http://repub.eur.nl/res/aut/6139/ List of Publications en http://repub.eur.nl/static-eur/img/logo.png http://repub.eur.nl http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/32546/ 2012-04-01T00:00:00Z Terwijl Nederland bekendstaat als baken van tolerantie, wordt er de laatste jaren opvallend veel kritiek geuit op de islam. Bovendien hanteren islamkritische opinie- leiders hierbij een discours waarbij progressieve waarden centraal staan. Dit roept de vraag op hoe morele progressiviteit en afwijzing van de islam met elkaar verbon- den zijn onder de bredere bevolking. En hoe verhoudt een op progressieve waarden gebaseerde verwerping van de islam zich tot etnocentrische vooroordelen? http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/38250/ 2012-02-01T00:00:00Z It is often assessed that the construction of nature, technology and the relation between both is in the midst of a restructuring without specifying exactly what different articulations can be distinguished and how they differ from the modern notion of nature being separated from and domesticated by technology. Through an analysis of car commercials, this study develops a typology of constellations of nature and technology. Besides the well-known modern dichotomy of nature versus technology, with the latter being superior to the former, three types of articulations were found: technology as a flexible and superior technological mimicry of nature; technological mastery as harmful to nature; and nature and technology as two holistically connected realms. Implications for theories about the changing nature of nature and the restructuring of the relationship between nature and technology are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26141/ 2011-01-01T00:00:00Z ABSTRACT Some studies fi nd that interethnic propinquity leads to ethnic tolerance, while others conclude that it underlies ethnic confl ict. Using data on 50 Dutch cities in 2006 and 2010, this article assesses whether the consequences of interethnic propinquity for votes for Wilders’s PVV – the Dutch anti-immigrant party par excellence – are conditional on the economic and cultural urban contexts in which these contacts take place. In line with the ‘confl ict hypothesis’ it is found that a higher level of interethnic propinquity leads to more support for the PVV in cities with a high level of unemployment and an intolerant cultural climate (as measured by the bohemian index and the gay-scene index), whereas the relationship is reverse in cities with low unemployment levels and a tolerant cultural climate (corroborating the ‘contact hypothesis’). http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26138/ 2010-12-01T00:00:00Z Vaak wordt gesuggereerd dat internetfora bijzonder aantrekkelijk zijn voor mensen met ‘ongebruikelijke’ identiteiten, maar hoe werkt dat precies? Om bij te dragen aan de theorievorming rond deze thematiek, wordt in dit artikel de participatie binnen een forum voor orthodox protestantse homoseksuelen onderzocht door niet alleen aandacht te besteden aan de forumdeelname van de betrokkenen, maar ook aan hun ervaringen in het offline sociale leven. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/18452/ 2010-11-01T00:00:00Z Abstract Whereas substantial scholarly attention has been paid to the online presentation of self, symbolic interactionist approaches are largely absent in the literature on virtual communities. Instead, recurrent questions are whether communities can exist online and if specific online venues qualify as communities or not. Inspired by symbolic interactionist perspectives on urban settlements, this paper aims to move beyond these dichotomous questions by studying how different meanings attached to an online venue (‘virtual imagery’) can be understood from offline experiences. In a case study of a Dutch forum for orthodox protestant homosexuals two types of understanding of online community emerged from an analysis of 15 in-depth interviews. Users struggling with stigmatization in offline life seek empathic support and have an encompassing sense of online community – the forum is a ‘refuge’. For users dealing with practical everyday questions, online contacts are part of so-called personal communities and help to ameliorate offline life – the forum is a ‘springboard’. Apart from demonstrating that online forums can serve as Goffmanian back-stages in two distinct ways, these results indicate it is fruitful to take a symbolic interactionist approach to uncover relationships between offline and online social life. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26139/ 2010-11-01T00:00:00Z Internationale waarnemers verbazen zich al tijden over het verhitte integratiedebat dat in Nederland woedt. Ze vragen zich af hoe zoiets mogelijk is in een land dat bekendstaat als baken van seculiere tolerantie. Dit roept de vraag op hoe etnische tolerantie en afwijzing van traditionele christelijke stellingnamen over morele vraagstukken zich tot elkaar verhouden. In dit artikel onderzoeken we daarom of en waarom het aanhangen van een post-Christelijke moraal voor sommigen leidt tot etnische intolerantie, terwijl het voor anderen samengaat met etnische tolerantie. