Prelims

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Transregional Europe

Title Page

Transregional Europe

By

William Outhwaite

Emeritus Professor of Sociology, Newcastle University, UK

United Kingdom – North America – Japan – India – Malaysia – China

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Emerald Publishing Limited

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First edition 2020

© 2020 William Outhwaite

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ISBN: 978-1-78769-494-1 (Print)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-493-4 (Online)

ISBN: 978-1-78769-495-8 (Epub)

About the Author

William Outhwaite, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, UK, taught at the universities of Sussex, in the School of European Studies, and Newcastle, where he is Emeritus Professor of Sociology. His interests include the philosophy of the social sciences (especially realism), social theory (especially critical theory), political sociology and the sociology of knowledge.

Professor Outhwaite is now working mainly on contemporary Europe. He is the author of Understanding Social Life: The Method Called Verstehen (1975, 2nd edn. 1986), Concept Formation in Social Science (1983), New Philosophies of Social Science: Realism, Hermeneutics and Critical Theory (1987), Jürgen Habermas: A Critical Introduction (1994), The Future of Society (2006), European Society (2008), Critical Theory and Contemporary Europe (2012), Social Theory (2015), Europe since 1989: Transitions and Transformations (2016), Contemporary Europe (2017) and (with Larry Ray) Social Theory and Postcommunism (2005). He edited The Habermas Reader (1996), Brexit: Sociological Responses (2017), (with Tom Bottomore) The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought (1993, 2nd edn. 2004), (with Luke Martell) The Sociology of Politics (1998), and (with Stephen P. Turner) the Sage Handbook of Social Science Methodology (2007) and Sage Handbook of Political Sociology (2018) and (with Luca Corchia and Stefan Müller-Doohm) Habermas global: Wirkungsgeschichte eines Werks (2019).

Preface

This book continues a line of argument developed in my European Society (2008), Europe Since 1989 (2016) and Contemporary Europe (2017). It aims to integrate work such as ‘new regionalist’ approaches in human geography and planning with related scholarship in history and the other social sciences. At the time of writing, the future of the UK and its relationship with the European Union (EU) still remains open, but it is possible to make two remarks here. First, there is no obstacle in principle to non-member states participating in EU programmes of the kind discussed here. Second, however, when the UK does secede, on whatever terms, it will probably cease to appear in many of the statistical sources on which writers on contemporary Europe have increasingly relied. ¹ This is a further source of regret amidst a much broader tragedy. The EU will survive (and hopefully thrive) without the UK, though it is hard to see any future for the UK or whatever remains of it after its probable dissolution.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Bob Jessop and Krishan Kumar for providing copies of papers. I have also benefited from conversations with a number of other friends and colleagues, in particular Gerard Delanty, who read the book in manuscript.