Capturing the Imaginary Students and Other Tribes in Amsterdam Núria Arbonés Aran Núria Arbonés ii Capturing the Imaginary: Students and Other Tribes in Amsterdam ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het College voor Promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Agnietenkapel op dinsdag 8 december 2015, te 10:00 uur door Núria Arbonés Aran geboren te Barcelona, Spanje iii Promotiecommissie: Promotor(es): Prof. dr. J.T Leerssen Universiteit van Amsterdam Copromotor(es): Dr. W. van Winden Hogeschool van Amsterdam Overige leden: Prof. dr. L.A. Bialasiewicz Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. dr. M.D. Rosello Universiteit van Amsterdam Prof. dr. J.B.F. Nijman Universiteit van Amsterdam Dr. J.W.M. de Wit Hogeschool van Amsterdam Prof. dr. G.J. Hospers Universiteit Twente Faculteit: Faculteit der Geesteswetenschappen iv Ter bevordering van de professionalisering van docenten verbonden aan de Hogeschool van Amsterdam heeft het College van Bestuur een speciale HvA-brede promotieregeling ingesteld, die de kwaliteit van promotietrajecten van HvA docenten bewaakt en faciliteert. Met deze regeling worden (kandidaat-)promovendi in staat gesteld om het promotietraject te volbrengen in maximaal vijf jaar onder begeleiding van een HvA lector/(co-)promotor, en op de kostenplaats van het kenniscentrum. Uitgangspunt voor een promotietraject is dat het een bijdrage levert aan de onderzoeksprogrammering van het kenniscentrum. Het promotietraject van Núria Arbonés Aran is gefinancierd door het domein Economie en Management van de Hogeschool van Amsterdam, en gefaciliteerd door het kenniscentrum CAREM (Centre for Research on Applied Economics and Management). Table of Contents Acknowledgements vii 1. Background and Aims: Cities and Imaginaries 1 1.1. City aspirations: The competition for the Talented Student and some of its side effects 2 1.2. Some relevant changes in education and the city 4 1.3. Doing research in a place like Amsterdam 9 a. Cities and their Imaginary 9 b. Text as research material for self-representation 12 c. Student seen from the eyes of the Pragmatic Language Style: from Student to Client 14 d. My stance in this story 15 2. Theories and Methods: Capturing the Imaginary 17 2.1. ‘We say that times are changing; yet we tend not to change our research practices’ 17 2.2. L’air du temps: Postmodernity, fluid cities and the urban tribe 18 a. Postmodernism: Shift, continuation and the revival of community feelings 18 b. Conceptualizing Society as ‘Networked’ and ‘Reticulated’ 19 c. ‘Provincial Globalism’ 20 d. Conceptions of language as a construction and a material with which to ‘domesticate’ the world 20 e. A shift from Modern Control to Postmodern Amor Fati 22 f. Depicting it: ‘As amorphous as an imperial organization’ 22 g. A recurrent use of symbolism and metaphor 23 h. A recurrent emergence of stardom and myths 24 i. The visibility of tribalism in acts of consumption 25 j. Re-enchantment 26 k. Primacy of the Homo Consumens, commodification and fetishism 27 l. The Restless Consumer: frozen desire and floating brands 28 m. Commodifying anti-consumerism 29 n. A different understanding of the ontology of ‘Place’ and its role in human life 31 ii o. A different understanding of the relationship between place and identity formation 31 p. A different sort of metropolis with large masses of immigrants and new actors in political life 33 2.3. In challenge to existing methodology 34 a. Why do most existing reports on students in Amsterdam fail to offer insight into the diversity of students’ Imaginaries? 34 b. Reports as managerial tools: Requisites and set-up 35 c. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are not the problem: the problem is the a priori attribution of fixed values to specific variables 37 d. In short: This thesis attempts to fill a gap in the reports for policymakers 41 2.4. Imagology and Tribal Marketing 42 a. Fusing empirical research and discourse analysis 42 b. Tribal Marketing: Brands, niches, lifestyle 43 c. Imagology: Identities, self-images, articulations 46 d. The combination 49 e. On the meaning of the Imaginary 51 2.5. Modus operandi in this study: Enquiring and interpreting 54 a. Data-gathering: Capturing the ephemeral 55 b. Negotiating specific problematics 57 3. Capturing the Imaginary: Creative Amsterdam in Current Fiction 61 3.1. Introduction: Amsterdam as generator of fictional narratives 61 a. Sociohistorical and cultural-literary background 62 b. Narrowing down the matter 68 3.2. Thematic focus 69 a. The influence of place on people’s lives 70 b. The actualization of the concept of a creative city in contemporary life 70 c. The tribal way of expressing shared links, as seen in one tribal marketing case study of