In his article ‘Did Dalli act bizarrely?’ (July 10), Ranier Fsadni used phrases such as “One has to show that Europeans, generally, would not have minded” and “one would need to show that such behaviour is not ‘bizarre’ for Europeans.”
While Dr Fsadni’s article does not provide a definition of “Europeans”, it leads to questions about the very idea of typical “European” behaviour.
Needless to say, the reference is not to political behaviour based on values such as liberal democracy, human rights and so on, which make up the wider cultural framework of the West. Instead, the reference is to ethical behaviour, and therefore culture on a smaller scale.
Empirical research – as opposed to theoretical supposition – seems to suggest there is no behaviour which can be classified as typical “European”.
Invoking a universalist, utopian concept of ‘Europeans’ is playing with fire. It is easily understood as provocation
Cultural investigations, such as those of Richard Lewis, clearly and empirically show that there is no “general” European behaviour. There might be a common European underlying substratum, but the European geographical area is inhabited by different cultures.
One would certainly not think that “European” codes of conduct, for example, are mere positivist exercises meant to reduce to writing the rules of some existing common European behavioural culture.
The codes’ existence is self-evidently due to the opposite reason, namely the existence of a multicultural environment which holds sway in any supranational European setting. In other words, because there are different (unwritten and untold) cultural assumptions which have to be negotiated if people are to work harmoniously together for a common cause (such as the EU project).
To put it differently, written rules are needed because there is no single, common “European-ness”. What is not ‘bizarre’ for the Italians might be absolutely ‘bizarre’ for the Finns, say. And vice versa.
The cultural differences between European peoples are vast and well-documented. But the differences do not only run along national fault lines. They exist also within the same individual country. It cannot be denied that Sicilians, for instance, face considerable internal prejudice in Italy – mostly due to the political history of that country.
To argue that there is a European way of doing is not only slightly imprecise. Unfortunately, it is also dangerous.
The idea of a one-size-fits-all way of doing things irritates many, on the left and on the right of the political spectrum.
Mostly, however, it heightens the appeal of extreme-right parties, which define themselves – paradoxically enough – as freedom parties. Freedom, that is, from the almost totalitarianism of this brand of European-ness.
The one-size-fits-all ideal ignores its rival, the pragmatic “unity in diversity” ideal. In so doing, it fuels the sentiments which feed the extreme-right agenda.
One of the tenets of the extremist’s philosophy is a variant of the idea of heimat, which Austrian politician Jörg Haider (1950-2008), for example, used to embrace and promote.
Heimat is a concept which does not lend itself easily to translation.
One Maltese book which dealt with culture and identity rendered the neutral variant as “the feeling of ‘home’”. But one gets the impression that the author himself was not entirely satisfied with that rendition.
Years later, Haider promoted heimat as the essence of localism – a space which surrounds individuals, in which they feel ‘at home’ because it is where they do things their own way not as the others from afar – usually a centre of political power – want them to.
Viewed in this perspective, invoking a universalist, utopian concept of “Europeans” (even if qualified by “generally”) is playing with fire. It is easily understood as a provocation – there are “Europeans” who want to dictate to the locals how to do things, invading their heimat. It is a useless provocation, because these stylised “Europeans” do not exist in reality.
Even when Europe was still Christendom – between the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the onset of the Reformation – there were behavioural differences among Christians.
And this at a time when the powerful, centralised Roman Church tried to make the non-Byzantine part of the continent conform to its worldview and set of moral values.
Localism seems to be an intractable human trait. Fomenting it, instead of keeping it in check by insisting on “unity in diversity”, might spell undesirable extreme-right trouble.