Les musulmans à l’intérieur de la « Maison néerlandaise »

La construction de l’autre en négatif de la définition de soi est au cœur de la relation biaisée qu’entretiennent les Pays-Bas avec leurs citoyens musulmans. Derrière son image d’Épinal d’un peuple ouvert et accueillant, la société néerlandaise impose les représentations d’une culture nationale auxquelles les immigrés et leurs descendants sont sommés de s’adapter. Les visions protectionnistes des libertés culturelles ou sexuelles, et nationalistes du territoire fonctionnent de concert dans cet imaginaire qui fantasme son homogénéité. L’identité néerlandaise se fabrique ainsi sur une double discrimination religieuse et ethnique dont ceux qu’elle vise ne parviennent pas à s’extraire

Thuis voelen in de buurt: een opgave voor stedelijke vernieuwing

Public administration; Sociolog

Als ze maar van me afblijven

Sociolog

Understanding governmental activism

This article seeks to understand an understudied phenomenon: governmental players joining forces with non-governmental players in contentious actions against policies they want to prevent or redress. This behaviour, which we call ‘governmental activism’, problematizes important assumptions in the social movement literature on state–SMO dichotomies and on seeing ‘the state’ as a homogeneous and unified actor that solely provides the context for SMO activities. Governmental activism also problematizes assumptions on cooperation and ‘new’ modes of coordination in the governance literature. To understand governmental activism, we build on the strategic interaction perspective from social movement studies and on third-phase institutionalism from political science. In our analysis, we show the particulars of governmental activism. Our arguments are illustrated by empirical material on a case of municipal amalgamation in the Netherlands

Terugkeer van de native: ‘echte’ of ‘onechte’ Nederlander?

Het boek The Return of the Native onderzoekt de terugkeer van nativisme. Auteurs Jan Willem Duyvendak en Josip Kesic schrijven over het veelgemaakte onderscheid tussen ‘echte’ en ‘onechte’ Nederlanders

Anti-nationalist nationalism: the paradox of Dutch national identity

Academic research on contemporary Dutch nationalism has mainly focused on its overt, xenophobic and chauvinist manifestations, which have become normalised since the early 2000s. As a result, less radical versions of Dutch nationalism have been overlooked. This article attempts to fill this gap by drawing attention to a peculiar self-image among Dutch progressive intellectuals we call anti-nationalist nationalism. Whereas this self-image has had a long history as banal nationalism, it has come to be employed more explicitly for political positioning in an intensified nationalist climate. By dissecting it into its three constitutive dimensions – constructivism, lightness and essentialism – we show how this image of Dutchness is evoked precisely through the simultaneous rejection of ‘bad’ and enactment of ‘good’ nationalism. More generally, this article provides a nuanced understanding of contemporary Dutch nationalism. It also challenges prevalent assumptions in nationalism studies by showing that post-modern anti-nationalism does not exclude but rather constitutes essentialist nationalism