ABSTRACT
The study of European integration and the European Union (EU) is a relative latecomer as the subject of interpretivist studies, the work of some anthropologists notwithstanding (e.g. Shore 1993). In 1999, Christiansen et al. (1999: 528) still observed with some consternation that ‘it is odd that a process so explicitly concerned with the construction of a novel polity has largely escaped the attention of constructivist theorizing’. Indeed, the special issue from the introduction of which this quote is taken was the culmination of various efforts to bring interpretivist approaches to European integration studies (EIS). From the 2000s onwards, the situation in this field roughly matched that of other social sciences.
