ANTHROPOLOGICAL JOURNAL

CALL FOR PAPERS: THE NETHERLANDS NOW

This issue of ETNOFOOR seeks to provide ethnographic insight into the state of the Netherlands in the twenty‐first century. While Dutch dates back nearly a century and a half (see Barnard 2003; Blok and Boissevain 1984), the training of the anthropological lens on the Netherlands is – some notable exceptions notwithstanding – a fairly recent phenomenon. Over the last few decades Dutch researchers have been bringing anthropology home. This shift in geographical focus was partially informed by a political project of de‐exoticizing the field. However, practical constraints have also influenced this Dutch turn: decades of university budget cuts have meant that time and money to do fieldwork in faraway places have become increasingly scarce, while the functioning of contemporary households seldom facilitates long‐term stays abroad. The range of reasons underlying the upsurge in research at home has meant that initially many studies engaged in ‘third worlding at home’ (Koptiuch 1991), for instance in narrowly defined ethnic and migration studies that focused exclusively on Dutch society’s Others. However, a larger body of critical work has been emerging that has expanded its focus and taken a more reflexive stance, interrogating broader societal structures and national preoccupations.

An important preoccupation in recent years has been ‘the multicultural society’ – both as a social project and as political ideology. Even before this multicultural society had been declared a failure, the Netherlands saw a heightened sense of unease about, and hostility towards, migrants and migration. Amidst populist calls to close the borders and introduce more repressive regimes of disciplining so‐called allochtonen, the nation has increasingly turned inwards (Geschiere 2009). Even as allochtonen are pressured to adapt or assimilate to ‘Dutch culture’, it has become increasingly unclear what exactly is meant by this term. What it means to be Dutch remains elusive, despite ongoing efforts to provide a firmer grounding for a national sense of self. In addition to official projects such as the creation of a historical canon and the failed attempt to establish a national historical museum, popular culture, from advertising to reality television, displays a burgeoning obsession with Dutchness.

Ironically, in this post‐progressive context, values of tolerance and liberal democracy that many understand as typifying the Dutch nation are mobilized with increasing force. This is especially evident with regard to sexual emancipation. Women’s and gay rights are framed as achievements that set apart ‘modern’ Dutch society from the supposedly more ‘backward’, ‘underdeveloped’ and mostly Islamic Others (Mepschen et al. 2010; cf. Yuval‐Davis 1993, 2007). This tendency towards the rhetorical ‘culturalization’ of citizenship (Mepschen and Duyvendak 2012) – the framing of national belonging in terms of culture – often masks both class conflict (van Eijk 2013) and the resurgence of racialized exclusion. How, for example, does a desire to find a socio‐ biological basis for national belonging resurface in more or less subtle forms of ‘gene talk’ (see M’charek et al. 2013; Taussig 2009)? Despite the rancorous nature of the debates and the increasing polarization they produce, there are also many everyday instances of conviviality and cosmopolitanism, which can be found amongst neighbors, in youth culture and in various forms of activism (Guadeloupe and de Rooij 2007).

The Dutch obsession with multicultural society may be giving way to a growing preoccupation with European unification, centering on the ongoing transfer of political power to European Union institutions. Such concerns over national sovereignty have been exacerbated in recent years by a financial and economic crisis that appears chronic, and by the adoption and implementation of a neoliberal economic model. News reports are full of constant, pessimistic evaluations of the economic outlook, a sobering perspective for a nation that continues to take pride in what has long been narrated as a glorious history of trade.

The intense focus on multiculturalism and Europe connects to another dimension that informs the present moment in the Netherlands. Although the political process of decolonization has been ongoing for almost seventy years, the nation arguably has not yet come to terms with this historical change. Statements such as former Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende’s call for a renewed ‘VOC mentality’ demonstrate the tension between the desire to move on and an inability to let go (Balkenhol 2010). Paul Gilroy has described this phenomenon in Great Britain as postcolonial melancholia: the compulsive need to repeat the past (Gilroy 2005, 2012).

Another crucial transformation of the present moment in the Netherlands is the process of depillarization (ontzuiling) that began in the 1960s and has fundamentally changed Dutch society over the past fifty years. The shift away from Catholic, Protestant and socialist ‘pillars’ is often associated with increasing individualization and secularization. Yet this apparent trend away from religion and collective forms of belonging is belied by a move towards the ‘post‐secular’, as not only Muslims but also a growing group of (evangelical) Christians are becoming a visible national presence.

In light of these various socio‐cultural shifts and attendant anxieties, this issue of ETNOFOOR seeks to explore the kinds of self‐understandings people in the Netherlands are fashioning today. How do forms of conviviality relate to more exclusionary notions of Dutchness? How can we understand the Netherlands now as a postcolonial society, and how does this post‐colonial moment tie into ‘multicultural society’? How can we understand ethnographically the ways in which macro‐economic phenomena intersect with senses of national belonging? How does the post‐secular inform national modes of self‐ and world‐making in the Netherlands today? The editors of ETNOFOOR invite all those who wish to reflect upon these or related issues to send an abstract of no more than 250 words to [email protected] before March 1, 2013. The deadline for authors of accepted abstracts to submit their full paper for consideration is June 15, 2013.

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