Paul Mepschen | Utrecht University (original) (raw)

Papers by Paul Mepschen

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material inf... more Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

This study sets out to examine the politics of autochthony in the Netherlands. It thereby zooms i... more This study sets out to examine the politics of autochthony in the Netherlands. It thereby zooms in on the everyday articulation of a metaphoric figure that is central to the culturalization of citizenship and that has come to play an increasingly pivotal role in the Dutch political and cultural imagination in broader terms: the figure of the ordinary Dutch person. The book takes as a starting point the emergence, in the extended aftermath of decolonization and the Cold War and amidst the withering of the Fordist-Keynesian compact in Europe, of what Nicholas de Genova has referred to as ‘the European question’, or the problem of Europeanness. The reanimation of nationalism in Europe, which is expressed in the rise and growing social and political influence of exclusionary political formations, practices, and ideas, calls for an anthropology that turns attention to precisely those European populations construed as native or ‘autochthonous’. The focus of the book has therefore been on ...

Social Anthropology

In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the 'doing' of whiteness, which ... more In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the 'doing' of whiteness, which is necessary to understand how various, contrasting but interconnected articulations of whiteness come into being. We focus on two ethnographic vignettes that reveal the different structural positions, within a culturalised and racialised order, of the anthropologists developing them. The vignettes focus on liberal and progressive 'middle-class' articulations of whiteness that often remain unrecognised and-especially-bathed in innocence, but that go to the heart of the contemporary European question. We take issue with the liberal peripheralisation of racism, a discursive practice that locates racism in the 'white working class' and symbolically exorcises it from the 'moderate', centrist core of Europe. Rather than truly facing racism, what seems at stake for many liberals and progressives is the self-image of being well-meaning 'respectable' and 'good' middle-class people.

Facing racism: discomfort, innocence and the liberal peripheralisation of race in the Netherlands, 2019

In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the ‘doing’ of whiteness, which ... more In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the ‘doing’ of whiteness, which is necessary to understand how various, contrasting but interconnected articulations of whiteness come into being. We focus on two ethnographic vignettes that reveal the different structural positions, within a culturalised and racialised order, of the anthropologists developing them. The vignettes focus on liberal and progressive ‘middle‐class’ articulations of whiteness that often remain unrecognised and – especially – bathed in innocence, but that go to the heart of the contemporary European question. We take issue with the liberal peripheralisation of racism, a discursive practice that locates racism in the ‘white working class’ and symbolically exorcises it from the ‘moderate’, centrist core of Europe. Rather than truly facing racism, what seems at stake for many liberals and progressives is the self‐image of being well‐meaning ‘respectable’ and ‘good’ middle‐class people.

The notion of super-diversity has been employed to describe the urban condition in cities across ... more The notion of super-diversity has been employed to describe the urban condition in cities across the world. By focusing on the politics of culturalization in the Netherlands, I engage with scholars who claim that super-diversity may lead to a normalcy of difference. I argue that in the Netherlands a culturalist common sense has emerged which divides Dutch society into distinct and internally homogeneous cultures and which represents Dutch culture as a threatened entity that must be protected against the mores and moralities of minoritized, racialized outsiders. Focusing on working-class whites in a neighbourhood in Amsterdam, I show how plans to demolish and restructure their neighbourhood fuelled a discourse of displacement in antagonistic relation to “Others”. Rather than normalizing differences, this culturalist common sense has brought into being a field of knowledge and both reflected and supported views that produce and reinforce boundaries between “ordinary” neighbours and cultural and social others.

National Politics and Sexuality in Transregional Perspective The Homophobic Argument, 2018

Sexual democracy raises important questions concerning political democracy and citizenship in plu... more Sexual democracy raises important questions concerning political democracy and citizenship in pluralistic societies. Sexual liberty is incorporated into a cultural protectionist discourse that associates it with secularism and liberalism and pits it against the allegedly backward cultures and religions of post-immigrant citizens, especially Muslims. In commenting on the intellectual and activist travels of the concept of homonationalism, Jasbir Puar (2013, 337) argues that it is not simply a synonym for gay racism. Similarly, ‘sexual nationalist’ denotes not an identity that scholars and activists can attribute to those with whom they disagree but, rather, a political lens through which many people view political and sexual dynamics in Europe and the United States. In this chapter, I analyze the discourse of sexual nationalism in the case of the Netherlands beyond its articulation in far-right or right-wing populist neonationalism.

