Abstracts
Abstract
This article analyzes the impact of European Union membership on the practice of diplomacy among new member states. What does it mean, for a diplomat, to move from embodying the nation state to representing a member state? To generate a fine-grained account of the experience of adapting to the EU, I conduct an interview-based study of Austrian diplomats’ adaptation to the EU following their country's accession in 1995. Borrowing from the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, the interpretation of the data shows the cardinal importance for diplomats of learning to master the rules that have become taken-for-granted in the EU diplomatic field. Learning to deploy effective strategies in a new EU context, I argue, matters significantly more to the successful adaptation of diplomats than being socialized into a new identity does. This empirical finding suggests that the socialization literature in EU studies has not paid enough attention to social practices.
Appendices
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Interviews
- Interview 1, June 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 4, June 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 5, June 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 7, June 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 8, July 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 10, July 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 14, July 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 15, July 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 17, July 2009, Vienna.
- Interview 19, July 2009, Vienna.
- Interview 20, July 2009, Vienna.
- Interview 23, July 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 24, July 2009, Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs, Vienna.
- Interview 26, July 2009, Vienna.