Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe

Transnational infrastructures have long been an integral part of projects to unite Europe. From the first ceremonial train of the European Coal and Steel Community to the new border signs that have replaced checkpoints along motorways, such technologies of connection have served as powerful symbols of European unification. But what role have they actually played in integrating - or fragmenting - Europe?

In interpreting infrastructures as mediating interfaces of European projects, this book aims to analyze the complex histories of network technologies in their material, institutional and symbolic performances. Taking material networks as the focal point of study allows the authors to tell a truly transnational history, broadening fruitfully our perspectives on a number of historical narratives. It expands the time frame for exploring European integration by pointing to the longer processes of international connection and co-operation.

These broadened spatial and temporal horizons allow to de-centre the processes of formal integration surrounding the EU after WWII to reveal a broader range of actors and forces in European history.

Alexander Badenoch is Lecturer in Media and Culture Studies at Utrecht University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD in Modern Languages from the University of Southampton, and recently completed a post-doc on European Infrastructures at Technical University of Eindhoven. He is author of Voices in Ruins: West German Radio Across the 1945 (Palgrave 2008). 

Andreas Fickers is Associate Professor for Comparative Media History at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD in History from Aachen University and was Assistant Professor in Television History at Utrecht University. He recently edited A European Television Historytogether with Jonathan Bignell. He is currently President of the German Association for the History of Medicine, Science and Technology.

Title: Materializing Europe:Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe
Author(s): Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers (eds.)
isbn: 9780230232891
Price: £ 65.00
Publisher: 2010, Palgrave Macmillan