tyranny of unelected rulers in Europe was
never extended to the native peoples of Asia,
Africa and the Americas. The fate of these
people was to be decided by the colonizing
Europeans. The values of enlighteneddemo-
cracyshone brightly in eighteenth-century
Europe and the newly independent European
North America, partly because the rest of the
world had been simultaneously darkened.
During the nineteenth century, the high
point of Europeanimperialism, the cultural
criteria used to define Europe were recast yet
again, this time in racial and biological terms
inspired by the prevalent theories of social
darwinism andenvironmental determin-
ism. The European peoples were deemed not
merely to haveacquireda superior level of
civilization but, rather, to possess aninherent
racial superiority, a consequence of their
uniquely benevolent physical environment
(seerace). This both explained and justified
the European domination of the world.
As the last remaining uncolonized regions of
the world gradually diminished, so the tensions
between different European nations increased,
unleashing a more or less continuous period of
intra-European warfare from 1914 to 1945.
This ended with the attempt by the Nazi
authorities in Germany to eradicate long-estab-
lished European communities, notably the
Jews, in the name of a racially ‘pure’ Europe. If
a ‘dark continent’ has ever existed, it was surely
Europe between 1914 and 1945 (Mazower,
1998: see alsogenocide; holocaust).
Europe was divided in 1945, the western
and eastern parts of the region dominated by
the opposing military superpowers of the USA
and the Soviet Union, respectively. New meas-
ures to foster economic integration developed
on both sides during thecold warfrom the
1950s to 1980s, most successfully through the
European Economic Community (EEC) and
its successor the European Community (EC),
which eventually encompassed most of the
national economies of western Europe. This
generated remarkable economic success but
little additional discussion about the essential
meaning of Europe, mainly because the
regionpreviously regarded as Europe seemed
permanently divided. The word ‘Europe’ had
little currency in eastern Europe in this period
and acquired only a limited economic mean-
ing in western Europe (Judt, 1996, 2005).
The realignment of central and eastern
Europe after the collapse of the Soviet Union
and the reunification of Germany has been
achieved with remarkable speed, and amid
continuing economic success. The enlarged
European Union (EU) now includes 27 coun-
tries with a combined population approaching
500 million. Twelve countries, with a total
population in excess of 300 million, share a
single currency (the euro), established in- These seismic developments have
begun to generate new reflections on the fun-
damental idea of Europe, but it remains to be
seen whether an enlarged Europe will develop
a distinctive identity in the twenty-first century
and emerge as a political and economic coun-
terbalance to the USA. Whether the new
Europe needs such a ‘nation-like’ identity is
a moot point, however, for it might more
usefully be defined as a set of values and aspir-
ations that consciously reject the exclusive
geographies of the past (Delanty, 1995, 2005a;
Amin 2004a; Levy, Pensky and Torpey, 2005;
Beck and Grande, 2007; Heffernan, 2007: see
alsocosmopolitanism). mjh
Suggested reading
Amin (2004a); Heffernan (1998).everyday life A realm associated with ordin-
ary, routine and repetitive aspects of social life
that are pervasive and yet frequently overlooked
and taken-for-granted. For many commenta-
tors, the everyday is inherently ambiguous and
indeterminate, something that is both every-
where yet nowhere, familiar at the same time
as it escapes (Blanchot, 1993 [1969]). The
term ‘everyday life’ is often used to evoke the
lived qualities of a range of activities such as
cooking, eating, drinking, shopping, playing,
walking, commuting, nurturing children,
working for wages and so on, through which
people experience and interact with the world
and with others. Henri Lefebvre (1991b, p. 97)
suggests that it may be defined negatively as
‘‘‘what is left over’’ after all distinct, superior,
specialized, structured activities have been
singled out by analysis’. Yet he insists that it
is related to all activities as their common
ground or bond, and he likens it to a ‘fertile
soil’ that ‘has a secret life and a richness of its
own’ (p. 87).
From the perspective of everyday life, ‘geog-
raphy is everywhere’ (Cosgrove, 1989), its
subject matter found in even the most seem-
ingly ordinary streets, homes, malls, offices,
factories, parks, playgrounds and the like. As
a distinct formulation, ‘everyday life’ has been
widely referenced and problematized in recent
years within geographyand many of the
social sciences andhumanities, where it has
been seen as offering an important perspective
on social, cultural, political and economicGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 223 1.4.2009 3:17pmEVERYDAY LIFE