Path: news.lth.se!pppa06.sdv.fr!user From: cmlewan@sdv.fr (C Malte Lewan) Newsgroups: eunet.politics,talk.politics.european-union Subject: Community regionalism in Europe (half-long) Date: Mon, 17 Jun 1996 23:58:57 +0100 Organization: Maison de Boulangerie Matter, Steinstross Lines: 109 Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: pppa06.sdv.fr Xref: news.lth.se eunet.politics:18576 talk.politics.european-union:8730 Some of you might remember some discussion I had with Ole Villumsen (no longer on the net) about nationalism. One particular thread (initiated by him) was called "Nationalism is good" (it was a bit more nuanced than that!) where I articulated my ideas about the fabrication on which nationalism builds and my belief only in communitarian nationalism (or regionalism then). Now, one year and three weeks later I've reached another step in my ideas: The original idea is that only "communities" can have a true "nationalism"/regionalism. Here I make the two concepts nationalism and regionalism very similar because I refer to the sense of belonging to a group of people. "Communities" is a key concept to the reasoning. It's an area where a "considerable" number people mix in their daily lives. Obviously, almost any city would be a community (possibly with the exception of very big ones with several centres). Two cities can easily be a community as well if they are close to each other and there is a lot of movement in between them. I think that today, the most salient evidence of two cities belonging to the same community is an existance of commuters. So if this group is "considerable" for a certain area, we have a "community". In the region of Scania in the south of Sweden, for you who know the area, the two cities Malmö (250 000 inh) and Lund (100 000 inh) (with 20 km in between them) would constitute a community. Helsingborg and Ängelholm in the north of Scania (same distance in between them, 60 km away from Malmö-Lund), would be another one. So, Scania is too big to have a true nationalism, regionalism. We might eg. have four (2x2) or maybe nine (3x3) communites. The same - being too big for true nationalism - goes for the Basque country, Slovenia, Alsace and all bigger nation states in Europe with the possible example of Luxemburg that approaches the perfect size though it's on the verge being too big. In Switzerland, as usual, we find again something approaching the perfect system with the country divided into 23 cantons (this time, on the verge of being too small (especially the half cantons)). What is deciding the size of a community is something I won't go into too much here, but you can you yourself imagine what make commuters take the trouble to travel to work everyday: not too long distances, densily populated areas with specializations in work. Even the prices of travel can set the size of the community. That means that (at least in the long term), it can be a political measure to increase or decrease the size. Let me finish with to say that in argicultural areas, people are less keen on moving, so therefore we have smaller communites. Now, nationalism. People can sense the belonging to a community. It's natural. But often, we say that we belong to a bigger group (Basques, Scanians, French...) and sometimes a smaller (Andorra...). How come? Well, first of all, creating a belonging to a national group has been a very popular way of people in power to unite an area to increase the power of this area (and in the old times almost exclusively to give themselves power as a result, less so now). And this is really the speciality of the national state. Here, this idea is driven to its final point. It's one fine fabrication, that most Europeans still believe, for example by routing for their own "national" team in the football championships, even though they come from the periphery (often border zone) of the country in question. But there are regions in Europe bigger than the communites that for some reason have succeded in surviving with a sense of belonging to a "too big" community. Again, the Basque country is a good example. Even though (or actually precisely because) the Scanian identity is clearly weaker than the Basque one (but still existing), it's my completary example. Are the identities of "Basque" and "Scanian" as much nonsense as the ones of the (to the area) bigger nation states in Europe? I'd say not. With these smaller areas where interaction between people have been at least _resembling_ the communitarian way and where the size of the region is no bigger (in a conceptual sense) than maybe the limits of the _neighboring_ community, we're not talking about the same complete (well almost) fabrication any longer. In political economics, sometimes we talk about three sorts of public goods: the facilities you use, the facilities you know are there for you to use whenever you feel like it, and finally the facilites you enjoy just because they exist (eg. you think it's important to preserve some piece of nature far far away because you are simply happy that this sort of nature exist). To transfer this thinking to regionalism, you are I) happy of living together you people who actually go places in the territory and meet people from other parts of the territory every day. Or II) you are happy about a small group of communities hanging together because you feel good about the ease you can go there and meet people from there. But the nation state ideology wants you to III) enjoy belonging to one nation with people you to a large amount never have a chance to meet on a daily basis. There is no possibility. You should just go around and feel being part of the nation, that's all. In line with the theories above, we'd allow Netherland as an acceptable political result of Type II nationalism because the territory is so limited and the movement pretty big, I'd guess. But it's harder to accept that whole territory in France where the Occitan languages (now I a bit falsely include Provencal to make the point) is spoken as a good ground for a political territory since the constituting communities do not come in natural contact with each other (strething from western to eastern South of France). So I'm not saying that all today Europe's nation states are bad and all future territories based on minority speakers are good. Finally, it's necessary once more to stress how the sizes of communities might change. With the contruction of the TGV between Paris and Alsace, Alsace might come more into the zone of being admissible for a French (again: acceptable) Type II nationalism (depending on the price of the route). For the moment, Lund and Copenhagen don't belong to the same (Type I) community. That will probably change with the building of the bridge over the strait. Internet might build communities in the distant future (and even strangely looking non-continuous communities). But, the existence of a Type III community is an illusion. It's nothing. -- Malte Lewan Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Strasbourg, Alsace, UE cmlewan@sdv.fr cml@df.lth.se http://www.df.lth.se/~cml