The Two Faces of Europeanization

Abstract

Non-synchronous events are constitutive for the social. Every society has to institutionalize synchronicity over time to make a social order of the present possible. A social world of discontinuity (i.e. a non-synchronized world) is amended by a semantics of simultaneity (i.e. a synchronized world) which makes the non-synchronous appear as synchronous. From this follows that synchronicity is a necessary illusion. Cultures of synchronicity are powerful symbolic representations. The case of the New Europe is a particularly striking case. It synchronizes by standardization and by the timing of standardization which generates non-synchronicity at increasing speed. This is called the first face of Europeanization. The New Europe has to legitimate its non-synchronicity and make it appear as synchronicity. This is called the second face of Europeanization. Thus a culture emerges in which non-synchronicity and synchronicity are constructed simultaneously.