deBuren

deBuren and the Cultural Service of the Polish Embassy in Belgium are working together on a program about nationalism in Europe, as part of the EUNIC in Brussels project Getting Smaller. National cultural institutes (such as the Goethe-Institüt, Alliance Française and the British Council) work together in pairs on a series of four evenings in preparation of a large-scale conference (2012) which examines the phenomenon of ‘shrinking' European Member States.

Economical and political crises in Europe question the role of the national state. Europe should react as unified powerful agent against these crises, but traditional ideas about the necessary expansion of power of European institutes are currently also subject of debate. This conference frames this phenomenon in a political, cultural and economical perspective.

Nationalism in Poland, in Belgium and in Europe?
The nationalistic discourse in Poland and Belgium today has a different breeding-ground and origin. The form it has taken in both countries differs as well. In Poland it is shaped into a continuous urge to create a distinct profile of oneself in opposition to the powerful Russia, while the different types of nationalism in Belgium have a pure national (internal) foundation.

But both discourses have consequences for the European political integration. Can a nationalistic discourse go hand in hand with the European political ideology? In what way does our ‘Europeanness' influence the nationalistic reflex in the youngest and oldest Member States of the Union? Can we translate the findings about Poland and Belgium to other European Member States?

Panel
Bruno Coppieters is Professor of Political Science and teaches courses on the history of political thought, normative political theory and conflict resolution. He obtained his PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1991.
His research focuses on the ethics of war and secession and on federal techniques of conflict resolution. He has published widely on the conflicts in the Caucasus. He was a research fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University in the academic year 2003-04.

Peter Vermeersch is a professor at the Social Science Faculty of the University of Leuven in Belgium (KU Leuven). In 2007 and 2008, he was a visiting scholar at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He is a graduate of the University of Leuven, but he also studied, lived and conducted research in Kraków, Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Venice. He is the author of The Romani Movement: Minority Politics and Ethnic Mobilization in Contemporary Central Europe (Berghahn Books, 2006) and of a recent book in Dutch on ethnic conflict and international intervention (Het Vredesfront, Acco Publishers, 2011). His other research focuses on ethnic mobilization, minority politics, multicultural citizenship, resurgent nationalism and party politics in Central Europe and in the Balkans.

Jurek Kuczkiewicz (Le Soir) moderates the debate.

Take a look at the full program of Getting Smaller here 

This program is organized in the framework of a larger EUNIC in Brussels project, titled Getting Smaller. In collaboration with the Cultural Department of The Polish Embassy and EUNIC in Brussels