Merijn Oudenampsen

The observation that a significant rupture occurred in Dutch political culture at the turn of the century is by now seen as one of the tedious truisms of the public debate. A country that perceived itself as a beacon of tolerance and progressivism quite rapidly became part of the European vanguard of the political revival of nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiment. The meteoric rise and dramatic assassination of the right-wing populist politician Pim Fortuyn in 2002 resulted in a stunning election victory of his party List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). It became the second largest party out of the blue, winning 17 percent of the vote in what is commonly called ‘the Fortuyn revolt’. Ever since, national identity, immigration, and law and order have been the dominant themes in Dutch public debate. It set the stage for the Dutch culture wars, pitting conservative defenders of restrictive immigration and integration policies against prudent progressives. The central question of this book is how to make sense of this shift in ideological terms. So far, the dominant frame in seeking to understand the twenty-first century political turnaround in the Netherlands has been that of (right-wing) populism; a focus that foregrounds style, technique and rhetoric, but undervalues ideas. Dutch populist leaders such as Pim Fortuyn and Geert Wilders were seen above all, as savvy political entrepreneurs expressing the ignored concerns of a marginalized electorate, but have less frequently been analysed in terms of their political ideas, as part of a broader intellectual movement. Not the head but the underbelly, not ideas but the empirical realities of ‘the man on the street’ were presumed to be the decisive factors, reinforced by the newfound power of the media and the personal charisma of the populist leader. This study seeks to cast a wider conceptual net than what is common in existing scholarly accounts. I argue that political leaders such as Frits Bolkestein, Pim Fortuyn, Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders are only the most visible exponents of a broader conservative political and intellectual tendency that I refer to as the Dutch New Right. This analytical move might seem unorthodox, since the New Right is not a household name in the Netherlands. The term ‘New Right’ came into use in the US and the UK to describe conservative movements that emerged in parallel with – and partly in response to – the rise of the New Left in the 1960s and 1970s. Most prominently, the politics of Thatcher and Reagan are associated with the term. The newness of New Right, on the one hand, lies in the combination of a free market strand and a culturally conservative strand. The ideology of the New Right is a complex and often contradictory fusion of neoliberal and (neo)conservative ideas. The central thesis of this book is that the swing to the right in the Netherlands can be understood along similar lines, as a belated iteration of the New Right backlash that occurred overseas.

Vlak na de terreuraanslagen van 9/11 was Geert Wilders te gast bij het televisieprogramma Barend en Van Dorp. Wilders, toen nog kamerlid voor de VVD, nam stelling tegen de anti-islampolitiek van de rechtspopulist Pim Fortuyn. 'In tegenstelling tot Pim Fortuyn die oproept tot een kruistocht, of wat is het, een Koude Oorlog tegen de islam- wat een verwerpelijke opmerking is omdat hij daarmee alle moslims op één hoop gooit- heb ik van begin af aan gezegd: de islam, daar is niets mis mee, het is een te respecteren godsdienst. ' Volgens de toenmalige rechtsbuiten van de VVD moest er een duidelijk onderscheid gemaakt worden: 'Ook de meeste moslims ter wereld, maar ook in Nederland, zijn goede burgers waar niets mis mee is. Het gaat om dat kleine stukje moslimextremisme. ' Na de oprichting van de Partij voor de Vrijheid (pvv) zou Wilders radicaal van mening veranderen. De islam werd door hem beschreven als een gewelddadige ideologie, gericht op de vernietiging van het Westen. De 'kruistocht tegen de islam' waar hij in 2001 nog op afgaf, zou uitgroeien tot het allesbepalende agendapunt van de PVV. Het thema islam is zelfs zo'n belangrijke plaats gaan innemen in het partijprogramma, dat de pvv vaak gekarakteriseerd is als een one-issue beweging. Wie na vijftien jaar de balans wil opmaken van de maatschappelijke impact van Wilders en de PVV, zal de partij bovenal in dit licht moeten zien.

A series of editorials and opinion pieces declared 2016 to be the ‘year of the angry voter’. It is illustrative of the wider resurgence of a particular conception of anger that contains striking parallels to the philosophical concept of ressentiment as elaborated by Friedrich Nietzsche and the German-Jewish philosopher Max Scheler. They defined ressentiment as a form of political anger that does not seek a clear remedy. It is this particular conception of irremediable political discontent that appears to resurface in current discussions on populism and the angry voter.

