Bridging the Discursive and Material Dimensions of Europeanity and Europeanisation: A Participatory Semantic Map Approach

The article aims to capture the significatory diversity of the concepts of Europeanity and Europeanisation, through the development of a semantic map in order to visualize the different concepts that define Europeanity and Europeanisation, and their  interconnections. Embedded in the field of Communication and Media Studies, but with multidisciplinary ambitions, this semantic map combines 19 different approaches, structured through one main dimension, the discursive versus the material, which allows bridging the major rift in the conceptual reflections about Europeanity and Europeanisation. Moreover, the semantic map uses two support dimensions, with the discursive dimension intersecting with the essentialist versus relationist dimension, and the material dimension intersecting with the socio-spatial versus politico-spatial dimension. In order to construct this semantic map, phases of both general and targeted literature reviews were combined with a participatory theorybuilding method, which was grounded in collaborative knowledge building and collaborative theory construction approaches.