Trineke Palm organizes panel at European Social Science and History Conference

Trineke Palm organizes a panel on “the affective glue of European integration” at the European Social Science and History Conference in Leiden.

This panel asks the question: How have transnational networks shaped the start-up of European integration (1930-1957) and how did they develop and make use of a shared emotional vocabulary to articulate their ambitions, dreams, longings, and dreads in this respect?

While there have been numerous accounts of the early years of European integration emphasizing the importance of economic and (geo-)political interests, the emotional dimension in the history of European integration has often been overlooked.

Research on the role of emotions in international relations has shown that emotions both inform the perception of interests and ideas, and are actively used to mobilize or constrain support for certain political ideas. Moreover, emotions are important to understand the interactions among policy-making elites. For example, a shared emotive vocabulary facilitates political negotiations, and political ideas that are tied to dominant “emotion norms” (i.e. affective glue) can be expected to be more successful. This panel aims to examine emotions as the driving force of European (dis)integration.

It features papers from Domenica Dreyer-Plum (University of Bonn) on the emotions involved in Europe’s legal culture, Taru Haapala (University of Jyväskylä) on the European Federalist Movement in the 1940s and 50s and Jenny Hestermann (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt) and Anne-Isabelle Richard (Leiden University) on the role of fear and distrust in European integration. Trineke herself will present on emotional contestation in the debate about a European army in the 1950s.