In so doing, the concept of ressentiment seems to have traversed a curious trajectory. Nietzsche and Scheler originally conceived ressentiment as a critique of the striving towards egalitarianism. While at present, the notion of ressentiment is mobilized to explain the rise of right- wing populist movements whose agenda is, in important respects, decidedly inegalitarian. In this chapter, I trace this transformation back to the interwar period and the work of the Dutch essayist Menno ter Braak. With the rise of National Socialism in the 1930s, an important change occurred in the usage of the term ressnetiment. German conservatives such as Herman Rauschning mobilized the work of Nietzsche and Scheler to criticize Nazism from the right. In the Netherlands, the leading essayist and literary critic Menno ter Braak took up this new usage of the term in the 1930s, blaming egalitarianism and democracy for the rise of National Socialism. On closer inspection, this shift in the application of the term ‘ressentiment’ from the left to the right is analytically dubious, and that includes current debates about right-wing populism.

[paper in Dutch] The word neoliberalism has often been the object of fierce controversy in the Dutch public debate. Prominent intellectuals have equated neoliberalism with extremism and fundamentalism, with some going as far as calling it a ‘totalitarian faith’. The opposite camp in the debate has argued that neoliberalism is largely a self-invented bogeyman of the left, a swearword used by critics to engage in an intellectual witch-hunt. Of course, neoliberalism is not the only social science term suffering from a polemical status. Common concepts such as populism, socialism, nationalism or conservatism have given rise to similar lasting disagreements and comparable accusations of their derogatory use. What does appear to be exceptional about neoliberalism in the Dutch debate, is that very few conceptual and historical studies have been published on the subject. While the word neoliberalism is commonly employed in Dutch mainstream social science, many scholars seem to use the term without much further qualification. This paper explores the controversy and looks for ways to proceed beyond it. Drawing on a recent wave of international scholarship, it outlines an ideational approach to neoliberalism. After tracing the origins of the term neoliberalism, it closes with a preliminary example of an ideational analysis of Dutch neoliberalism.

Internationally, the social-liberalism of the Third Way is experiencing a deep crisis. The Netherlands is no exception to the trend. In the 2017 elections, the Dutch social democrat party suffered the worst defeat in Dutch parliamentary history. At the same time, the Dutch Third Way distinguishes itself from its more famous Anglo- American counterparts by its implicit character. Social democrat leaders in the Netherlands have sought to downplay the idea of a break with traditional social democracy, combining a Third Way agenda with more classically social democratic rhetoric. As a result, the crisis has taken on a different form. The Dutch social democrat party is commonly associated with a wholesale lack of principles and ideas, rather than with the Third Way. As such, the curious case of the Dutch Third Way might be illustrative of a broader, ‘muffled’ crisis in other countries where the Third Way has been adopted in a more implicit manner.

The Somali-born Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been one of the world’s most influential voices in present debates on the role of Islam in Western societies. Particular to Hirsi Ali’s role as a public figure is that her political views are largely expressed in biographical writing. This has led many to believe that Hirsi Ali’s views on Islam are simply a reflection of her personal experiences. This article aims to deconstruct her biographical narrative. It situates Hirsi Ali’s writing in relation to two formative intellectual influences: Sunni Islamic fundamentalism and neoconservatism. Hirsi Ali became part of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in her teenage years, and joined an influential circle of neoconservative intellectuals after her arrival and study in the Netherlands. The paper will show how Hirsi Ali has sought to consciously transpose the fundamentalist image of Islam, known to her from her youth, unto Islam as a whole. It will trace the development of Hirsi Ali’s views on Islam, which are of decidedly Western extraction, deriving from the Western tradition of Orientalism. And it will show how these adopted views are—in important respects—in open contradiction with her personal life story, as told in her biography, Infidel.

