CENTRES AND PERIPHERIES
by Hannes Swoboda
Societies, states, continents, etc. are never unitary and homogeneous. Only nationalists uphold the fiction of a uniform people of each nation that has clear and unambiguous national interests. For them, the distinction between people and elite applies precisely, whereby they themselves belong to the people and not to the elite. In reality, however, societies are structured in many different ways.
One structural feature is the distinction between centre and periphery or between centres and peripheries. Objective, but also subjective, criteria can be found here for belonging to one or the other. Some people are in the centre or in the periphery for clearly recognizable and definable economic, social and political reasons.
The unequal development of Europe, particularly after the Second World War, has created unequal economic and social conditions. The Iron Curtain slowed down development to the east of it and created peripheral conditions vis-à-vis the West. The behaviour of some “Westerners” after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain undoubtedly confirmed this peripheral position and even reinforced it. But sometimes people feel that they are marginalised or disadvantaged and discriminated against, and thus in a social periphery, without the general public being able to understand why.
New Divisions Due to Corona
The recognition of the Covid threat and the campaign for vaccination on the part of government agencies and medical experts is regarded as “fake” by some and, ultimately, as a means of exclusion. Others, in turn, feel threatened by a large number of people who refuse to get the vaccine and demand stronger measures to protect the vaccinated. The Covid crisis has, in any case, given rise to new tensions and divisions in our societies.
Overall, we can assume that existing divisions between poor and rich were exacerbated by Corona. Here too, this is a matter of ascriptions to the centre or the periphery that are not always clearly defined and supported by numbers. People feel that they have been left behind or neglected, even though they are by no means among the poorest segments of the population. Above all, the rejection of immigrants and refugees comes, in part, from people who have no reason at all to fear a downgrading, i.e. a financial or social devaluation. Even if the topic of immigration has receded into the background, it is again and again brought up by nationalist forces, in order to be exploited politically.
Inner-European Tensions
The division within Germany, which has still not been overcome, also exhibits features of a discriminatory assignment to the centre or to the periphery. This also involves critical attitudes of the centre towards the periphery. In her last speech on the Day of German Unity, Chancellor Merkel invoked striking examples of such a condescending attitude of the — West German — centre vis-à-vis the East German — periphery.
In Europe, however, we can also observe a division between centres and peripheries that cuts across national boundaries. Clear economic and social facts can be observed in this regard as well, but so too can mutual animosities. There are not only condescending attitudes coming from the Western centre, but also “counter-reactions”. Thus, a part of the periphery or some of its political representatives are trying to go to battle against the centre. The centre is criticised for abandoning “Christian values”, destroying the family, and thus also for wanting to transform the Eastern periphery. Illiberal democracy is opposed to liberal democracy and promoted. There are also such attitudes within the centre. But here precisely, the centre’s elite is also made the target of agitation, in order thus to gain approval and votes from the peripheral strata.
Ties to Global Conflicts
It is interesting to note that some of the political forces in Europe that argue against the centre are forming ties with forces outside of Europe that likewise argue against the European centre and the liberal democracy it represents. Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, at any rate, neither represent a liberal democracy nor do they want to accept the process of European unification. Ultimately, these alliances between the European periphery and the global periphery — at least from the European perspective — aim to create a new authoritarian and illiberal centre that would like to be globally hegemonic. It wants, in any case, to replace the Western centre, which has hitherto been dominated by the USA.
There is no question that the West has to take into account new economic and political powers. What was once the Eastern periphery — from the point of view of the West — is becoming a centre, in any event. The West has, however, to make sure that there is not a new, and furthermore authoritarian, centre in the future that extends its, above all technologically-based, structures of domination worldwide.
Northern Centre and Southern Periphery
Apart from the East-West distinction and assignment to centre and periphery, there is also a North-South division. Recently, however, there has been a lessening of tensions in Europe between the — mostly Northern — centre and the Southern periphery. Above all, Mario Draghi, who for many years was responsible for monetary policy in the eurozone, was able to steer the Southern — Italian — periphery closer to the centre again. In Spain, Portugal and Greece as well, the relationship to the wealthier centre has become less tense. Nonetheless, the step-by-step reduction of regional and social inequalities remains an unfulfilled task of the European Union.
The tensions between the European centre and the non-European Southern periphery should not be overlooked. Many people from the periphery are still trying to make it to the centre today. On the other hand, the centre is dependent on many raw materials, especially rare earth metals, for the transition to renewable energy.
And in terms of climate policy, the centre has to invest far more in the South, in order to prevent population growth, in combination with economic growth, from leading to a significantly increased CO2 burden. In light of the dynamic of population growth and the required increase in GDP, far greater energy efficiency has to be achieved. This is the only way to avoid an excessive rise in CO2 emissions and hence a dangerous rise in temperature. There has thus to be close cooperation, above all technological cooperation, with Africa in particular. Centre and periphery have to cooperate to avoid a climate catastrophe.
Europe will only be able to fulfil its missions if it strengthens the ties between centre and periphery on all levels. This is the only way to avoid dangerous social and regional tensions. This too makes clear that the national, European and global levels cannot be separated from one another.
Hannes Swoboda was member of Vienna City Council for Urban Planning and Development. Later he was for 18 years member of the European Parliament in different leading positions. At present he is President of different NGOs in the fields of international politics and economics, sociology and architecture.