Cultural and religious alterity, associated with postcolonial and labour migrants and their desce... more Cultural and religious alterity, associated with postcolonial and labour migrants and their descendants, has become a matter of growing contention across Europe. Various scholars have discussed the situation in the Netherlands as exemplary of European anxieties about national cohesion and cultural homogeneity in which culturalized and racialized conceptions of the nation and its Others are central. Mepschen examines how these public discourses and politics are played out in the context of a pluri-ethnic, working-class neighbourhood in Amsterdam New West. Taking an ethnographic approach, he points to the ways in which ‘white’ Dutch citizens—imagined and construed as autochthonous, literally ‘born from the Earth itself’—come to recognize themselves in, identify with and appropriate the images and rhetorics that circulate within culturalist, autochthonic symbolic economies. Following up on his previous work, Mepschen focuses here on the role played by discourses surrounding sexual liberty and LGBTIQ rights in these dynamics. Continuing with an ethnographic approach, he foregrounds the complex interplay of religion, secularism and sexuality in the ‘making’ and ‘doing’ of autochthony in an everyday, local context, a complexity that is lost in much of the existing analyses of Dutch multiculturalism.

This is the Introduction to my PhD-thesis, defended on January 29, 2016 (highest honours). My stu... more This is the Introduction to my PhD-thesis, defended on January 29, 2016 (highest honours). My study sets out to examine the politics of autochthony in the Netherlands. It thereby zooms in on the everyday articulation of a metaphoric figure that is central to the culturalization of citizenship and that has come to play an increasingly pivotal role in the Dutch political and cultural imagination in broader terms: the figure of the ordinary Dutch person. The book takes as a starting point the emergence, in the extended aftermath of decolonization and the Cold War and amidst the withering of the Fordist-Keynesian compact in Europe, of what Nicholas de Genova has referred to as ‘the European question’, or the problem of Europeanness. The reanimation of nationalism in Europe, which is expressed in the rise and growing social and political influence of exclusionary political formations, practices, and ideas, calls for an anthropology that turns attention to precisely those European populations construed as native or ‘autochthonous’. The focus of the book has therefore been on ethnographic case studies in which everyday articulations of autochthony and the politics of cultural and social location animating Dutch citizens - categorized as autochthonous - could be studied from a microscopic, ethnographic perspective. I do not attempt to give an ‘overview’ of the plurality of autochthony in the Netherlands, but study its articulation in local dynamics in Amsterdam New West surrounding struggles over the right to the city; the negotiation of respectability and stigmatization; the politics of self and other; and the interconnections of sexuality, politics, and locality and belonging in Amsterdam New West.

This chapter examines the social formation of Dutch nativism by focusing on two issues that have ... more This chapter examines the social formation of Dutch nativism by focusing on two issues that have been central in recent Dutch public discourse: the debate surrounding the blackface servant of Saint Nicholas, Zwarte Piet, and the ascendance of ‘sexual nationalism’ in the country. Both exemplify the dominant nativist discourse in which Dutch culture is framed as under attack and in need of protection from the nefarious consequences of postcolonial and labor migration; both reveal the central roles played by ‘race’ and sexuality in Dutch nativist discourse. Focusing on how race and sexuality intersect within nativist discourse further reveals the importance of the third leg in the nativist triangle: religion (read: Islam). We argue in this chapter that Dutch nativist discourse is best understood through a conceptual framework with three central nodes: sexuality, race, and religion. We begin by examining the recent explosion of ‘race talk’ in the Netherlands – a surprising phenomenon in a country that has long seen itself as post-racial and beyond any form of racism. (Forthcoming, 2015).

In: Duyvendak et al., The culturalization of citizenship. Autochthony and belonging in a globalizing world. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

By focusing on what I call the ‘culturalization of everyday life’ in a neighbourhood in the Amste... more By focusing on what I call the ‘culturalization of everyday life’ in a neighbourhood in the Amsterdam district of New West where I pursued ethnographic research from 2009 to 2011, this chapter examines the dialectics of urban super-diversity. Rather than understanding super-diversity in terms of an increasing ‘normalcy of diversity’, I argue that the contemporary global city is characterized by a ‘dialectics of flow and closure’ where increasing heterogeneity goes hand in glove with an ever more powerful focus on locality, belonging and identity ‘fixture’. n a world characterized by flux, a great deal of energy is invested in fixing, controlling and freezing identities. In this chapter I argue that Dutch culturalism is a mode of controlling and fixing identity as culturalist ‘common sense’ produces an increased awareness of the proximity and alterity of others. The resulting focus on autochthony is a process of boundary-making between those who belong and those who are construed as guests or strangers. (Forthcoming, 2015).