[Article in Dutch]

    In the 1990’s, the Dutch social democrats were trailblazers of what became known internationally as the politics of the Third Way, a new middle course between social democracy and neoliberalism. From the start, the Dutch Third Way distinguished itself from its Anglo-Saxon counterparts by its implicit character. The Dutch social democrat party (Partij van de Arbeid, PvdA) never fully embraced the Third Way and has sought to downplay the idea of a break with traditional social democratic thinking, combining Third Way practice with more classical social democratic rhetoric. The resulting political ambiguity, this paper argues, is at the centre of the present identity crisis of the social democrat party. Even though Third Way ideology has at times been declared dead, the range of attitudes, strategies and policy proposals that were introduced under its banner, still play a vital and prominent role in Dutch politics. While in the UK and the US, communitarianism was from the very beginning a defining feature of the Third Way, in the Netherlands this only came to the fore in 2012 under the leadership of Samsom and Asscher, and in the plea for a participation society under the Rutte II government. Leading us to conclude that the reports of the Third Way’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Chercheur affilié à l'Université de Tibourg, mène une recherche sur le populisme et le développement urbain. Il a récemment coordonné le numéro 20 de la revue Open intitulé The Populist Imagination. On the Role of Myth, Storytelling and Imaginary in Politics ( ...

Populisme beperkt zich niet tot de politiek van Fortuyn of Wilders. In Latijns Amerika is populisme een stijlfiguur van links, terwijl sociale bewegingen als Occupy en Anonymous een populisme zonder leiderschap promoten. En ook buiten de politiek, van de reclame tot de kunst, worden populistische sentimenten en stijlfiguren ingezet tegen de gevestigde orde. Hoe kunnen we de verschillende uitingsvormen van het populisme herkennen, begrijpen en verklaren?

One person’s freedom is another’s constraint. The Dutch post-war conflict between Left and Right is articulated around two conceptions of freedom: one neoliberal, the other socialist. Two thinkers are attached to these conceptions. There is Friedrich Hayek, doyen of neoliberalism and intellectual inspiration for the Dutch conservative-liberal party, VVD. In 1944, Hayek published The Road to Serfdom, which grew out to become a foundational text of the neoliberal movement. And there is Den Uyl, the foremost thinker and leader of Dutch post-war social democracy, and co-author of The Road to Freedom, the 1951 plan that outlined the socialist vision of the Dutch social democrat party (PvdA). As the title makes clear, the plan served as a rebuttal to Hayek. The conflict took the form of a dialectic of freedom: both sides used opposing conceptions of freedom in pursuit of hegemony, while both maintained that the opponent’s freedom was a pathway to oppression.

Published in 1516, Thomas More’s Utopia would become the founding text of the utopian tradition. The scholarly debate on whether Utopia should be read as satire, or as a detailed blueprint for a new society has implications that stretch far beyond the text itself. More’s Utopia functions as a platform to discuss the merits of utopian thought and intellectual engagement as such. Do utopian ideas necessarily lead to violence and totalitarianism? Does it need to end “in a miserable fit of the blues”, as Marx once famously wrote? Is it possible to transform society on the basis of ideas? What role can intellectuals play in politics? The Dutch philosopher Hans Achterhuis has formulated forceful answers to these questions. In his view, More’s Utopia has carved a path that subsequent generations of utopian thinkers have been forced to follow, often against their will. A path that has inexorably lead to the modern totalitarian regimes of Stalin, Mao and the Khmer Rouge. The dismissal of societal alternatives as theorized by Achterhuis, became a defining feature of the postpolitical culture in the Netherlands after 1989, the year that Wim Kok, leader of the social democrat party (PvdA), renounced its “striving towards the Grand Aim”. Though there is no final resolution to be reached on the interpretation of More’s Utopia - which remains a rather enigmatic book - there are convincing arguments to approach it as a satirical text in the tradition of serio ludere. In this tradition, utopia should be understood, not as a blueprint to be implemented in its detailed totality, but an unstable and unrealizable image of the future that serves to critique the present. While having some fun in the process, too.

