In this essay, Anouk de Koning (Urban Citizen Fellow at NIAS) argues that questions in the field of democracy particularly play a role in everyday contacts between youth professionals and parents and children, or area brokers and residents. In such everyday encounters, the relationship between government and citizen takes concrete shape. De Koning shows that, in the context of the pursuit of a more close, accessible and humane government, for all residents, we must continue to ask questions about the position of power and positioning of the government.
The Urban Citizen Fellowship was created in a collaboration between the City of Amsterdam and NIAS. Find more information about the Urban Citizen Fellowship via the link below the document.
On April 1st Anouk de Koning will talk about her essay in an online event: In this NIAS Talk 'Here me out!' three fellows discuss contemporary urban citizenship in Amsterdam as there is increasing emphasis on democratization and representation in citizen-state relations. With Urban Citizen Fellows Anouk de Koning, Nanke Verloo and Markha Valenta.
Click here for more info about the event and registration 1st of April 2021 - 20:00 - 21:15 Zoom, SPUI25
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meer lezen over de relatie tussen burgers en gemeenten en het effect van de decentralisering van de verzorgingsstaat? Onderzoekers van de Universiteit van Amsterdam en de Universiteit voor Humanistiek deden daar de afgelopen vier jaar uitvoerig onderzoek naar. Ze doen er in het boek 'De Verhuizing van de Verzorgingsstaat' onverbloemd verslag van. Ze analyseerden beleid, observeerden 127 ‘keukentafelgesprekken’ en interviewden tientallen professionals en cliënten in zes gemeenten.
Auteurs: Femianne Bredewold, Jan Willem Duyvendak, Thomas Kampen, Evelien Tonkens, Loes Verplanke
Naar aanleiding van meerdere onderzoekservaringen in het welzijnslandschap in Amsterdam schreef Anouk de Koning een essay over democratie in de uitvoering van de verzorgingsstaat. Tijdens een bijeenkomst heeft zij haar bevindingen hieruit voorgelegd aan aan professionals die actief zijn in de uitvoering van de verzorgingsstaat. Aan participatiemedewerkers van onder andere Civic en Stichting Sociaal Cement, Ouder- en Kindteam professionals, gebiedsmakelaars en andere medewerkers van de gemeente Amsterdam is gevraagd om hun ervaringen uit de praktijk te delen.
Video: Hear me out! Citizen-state relations in the city
In this NIAS Talk fellows Anouk de Koning, Nanke Verloo and Markha Valenta discuss contemporary urban citizenship in Amsterdam as there is increasing emphasis on democratization and representation in citizen-state relations.
What works in social work? Large-scale research into social resilience policy interventions
The need for knowledge among practitioners and the lack of an academic knowledge base for specifically collective arrangements of social work in the Netherlands were the reason for Anouk de Koning, Femke Kaulingfreks and Maartje van der Woude to start working on a Dutch Research Agenda (NWA) application for research into social resilience more than two years ago. A short introduction to the three PIs and the Crafting Resilience project, in full “Social work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies”.
A long-term project, but now 13 researchers, 16 co-funding partners, and 11 collaboration partners have joined the consortium to investigate what is needed to realise social resilience in an effective, democratic and just manner. And successfully: the consortium has been awarded an NWA research grant of 5 million.
Maartje van der Woude, Femke Kaulingfreks and Anouk de Koning
Equal collaboration between academics and applied sciences
The equal collaboration between academic partners and researchers at universities of applied sciences (HBO) sets this research project apart. This was one of the key conditions for Femke Kaulingfreks to participate in the project application. The Professor of Youth and Society at Inholland University of Applied Sciences did not want to be involved in the knowledge utilization part only, at the very end of a project, something that often happens in research projects. Femke: ‘Our central role in this project as a university of applied sciences is quite special. The project’s ambition is to make the research findings suitable for use in practice, and to do so successfully, it is much more productive if you are involved as a researcher from the start.' Anouk adds: 'In our project, experienced social work lecturers conduct research into social work and university academics contribute to the realization of the applied materials for practitioners. This creates valuable knowledge exchange.'
The intersection of social work, care and safety
Anouk and Femke have known each other for years. Anouk was once on the search committee at Radboud University to which Femke had applied. Femke initially had some doubts when Anouk proposed to develop the grant application together, but when they were able to secure a proportional division of roles between general and applied universities, she was convinced, and they started writing the application. Anouk soon also involved Professor of Law & Society Maartje van der Woude, with whom she leads the interdisciplinary university-wide research programme Social Citizenship and Migration. Maartje was immediately enthusiastic about the idea of developing the security angle within the research: 'This project tied in very nicely with issues I have been working on for the past years. I also felt a growing urge to think about ways in which scientific knowledge could be translated into actual products and insights that would resonate with the daily reality in which, for instance, police professionals must operate in the Netherlands. Both in the criminal justice and the social policy domain, there is an increasing convergence between care and security and a lot is expected from professionals in this respect, but the underlying knowledge about such collaborations is still lacking.'