APSA Migration and Citizenship Newsletter (2) 1: Winter 2013 / 2014

De politiek van sloop Stedelijke vernieuwing en de sociale constructie van 'gewone mensen' in Slo... more De politiek van sloop Stedelijke vernieuwing en de sociale constructie van 'gewone mensen' in Slotermeer Paul Mepschen In de vroege herfst van 2009 bezocht ik een festival in Slotermeer waarop de vernieuwing van de wijk gevierd werd. 'Geuzenveld-Slotermeer verandert' i stond te lezen op spandoeken en flyers. Bewoners informeerden zich over de plannen en werden verleid met kleurrijke beelden en filmpjes over de toekomst van de wijk. Een plaatselijk clubje volksdansers trad op, kinderen lieten hun snoet schminken of leefden zich uit op springkussens, buurtorganisaties presenteerden zich en bestuurders legden nog eens uit dat het beter, mooier en veiliger zou worden in de buurt. In de marge van het festival ontmoette ik echter een groep mensen in een minder feestelijke stemming: bewoners van de Louis Couperusbuurt en andere delen van Slotermeer. Zij waren in actie gekomen tegen de plannen om hun woningen en wijk te slopen. De Louis Couperusbuurt bestaat uit 670 woningen, vooral goedkope sociale huurwoningen. In de plannen voor de vernieuwing van Slotermeer zou het overgrote deel van deze woningen tegen de vlakte gaan. Op de plek van het buurtje zou een volledig nieuwe wijk worden gebouwd: hoger, ruimer, mooier en voor het grootste deel duurder. Een meerderheid van de sociale huurwoningen zou worden vervangen door koopwoningen en huurwoningen in de vrije sector. Ongeveer dertig procent van de terug te bouwen huizen zou bestaan uit sociale woningbouw. ii Een centraal figuur in het verzet tegen deze plannen was Rick. Ik ontmoette hem op het festival. Rick was een geboren Amsterdammer van vijftig, die een goedkoop maar klein appartement deelde met zijn partner en drie katten. De tweekamerwoning van 32 vierkante meter was weliswaar klein, maar Rick genoot van zijn tuintje, het vele groen rond de woning en de ruime parkeermogelijkheden. Hij werkte als voorman bij een tuindersbedrijf en was verantwoordelijk voor de aanleg 1 van binnentuinen en hoven in nieuwbouwprojecten in de stad. De Amsterdamse stadsvernieuwing was hem dan ook niet vreemd en hij vertelde dat hij veel mensen kende die, zoals hij dat noemde, 'weg waren gesloopt' of 'gedeporteerd'. Maar Rick had nooit verwacht dat de 'sloopwaanzin' zijn kant op zou komen. De Louis Couperusbuurt was 'netjes en gewoon'. Het was een respectabele wijk. Rick benadrukte ook dat hij zijn buren zag als hardwerkende en gewone mensen. 'Ik zie elke morgen de mensen naar hun werk gaan! Ja? Vijftig tot zestig procent gaat keurig netjes naar het werk. En de overige veertig procent kun je opdelen in ouderen en werklozen. Die werklozen zorgen voor overlast. Dat is niet het grootste deel van de buurt.' Ondanks het feit dat ongeveer veertig procent van de bewoners van zijn buurtje een migratie-achtergrond had, stelde Rick dat 'de wijk hier (…) voor het grootste deel witte mensen is'. Sloop associeerde hij met sociale problemen en grote concentraties van postmigranten. Er waren in zijn ogen dus geen goede redenen voor de sloop van zijn wijk. Ik vroeg hem naar Mohammed Bouyeri, de moordenaar van filmmaker Theo van Gogh, die ten tijde van de moord in de Louis Couperusbuurt woonde. Dat had voor enige opschudding gezorgd in 2004, toen journalisten en zelfs tv-crews plotseling de wijk indoken, op zoek naar het getto. Maar Rick reageerde: 'Dus omdat er één gestoorde Marokkaan in de wijk zit is het een slechte wijk? (…) Ja, dus ik kan me niet verplaatsen in het feit dat hier dus inderdaad Mohammed B. heeft gewoond dat wij daarmee over een kam worden geschoren. Wat bewijst het? Wat bewijst het? Haha...' Rick verdedigde de respectabiliteit van zijn wijk. Er woonden 'gewone Amsterdammers': hardwerkend, autochtoon, netjes. Hij sprak over de sloop in termen van vernedering en verdringing: 'Wat ze in mijn ogen doen is dat de mensen die er wonen worden verdreven en weer in achterstandsbuurten worden gedouwd.' 2