De een zijn vrijheid is de ander zijn gebondenheid. In het naoorlogse politieke conflict tussen links en rechts staan twee concepties van vrijheid centraal: een socialistisch vrijheidsidee en een neoliberaal vrijheidsidee. Het zijn twee tegengestelde ideaaltypes waar de huidige politiek nog immer op teert, zij het bijna altijd in gemengde of gematigder vorm. Twee denkers zijn aan die concepties verbonden: er is Den Uyl, de belangrijkste ideoloog van de naoorlogse sociaaldemocratie en medeauteur van De weg naar vrijheid, het Plan waarmee de PvdA voor het eerst haar socialistische maatschappijvisie ontvouwde. En er is Friedrich Hayek, auteur van De weg naar slavernij, grondlegger van het neoliberalisme en intellectueel boegbeeld van de VVD . Bij hun oprichting gebruikten beide partijen het begrip vrijheid op strategische wijze om politieke hegemonie te verwerven. In andere woorden: om de politieke ruimte af te bakenen, om een eigen toekomststreven te verwoorden en op basis daarvan het electoraat over te winnen en meerderheidscoalities te vinden. Beiden herwerkten hun ideologieën ten opzichte van elkaar. Het neoliberalisme en het democratisch socialisme zijn uit een onderlinge ideeënstrijd ontstaan.

De verhouding tussen vrijheid en gelijkheid was daarbij essentieel. Voor Den Uyl was gelijkheid een voorwaarde voor vrijheid en vice versa. Volgens Hayek leidde het gelijkheidsstreven juist tot onvrijheid. Deze twee met elkaar strijdige visies zouden in de jaren negentig samen worden gebracht in de centristische synthese van de Derde Weg, een nog immer dominant gedachtegoed onder de middenpartijen. De eerste grote scheuren vertonen zich nu in de vorm van het moeilijk verkoopbare economische beleid en de tanende electorale populariteit van de PvdA. Een korte terugblik biedt hopelijk ingrediënten voor een nieuwe progressieve politiek.

A reflection on some of the deeper issues and paradoxes that underly both art discourse and the recurring discussion about its intelligibility in the Netherlands. Can it be that both the “unassailable jargon” of art discourse and the opposed anti-intellectualism of newspaper critics stem from a similar background? Could it be that both actually feed and reinforce each other?

In de zomer van 2013 discussieerden de sociologen Merijn Oudenampsen en Jan-Willem Duyvendak over de politieke veranderingen in Nederland van het afgelopen decennium, en hoe deze politiek te duiden. Centraal stond de vraag wat de politieke signatuur is van de kentering die zich sinds de opkomst van Fortuyn heeft voorgedaan. En of deze omslag eerder conservatief of progressief genoemd kan worden. Deze briefwisseling zet dit debat voort.

Waarschuwingen dat de sociale wetenschappen verschralen door de dominantie van survey-onderzoek en kwantitatieve methoden, zijn de afgelopen jaren herhaaldelijk voorbij gekomen (Boomkens 2008, Houtman 2009, Blommaert 2012). Daar tegenover staan auteurs die de opmars van kwantitatieve methoden juist positief waarderen en stellen dat deze heeft bijgedragen aan de professionele status van de sociale wetenschappen (Wilterdink 2011). In dit commentaar wordt de discussie wat geconcretiseerd aan de hand van een reactie op het artikel ‘Nieuw rechts en de verzorgingsstaat’ van Willem de Koster, Peter Achterberg en Jeroen van der Waal (De Koster et al. 2013), overigens zonder het artikel te willen beladen met al teveel symbolisch gewicht.

[Article in Dutch] "In the last decade, the Netherlands has experienced a conservative backlash against the progressive consensus emenating from the sixties and seventies. A backlash, however, that is paradoxical and ambiguous in its nature. On the basis of Pim Fortuyn’s writing I argue that the Dutch New Right has developed a new, mutated form of conservatism - inspired on American neoconservatism - that distinguishes itself by the incorporation of important progressive attainments: women’s rights, gay rights, individualism and secularism. While on other terrains – law & order, the environment, culture, internationalism, the work ethic - the former progressive consensus is actively contested and undermined. To qualify the content of this new conservative politics, I propose to use the term postprogressive politics."

