Overview
- 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
Part of the book series: Cultural Sociology (CULTSOC)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
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.
Reviews
“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)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Out of Character
Book Subtitle: Debating Dutchness, Narrating Citizenship
Authors: Rogier van Reekum
Series Title: Cultural Sociology
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48898-6
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-48897-9Published: 29 December 2023
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-48900-6Due: 29 January 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-48898-6Published: 28 December 2023
Series ISSN: 2946-3572
Series E-ISSN: 2946-3580
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIII, 293
Topics: Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, European Politics