A tumultuous conference in Amsterdam, early 2011, on Sexual Nationalisms: Gender, Sexuality and t... more A tumultuous conference in Amsterdam, early 2011, on Sexual Nationalisms: Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Belonging in the New Europe, bore witness to the academic and political thorniness of the issues at stake. The conference, organized by the Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS)
at the University of Amsterdam and the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux Sociaux (IRIS) at EHESS in Paris, brought together more than 80 scholars and hundreds of participants to discuss the entanglements and convergences
of liberal and progressive feminist and gay rights politics with anti-immigration policies in Europe. The Dutch case, in our view, provides quintessential examples of the sexualization of European anxieties about cultural and religious diversity. In no other country have discourses of gay rights and sexual freedom played such a prominent role.

The social analysis of European populism lacks ethnographic attention to agency and to the symbol... more The social analysis of European populism lacks ethnographic attention to agency and to the symbolic meaning of populist constructions in people’s everyday lives. This paper offers an ethnographic analysis, starting with an understanding of populism as a perspective on the world: frames or schemas for perceiving, interpreting and classifying society. The paper focuses on the perspectives of ‘autochthonous’ (native, white) residents in a socially and ethnically mixed neighbourhood in Amsterdam New West. I show how plans for the demolition and restructuring of the neighbourhood opened up the symbolic space for the articulation of a discourse of displacement in which people construed and articulated a ‘self-understanding’ in antagonistic relations with ‘others’: elites and sometimes (post)migrants. The analysis of this local discourse of displacement offers insight into the crisis of representation and voice in a postfordist society, and therefore into the deeper structures of Dutch populism.

De SP wordt nostalgie verweten. Haar verdediging van de ontslagbescherming en de pensioengerechti... more De SP wordt nostalgie verweten. Haar verdediging van de ontslagbescherming en de pensioengerechtigde leeftijd wordt bij herhaling benoemd als 'niet meer van deze tijd'. Haar kritiek op het neoliberale Europa wordt afgedaan als provinciaal en nationalistisch. Niet alleen progressieve politici schermen met die noties: ook veel columnisten, publieke intellectuelen en sociaalwetenschappers bekijken de opmars van de SP op deze manier.

Sexuality features prominently in European debates on multiculturalism and in Orientalist discour... more Sexuality features prominently in European debates on multiculturalism and in Orientalist discourses on Islam. This article argues that representations of gay emancipation are mobilized to shape narratives in which Muslims are framed as non-modern subjects, a development that can best be understood in relation to the ‘culturalization of citizenship’ and the rise of Islamophobia in Europe. We focus on the Netherlands where the entanglement of gay rights discourses with anti-Muslim politics and representations is especially salient. The thorough-going secularization of Dutch society, transformations in the realms of sex and morality since the ‘long 1960s’ and the ‘normalization’ of gay identities since the 1980s have made sexuality a malleable discourse in the framing of ‘modernity’ against ‘tradition’. This development is highly problematic, but also offers possibilities for new alliances and solidarities in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (LGBTQ) politics and sexual and cultural citizenship.

This paper appropriates the notion of 'aesthetics of persuasion' coined by the anthropologist Bir... more This paper appropriates the notion of 'aesthetics of persuasion' coined by the anthropologist Birgit Meyer, to investigate the politics of sexual nationalism and the culturalization of citizenship in the Netherlands. To persuade citizens to embrace a reinvented Dutch nationalism, of which the moral universe of liberal secularism and an ideology of neoliberal subjectivity are framed as the characteristic elements, the newly invented and constructed notion of Dutch national identity was embellished with sex and desire. At work have been an erotics of persuasion.

De Caribisch-Amerikaanse, lesbische dichteres en activiste Audre Lorde schreef in haar memoires: ... more De Caribisch-Amerikaanse, lesbische dichteres en activiste Audre Lorde schreef in haar memoires: "[O]ur place was the very house of difference, not the security of any one particular difference". In een globaliserende samenleving is Lorde’s adagium relevanter dan ooit. Wij pleiten daarom voor een nieuw seksueel antinationalisme: een radicaal inclusieve homobeweging, die seksuele hervorming weer bovenaan de agenda zet en allianties met islamofoben, nationalisten en racisten uitsluit.

Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material inf... more Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible.

