Energy as a functional area for European integration

policy has historically played an important role in the development of the European Union (EU). This study examines the reasons for the choice of coal and atomic energy as the bases for constructing community institutions of governance and analyzes their successes and failures as functional areas of integration.Functionalist theory has provided the ideological foundations for the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Atomic Energy Community. Functionalist theorists advocate technocracy as the means for overcoming the conflicts inherent in traditional political processes. Coal and atomic energy were chosen as regimes of integration because of their technocratic character and the importance attached to them, respectively, as the dominant energy source of the time and the perceived source of energy abundance in the proximate future. This vision of a process of technical integration paving the way for political union was predicated on the assumption that the political and technical functions of governance could and should be separated. In fact, energy regimes could not be removed from the political context of national governance. Hard energy regimes, which include coal and atomic energy, are technocratic polities which exclude ordinary citizens from the exercise of power and intensify international conflict. Their choice as regimes of integration bestowed on the institutions of the EC a technocratic character and made it difficult for them to claim political legitimac

Writing the Land: An Interdisciplinary Experiential Approach

Written assignments in college courses are most often analytical in nature (i.e., essays—expository or persuasive, book or research paper reviews, annotated bibliographies, research pa-pers, etc.). The one notable exception is creative writing, where assignments are typically fiction, literary nonfiction, and poetry. While the crea-tive approach to writing is rarely utilized outside this specific area, there is mounting evidence that it has much to offer to learning in all areas of study. Studies show that reflective writing (pieces in which the student writes about the per-sonal element of his or her learning experience) is an important component in a successful learn-ing process, regardless of the subject or field of study. Reflective writing facilitates deep-level processing and has been shown to be an im-portant positive element of experiential learning. This paper will discuss these findings and present an example of the use of reflective writing in the context of an experiential field-based environ-mental studies course