Out of Character
Debating Dutchness, Narrating Citizenship
Buch in deiner Nähe kaufen
Beschreibung
This book offers a detailed and innovative study of the Dutch case of politics of citizenship and nationalism by focusing on public and political controversies in the crucial period of 1973–2015. By foregrounding the crucial role of performance and narration in public and political debates, this book shows how discourses of citizenship and nationhood are deeply shaped by established repertoires and long-lasting lines of disagreement about difference and belonging in the Netherlands.
While change did occur within the Dutch context during this period, this book reveals that these transformations were not primarily driven by purportedly permissive and accommodating responses to immigration and cultural diversity. Instead, it unveils a Dutch landscape deeply marked by challenges related to race, democracy, and liberal exceptionalism. In doing so, the book contributes to ongoing debates in the study of citizenship, nationalism, and intellectual history around the merits and limitations of liberal politics of inclusion. It critically extends concepts and arguments in cultural pragmatics and problematizes the common hope that public debate may progressively resolve antagonisms over difference.
With a focus on empirical research, the book meticulously reconstructs the emergence of national identity debates in recent decades and vividly portrays the dynamics and tensions of these public performances while dissecting their role in shaping the nation's identity and its boundaries. The book covers a crucial period of the European politics of citizenship and nationhood in which anti-immigrant politics, new modes of racism, and the bordering of Europe took shape. It locates the Dutch case within these developments and insists on the importance of historical continuity and narrative performance. This book demonstrates that the Netherlands, and Europe more broadly, has not overcome the profound consequences of its past.
Shows how discourses of citizenship and nationhood are deeply shaped by established repertoires in the Netherlands Reconstructs the rise of national identity debates in recent decades Uses the Netherlands as a case study to examine contemporary politics of citizenship and nationalism
Autor*in
Rogier van Reekum
Themen in »Out of Character«
National identity debates The Netherlands Cultural sociology Citizenship Nationalism Political sociology
Stimmen zu »Out of Character«
“A necessary and astute analysis, this discursive ethnography of the discourses made and remade about the concepts of Dutchness, nation and citizenry during the period 1990- 2010, but actually from the 1970s on. These discourses are produced by the centers of power in Dutch society, white male heterosexual publicists writing in major newspapers. Yet, Rogier van Reekum makes the historical inextricability of Dutchness and race abundantly clear”. (Prof. Dr. Gloria Wekker, Utrecht University)
“This book contains a comprehensive analysis of the cultural politics of citizenship in the Netherlands throughout the past four turbulent decades. Making an important intervention to existing scholarship, Van Reekum focuses on the work of composing and recomposing the problems of Dutchness in the civil sphere, thereby bringing constructivist theories to work at the normative level. A revealing read for anyone interested in a deeper understanding of public forms.” (Prof. Sonjavan Wichelen, The University of Sydney)
()