This study sets out to examine the politics of autochthony in the Netherlands. It thereby zooms i... more This study sets out to examine the politics of autochthony in the Netherlands. It thereby zooms in on the everyday articulation of a metaphoric figure that is central to the culturalization of citizenship and that has come to play an increasingly pivotal role in the Dutch political and cultural imagination in broader terms: the figure of the ordinary Dutch person. The book takes as a starting point the emergence, in the extended aftermath of decolonization and the Cold War and amidst the withering of the Fordist-Keynesian compact in Europe, of what Nicholas de Genova has referred to as ‘the European question’, or the problem of Europeanness. The reanimation of nationalism in Europe, which is expressed in the rise and growing social and political influence of exclusionary political formations, practices, and ideas, calls for an anthropology that turns attention to precisely those European populations construed as native or ‘autochthonous’. The focus of the book has therefore been on ...

Social Anthropology

In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the 'doing' of whiteness, which ... more In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the 'doing' of whiteness, which is necessary to understand how various, contrasting but interconnected articulations of whiteness come into being. We focus on two ethnographic vignettes that reveal the different structural positions, within a culturalised and racialised order, of the anthropologists developing them. The vignettes focus on liberal and progressive 'middle-class' articulations of whiteness that often remain unrecognised and-especially-bathed in innocence, but that go to the heart of the contemporary European question. We take issue with the liberal peripheralisation of racism, a discursive practice that locates racism in the 'white working class' and symbolically exorcises it from the 'moderate', centrist core of Europe. Rather than truly facing racism, what seems at stake for many liberals and progressives is the self-image of being well-meaning 'respectable' and 'good' middle-class people.

Facing racism: discomfort, innocence and the liberal peripheralisation of race in the Netherlands, 2019

In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the ‘doing’ of whiteness, which ... more In this paper, we argue in favour of an anthropological focus on the ‘doing’ of whiteness, which is necessary to understand how various, contrasting but interconnected articulations of whiteness come into being. We focus on two ethnographic vignettes that reveal the different structural positions, within a culturalised and racialised order, of the anthropologists developing them. The vignettes focus on liberal and progressive ‘middle‐class’ articulations of whiteness that often remain unrecognised and – especially – bathed in innocence, but that go to the heart of the contemporary European question. We take issue with the liberal peripheralisation of racism, a discursive practice that locates racism in the ‘white working class’ and symbolically exorcises it from the ‘moderate’, centrist core of Europe. Rather than truly facing racism, what seems at stake for many liberals and progressives is the self‐image of being well‐meaning ‘respectable’ and ‘good’ middle‐class people.

The notion of super-diversity has been employed to describe the urban condition in cities across ... more The notion of super-diversity has been employed to describe the urban condition in cities across the world. By focusing on the politics of culturalization in the Netherlands, I engage with scholars who claim that super-diversity may lead to a normalcy of difference. I argue that in the Netherlands a culturalist common sense has emerged which divides Dutch society into distinct and internally homogeneous cultures and which represents Dutch culture as a threatened entity that must be protected against the mores and moralities of minoritized, racialized outsiders. Focusing on working-class whites in a neighbourhood in Amsterdam, I show how plans to demolish and restructure their neighbourhood fuelled a discourse of displacement in antagonistic relation to “Others”. Rather than normalizing differences, this culturalist common sense has brought into being a field of knowledge and both reflected and supported views that produce and reinforce boundaries between “ordinary” neighbours and cultural and social others.

National Politics and Sexuality in Transregional Perspective The Homophobic Argument, 2018

Sexual democracy raises important questions concerning political democracy and citizenship in plu... more Sexual democracy raises important questions concerning political democracy and citizenship in pluralistic societies. Sexual liberty is incorporated into a cultural protectionist discourse that associates it with secularism and liberalism and pits it against the allegedly backward cultures and religions of post-immigrant citizens, especially Muslims. In commenting on the intellectual and activist travels of the concept of homonationalism, Jasbir Puar (2013, 337) argues that it is not simply a synonym for gay racism. Similarly, ‘sexual nationalist’ denotes not an identity that scholars and activists can attribute to those with whom they disagree but, rather, a political lens through which many people view political and sexual dynamics in Europe and the United States. In this chapter, I analyze the discourse of sexual nationalism in the case of the Netherlands beyond its articulation in far-right or right-wing populist neonationalism.

