Content uploaded by Mandy de Wilde
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Mandy de Wilde on Oct 23, 2015
Content may be subject to copyright.
A preview of the PDF is not available
Brave new neighbourhood. Affective citizenship in Dutch territorial governance
... Schinkel and Van Houdt, 2010) and perspectives on state pedagogies (Clarke, 2005;Newman, 2010;Newman and Tonkens, 2011a) to study how precisely the Dutch state teaches its citizens to feel certain ways about their precarious position. Conceptualisations of 'affective citizenship' (Muehlebach, 2012;De Wilde, 2015) have drawn attention to the ways in which government now mobilises affects such as a sense of belonging (Duyvendak, 2011;De Wilde and Duyvendak, 2016) and compassion with others (Berlant, 2004, Muehlebach, 2011. Following Andrea Muehlebach, we understand affective labour as central to the "unwaged labour regime" that relies on producing "good feeling", and is "valued by the state and other social actors" because it presumably contributes to fostering social cohesion (2011, pp. ...
... The state's mobilisation of affects is not new (see for example Rose, 1989;Duyvendak, 2011;Muehlebach, 2012;De Wilde, 2015). Nevertheless, teaching citizens 'optimism' and the 'right' aestheticsand enabling case managers to sanction recipients if they fail to 'think in possibilities' or 'look presentable' -is characteristic of contemporary social assistance in the Netherlands and beyond (see for example Friedli and Stearn, 2015;Kampen and Tonkens, 2018). ...
The gradual retreat of many governments from guaranteeing secure labour relations and social security, and the attendant normalisation of precarious working and living conditions, goes hand in hand with a promise that ‘the good life’ can be attained through paid work. Welfare-to-work programmes are at the centre of this, as they problematise social assistance and seek to ‘improve’ recipients and their positions in society by obliging them to find precarious employment in the post-Fordist labour market. This dissertation examines how this is done within the daily practices of ‘labour market (re)integration’ in social assistance offices in the Netherlands. It asks how the focus on future employment takes shape in these practices, what exactly is required of recipients who are deemed ‘work-ready’ in return for the right to social assistance benefits, and what the observed practices tell us more generally about the politics of social security. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, I reveal the work that goes into obtaining and retaining the right to social assistance and the pedagogical techniques that case managers use to entice, persuade and coerce recipients to find precarious paid work. ‘Work-readiness’ (being continuously and completely ready for and able to adapt to potential future employment) is accomplished by problematising the need for social assistance, by mobilising ‘the right’ aesthetics and affects, and by glorifying paid work. It is by looking presentable, feeling optimistic and performing potentiality that social assistance recipients are deemed able and willing to find paid work and to become potentially valuable members of society.
... In policy, the neighbourhood is considered a relevant site for government intervention . Such strategies, also known as territorial governance (De Wilde, 2015) or area-based policies , are aimed at reducing social problems related to social exclusion, deprivation, unsafety and liveability (Van Gent, Musterd and Ostendorf, 2009). To tackle such issues, measures are taken to engage residents in their neighbourhood and to stimulate social contact (De Wilde and Duyvendak, 2016;Hoekstra and Dahlvik, 2018). ...
... Hoe proberen wijkprofessionals onder burgers verbondenheid en zorgzaamheid en 'zelfredzaamheid' te genereren? Niet door gangbare beleidsstrategieen zoals voorlichting en overtuiging door argumentatie, maar door 'gevoeligmakende beleidstechnieken' (De Wilde 2015;De Wilde & Duyvendak 2016) waarmee een beroep gedaan wordt op hun verlangens, wensen en emoties. Wijkprofessionals leggen niet uit hoe het beleid is veranderd en wat er dus van burgers verwacht wordt. ...
In dit artikel onderzoeken we de emotionele dimensie van de herziening van de verzorgingsstaat. We betogen dat hier sprake is van een nieuw arrangement van professionaliteit en burgerschap, dat we in navolging van enkele andere auteurs ‘affectief burgerschap’ noemen. We onderzoeken de politieke emoties die hierbij in het geding gebracht worden. Hoe krijgen professionals burgers zover dat ze zich verantwoordelijk gaan voelen voor zichzelf en elkaar? (Hoe) krijgen professionals burgers zo ver dat ze deze verantwoordelijkheid en zelfredzaamheid ook gaan verlangen?
... This strategy signals an integrated approach, as well, which derives from the widespread recognition that problems such as inequality, socio-economic deprivation and crime accumulate and concentrate in cities. An integrated approach suggests therefore, that instead of sectorial policy solutions these problems are rather to be handled as complementary to each other and to be dealt with simultaneously on the economic, social and physical levels in the specific geographic area of the neighbourhood (van Gent et al. 2009a, de Wilde 2015. Integrated work automatically infers that urban governance sees a new constellation of participating actors in the policy making process, both horizontally and vertically. ...
