Achieving Cultural Community Through Rhetorical Means: A Study of Culture in the Bologna Process Documentation

An interesting point to consider when studying the Bologna Process, Europe’s contemporary initiative to reform the higher education systems among the 47 member countries, is how culture is represented in the official Process documentation. The official documentation contains layered definitions of culture that become problematic when determining the progress or the success or failure of this reform effort. For example, in the Sorbonne Joint Declaration (1998), the originating document of the Bologna Process, education ministers emphasized a large, overarching, definition of culture—a European culture—when they wrote that the Bologna Process is an opportunity “where national identities and common interests can interact and strengthen each other for the benefit of Europe” (para. 13), and one year later, they committed to preserve the diversity of Europe when they wrote that the Bologna Process will take “full respect of the diversity of cultures, languages, national education systems and of University autonomy— to consolidate the European area of higher education” (Bologna Declaration, 1999, para. 10)