Cultural and religious alterity, associated with postcolonial and labour migrants and their desce... more Cultural and religious alterity, associated with postcolonial and labour migrants and their descendants, has become a matter of growing contention across Europe. Various scholars have discussed the situation in the Netherlands as exemplary of European anxieties about national cohesion and cultural homogeneity in which culturalized and racialized conceptions of the nation and its Others are central. Mepschen examines how these public discourses and politics are played out in the context of a pluri-ethnic, working-class neighbourhood in Amsterdam New West. Taking an ethnographic approach, he points to the ways in which ‘white’ Dutch citizens—imagined and construed as autochthonous, literally ‘born from the Earth itself’—come to recognize themselves in, identify with and appropriate the images and rhetorics that circulate within culturalist, autochthonic symbolic economies. Following up on his previous work, Mepschen focuses here on the role played by discourses surrounding sexual liberty and LGBTIQ rights in these dynamics. Continuing with an ethnographic approach, he foregrounds the complex interplay of religion, secularism and sexuality in the ‘making’ and ‘doing’ of autochthony in an everyday, local context, a complexity that is lost in much of the existing analyses of Dutch multiculturalism.

This is the Introduction to my PhD-thesis, defended on January 29, 2016 (highest honours). My stu... more This is the Introduction to my PhD-thesis, defended on January 29, 2016 (highest honours). My study sets out to examine the politics of autochthony in the Netherlands. It thereby zooms in on the everyday articulation of a metaphoric figure that is central to the culturalization of citizenship and that has come to play an increasingly pivotal role in the Dutch political and cultural imagination in broader terms: the figure of the ordinary Dutch person. The book takes as a starting point the emergence, in the extended aftermath of decolonization and the Cold War and amidst the withering of the Fordist-Keynesian compact in Europe, of what Nicholas de Genova has referred to as ‘the European question’, or the problem of Europeanness. The reanimation of nationalism in Europe, which is expressed in the rise and growing social and political influence of exclusionary political formations, practices, and ideas, calls for an anthropology that turns attention to precisely those European populations construed as native or ‘autochthonous’. The focus of the book has therefore been on ethnographic case studies in which everyday articulations of autochthony and the politics of cultural and social location animating Dutch citizens - categorized as autochthonous - could be studied from a microscopic, ethnographic perspective. I do not attempt to give an ‘overview’ of the plurality of autochthony in the Netherlands, but study its articulation in local dynamics in Amsterdam New West surrounding struggles over the right to the city; the negotiation of respectability and stigmatization; the politics of self and other; and the interconnections of sexuality, politics, and locality and belonging in Amsterdam New West.

This chapter examines the social formation of Dutch nativism by focusing on two issues that have ... more This chapter examines the social formation of Dutch nativism by focusing on two issues that have been central in recent Dutch public discourse: the debate surrounding the blackface servant of Saint Nicholas, Zwarte Piet, and the ascendance of ‘sexual nationalism’ in the country. Both exemplify the dominant nativist discourse in which Dutch culture is framed as under attack and in need of protection from the nefarious consequences of postcolonial and labor migration; both reveal the central roles played by ‘race’ and sexuality in Dutch nativist discourse. Focusing on how race and sexuality intersect within nativist discourse further reveals the importance of the third leg in the nativist triangle: religion (read: Islam). We argue in this chapter that Dutch nativist discourse is best understood through a conceptual framework with three central nodes: sexuality, race, and religion. We begin by examining the recent explosion of ‘race talk’ in the Netherlands – a surprising phenomenon in a country that has long seen itself as post-racial and beyond any form of racism. (Forthcoming, 2015).

In: Duyvendak et al., The culturalization of citizenship. Autochthony and belonging in a globalizing world. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

By focusing on what I call the ‘culturalization of everyday life’ in a neighbourhood in the Amste... more By focusing on what I call the ‘culturalization of everyday life’ in a neighbourhood in the Amsterdam district of New West where I pursued ethnographic research from 2009 to 2011, this chapter examines the dialectics of urban super-diversity. Rather than understanding super-diversity in terms of an increasing ‘normalcy of diversity’, I argue that the contemporary global city is characterized by a ‘dialectics of flow and closure’ where increasing heterogeneity goes hand in glove with an ever more powerful focus on locality, belonging and identity ‘fixture’. n a world characterized by flux, a great deal of energy is invested in fixing, controlling and freezing identities. In this chapter I argue that Dutch culturalism is a mode of controlling and fixing identity as culturalist ‘common sense’ produces an increased awareness of the proximity and alterity of others. The resulting focus on autochthony is a process of boundary-making between those who belong and those who are construed as guests or strangers. (Forthcoming, 2015).

