Integral Europe

"Holmes convinces the reader that integralism plays a large role in shaping mainstream political discourse on Europe as well as in bolstering an explicitly fascist and marginal opposition."

Auteur

Douglas R. Holmes teaches social anthropology at the Univesrity of Otago, New Zealand. He is the author of Cultural Disenchantment: Worker Peasantries in Northeast Italy (Princeton).

Texte du rabat

Over the past 15 years, the project of advanced European integration has followed a complex secular and cosmopolitan agenda. As that agenda has evolved, however, so have various hard-line populist movements with goals diametrically opposed to the ideals of a harmonious European Union. Spearheaded by figures such as Jean-Marie Le Pen, the controversial leader of France's National Front party, these radical movements have become increasingly influential and, because of their philosophical affinities with fascism and national socialism--politically worrisome. In Integral Europe, anthropologist Douglas Holmes posits that such movements are philosophically rooted in integralism, a sensibility that, in its most benign form, enables people to maintain their ethnic identity and solidarity within the context of an increasingly pluralistic society. Taken to irrational extremes by people like Le Pen, integralism is being used to inflame people's feelings of alienation and powerlessness, the by-products of impersonal, transnational "fast-capitalism." The consequences are an invidious politics of exclusion that spawns cultural nationalism, racism, and social disorder. The analysis moves from northern Italy to Strasbourg and Brussels, the two venues of the European Parliament, and finally to the East End of London. This multi-sited ethnography provides critical perspective on integralism as a form of intimate cultural practice and a violent idiom of estrangement. It combines a wide-ranging review of modern and historical scholarship with two years of field research that included personal interviews with right-wing activists, among them Le Pen and neo-Nazis in inner London. Fascinating, provocative, and sobering, Integral Europe offers a rare inside look at one of modern Europe's most unsettling political trends.

Résumé
The project of advanced European integration has followed a complex secular and cosmopolitan agenda. This title provides a perspective on integralism as a form of intimate cultural practice and a violent idiom of estrangement. It looks at one of modern Europe's most unsettling political trends.

Contenu

Preface ix Acknowlegments xi Chapter One: Inner Landscapes 3 Part One: EUROPE 17 Chapter Two: Flowering of Cultures 19 Chapter Three: Science and Metaphysics of Solidarity 37 Chapter Four: Cultural Physician 59 Chapter Five: An Essential Sociology 75 Chapter Six: Society and Its Vicissitudes 90 Part Two: EAST END 103 Chapter Seven: Call It Fascism 105 Chapter Eight: Factual Racism 116 Chapter Nine: Authoritarianism 138 Part Three: ATAVISM 163 Chapter Ten: Radical Symmetry 165 Chapter Eleven: Eclipse 191 Notes To The Chapters 203 Bibliography 231 Index 247