, societies in France, Italy, Portugal and Spain have gone through mutiple crisis. The recent pandemic further aggravates calamities that were already visible during the financial and Eurozone crisis: social inequalities, dysfunctions in national systems of social security and health provision, political instability and non-sustainable economies. At the same time, the Covid-19 pandemic markes a shift in policies of crisis management: on both national and European levels, policy-makers have departed from austerity and agreed on stimulus programmes, instead. This workshop explores reasons for this policy shift and the role, crisis narratives play in making that shift more or less possible.

Exercise in complexity and contingency: the example of the MES-Viadrina snap-shot simulation of EU legislation on asylum and migration

This paper, presented by Amelie Kutter at the DVPW Congress 2021, suggests that a neglected, but promising, potential of EU simulations is their function as exercises in complexity and contingency. If designed appropriately, simulation games not only reveal the complexity and contingency of EU politics (cognitive learning), but also the complexity and contingency of thinking about EU politics (cognitive-reflexive learning). Drawing on the example of a snap-shot simulation of the first reading of the EU’s New Pact on Asylum and Migration that was carried out as part of the lecture class ‘Introduction to the politics of the European Union’ at the MA European Studies unit of European University Viadrina, I will show such learning objective can be fostered in simulation game design.

Expert panel: Boundaries of social citizenship in EUrope

Recent crises have revealed that access to social rights, such as social security, short time work, housing, or health care is essential for the resilience of economies to external shocks, but also for sustaining social cohesion, trust and belonging in European societies. Prof. Dr. Dagmar Schiek (University College Cork); Dr. Alexandre de le Court (Universidad Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona); Dr. Norbert Cyrus (Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION) and Dr. Amelie Kutter discuss problems of transnational social citizenship highlighted by the Covid-19 pandemic, in the frames of the Research Factory B/ORDERS IN MOTION on 8 Dec, 2020.

Project: The Crisis & Discourse Blog

The crisis & discourse blog is a platform for people interested in disentangling and reflecting upon forms of language use that emerge or reinforce in times of crisis. The major concern is to reveal how recurrent forms of language use and crisis discourse contribute to the entrenchment of social hierarchies or open up prospects for collective action. Researchers and students have already worked on contributions that will be published successively in thematic issues. Calls for further contributions will follow soon.