Culture and Identity in the European Context

This thesis aims to clarify the relation between culture and identity in the context of the European integration. To be precise, it analyzes the European Union’s cultural policy in reference to the nation building process. Nation-states made people believe by means of culture that the imagined communities are real. But in the European context, are there official attempts to create “European Identity” through cultural projects? If so, is it the same way as nation-states have constructed national identity?In order to get a better grasp of the EU cultural policy, this thesis takes theories of nationalism as a clue of analysis, and then investigates the European Union’s cultural policy and attempts. The limit of the European Union’s cultural policy and the shift of its purpose are discussed. Because of the lack of the shared culture and legal limit by the rule of subsidiarity, the European Union cannot take initiative to create one homogeneous culture which nation states have achieved, even if it aims. There was an obvious EU's attempt to create strong European Identity by constructing European symbols in 1980s, however, nowadays the focus of the cultural policy shifts from unity to diversity. European elites no longer intend to make people imagine this community in the same way as the nation-states are imagined. In this context, European unity is considered as logic to connect diverse cultures.