Bo Stråth

An experiended need for new world history, an alternative to the globalization narrative, was behind the initiation of this project in 2008. An alternative with a focus on how we conceptualize cohabitation on Earth, realizing that humans are not the only inhabitants, as opposed to the story about the transportation of commodities on a world market without borders where human labour, too, became commodities. This experienced need for a new conceptualization in 2008 has since then gained profile and precision in the argument for a planetary perspective on cohabitation on Earth.

There is a lack of a more realistic history that rejects teleological understandings of Europe as a self-propelling project on a steady march towards a predetermined goal. A lack of a history that emphasises the fragility of European peace and progress, so evident today, This project was initiated to respond to this experienced lack.

Perceptions of social inequality at a European level were behind the initiation of this project. An important question was whether the emergence, interpretations and regulations of social inequalities is transformed by new centre-periphery structures in the EU. The project addressed the tension in the fact that EU is an economy but not a polity, a market but not a state. The focus was on the tension that emerges when social disintegration in the wake of market integration cannot be matched by redistributive politics to adjust for inequalities however they are defined.

The focus of this project was the diversity and plurality of cultural orientations and, moreover, ever-shifting cultural practices within Europe. Historical ruptures challenge continuities and instability coexist with stabiity.