This article argues for a robust notion of collective identity which is not reduced to a psychological conception of identity. In the first part, the debate on the concept of identity raised by several authors is taken up critically with the intention of defending a strong sociological conception of identity which by definition is a collective identity. The basic assumption is that collective identities are narrative constructions which permit the control of the boundaries of a network of actors. This theory is then applied to the case of Europe, showing how identity markers are used to control the boundaries of a common space of communication. These markers are bound to stories which those within such a space of communication share. Stories that hold in their narrative structures social relations provide projects of control. National identities are based on strong and exclusive stories. Europeanization (among other parallel processes at the global level) opens this space of boundary constructions and offers opportunities for national as well as sub-national as well as transnational stories competing with each other to shape European identity projects. The EU — this is the hypothesis — provides a case in which different sites offer competing opportunities to continue old stories, to start new stories or to import old stories from other sites, thus creating a narrative network on top of the network of social relations that bind the people in Europe together. European identity is therefore to be conceived as a narrative network embedded in an emerging network of social relations among the people living in Europe.

The riddle of how to democratize the multi-level polity of the EU is answered by pointing to the empirical impact of an unfolding European public sphere. It is argued that there is a self-constituting dynamic of a European public sphere which abets the coupling of transnational spaces of communication with the institutional integration of the EU. From this perspective, democracy is not external to the EU, it is already part of the logic of European institution-building and governance and is fostered by collective learning processes in which definitions of the collective good as well as conditions for appropriate forms of political participation are negotiated. In discussing the case of the EU’s constitutional reform, a theory of democratic functionalism is proposed which accounts for this specific form of democratization of the EU.

Religion ist ein Phänomen, das mit der Zunahme der Umlaufgeschwindigkeit von Kommunikation zunimmt. Je mehr Gesellschaften säkularisiert werden, umso mehr erhöht sich religiöse Kommunikation. Dieses Paradox wird zunächst theoretisch kommentiert und als Herausforderung für kommunikationstheoretisch ansetzende Gesellschaftstheorien aufgenommen. Zunehmende religiöse Kommunikation produziert weiterhin -über die alten institutionalisierten Formen hinausneue soziale Formen religiöser Kommunikation, die in besonderen Forschungsfeldern thematisiert werden: in der Forschung zu den neuen religiösen Bewegungen, in der Forschung zur Mobilisierung religiöser Differenz, sowie in der medialen Verstärkung religiöser Kommunikation. Unter diesem Blickwinkel erscheint die Beschreibung Europas als eines säkularen Kontinents als theoretisch zu einfach und empirisch irreführend. Die These der "unsichtbaren Religion" hat dieses Bild zwar zu korrigieren begonnen. Die These der "neuen Sichtbarkeit" von Religion in Europa geht darüber noch hinaus. Religion wird -entgegen der Säkularisierungserwartungzunehmend ein öffentliches Phänomen. Europa lässt sich als ein öffentlicher Raum beschreiben, in dem religiöse Kommunikation mit dem Selbstverständnis moderner öffentlicher Kommunikation zusammentrifft und beides, religiöse Kommunikation wie die Öffentlichkeit, in der kommuniziert wird, zur weiteren Reflexion und kognitiven Dezentrierung des Selbstverständnisses von Modernität zwingt.

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Evolution and learning are two analytically distinct concepts. People learn yet evolution (`change') does not necessarily take place. To clarify this problem the concept of learning is explicated. The first problem addressed is the question of who is learning. Here a shift from the single actor perspective to an interaction perspective is proposed (using Habermas and Luhmann as theoretical arguments for such a shift). Both, however, idealize the preconditions that interactants share while learning collectively. Against rationalist assumptions it is argued that in order to learn people need a narratively based shared world. What do they learn? They acquire knowledge and they learn how to learn. This still does not solve the problem why they learn. Learning, it is argued, does not guarantee evolution but provides the mutations for evolutionary processes to take place.