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/21721/ 2010-10-01T00:00:00Z Various studies have demonstrated that while the lower educated support economic redistribution more than the higher educated do, they nonetheless dislike welfare support for immigrants more strongly. This paper aims to explain this remarkably particularistic application of the principle of economic egalitarianism ('welfare chauvinism') by testing three theories by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population (N = 1972). The first theory asserts that the low level of political competence of the lower educated is responsible, the second focuses on their weak economic position, and the third claims that their limited amount of cultural capital is decisive. Only the latter explanation is confirmed and implications for debates about ethnocentrism, deservingness and welfare state legitimacy, as well as the ideological profile of the lower-educated working class are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/26140/ 2010-06-01T00:00:00Z Laagopgeleiden zijn meer dan hoogopgeleiden geneigd om voorkeur voor economische herverdeling gepaard te laten gaan met afkeer van sociale voorzieningen ten bate van etnische minderheden. Waarom zijn zij van mening dat sommigen gelijker zijn dan anderen? In dit artikel wordt onderzocht of hun opmerkelijke combinatie van economisch egalitarisme en ‘verzorgingsstaatschauvinisme’ voortkomt uit gebrekkige politieke competentie, hun zwakke economische positie of hun geringe cultureel kapitaal en de culturele onzekerheid die daarmee gepaard gaat. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/18240/ 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z Various studies have demonstrated that while the lower educated support economic redistribution more than the higher educated do, they nonetheless dislike welfare support for immigrants more strongly. This paper aims to explain this remarkably particularistic application of the principle of economic egalitarianism (‘welfare chauvinism’) by testing three theories by means of survey data representative for the Dutch population (N = 1,972). The first theory asserts that the low level of political competence of the lower educated is responsible, the second focuses on their weak economic position, and the third claims that their limited amount of cultural capital is decisive. Only the latter explanation is confirmed and implications for debates about ethnocentrism, deservingness and welfare state legitimacy, as well as the ideological profile of the lower-educated working class are discussed. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/22657/ 2010-01-01T00:00:00Z 1. Introduction “After nearly three centuries of utterly failed prophesies and misrepresentations of both present and past, it seems time to carry the secularization doctrine to the graveyard of failed theories, and there to whisper ‘requiescat in pace’” (Stark 1999: 269). Stark’s words, published just before the turn of the century, may count on much approval among sociologists of religion today. Secularization theory has been discredited because of its inability to account for religious change in the modern world (e.g., Berger, 1999; Heelas and Woodhead, 2005; Houtman and Mascini, 2002) and because of its sheer broadness and lack of specificity, as emphasized by Hadden (1987: 587), for instance, when he noted that it is a “hotchpotch of loosely employed ideas rather than a systematic theory”. Secularization theory’s two principal subtheses, the ‘decline-of-religion thesis’ and the ‘privatization thesis’ (Casanova, 1994), have both become increasingly contested and recent research even suggests that these two aspects of secularization may develop in a remarkably uneven way. That idea is put forward by Achterberg et al. (2009), who point out that the decline of Christian religion in the West spawns its public revitalization rather than its further privatization. This paper elaborates on this by assessing the empirical merits of two objections that suggest that these recent findings may after all not contradict the established notion that religious decline and religious privatization occur in tandem. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/16859/ 2009-01-01T00:00:00Z In dit artikel wordt onderzocht of twee centrale aspecten van secularisering hand in hand gaan: een afname van het aantal christenen en een toenemende privatisering van het christelijk geloof. Via een analyse van gegevens over achttien westerse landen en voor Nederland over de periode van 1970 tot 1996 laat dit artikel zien dat afnemende christelijke kerkelijkheid opmerkelijk genoeg niet gepaard gaat met een afnemende publieke relevantie van het christelijk geloof. In plaats daarvan zien de auteurs een dialectische relatie tussen beide dimensies. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20101/ 2008-12-01T00:00:00Z ABSTRACT Although the subject of extreme right virtual community formation is often discussed, an online ‘sense of community’ among right-wing extremists has not been systematically analysed. It is argued that to study this phenomenon and to understand its backgrounds and function, the offline and online experiences and actions of those involved need to be taken into account. For this purpose, qualitative data has been collected on the web forum ‘Stormfront’, supplemented by extensive online interviews with eleven of its members. It is demonstrated that those experiencing stigmatisation in offline social life regard the forum as a virtual community that functions as an online refuge, whereas those who – due to special circumstances – do not experience offline stigmatisation do not display an online sense of community. It is concluded that offline stigmatisation underlies virtual community formation by Dutch right-wing extremists. Because this mechanism may have broader significance, additional hypotheses for future research are formulated. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/14416/ 2008-11-01T00:00:00Z Imprisonment rates are presumed to have risen in the West, and it is argued by certain social scientists that this can be explained by a comprehensive process of economic neo-liberalization. In this paper, we develop an alternative explanation, focusing on the rise of a 'new political culture'. Longitudinal cross-national analyses are performed to test the tenability of these theories. First, it is demonstrated that some countries have been witnessing a trend of penalization, but that there is no overall trend. Second, economic explanations for variations in imprisonment rates prove to be untenable. Third, it is shown that a new-rightist demand for social order, which is not found to be inspired by economic neo-liberalization, provides a better explanation. This leads to the conclusion that high incarceration rates can be understood as being part of a right-authoritarian politico-cultural complex. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12182/ 2008-04-17T00:00:00Z Drawing upon problems of interpretation in political sociological research, this article questions the common practice of lumping together moral traditionalism and authoritarianism. First, it is demonstrated that of the two only moral traditionalism relates to religious orthodoxy. Second, the well-established strong correlation between both value orientations proves to be caused, in the case at hand solely by the circumstance that nontraditionalism and nonauthoritarianism go hand in hand; moral traditionalism and authoritarianism are almost unrelated. Third, moral traditionalists are shown to vote for Christian right-wing parties, whereas authoritarianism more commonly leads to a vote for a secular right-wing party. Fourth, whereas moral traditionalism proves decisive for the voting behavior of Christians, it is authoritarianism that underlies the non-Christian vote. These findings from The Netherlands (consistent with theories on cultural modernization) lead to the conclusion that attention should be paid to the distinction between these orientations because this aids the interpretation of research fi ndings, and because authoritarianism will probably gain a more central role in politics at the cost of moral traditionalism. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12189/ 2008-04-17T00:00:00Z In de media en de sociologie wordt steeds vaker de indruk gewekt dat hedendaagse individuen aan stress en frustratie ten onder gaan vanwege hun schijnbaar onbeperkte keuzevrijheid. Maar is dat zo? Mensen blijken keuzestress bij hun alledaagse keuzes op drie manieren te ondervangen. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/12122/ 2008-04-14T00:00:00Z This article demonstrates that studies in political sociology are flawed, because they fail to distinguish between moral conservatism/progressiveness and authoritarianism/libertarianism. Such a distinction is necessary, because historically and theoretically speaking, it is the process of modernization (de-pillarization in the Dutch case) that erodes the former’s salience and, through the alienation and anomie this creates, increases the latter’s. Hypotheses derived from this theory are strikingly confirmed. First, the well-established strong correlation between both value dimensions proves solely caused by the circumstance that moral progressiveness and libertarianism go hand in hand: moral conservatism and authoritarianism are almost unrelated. Second, whereas moral conservatism/progressiveness proves decisive for the voting behaviour of those who belong to a pillar, it is authoritarianism/libertarianism that underlies the vote of those who do no not belong to a pillar. It is concluded that the common practice in political sociology to lump both value dimensions together needs to be abandoned, because it produces theoretically unclear research findings. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/15139/ 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z Imprisonment rates are presumed to have risen in the west, and it is argued by certain social scientists that this can be explained by a comprehensive process of economic neoliberalisation. In this paper, we develop an alternative explanation, focussing on the rise of a ‘new political culture’. Longitudinal cross-national analyses are performed to test the tenability of these theories. First, it is demonstrated that some countries have been witnessing a trend of penalisation, but that there is no overall trend. Second, economic explanations for variations in imprisonment rates prove to be untenable. Third, it is shown that a new-rightist demand for social order, which is not found to be inspired by economic neo-liberalisation, provides a better explanation. This leads to the conclusion that high incarceration rates can be understood as being part of a right-authoritarian politico-cultural complex. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/15141/ 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z Dat in westerse landen steeds meer mensen in de gevangenis lijken te zitten is volgens een invloedrijke theorie het gevolg van economische neo-liberalisering. In dit artikel formuleren we een alternatieve verklaring gebaseerd op de opkomst van een nieuwe politieke cultuur. Na een analyse van de vermeende groei van gevangenispopulaties toetsen we de houdbaarheid van beide theorieën. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/20100/ 2008-01-01T00:00:00Z ABSTRACT Although the subject of extreme right virtual community formation is often discussed, an online ‘sense of community’ among right-wing extremists has not been systematically analysed. It is argued that to study this phenomenon and to understand its backgrounds and function, the offline and online experiences and actions of those involved need to be taken into account. For this purpose, qualitative data has been collected on the web forum ‘Stormfront’, supplemented by extensive online interviews with eleven of its members. It is demonstrated that those experiencing stigmatisation in offline social life regard the forum as a virtual community that functions as an online refuge, whereas those who – due to special circumstances – do not experience offline stigmatisation do not display an online sense of community. It is concluded that offline stigmatisation underlies virtual community formation by Dutch right-wing extremists. Because this mechanism may have broader significance, additional hypotheses for future research are formulated. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/10430/ 2007-04-06T00:00:00Z Overdrijving van hedendaagse culturele vraagstukken die voortvloeien uit de afgenomen legitimiteit van traditionele instituties is wat de cartoons van Gummbah sociologisch inspirerend maakt. Met zijn verbeelding van een wereld zonder gedeelde betekenissen geeft Gummbah blijk van een scherp oog voor hedendaagse zingevingsvraagstukken. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/13401/ 2007-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/8049/ 2006-10-31T00:00:00Z Stormfront, het grootste rechts-extremistische internetforum in het Nederlandse taalgebied, fungeert als een virtueel toevluchtsoord. Gedeelde ervaringen van sociale uitsluiting door een samenleving waarin individuele vrijheid en tolerantie hoog in het vaandel staan, vormen volgens Willem de Koster en Dick Houtman de drijvende kracht achter rechts-extremistische virtuele gemeenschapsvorming op Stormfront. Drawing on data collected on the web forum of the Dutch branch of 'Stormfront White Nationalist Community', supplemented by extensive online interviews with eleven of its participants, this paper studies extreme-right virtual community formation. It is demonstrated that shared experiences of social exclusion and stigmatisation in offline social life engender a longing for a virtual haven in which one can freely and anonymously express one's political ideas, 'be oneself', and enjoy the company and support of like-minded spirits. This reveals the social significance of late modernity's emphasis on individual liberty and tolerance. The latter does not simply mean that social behaviour has become less subject to moral regulation, but rather that this type of individualism has become a coercive regime itself, generating its own social exclusion, just like any other discourse does. http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/10167/ 2006-01-01T00:00:00Z http://repub.eur.nl/res/pub/8680/ 2003-07-01T00:00:00Z Binnen de universiteiten wordt het onderzoeksbeleid in toenemende mate ‘gerationaliseerd’. Dit houdt onder meer in dat de input aan menskracht en budgetten sterker afhankelijk wordt gemaakt van de output. Bestuurders sluizen dan meer middelen naar mensen en groepen die betere prestaties blijken te leveren. Dat gebeurt ook aan de EUR, zowel bij verdeling van geld tussen faculteiten als bij allocatie binnen faculteiten. Hier is op zich niets mis mee, maar dit noopt wel tot het systematisch meten van onderzoeksprestaties en het vergelijken daarvan over langere termijn. Daarvan is binnen de FSW echter nog nauwelijks sprake. De faculteit registreert momenteel maar een deel van de onderzoeksoutput, namelijk aantallen publicaties. Die cijfers blijken echter niet beschikbaar in een handzaam overzicht. Over de impact van het onderzoek worden vooralsnog geen gegevens verzameld. Bij gebrek aan goede interne output registratie wordt de onderzoeksoutput van afdelingen in de faculteit nu beoordeeld op de rangorde in externe disciplinaire onderzoeksvisitaties. Op grond daarvan heeft het CvB de afdeling sociologie onlangs gekort. Die meting van onderzoeksprestaties heeft echter evidente tekortkomingen. Bij vergelijking binnen disciplines blijven kwaliteitsverschillen tussen disciplines buiten beeld; in het land der blinden kan éénoog koning zijn. Bij de nu gangbare visitaties worden ook enigszins verschillende maatstaven gehanteerd en die maatstaven zijn iedere visitatie weer net iets anders. Voorts wordt het oordeel van visitatiecommissies onvermijdelijk beïnvloed door belangentegenstellingen en door verschil in wetenschapsopvattingen. Het is daarom nuttig om de onderzoeksprestaties in de faculteit op een objectieve en eenduidige wijze in beeld te brengen. Deze notitie biedt een aanzet daartoe.