The last decade saw the rapid emergence of the Dutch New Right, leading to a significant break in Dutch political culture. The nature of this break remains contested. Some argue it should be seen as a conservative restoration, an attempt to turn back time; others stress the progressive nature of the revolt, depicted as an attempt to bolster Dutch progressive values with respect to conservative Muslim immigrants. In this article, an alternative interpretation is offered: I argue that the Dutch New Right has developed a new, mutated form of conservatism in the Netherlands. It has done so firstly by borrowing and adapting ideas from American neoconservatism and secondly by absorbing in its programme some of the most important progressive attainments emanating from the Dutch sixties and seventies. Despite these progressive incorporations, the programme of the New Right is nonetheless conservative in character and effect. To qualify the content of this new conservative politics, I propose to use the term postprogressive, suggesting some lines of continuity and affinity with the progressive project, while at the same time, a wide-ranging rupture is implied. This postprogressive conservatism can be reduced to two elements: 1) a paradoxical incorporation of a select set of progressive values – mainly women’s rights, gay rights, secularism and individualism – which are subsequently culturalised and historicised; 2) a concerted conservative attack on the progressive consensus on a range of other terrains, such as environmental policy, internationalism, cultural policy, the economy, labour relations and the work ethic, development aid, terrorism, crime, immigration and social policy.

In these last ten years the Netherlands has experienced a dramatic swing to the Right. Long considered the epitome of tolerance and liberalism, the country now finds itself at the forefront of the political revival of nationalist and anti-immigrant sentiments in Europe. The motor behind this remarkable turnaround is the spectacular rise of right-wing populism since the 1990s, an ascendancy that reached yet a new climax with the 2010 elections, which resulted in a resounding victory for the right-wing populist and anti-Islamist Freedom Party (PVV) of Geert Wilders.  The election was followed by the formation of a minority government of right-wing Liberals (VVD) and Christian Democrats (CDA), dependent on the strategic support of the PVV to obtain a parliamentary majority. It is generally seen as the most right-wing government in Dutch post-war history.

Article in Dutch.  English abstract here:

"Amsterdam Noord: From social to spatial engineering
M. Oudenampsen
The question of social engineering is an important aspect of debates on security: up to what point can undesired behavior be corrected, prevented or diminished? To what extent is human behavior mal‐ leable? This article is a reflection on the development of social engineering, through the lense of the developments in the north of Amsterdam. It is an area that can be seen as a laboratory, a testing ground for the social democratic dream to create a new man, by uplifting and disciplining the urban poor. The central thesis is that the present redevelopment of Amsterdam Noord is predicated upon a shift in governmental strategy: from social engineering to spatial engineering. Location is arguably no longer used to uplift the popu‐ lation, presently the social composition of the population is being changed to uplift the location."

"NL:

Een dominante aanwezigheid in de literatuur over het populisme in Nederland zijn de studies die pogen de opkomst van het populisme te verklaren uit veranderend kiezersgedrag en politieke participatie. Onderzoekers grijpen daarbij terug op het behaviouralisme en pluralisme uit de jaren veertig en vijftig. De kanttekeningen die in de afgelopen decennia bij deze stromingen zijn geplaatst lijken te zijn vergeten, of worden in ieder geval onvoldoende meegenomen. De stelling van dit artikel is dat dit heeft geleid tot een onevenwichtig en incorrect beeld van de opkomst van het populisme, waarbij de vormende rol van gebeurtenissen, van politiek en ideologie – in andere woorden, de continue strijd om de perceptie van maatschappelijke problemen en ontwikkelingen – onvoldoende erkend en bestudeerd wordt. Deze kritiek wordt geïllustreerd aan de hand van een revisie van de studie Diplomademocratie. Dit alles niet enkel uit epistemologische overwegingen, maar ook vanwege de concrete politieke implicaties van de in dergelijke studies aangehouden keten van causaliteit.

Abstract:
Studies that attempt to explain the rise of populism from changing voter behaviour and political participation are a dominant presence in the literature on populism in the Netherlands. They stem from a social science tradition inspired on the behaviouralist en pluralist tradition of the forties and fifties. Critiques of these traditions formulated in these past decennia seem to have been forgotten, or ignored. This has resulted in an imbalanced and incorrect representation of the emergence of populism in the Netherlands. The formative role of events, political action and ideology – in other words, the continuous struggle over the perception of social problems and events – is insufficiently recognised and studied. This criticism is illustrated by an in depth revision of the study Diplomademocracy. This critique is voiced, not only out of epistemological concerns, but also on account of the concrete political implications that stem from the chain of causality maintained by pluralist science.
"

De schoonmaakbranche laat een nieuw soort protest zien tegen slecht werk: niet georganiseerd vanuit het kantoor van de vakbond, maar via het sociale netwerk van de werkenden. Organising heet deze uit Amerika overgewaaide manier van actievoeren. Merijn Oudenampsen: ‘De campagnes zijn een sociale lijm die de meest uiteenlopen etniciteiten met elkaar kan verbinden in omstandigheden van extreme fragmentatie.’

