Town Twinning, Transnational Connections, and Trans-local Citizenship Practices in Europe

In 2010 the Council of European Regions and Municipalities established the number of European town twinning relationships as 39,816. The European Commission has defined town twinning as one of the main pillars on which a 'Europe for Citizens' can be achieved and European identity be fostered. Yet what does twinning entail for those engaged in it on a local level? How does transnationalism enter local settings? Andreas Langenohl argues that the transnationalism of town twinning in Europe rests on practices of localization assembled around an ethics of exchange, encompassing codes of hospitality, notions of friendship, and reciprocity in giving and receiving. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with twinning practitioners, the book argues that the kind of European integration achieved through town twinning resembles a model of European integration that establishes 'exchange' and 'market' as a generalized model of cooperation.

Andreas Langenohl is Professor of Sociology at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany. His research and teaching interests encompass modernization theory and it critique, notions of the public sphere, transnationalism, social studies of finance and the epistemology of the social sciences.

1. Introduction: Local Transnationalism in a 'Europe for Citizens'
2. European Visions: On the Political Historiography of Town Twinning
3. Small-town Transnationals: The (Trans-)locality of Town Twinning
4. Making Towns Meet: The Social Logics of (Trans-)local Encounters
5. Trans-local Friendships: The Microstructures of Twinning Sociability
6. Organizing (Civic) Culture: The Making of Europeans
7. (Trans-)local Economies: Imaginary Understandings of Europe
8. Aesthetic and Cultural Idioms of Difference in Town Twinning
9. Conclusion: Town Twinning and the Ethics of Exchange