white US students in the 1960s 71 d. The role that literature (and the interpretation of dreams) plays in capturing real-world imaginaries 71 iii e. The conceptualization of urban drifting as a creative process 72 3.3. Corpus and characteristics 73 a. Short description of the story and the main characters 77 3.4.The analyses and interpretation 80 a. The construction of one’s own life in a coming of age story: the realization of a dream 81 b. The homecoming 94 3.5. Conclusions 106 4. Capturing the Imaginary: the Corps as Tribe 112 4.1. Introduction: organized exclusivity of the student corps tribe 112 4.2. Narrowing down the matter: the importance of the tradition 114 4.3. Data gathering 118 4.4. Analysis 122 a. Contrasts between student associations 123 b. Quality, exclusivity and awards 126 c. Other peculiarities 127 d. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’ 128 e. Bravado 128 f. A sense of ownership in the city 129 g. Symbolic clashes over territory: rivalry between student associations 131 h. Victimization: ‘Corps being oppressed’ 131 i. An extended habitat: hockey, rowing and such 132 j. Living in a society house 133 k. Friendship 135 l. Unwritten rules 136 m. Internal rivalries 137 n. More internal conflicts: ‘signs of degeneration’ 138 o. Main characters: the rich, the old boys’ network and the ‘well-off butcher’ 140 p. Traces of corps life in professional environments 142 iv 4.5. Conclusions 144 5. Capturing the Imaginary: Ajax Supporters and Amsterdam 148 5.1. Introduction: When Ajax is Amsterdam and vice versa 148 5.2. Literature review: On football, fans and Ajax 149 5.3. Methodology and Approach 155 5.4. What it means to be a supporter: Analysis 157 a. Criteria of belonging 157 b. Distinctions within fandom 170 5.5. Conclusions 181 6. Capturing the Imaginary: What About Hip Hop? 186 6.1. Introduction: and why about Hip hop? 186 6.2. From Brooklyn to Amsterdam 190 6.3. Methods and approach 196 6.4. Hip hop and Amsterdam 200 a. Ghetto feeling in Amsterdam 203 b. The dilemma: in-between-two-worlds 213 c. Avant-garde hip hop: Intimacy and personal experiences 223 6.5. Wrapping up and conclusions 234 7. Capturing the Imaginary. International Students in the City: ‘Going Erasmus’ in Amsterdam 240 7.1. ‘Going Erasmus’: An introduction 240 7.2. Erasmus in the European landscape. Narrowing the focus to Erasmus students coming from universities in Spain 246 a. Europeanism in Spain 247 7.3. Set up for an analysis of core material 250 a. Characteristics of the material 252 b. Distilled topics 254 7.4. Analysis and interpretation 255 a. Homo Erasmus 255 v b. Erasmus stay: Entering another reality 261 c. The Halo Effect. The Dutch are … 266 d. Nostalgia and longing. The Post Erasmus Syndrome 271 e. Landmarks of Amsterdam 273 7.5. Wrapping up and conclusions 276 8. Capturing the Imaginary: ‘What Is Someone Like You Doing in a Place Like This?’ A Tribal Topography of Amsterdam 281 8.1. Place and ‘look’ references in today’s Amsterdam 281 8.2. Cities and Urbanites 282 a. Narrowing-down: Amsterdam 284 8.3. Method 287 8.4. Analysis and discussion 290 a. Demarcations of areas and places in Amsterdam and a small ‘sample’ of student daily life 291 b. The case of ‘Oud Zuid’ 300 c. Aestheticization. Cross global references 314 8.5. Conclusions 319 9. Capturing the Imaginary: Images, Youth and self-representation in Amsterdam 327 9. 1. Imagine a typical day in the Red Light District 329 a. Excursion 329 b. The Red Light District as ectopia and microcosm 334 9.2. Images, characters and the tribes. Liminal spaces: rites of passage 337 a. Creative in Amsterdam. Sharing images of projection 337 b. Corps students. Sharing images of traditionalism 338 c. Ajax fandom. Sharing images of a man’s world 339 d. Avant-garde Hip hop. Sharing images of cooperation 340 e. A space for transients and arrivals. Sharing the immigrant condition 341 f. Erasmus students. Sharing the moratorium and the European ideal of democracy, openness and freedom 342 vi 9.3. Why ‘imagining’ is also real 343 a. Set of answers 343 b. Reflections on sentient data 349 9.4. Choices and lifestyles: How Amsterdam accommodates what people want to become 352 a. The call for talented people and the postmodern politics of difference. Spatial distribution, participation and separation 352 b. Fetishizing differences 354 c. Youth, generation ‘clash’, melancholy and the shrugging of shoulders 355 d. The ‘attending to the world’ references 357 e. Acquired views provide a better understanding of the ‘Floating Significance’ of categories such as social class or race 358 f. The heritage of tradition: students as revolutionaries and critical masses 359 g. The post-political city and the accommodating city 360 h. A place for new opportunities.