Net als het populisme na tien jaar gerust een blijvertje in het Nederlandse politieke landschap genoemd mag worden, zo lijkt ook de verschuiving naar rechts meer dan een kortstondige verschuiving in de machtsbalans. Het is inmiddels geen controversiële uitspraak meer: de Nederlandse maatschappij heeft in de afgelopen jaren een stevige ruk naar rechts ondergaan. Alhoewel de overgrote meerderheid daar grosso modo akkoord mee gaat, is het nooit meer dan een achtergrondverhaal geweest bij het verbale geweld rond het islam- en integratievraagstuk. Het gevolg is dat weinigen zich bezig hebben gehouden met de vraag hoe deze verschuiving precies heeft plaatsgevonden, laat staan hoe erop te reageren. Dat wreekt zich in het bijzonder bij links, dat als een murw gebeukte bokser in de ring lijkt te wachten op de bel die het einde van de ronde aankondigt. Politiek en journalistiek haasten zich nog immer gedwee van de ene Wilders-polemiek naar de andere en het linkse weerwoord beperkt zich veelal tot damage control.

In 1947, the architect Aldo van Eyck built his first playground in Amsterdam, on the Bertelmanplein. Many hundreds more followed, in a spatial experiment that has (positively) marked the childhood of an entire generation. Though largely disappeared, defunct and forgotten today, these playgrounds represent one of the most emblematic of architectural interventions in a pivotal time: the shift from the top down organization of space by modernist functionalist architects, towards a bottom up architecture that literally aimed to give space to the imagination.

Amsterdam started branding itself in the eighties, through the now largely forgotten Amsterdam Heeft ‘t campaign. It appealed in popular slang to existing residents of Amsterdam, instructing them to become proud ‘sellers of the town’. The campaign was part and parcel of a paradigm shift: a new entrepreneurial policy took over from the old Keynesian way of running things. Presently, Amsterdam is one of the best brands around. The city sells itself through the I Amsterdam campaign. But new dangers lurk on the horizon. Tracing the history of the Amsterdam branding campaigns, we can see that they are not simply superficial promotion campaigns but the linchpin of a new urban policy that sells cities as products in the international marketplace.

Along a twelve hundred meter stretch of Amsterdam’s southern ring road, a business park is being developed, Zuidas (South Axis), the Netherlands’ new prime business location. Billboards of building companies with promising presentations of what the near future has on offer stand amongst the ghostly lit cement skeletons of newly constructed office towers. Both the height of the towers and that of the project’s ambitions are – for Amsterdam standards – unprecedented. Over a period of twenty-four years, until 2032, the plan is to quadruple the current amount of floor area, to a grand total of 2.7 million square meters. The aim is to lure corporate headquarters to Amsterdam, vying for the economic success of the London City and Paris’ La Defense.

The Zuidas project is symptomatic of several long-term structural shifts in Dutch urban planning, and part and parcel of what has been hailed as the ‘second modernity’ of Dutch architecture. A new policy of spatial resource concentration has set in, combined with a newly acquired taste for big projects, public private partnerships and boosterist architecture. But unlike the first urban modernisation drive in Amsterdam, a wave that broke on the urban revolt of the new left in the sixties and seventies, the new development agenda is faced with next to no opposition. Using these developments as an occasion for some broader reflections, this article is a short exploration of the changing spirit of urban development, using a material as metaphor: glass.

