Of facts, fiction and the EU : a response to Ryba

Abstract

The nub of the argument between Ryba and myself can be summarized as follows: I am arguing that we should take seriously the ED's involvement, as a supranational body, in the field of education, and that while recognizing some of its progressive elements, we should also recognize the dangers that are involved here, given that education is linked, in a contested way, to economics, and that the industrial imperatives espoused by the ED are often in contradiction with democratic imperatives. Ryba, while gracefully accepting my central premiss that one should, indeed, vigilantly and critically watch the EU, finds very little empirical evidence to warrant the concern I have expressed here and elsewhere. His position is, he says, closer to the 'facts': there has been an increase in influence on educational matters after Maastricht, it is true, but its power is severely circumscribed by the clause of subsidiarity; there has been more funding allocated to the field, but this is a relatively minuscul l3 portion of the EU budget; there might be capitalist influence on the direction taken by the EU, but this is constrained by the influence of other lobby and pressure groups, and by the very way the European Parliament functions. Overall, one detects a discomfort with 'macro-theory' since this tends to make claims (at least, for Ryba, and in so far as I am concerned) without empirical proof, that can be checked out by research at the meso- and micro-levels. :\t face value, the argument between us can be t.ollapsed into a contention between the 'Europhobes' (and presumably I would be a member of this species, since I'm the one 'crying wolf) and the Euro-enthusiasts (and Ryba, despite his measured analysis, would tend to fall in the latter ranks). That simplification would be a shame, because I think there is enough material in Ryba's paper and in my own contribution to make the case that such binary oppositions are crude, do not quite come to grips with what is at stake and fail to realize the extent to which 'Europe' and the 'European Union' are far from being solid entities with a fixed identity that can be reduced to a 'for' or 'against' position. To his credit, Ryba admits feeling uncomfortable with the 'form' of argumentation this volume series imposed upon him. But in my view, by calling upon 'facts' in order to make his case, and by adopting an epistemologically weak positivistic position arguihg that I am (mostly) wrong because I do not have the 'facts' right, he lets himself be drawn upon the quicksands of what, indeed, constitutes a 'fact'. I will, of course, come up with (more) 'facts' to reinforce the main argument I make in my initial contribution, but the main point (or one of them, at any rate) in a discussion such as this should be: how do 'facts' make an argument stick?