The article analyses how active citizens in the Meevaart Development Group, seated in the Indische neighborhood in Amsterdam, navigate their activities in the context of national and local participatory mechanisms wherein citizens are invited to partake. This interplay between initiatives and policy context was explored with the sensitizing concepts of participation as a politics of lived experience as well as a source of deeper democracy, versus participation as part of policy making and implementation. It is found that the leaders of the Meevaart see the opening of participatory spaces as a 'possibilities machine' that they aspire to fill in according to their own understanding. In their role as boundary spanners, they appropriate the participation rhetoric of the government as part of everyday life and also contribute to policy implementation. Moreover, in this process, they also facilitate the participation of vulnerable groups that otherwise would not have the opportunity to contribute to the participation agenda of the state. The role division between the citizen and the government, and between the disadvantaged and the privileged-is disordered and reordered from a bottom-up perspective so that alternatives of increased democratic practices are realized under the label of participation.
... Schinkel and Van Houdt, 2010) and perspectives on state pedagogies ( Clarke, 2005;Newman, 2010;Newman and Tonkens, 2011) to study how precisely the Dutch state teaches its citizens to feel certain ways about their precarious position. Conceptualisations of 'affective citizenship' ( Muehlebach, 2012;De Wilde, 2015) have drawn attention to the ways in which government now mobilises affects such as a sense of belonging (Duyvendak, 2011; De Wilde and Duyvendak, 2016) and compassion with others ( Berlant 2004, Muehlebach, 2011). Following Andrea Muehlebach, we understand affective labour as central to the 'unwaged labour regime' that relies on producing 'good feeling', and is 'valued by the state and other social actors' because it presumably contributes to fostering social cohesion (2011: 61-62). ...
In the context of the Dutch welfare state, precarisation entails particular pedagogies: citizens are taught how to feel about being insecure through the techniques of (1) accepting; (2) controlling; and (3) imagining. Welfare activation thus focuses on teaching citizens to accept their precarious position, to embrace it and to prepare for its continuation while remaining optimistic about its discontinuation. Perhaps cruelly, then, the state teaches citizens to develop optimism towards certain imagined futures while at the same time acknowledging the unattainability of these futures. Importantly, case managers in Dutch welfare offices are often precarious themselves too, making the affective labour they perform both difficult and essential for themselves. Contemporary activation and workfare programmes are therefore best understood as characterised by insecurity and precarisation on both the receiving and the providing end of state–citizen encounters.
... Scholars have noted that this harder stance towards integration marked a shift from a Marshallian view of republican citizenship as membership towards what has been described as the contemporary 'culturalisation' of citizenship. Public discussions around citizenship often include abstract values such as 'goodness' , 'honesty' , 'tolerance' and 'loyalty' to describe the qualities of an ideal Dutch citizen (van Reekum 2012;de Wilde 2015). This is seen as a response to various local and global events such as an increase in migration into the Netherlands, 9/11 and the murder of outspoken critic ofIslam andfilmmaker Theo van Gogh in 2004 in Amsterdam (Duyvendak, Hurenkamp, andTonkens 2010). ...
This article is an ethnographic exploration of flexible cultural citizenship among a Surinamese Hindu community in the Netherlands. Rather than focus on the relationship between mobility and transnationalism, it revisits the notion of cultural flexibility in order to demonstrate how diasporic actors belonging to a transnational moral community construct their position as model citizens. This includes an appeal to aspects of difference rather than notions of sameness or integration. By introducing what the author calls ‘value flexibility’ in asserting a diasporic community’s belonging, this article draws attention to the ways in which citizenship and belonging in diasporic contexts hinges on culturally specific, orientalized notions of what it means to be Hindu. Such notions ultimately translate into flexibility across cultural and moral worldviews. It illustrates this through interviews with Surinamese Hindus across the Netherlands and a case study of a Hindu primary school in The Hague. This article focuses upon discursive constructions of the use of religious images, the circulation of moral stories and the performance of mythological narratives as productive domains of value flexibility.
... Community is one of 'the ways in which the state has reconfigured pro-environmentalism' to its own ends (Barr and Pollard, 2016: 5). More coercively, community is seen as a form of biopower corralling morally responsibly citizens into a natural social order (Dean, 2010;de Wilde, 2015;Hauxwell-Baldwin, 2013;Rose, 2000Rose, , 1999. Gilbert argues that a (mistaken) conservative idea-and ideal-of community as either 'a simple aggregation of individuals, or a homogenous and monolithic community' (2014: x) underlies the post-political condition. ...
