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Author: Gauthier Roussilhe
What is Europe made of ? Nothing, unquestionably. It is a political subject governing a non-existent body; a lid without the saucepan. So what is it made of, this lid that covers nothing but itself? It was founded on the well-intentioned belief that peace would be guaranteed if we multiplied exchanges, notably on economic matters. This is a somewhat Lévi-Straussian discourse that considers war, above all, as exchange that goes wrong: maximise exchange, therefore, and we prevent war. But in the societies studied by the anthropologist, the value of the exchanged object was rarely determined by economic circumstances or production, but rather by socio-cultural circumstances and the existence of a reciprocity inherent to the exchange.
Beyond the admirable intentions of those who created the ECSC and EEC, the economic choices made by European states paved the way for an increased number of economic exchanges, which subsequently became woven together to form the lid of our saucepan. But economic union can only be realised if there is political agreement, in the post-war context at least. It is generally rep...
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