Irène Bellier

A EUROPEANIZED ELITE? AN ANTHROPOLOGY OF EUROPEAN COMMISSION OFFICIALS

Tensions between the European and the national levels may be seen in the case of the Commission’s personnel management policies, which bear witness to the difficulties of constructing a Europe which has definitively escaped from nationalist reflexes. The political dimension of the re-construction of identities must be analysed as carefully as the economic character of the integration project. It is linked to the definition a European common public space and to the question of how and when the peoples of the members states in their diversity share the sentiment of forging a community of interest. This paper explores the manner in which EU institutions construct a common culture, accommodating the diverse nationalities of their own officials and the diversity of the member states’ societies. It demonstrates how the Commission showcases its Europeanness and illustrates the tensions between European and national identities. Attention is focused on the development of intercultural understandings, the process of hybridization which is emerging in EU institutions and the progressive Europeanization of national elites.

The Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the World Indigenous Movement

Over the last decade, under the auspices of the Human Rights Commission, indigenous peoples have been associated by the United Nations (UN) to the negotiations concerning the draft Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Even though the whole story started with the mobilisation of Northern, Central and South Amerindian organisations, which remain extremely active, indigenous representatives are now coming from all over the world to participate in the annual sessions. Known to be an aspirational document, equivalent to the universal declaration of the Human Rights and able to protect indigenous collective rights, the declaration is to be adopted through the formation of a consensus. Nothing has been adopted yet, and the controversies regarding the language of the declaration, as well as the oppositions between state and non-state actors, demonstrate that the international identification of a people and the definition of collective human rights remain difficult. However, in the last three years a series of changes concerning the development of indigenous issues have been observed, both in the UN’s Working Group on the Draft Declaration (WGDD) and on the national and regional stages where constitutional changes (South America) and a reflection on the definition of indigenous issues (Africa, Asia) are being introduced. Based on the participant observation of the process held in the UN, the following deals with the politics of negotiation and analyses the positions of the different actors involved and their impact on the development of the world indigenous movement.