This article excavates the role, function and practices of community within Transition, a grassroots environmentalist movement. It does so to pursue a quest for understanding if, how, and in what ways, community-based environmental movements are ‘political’. When community-based low carbon initiatives are discussed academically, they can be critiqued; this critique is in turn often based on the perception that the crucial community aspect tends to be a settled, static and reified condition of (human) togetherness. However community—both in theory and practice—is not destined to be so. This article collects and evaluates data from two large research projects on the Transition movement. It takes this ethnographic evidence together with lessons from post-political theory, to outline the capacious, diverse and progressive forms of community that exists within the movement. Doing so, it argues against a blanket post-political diagnosis of community transitions, and opens up, yet again, the consequences of the perceptions and prejudices one has about community are more than mere theoretical posturing.
... Initiated by the district government, Neighbourhood Circle was set up to target the above issues by engineering a community spirit in the neighbourhood. As face-to-face contact, friendly chats and intimate interactions were deemed the first steps towards kindling fellow feelings, a particular strategy was to transform public space in the neighbourhood into a cosy atmosphere and offer opportunities for encounters that could provoke this atmosphere (De Wilde, 2015). ...
In buurthuizen komen mensen met verschillende achtergronden samen. Overbruggen mensen uit diverse groepen daar ook de onderlinge verschillen? En wat doen sociaal werkers aan die ontmoeting en verbinding?
Urban policies are increasingly localized, stressing the role of neighbourhood social contacts in generating cohesion and citizen participation. Studies on ‘everyday’ multiculturalism also emphasize the neighbourhood as a meaningful place for encounters. However, there remains a lack of understanding of how specific contexts condition encounters with difference. We compare two European neighbourhoods that provide different contexts for participation: Amsterdam and Vienna. We ask how residents experience local spaces of encounter and how this influences their experience of the neighbourhood. We find a mismatch between the aims of local policies and the experiences of residents, who also value more superficial contacts.
Het is de taak van de overheid om de waarden van een open samenleving en de democratische rechtsstaat te garanderen en de publieke moraal te ondersteunen. Dat constateert de WRR in het rapport Waarden, normen en de last van het gedrag (rapport nr. 68, 2003). Daarnaast is het in de eerste plaats de samenleving zelf die die waarden vormt en onderhoudt.
Aan het begin van de eenentwintigste eeuw staat de verzorgingsstaat voor nieuwe uitdagingen: internationalisering van de economie, europeanisering van het bestuur, vergrijzing en ontgroening van de bevolking, en een grotere sociaal-culturele differentiatie van burgers. Met dit rapport schetst de Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid hoe de verzorgingsstaat met die uitdagingen op een productieve wijze kan omgaan. De WRR start zijn analyse met het determineren en doordenken van de vier hoofd-functies van de verzorgingsstaat: verzorgen, verzekeren, verheffen en verbinden. Voor alle vier functies schetst dit rapport de uitdagingen, de invulling die ze moeten aan-nemen en de beleidsprogramma's die nodig zijn om ze toekomstbestendig te maken. Bovendien presenteert de WRR een weging van de functies ten opzichte van elkaar. De hoofdconclusie is dat de verheffings- en verbindingsfunctie een duidelijke impuls behoeven. De afgelopen jaren is er al ruimschoots aandacht besteed aan hervormingen die gericht zijn op verzekeren en verzorgen; het wordt nu tijd om de verheffings- en de verbindingsfunctie van een geconcentreerde en samenhangende beleidsinspanning te voorzien.
Literaturverz. S. [337] - 365
Does vital citizenship require moral consensus? Or is it the ability to organize our differences, that allows people to live together as citizens in a republic? Whereas liberal, republican, and communitarian theories of citizenship analyzed the conditions of citizenship, the central message of this book is that the practical exercise of citizenship, under conditions that are far from ideal, is the main source of its vitality. Instead of arguing for more participation, it focuses on the citizenship of those who, for whatever reason, are already active in the public sphere. Herman van Gunsteren develops a theory of citizenship well suited to the era of political reform that was inaugurated by the revolutions of 1989.
The second edition of this classic text substantially revises and extends the original, so as to take account of theoretical and policy developments and to enhance its international scope. Drawing on a range of disciplines and literatures, the book provides an unusually broad account of citizenship. It recasts traditional thinking about the concept so as to pinpoint important theoretical issues and their political and policy implications for women in their diversity. Themes of inclusion and exclusion (at national and international level), rights and participation, inequality and difference are thus all brought to the fore in the development of a woman-friendly, gender-inclusive theory and praxis of citizenship.