Distinct, Yet Common National Identities of European Science Policy Makers

• In Event: 521 - Special Session. The Local-Global Dynamics of World Society

Abstract

The paper scrutinizes the institutional identities and related interests of those working for the European Research Area (ERA) as a new tool of EU research funding cooperation. The results show that the expansion of ERA can be better explained by the expansion of world society than by national interests. Cooperation is justified by European objectives, yet national arguments largely overshadow the common, European good in actual decisions. The paper argues that that is because nationality is abstracted in a way that it creates a common understanding of nationality. In other words national is not used in different and unique, but rather similar ways regardless of the nationality of the user. Thus the idea of nationality and the arguments based on it are the same: drawing on global ideas and values, and shared across Europe. The enduring national viewpoints and arguments are thus not automatically a sign of “non-global”. Instead what is understood as national, national identity or national arguments are in flux and create as well as take influences of global discourses.

Author

• Laura Valkeasuo, University of Tampere Finland