A Sociology of Knowledge Approach to European Integration: Four Analytical Principles

Abstract

Scholars are deeply involved in the process of European integration, but we lack systematic understanding of this involvement. On the one hand, scholars, academic ideas and ideologies shape European integration and policies (e.g. the Economic and Monetary Union and the free movement of people). On the other hand, EU institutions, policies and practitioners produce particular forms of knowledge (e.g. the Eurobarometer and benchmarking of national performances) that inform social scientific choices of theories, methods and research topics. Drawing on the new sociology of knowledge as well as Science and Technology Studies (STS) and political sociology, this introductory article develops a framework for studying the entanglement of EU studies with the EU around four analytical principles: (1) the principle of symmetry, (2) the principle of rejecting the internal/external division, (3) the principle of situatedness and (4) the principle of contextualism. A sociology of knowledge approach provides alternative explanations of the EU's development and of our scholarly attempts to make sense of it.

A Different Europe is Possible: The Professionalization of EU Studies and the Dilemmas of Integration in the 21st Century

“…But equally, the successful establishment of a scholarly narrative about what the object of study is and what is happening has the potential to privilege some approaches over others. Moreover, the policy and academic domains are not necessarily separated, and there is a growing body of work to suggest that the relationship between the two fields – in the co‐production of knowledge – should be of particular interest to scholars of the EU (Adler‐Nissen and Kropp, ; Mudge and Vauchez, ; Ryner, ; White, ).…”

The history of transdisciplinary race classification: methods, politics and institutions, 1840s–1940s

“…Like must current sociology of science, I found there was a constant interchange between these 'internal' scientific and 'external' sociological/political factors. 20 A political, real-world vocation has thus been central to several transdisciplinary projects. 21 UNESCO and the EU have, for example, been key sponsors of the post-1970 transdisciplinary movement, which emphasises the social application of research.…”

Fall and Rise: Normativity in Political Science Writing on the EU

“…Scholars should however be aware of dissonance between these habitual practices and the powerful Western tradition, especially in scholarship, whose ideal of objective truth is constructed in contrast to normativity. In the positivist ideology of science, ‘good’ scholarship’ and ‘rigour’ require ‘an objectivist gaze free from’ the author's own ‘personality’, emotions or viewpoint and an assumption that political science and politics constitute separate spheres (Adler‐Nissen and Kropp, , p. 156; Eagleton‐Pierce, , p. 809; Oren, , p. 20). Though generally recognized by practitioners as not entirely achievable and despite sociologists of knowledge having criticized positivism for decades as a social construct, this objectivity norm remains a ‘prevailing convention’ in the social sciences (Berling and Bueger, , pp.…”

“…805–806). Where this has emerged in EUS‐PS, it focusses on issues such as the subfield's transatlantic and theoretical cleavages and has only very recently begun to engage with sociology of knowledge literature (Adler‐Nissen and Kropp, ). Self‐described critical scholars do reproach the scientific objectivity ideology of ‘traditional’ positivist EUS‐PS for reproducing established ‘power structures’ and being infused with the conservative ‘economistic rationalities and methodologies’ of American political science (Manners, , pp.…”

“…Section III then assesses the relative impact of factors that may explain normativity's decline and recovery. Here I incorporate the key sociology of knowledge insight that ‘external’ factors in the object of study, such as the EU's 2008 economic crisis, interpenetrate and mutually influence factors ‘internal’ to academia, like generational change, definition of disciplines, and rivalry among sub‐disciplines and theoretical factions (Adler‐Nissen and Kropp, , pp. 156, 160–165).…”