CA25134 - European Democracies, Geographies, Ecologies, and Societies (EDGES)

Europe’s liberal civic identity and emphasis on procedural democracy has offered only a thin solidarity, fostering limited cohesion, affective bonds, and collective attachment. Many have turned to alternatives promising deeper belonging; often populist, nativist, and ethno-national movements. Mainstream liberal discourse still assumes democratic culture is neutral and colourblind, even though these norms and solutions are depleted and fail to address crises including right-wing populism, global warming, and migration.

The EDGE COST Action addresses this thinness by turning to Europe’s margins, peripheries, and borderlands, where political practices have long diverged from liberal norms. EDGE explores thick, robust, embodied vernacular democratic and civic practices that foster strong cohesion and solidarity without ethno-national, racial, or nativist connotations. History, heritage, and narratives of belonging create this attachment and therefore cultural production, mapping, lexicons, and pedagogies are key tools EDGE will use to centre peripheries and improve democratic participation across Europe and beyond. EDGE activities aim to approach democratic culture anew across disciplines and sectors, by bringing key stakeholders together to collect, theorize, and innovate democratic life at Europe’s edges. Rather than assuming democracy is a static arrangement or universal norm, EDGE examines how different communities live democracy by articulating justice, negotiating disagreement, and enacting collective life. In doing so, this COST Action opens conceptual space for rethinking democracy from below through plural, situated, contested vernacular forms that animate public life across Europe’s geographic, cultural, and epistemic margins.