Need from practice
The social partners that participate are also enthusiastic. The conceptualization of the project started from the needs from the professional field. Anouk: 'We didn't come up with our own ideas: what is academically interesting, but we entered into an open discussion with various partners from the social and security domain.' The project focuses on social resilience initiatives in eight different cities in the Netherlands. Femke: 'In the Netherlands, social work is not an academic discipline. Professionals are often busy with in their everyday work practice, so there is no time to zoom out and reflect. They often sense that one thing works better than the other, but they don't know why. So just like our partners at several ministries and the national police, such partners are happy that there will be a large-scale examination of what works and what doesn't within social work.'
Community workshops and long-term interdisciplinary cooperation
The aim is to convert the acquired knowledge into material for practical use. Femke: 'We are going to look at different practices and projects geared towards enhancing social resilience. We will be doing this in eight cities in the Netherlands over a period of four years. Where do we see new forms of cooperation emerge? What are effective elements that enable social resilience? The goal is to find shared principles that can be applied in multiple places.' The insights are then translated into tools for practical and educational use. Each line of research is envisioned to lead to a textbook for the training of social and security professionals, there will be training events for professionals and media productions such as documentaries or podcasts will be made to reach a wider audience.
Maartje van der Woude, Femke Kaulingfreks and Anouk de Koning
The project "Social Work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies" [Crafting Resilience] will start in September 2022 and will host 6 PhD candidates and 3 Postdoc researchers. The project asks what is needed to realise effective, democratic and just collaborations between citizens and government. Cultural anthropologist Anouk de Koning is PI of the first research line that focuses on the administrative relationships that are shaped under the heading of social resilience. Femke Kaulingreks is the PI of the second research line that focuses on the professional politics of social work. Maartje van der Woude is the PI of the third research line that focuses on frictions and dilemmas of social resilience within the security domain.
Vici grant for Anouk de Koning for research on Prototyping Welfare in Europe
Across Europe, neighborhoods, schools and community centers are turned into living labs to experiment with “doing” the welfare state differently. Leiden's cultural anthropologist Anouk de Koning is receiving a Vici research grant for her project ‘Prototyping Welfare in Europe: Experiments in State and Society’ to study welfare experiments in four countries and to examine what they tell us about the futures of European welfare states.
Over the past ten years, De Koning has conducted research into Amsterdam’s welfare landscape and led a project that examined encounters between migrant parents and welfare professionals as sites where a new, more diverse Europe is negotiated. With this Vici grant, the cultural anthropologist wants to delve deeper into this subject by examining how different European countries deal with new welfare models and politics through comparative, in-depth ethnographic research into welfare experiments in Amsterdam, Liverpool, Marseille and Athens.
The role of imagination
Such experiments often involve various partners: state actors, citizens and civil society or third sector organisations. De Koning’s research will focus, among others, on the role of imagination in welfare experiments. De Koning: 'Experimental social projects are often a harbinger of future realities. That is why it is very important to understand the work of imagination within these projects. 'The potential of such state-sanctioned social experiments has not been fully used. With this project, I want to advance our understanding of Europe’s sociopolitical worlds and develop a practice-based theory of state and society that can inspire a rethinking of approaches to the state across disciplinary divides.’
An anthropological view
The welfare state is usually studied by sociologists or political scientists. By looking at the role of imagination De Koning approaches this subject from an anthropological perspective. The gap between citizens and government is widening in the Netherlands. The government wants a participation society in which citizens play a more active role, but has difficulty of really reaching and involving citizens. The project findings on the potentials and dilemmas of welfare prototyping will speak directly to practitioners: policy officials, social professionals and community actors who help shape European welfare states.’ De Koning wants to understand how particular sociopolitical arrangements are crafted in practice, drawing on the parameters of the settings in which they emerge. In addition, the project asks who is involved in such experiments, and in what way. Who is seen as a solution, who is deserving of care, and who is seen as a problem?
Making knowledge publicly available
Ultimately, De Koning hopes to be able to contribute to the public debate on the future of European welfare states and make the findings accessible to everyone, not just the academic or political world. De Koning: ‘A large part of the subsidy budget has been set aside to make the knowledge we acquire available to the public. We want to organise public events and invite people to engage critically with our findings. And I would really be delighted if a good documentary were to be made at the end of the project about this topic.’
Illustratie: opticnerve.nl
The Vici grant is one of the largest scientific grants in the Netherlands and is awarded annually by the NWO. The grant is intended for senior researchers. Anouk de Koning will receive a grant of 1,500,000 euros and is one of three Leiden scientists who have been awarded a Vici from the 2021 applications. A total of 306 applications were submitted.