For almost fifteen years now, the area to the west of Amsterdam’s ring road has been subject to large-scale redevelopment, in what is considered to be Europe’s biggest urban renewal program. The district, called the Westelijke Tuinsteden (Western Garden Cities) has been built on the basis of the modernist General Expansion Plan of CIAM architect Cornelis van Eesteren. Once presented as an advanced, modern living environment for the new Man, the area’s reputation has long been in decline. It’s image changed into that of a backward neighborhood, a ‘concentration area’ marked by segregation and social issues. The architecture has come to be  seen as intrinsic to these problems, leading to the present large-scale demolition. Though officially the renewal program is supposed to protect the Garden City qualities of the area, in reality the restructuring lacks any coherent vision on what that would mean. Ironically, some of the same mistakes of the modernists planners are now being repeated, most notably the fixation on form in stead of the social use of space. In what follows, this essay will trace the origins of the ideas behind the planning of the Western Garden Cities, to see whether some of these can be salvaged and put to use again in the 21st century.

Sometimes digging into the past is necessary in order to illuminate the present. In this case, contrasting Amsterdam’s ongoing Creative City policy with a utopian precursor will hopefully shed some light on the contradictions inherent in the contemporary fusion between creativity and industry. Despite being a recent hype, the Creative City policy has shown remarkable vigour and longevity. Not unlike famous ageing rock bands, even in advancing years it has been able to maintain a spell on groupies and adherents at local city governments around the western world.1 However, I do not intend to argue that when it was young and fresh, Richard Florida’s Creative Class Rock rang any truer, only that all along the line, a different tune is being played than the lyrics imply. In this article, I will argue that Amsterdam’s Creative City policy – far from intending to make the city’s entire population more creative – is predominantly a branding exercise, an expression of a more general shift towards entrepreneurial modes of city government; a shift that is currently being played out through an impressive urban redevelopment of Amsterdam.

Aan grofweg twaalfhonderd meter van de ringweg A10 in het zuiden van Amsterdam wordt gewerkt aan de Zuidas, naar eigen zeggen dé toekomstige toplocatie van Nederland. Borden van bouwbedrijven met beloftevolle beelden van wat komen gaat staan tussen de betonnen skeletten van kantoortorens in aanbouw. Zowel de hoogte van de bebouwing als die van de ambities is voor Amsterdamse begrippen ongekend: de komende zesentwintig jaar, tot 2032, plant men een vervijfvoudiging van het bestaande vloeroppervlak, zo’n 2,7 miljoen vierkante meter. Vreemd genoeg lijkt de bouw van dit megaproject - met uitzondering van de directe omgeving - redelijk onopgemerkt aan stad en land voorbij te gaan. Alleen al de omvang van het project en de belangen die ermee gemoeid zijn maken het tot een studieobject van belang. Maar de betekenis van de Zuidas beperkt zich niet tot het gebouwde zelf; in deze scriptie zal ik stellen dat de Zuidas representatief is voor een bredere ruimtelijke en politieke transformatie van de Keynesiaanse stadsontwikkeling in de jaren ’70 naar het meer bedrijfsmatige model van vandaag de dag. Het doel van deze scriptie is om de gevolgen van deze transitie in kaart te brengen voor de Amsterdamse stadsontwikkeling.

Ample amounts of obituaries have been written about the Dutch Third Way. Even though Third Way ideology is long presumed dead, the range of attitudes, strategies and policies that were introduced under its banner, still play a vital and prominent role in Dutch politics. From the start, the Dutch Third Way distinguished itself from its Anglo-Saxon counterparts by its covert and implicit character. Dutch social democrats never fully embraced the Third Way and have sought to downplay the idea of a break with traditional social democratic thinking, combining Third Way practice with social democratic rhetoric. The resulting indeterminacy of the Dutch Third Way has led to a lack of scholarly attention. This paper offers a revision of the Dutch Third Way, which is defined both in terms of a specific political attitude and a specific set of policy proposals. While in the UK and the US, communitarianism was from the very beginning a defining feature of the Third Way, in the Netherlands this only came to the fore in 2012 under Samsom en Asscher, and in the plea for a participation society under Rutte II. Leading us to conclude that the reports of the Third Way’s death are greatly exaggerated.

The Somali-born Islam critic Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been one of the world’s most influential voices in present debates on the role of Islam in Western societies. Due to the fact that her views are often seen as the reflection of her personal experiences, comparatively little attention has been given to her intellectual development. Hirsi Ali became part of the Islamic fundamentalist movement in her teenage years, and joined an influential circle of neoconservative intellectuals after her arrival and study in the Netherlands. This paper situates her writing in relation to these two formative intellectual influences. It will look at how Hirsi Ali has sought to consciously transpose the fundamentalist image of Islam, known to her from her teenage years, unto the religion as a whole. It will trace the development of Hirsi Ali’s views on Islam, which derive from the Western tradition of Orientalism. And it will show how these adopted views are –in important respects – in open contradiction with her personal life story, as told in her biography, Infidel.

