Materializing Europe: Transnational Infrastructures and the Project of Europe ed. by Alexander Badenoch and Andreas Fickers (review)

On 3 July 2012, a press release by the European Parliament announced an agreement on new rules for the transnational railway network, which should "stimulate the supply of international freight and passenger services" and "guarantee better competition." The headline states that "Parliament strengthens basis for high-performance rail network in the EU." The article is one of the many examples of the confident narrative about European unity suggesting a direct relation between European and infrastructural integration: Europe as a (coherent body of) institution(s) univocally influences Europe as a geographical entity by means of infrastructure networks. The central aim of the edited volume Materializing Europe is to debunk European historiography that builds too strongly on this rhetoric and therefore reduces history to a linear story dominated by a steady evolution toward unity—from the former EEC to today's EU and its expansion from six countries in 1957 to twenty-seven in 2012—thus fitting seamlessly in discourses on modernization and globalization.

Materializing Europe sheds a different light on the process of European integration by telling a more complex and dynamic story of a tripartite Europe: a coherent institution, a geographical entity, and an encompassing body of infrastructure networks. By following and contextualizing debates on transnational technological projects, Europe is portrayed as a fluid assembly of institutions, nation states, and networks. Three thematic strands, then, complemented by short biographies of prominent individuals, objects, and symbols, focus subsequently on ideas of Europe, movements stitching Europe together, and European performance in specific projects.

The book successfully dissects how national competition, technological innovation, sociotechnical actors, and geographical determinants all contribute to an intermittent course, surprisingly manipulated by configurations of forces outside of formal European institutions. For example, the essay by Andreas Fickers and Suzanne Lommers shows that international television broadcasting pioneered through a collaboration of the French and British broadcasting companies, with little involvement of the "official" European Broadcasting Union. Likewise, Erik van der Vleuten argues that it was not a strong European organization such as the EEC that offered a context in which cold-chain food supply was possible, but an overlap of multiple organizations. In addition, the collection of essays also complicates the geographical definition of what "Europe" is being integrated, as most networks originated out of collaboration or competition between a limited number of countries. Alexander Badenoch, for instance, demonstrates how geographies of Europe are shifted by network cartography placing infrastructure, the nation state, and the idea of Europe within a constructed frame. In an overview of the integration process of several infrastructure networks, Johan Schot highlights similar spatial fragmentations.

The authors successfully transcend, and even more, constrain mainstream history of European integration. However, as each chapter is a self-contained "episode," telling the story of the European integration of one particular type of infrastructure, the material integration only becomes apparent implicitly. One of the binding elements between the different essays is the focus on tensions within and between institutions during the conception of transnational infrastructure and their contesting ideas on Europe. However, the materialization of these technological systems into physical networks, as the material crystallization of the political debates, receives less attention. Consequently, the book could mainly be considered a history of transnational fields of political forces and integration explained by means of discussions on infrastructure projects. It is only in the last three chapters that the book offers an insight into the history of material transnational projects, and how they both embody and mold the dynamics of European integration.

In the introduction, the editors acknowledge the difficult balance between materiality and politics, or between technology and culture. As Badenoch and Fickers explain, the more one analyzes the ideas on European integration that underlie transnational systems, the more the material aspects are moved to the margin and vice versa. Although few essays are successful in treating both domains equally, most authors contribute to recent literature...