European Review of History-Revue Europeenne d Histoire最新文献

The 1976 Seveso disaster and its scandal-ridden aftermath had a lasting legacy that extended to the European Community (EC) and even beyond. When hazardous waste from the Seveso disaster site went missing, it generated a pan-European media scandal and a powerful symbol of the risks that modern industrialized capitalism produced. The scandal also revealed the perverse mechanisms that facilitated and even encouraged the dumping of chemical waste in and outside Europe. A variety of societal groups, ranging from consumers and environmentalists to development organizations, mobilized jointly to campaign against the trade in hazardous wastes. They all shared the same analysis, namely that the EC was both the core of the problem and the beginning of a solution. Setting out three case studies of grassroots mobilization in response to the trade in hazardous waste, this article examines how these activists found their way to EC institutions and how their campaigns evolved in the process. The first deals with the waste trade on the Common Market, the second with the global impact of waste exports from the EC and the third with a local anti-pollution movement emerging in response to the waste trade. Each of these mobilizations involved coalition building, allowing for a broad idea of environmental justice to emerge and for these coalitions to channel grassroots grievances with the waste trade to the EC institutions. In doing so, these grassroots mobilizations contributed to the EC becoming an increasingly important venue for global environmental governance towards the late 1980s.

This introduction to the special issue 'Towards a Social History of European integration' takes as its starting point that European citizens have from the early days of European integration engaged with 'Europe' as an emerging political and social entity, be this indirectly, as in the case of German coal miners marching to Bonn, or directly, as exemplified by farmers taking to the streets of Brussels. Moreover, European policies have shaped lived experiences and natural environments. Such episodes do not structure European integration textbooks, however; nor do they feature prominently in overviews of European contemporary history. The special issue focuses on manifestations of engagement, support and contention from European citizens, social groups and their representatives, both within European institutions and outside. This introduction presents a research agenda for a social history of European integration. The authors use the term 'social history' to describe an approach that centres social actors and their lived experiences with the European Community (EC). First, the article provides an overview of the role which social actors and non-institutional perspectives have played in the historiography of European integration. Second, it discusses relevant trends in writings on contemporary European history, which - when applied to the history of the EC/European Union - allows for moving away from formal institutions of power and expanding the range of political spaces, actors and practices that constitute the 'political'. The authors propose that following social actors as they moved across different political arenas illuminates how they experienced European integration and perceived of the (legitimacy of the) 'European project'.