Wantrouwen en wederzijds onbegrip zijn de verhouding tussen de journalistiek en de moderne kunstwereld gaan bepalen. Een centraal element in deze onenigheid is een terugkerende discussie over de begrijpelijkheid van kunstdiscours. Het meest recente aanvangspunt was een fel bekritiseerde expositie van de Prix de Rome in 2013, een van de belangrijkste Nederlandse kunstprijzen. Kunstjournalisten deden hun beklag over de complexiteit van de tentoongestelde werken. Het tentoongestelde werk was visueel niet aantrekkelijk genoeg, en daarmee zou de kunstsector het publiek tegen zich in het harnas jagen. Niet lang daarna schreef Ernst-Jan Pfauth, journalist en uitgever van De Correspondent, een aanklacht tegen de abstracte en met jargon gevulde zaalteksten in het Stedelijk Museum. 
Deze besprekingen werden al snel het onderwerp van kritiek, geleverd door stemmen uit de kunstwereld. Domeniek Ruyters beklaagde zich dat intelligent Nederland niet enkel de jas bij de garderobe van het museum achterlaat, maar de hersenen ook. Hebben journalisten niet geleerd “om naar  kunst te kijken, om haar te begrijpen op eigen merites, zonder in paniek te raken en alles direct uitgelegd te willen krijgen?”  De kunstcriticus Vincent van Velsen stelde dat de kunst, zoals elke beroepsgroep, zijn eigen technische jargon kent.  Waarom zijn journalisten niet in staat een inspanning te leveren om het kunstdiscours te begrijpen, zodat zij als tussenpersonen en vertolkers kunnen fungeren in verhouding tot het grotere krantenpubliek? Koen Kleijn antwoordde in De Groene Amsterdammer door de visie van Ruyters en Van Velsen als elitair af te doen: “Het is een ouderwets dogmatische ordening: de kunsten als een schitterend landjuweel, beschermd door onneembare singels van jargon.”  As kunst niet tot doel heeft om iets te communiceren richting het publiek, vraagt Kleijn zich af, waarom wordt het überhaupt tentoongesteld? En waarom beperken kunstenaars en culture instellingen zich vaak tot het Engels, als het hun taak is om een breder publiek te bedienen?
Het doel van deze tekst is om deze onenigheid te verkennen en in te zoomen op enkele dieperliggende paradoxen.

Soms heeft een publicatie een effect dat tegengesteld is aan het beoogde. Zulke boemerangeffecten doen zich in het bijzonder voor, als het gaat om pogingen de circulatie van bepaalde ideeën stop te zetten. De kans is groot dat daardoor deze ideeën juist meer voor het voetlicht treden dan voorheen. Een recent boekje van het wetenschappelijk bureau van de VVD lijkt een dergelijk lot beschoren. Volgens de auteurs – Martin van Hees, Patrick van Schie en Mark van de Velde – is het neoliberalisme een verschijnsel dat slechts in de (linkse) verbeelding bestaat. Linkse mensen gebruiken het als scheldwoord voor alles wat zij verafschuwen. En of we daar alsjeblieft mee op kunnen houden. Patrick van Schie hoopt dat het woord per direct “uit het publieke debat verdwijnt”. Vandaar de titel van de publicatie: “Neo-liberalisme: een politieke fictie”. Deze prikkelende stelling dreigt zo weer nieuw leven te brengen in wat geldt als een toch wat uitgekauwd debat. Hier een weerlegging in vijf punten.

Space is not a given, but is continuously produced, reconstructed and reconfigured. On the basis of this key insight of the French urban theorist Henri Lefebvre, the Marxist geographer David Harvey has focused on the development and incorporation of a spatial analysis in Marxist theory. He has emerged as one of the foremost intellectual commentators on the global financial crisis, portrayed in his recent book the Enigma of Capital (2010) as an instance of those same structural contradictions Karl Marx forewarned us about.