APSA Migration and Citizenship Newsletter (2) 1: Winter 2013 / 2014

De politiek van sloop Stedelijke vernieuwing en de sociale constructie van 'gewone mensen' in Slo... more De politiek van sloop Stedelijke vernieuwing en de sociale constructie van 'gewone mensen' in Slotermeer Paul Mepschen In de vroege herfst van 2009 bezocht ik een festival in Slotermeer waarop de vernieuwing van de wijk gevierd werd. 'Geuzenveld-Slotermeer verandert' i stond te lezen op spandoeken en flyers. Bewoners informeerden zich over de plannen en werden verleid met kleurrijke beelden en filmpjes over de toekomst van de wijk. Een plaatselijk clubje volksdansers trad op, kinderen lieten hun snoet schminken of leefden zich uit op springkussens, buurtorganisaties presenteerden zich en bestuurders legden nog eens uit dat het beter, mooier en veiliger zou worden in de buurt. In de marge van het festival ontmoette ik echter een groep mensen in een minder feestelijke stemming: bewoners van de Louis Couperusbuurt en andere delen van Slotermeer. Zij waren in actie gekomen tegen de plannen om hun woningen en wijk te slopen. De Louis Couperusbuurt bestaat uit 670 woningen, vooral goedkope sociale huurwoningen. In de plannen voor de vernieuwing van Slotermeer zou het overgrote deel van deze woningen tegen de vlakte gaan. Op de plek van het buurtje zou een volledig nieuwe wijk worden gebouwd: hoger, ruimer, mooier en voor het grootste deel duurder. Een meerderheid van de sociale huurwoningen zou worden vervangen door koopwoningen en huurwoningen in de vrije sector. Ongeveer dertig procent van de terug te bouwen huizen zou bestaan uit sociale woningbouw. ii Een centraal figuur in het verzet tegen deze plannen was Rick. Ik ontmoette hem op het festival. Rick was een geboren Amsterdammer van vijftig, die een goedkoop maar klein appartement deelde met zijn partner en drie katten. De tweekamerwoning van 32 vierkante meter was weliswaar klein, maar Rick genoot van zijn tuintje, het vele groen rond de woning en de ruime parkeermogelijkheden. Hij werkte als voorman bij een tuindersbedrijf en was verantwoordelijk voor de aanleg 1 van binnentuinen en hoven in nieuwbouwprojecten in de stad. De Amsterdamse stadsvernieuwing was hem dan ook niet vreemd en hij vertelde dat hij veel mensen kende die, zoals hij dat noemde, 'weg waren gesloopt' of 'gedeporteerd'. Maar Rick had nooit verwacht dat de 'sloopwaanzin' zijn kant op zou komen. De Louis Couperusbuurt was 'netjes en gewoon'. Het was een respectabele wijk. Rick benadrukte ook dat hij zijn buren zag als hardwerkende en gewone mensen. 'Ik zie elke morgen de mensen naar hun werk gaan! Ja? Vijftig tot zestig procent gaat keurig netjes naar het werk. En de overige veertig procent kun je opdelen in ouderen en werklozen. Die werklozen zorgen voor overlast. Dat is niet het grootste deel van de buurt.' Ondanks het feit dat ongeveer veertig procent van de bewoners van zijn buurtje een migratie-achtergrond had, stelde Rick dat 'de wijk hier (…) voor het grootste deel witte mensen is'. Sloop associeerde hij met sociale problemen en grote concentraties van postmigranten. Er waren in zijn ogen dus geen goede redenen voor de sloop van zijn wijk. Ik vroeg hem naar Mohammed Bouyeri, de moordenaar van filmmaker Theo van Gogh, die ten tijde van de moord in de Louis Couperusbuurt woonde. Dat had voor enige opschudding gezorgd in 2004, toen journalisten en zelfs tv-crews plotseling de wijk indoken, op zoek naar het getto. Maar Rick reageerde: 'Dus omdat er één gestoorde Marokkaan in de wijk zit is het een slechte wijk? (…) Ja, dus ik kan me niet verplaatsen in het feit dat hier dus inderdaad Mohammed B. heeft gewoond dat wij daarmee over een kam worden geschoren. Wat bewijst het? Wat bewijst het? Haha...' Rick verdedigde de respectabiliteit van zijn wijk. Er woonden 'gewone Amsterdammers': hardwerkend, autochtoon, netjes. Hij sprak over de sloop in termen van vernedering en verdringing: 'Wat ze in mijn ogen doen is dat de mensen die er wonen worden verdreven en weer in achterstandsbuurten worden gedouwd.' 2

