Stefanie Pukallus Libri

Focusing on the transformative power of communication in post-civil war societies, the book explores how various media and the arts can facilitate peacebuilding by fostering cooperation among former adversaries. It addresses the shift from discursive dehumanization to civil engagement, emphasizing the need for safe spaces for dialogue. By highlighting the importance of discursive civility, it argues that effective communicative strategies are crucial for achieving lasting and self-sustainable peace in communities affected by conflict.

This book is a study of the multiple meanings of European citizenship, which has been represented and publicly communicated by the European Commission in five distinctive ways – Homo Oeconomicus (1951-1972), A People's Europe (1973-1992), Europe of Transparency (1993-2004), Europe of Agorai (2005-2009) and Europe of Rights (2010-2014). The public communication of these five distinct representations of European citizenship reveal how the European Commission conceived of and attempted to facilitate the development of a Civil Europe. Ultimately this history, which is based upon an analysis of public communication policy papers and interviews with senior European Commission officials past and present, tells a story about changing identities and about who we as Europeans might actually be and what kind of Europe we might actually belong to.

This book argues that early European Commission officials envisaged an integrated civil Europe from the outset. Largely overlooked is the fact that between 1951 and 1972 there was a group of European Commission (and before that the High Authority) officials who wished to build a Civil Europe to sit alongside an economic and political Europe. This Civil Europe was, it was hoped, to become home to a European citizenry equipped with a European civil consciousness that complemented their national and local loyalties. To this end these officials pioneered a series of civil initiatives designed to begin the process of building Civil Europe. This book analyses three such civil initiatives: the building of the first European School, the European Community’s participation in Expo 58 and the production of the European Community’s own documentaries. From the start Europe was designed and conceived of in terms of a European general civil public and not solely in terms dictated by economic and political interests.