• University of Amsterdam

• Academic

• Diversity,
• Liveability

Everyday autochthony (2016)

Difference, discontent and the politics of home in Amsterdam

This study sets out to examine the politics of autochthony in the Netherlands. It thereby zooms in on the everyday articulation of a metaphoric figure that is central to the culturalization of citizenship and that has come to play an increasingly pivotal role in the Dutch political and cultural imagination in broader terms: the figure of the ordinary Dutch person.

The focus of the book has therefore been on ethnographic case studies in which everyday articulations of autochthony and the politics of cultural and social location animating Dutch citizens - categorized as autochthonous - could be studied from a microscopic, ethnographic perspective. I do not attempt to give an ‘overview’ of the plurality of autochthony in the Netherlands, but study its articulation in local dynamics in Amsterdam New West surrounding struggles over the right to the city; the negotiation of respectability and stigmatization; the politics of self and other; and the interconnections of sexuality, politics, and locality and belonging in Amsterdam New West.

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