A tumultuous conference in Amsterdam, early 2011, on Sexual Nationalisms: Gender, Sexuality and t... more A tumultuous conference in Amsterdam, early 2011, on Sexual Nationalisms: Gender, Sexuality and the Politics of Belonging in the New Europe, bore witness to the academic and political thorniness of the issues at stake. The conference, organized by the Amsterdam Research Center for Gender and Sexuality (ARC-GS)
at the University of Amsterdam and the Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux Sociaux (IRIS) at EHESS in Paris, brought together more than 80 scholars and hundreds of participants to discuss the entanglements and convergences
of liberal and progressive feminist and gay rights politics with anti-immigration policies in Europe. The Dutch case, in our view, provides quintessential examples of the sexualization of European anxieties about cultural and religious diversity. In no other country have discourses of gay rights and sexual freedom played such a prominent role.

The social analysis of European populism lacks ethnographic attention to agency and to the symbol... more The social analysis of European populism lacks ethnographic attention to agency and to the symbolic meaning of populist constructions in people’s everyday lives. This paper offers an ethnographic analysis, starting with an understanding of populism as a perspective on the world: frames or schemas for perceiving, interpreting and classifying society. The paper focuses on the perspectives of ‘autochthonous’ (native, white) residents in a socially and ethnically mixed neighbourhood in Amsterdam New West. I show how plans for the demolition and restructuring of the neighbourhood opened up the symbolic space for the articulation of a discourse of displacement in which people construed and articulated a ‘self-understanding’ in antagonistic relations with ‘others’: elites and sometimes (post)migrants. The analysis of this local discourse of displacement offers insight into the crisis of representation and voice in a postfordist society, and therefore into the deeper structures of Dutch populism.

De SP wordt nostalgie verweten. Haar verdediging van de ontslagbescherming en de pensioengerechti... more De SP wordt nostalgie verweten. Haar verdediging van de ontslagbescherming en de pensioengerechtigde leeftijd wordt bij herhaling benoemd als 'niet meer van deze tijd'. Haar kritiek op het neoliberale Europa wordt afgedaan als provinciaal en nationalistisch. Niet alleen progressieve politici schermen met die noties: ook veel columnisten, publieke intellectuelen en sociaalwetenschappers bekijken de opmars van de SP op deze manier.

Sexuality features prominently in European debates on multiculturalism and in Orientalist discour... more Sexuality features prominently in European debates on multiculturalism and in Orientalist discourses on Islam. This article argues that representations of gay emancipation are mobilized to shape narratives in which Muslims are framed as non-modern subjects, a development that can best be understood in relation to the ‘culturalization of citizenship’ and the rise of Islamophobia in Europe. We focus on the Netherlands where the entanglement of gay rights discourses with anti-Muslim politics and representations is especially salient. The thorough-going secularization of Dutch society, transformations in the realms of sex and morality since the ‘long 1960s’ and the ‘normalization’ of gay identities since the 1980s have made sexuality a malleable discourse in the framing of ‘modernity’ against ‘tradition’. This development is highly problematic, but also offers possibilities for new alliances and solidarities in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered and questioning (LGBTQ) politics and sexual and cultural citizenship.

This paper appropriates the notion of 'aesthetics of persuasion' coined by the anthropologist Bir... more This paper appropriates the notion of 'aesthetics of persuasion' coined by the anthropologist Birgit Meyer, to investigate the politics of sexual nationalism and the culturalization of citizenship in the Netherlands. To persuade citizens to embrace a reinvented Dutch nationalism, of which the moral universe of liberal secularism and an ideology of neoliberal subjectivity are framed as the characteristic elements, the newly invented and constructed notion of Dutch national identity was embellished with sex and desire. At work have been an erotics of persuasion.

De Caribisch-Amerikaanse, lesbische dichteres en activiste Audre Lorde schreef in haar memoires: ... more De Caribisch-Amerikaanse, lesbische dichteres en activiste Audre Lorde schreef in haar memoires: "[O]ur place was the very house of difference, not the security of any one particular difference". In een globaliserende samenleving is Lorde’s adagium relevanter dan ooit. Wij pleiten daarom voor een nieuw seksueel antinationalisme: een radicaal inclusieve homobeweging, die seksuele hervorming weer bovenaan de agenda zet en allianties met islamofoben, nationalisten en racisten uitsluit.