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A wide variety of social groups holds similar stances regarding many contemporary social issues: whether it is about corona measures, establishment politics, the European Union or vaccines, time and again an eclectic bunch of people shows a similar level of opposition to or support for the issue at hand. To understand what drives them, it is important to take into account how they themselves view these issues. In his inaugural lecture On the meaning of meaning, Willem de Koster argues that many puzzling social phenomena can be understood by analysing how people ascribe meaning to the world they live in. More specifically, it is important to uncover how they look at things, why this is the case, and how this inspires their actions. This, for instance, sheds new light on low levels of participation in citizens' initiatives, clarifies different vaccination decisions, shows how people become sceptical about climate change, elucidates why information campaigns often work out differently than hoped for, and reveals why some people do and others do not follow health recommendations. In uncovering this, Willem de Koster not only applies his cultural sociological perspective to a wide range of social issues, but also uses a great variety of research methods. He argues that such a thematically and methodologically general sociology is of crucial importance for developing sociological insights as well as for the disciplinary identity and coherence of sociology.

"Cover" -- "Half Title" -- "Dedication" -- "Title" -- "Copyright" -- "Contents" -- "List of Figures and Tables" -- "List of Contributors" -- "Acknowledgments" -- "1 Introduction: The Myth of Individualization and the Dream of Individualism" -- "2 Agony of Choice?: The Social Embeddedness of Consumer Decisions" -- "3 Beyond the Spiritual Supermarket: Why New Age Spirituality is Less Privatized Than They Say It Is" -- "4 'Be Who You Want to Be'?: Commodified Agency in Online Computer Games" -- "5 'Stormfront is like a Second Home to Me': Social Exclusion of Right-Wing Extremists" -- "6 Contesting Individualism Online: Catholic, Protestant and Holistic Spiritual Appropriations of the World Wide Web" -- "7 Two Lefts and Two Rights: Class Voting and Cultural Voting in the Netherlands, 2002" -- "8 One Nation without God?: Post-Christian Cultural Conflict in the Netherlands" -- "9 Secular Intolerance in a Post-Christian Society: The Case of Islam in the Netherlands" -- "Bibliography

Many authors have argued that digital technologies enable collaboration without central oversight or authority, obviating the need for the hierarchical bureaucracies that characterize industrial capitalism. In this context, Wikipedia is often mentioned as a paradigmatic example. We draw on the classical accounts of Robert Michels and Max Weber to study mechanisms pushing towards or away from power concentration and bureaucratization. Our historical analysis of bureaucratization and power concentration in Wikipedia is based on 118 conversations and interviews as well as extensive archival research. While most studies on Wikipedia only consider the online encyclopedia itself, we also scrutinize the Wikimedia Foundation. Our analysis uncovers alternating processes of power concentration and power diffusion. While we observe power concentration for reasons anticipated by Michels, we also find strong counter-tendencies. Consequently, power concentration does not follow an 'iron law' but is the contingent outcome of struggles among stakeholders. In line with Weber, we identify a process of progressive bureaucratization. This does not only result from the pursuit of organizational manageability, but from a quest for democratic equality and minimization of domination as well. We introduce the concept of self-organizing bureaucratization to highlight how bureaucratization is the unintended and emergent outcome of efforts to increase democratic accountability.

Leftist and rightist populist parties in Western Europe both oppose trade openness. Is support for economic protectionism also relevant for their electorates? We assess this in the Netherlands, where both types of populist parties have seats in parliament. Analyses of representative survey data ( n = 1,296) demonstrate that support for protectionism drives voting for such parties, as do the well-established determinants of political distrust (both populist constituencies), economic egalitarianism (leftist populist constituency) and ethnocentrism (rightist populist constituency). Surprisingly, support for protectionism does not mediate the relationship between economic egalitarianism and voting for left-wing populists, or the link between political distrust and voting for either left-wing or right-wing populist parties. In contrast, support for protectionism partly mediates the association between ethnocentrism and voting for right-wing populists. We discuss the largely independent role of protectionism in populist voting in relation to the cultural cleavage in politics and electoral competition, and also provide suggestions for future research.

Leftist and rightist populist parties in Western Europe both oppose trade openness. Is support for economic protectionism also relevant for their electorates? We assess this in the Netherlands, where both types of populist parties have seats in parliament. Analyses of representative survey data (n = 1,296) demonstrate that support for protectionism drives voting for such parties, as do the well-established determinants of political distrust (both populist constituencies), economic egalitarianism (leftist populist constituency) and ethnocentrism (rightist populist constituency). Surprisingly, support for protectionism does not mediate the relationship between economic egalitarianism and voting for left-wing populists, or the link between political distrust and voting for either left-wing or right-wing populist parties. In contrast, support for protectionism partly mediates the association between ethnocentrism and voting for right-wing populists. We discuss the largely independent role of protectionism in populist voting in relation to the cultural cleavage in politics and electoral competition, and also provide suggestions for future research.

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 findings, and because authoritarianism will probably gain a more central role in politics at the cost of moral traditionalism.

Citizens with lower social status are underrepresented in participatory democratic innovations like citizens' initiatives. Much research focuses on the barriers to participation that these citizens experience. The current study concentrates on civil servants tasked with advising on what initiatives to support and how. Informed by research on the social construction of target groups and the use of social stereotypes by civil servants, our work scrutinizes how the social status of initiators plays a role in the assessments of citizens' initiatives. Grounded on vignette-based, in-depth interviews with civil servants, we conclude that social status does indeed play a role. Contrary to the conventional understanding, we find that: (1) high-status initiators are met with suspicion and low-status initiators with benevolence; and (2) high-status initiators are offered hands-off support, while those with a low status are provided with hands-on help to carry out their plans.

AbstractVarious branches of the literature suggest that exposure to the high‐status appearances and lifestyles of politicians in contemporary "diploma democracies" affects the attitudes and behavior of less‐educated citizens because it confronts them with their lower status in the political domain. Informed by this, we theorize that such exposure inspires docility (a lower subjective social status, weaker feelings of political entitlement) and revolt (anger, more support for aggression against government). To investigate this, we conducted an original, pre‐registered, video‐vignette survey experiment among a representative sample of the Dutch population. While our findings likely generalize to other liberal democracies, the Dutch context is suitable to test our theorizing because low‐status and high‐status appearances and lifestyles are found across the political arena, irrespective of politicians' substantive positions or use of populist rhetoric. Each less‐educated respondent (n = 1390) was presented with a professionally produced video of an actor playing the part of a fictitious politician. This politician signaled either a low or a high status via his appearance and lifestyle. The potentially confounding factors of his substantive positions and populist rhetoric were randomized and controlled for. We find that exposure to the high‐status politician increased less‐educated citizens' support for aggression against the government. Through exploratory analyses, we assess how the responses of docility and revolt are interrelated, and how they are shaped by less‐educated citizens' economic status.

AbstractNumerous studies have assessed the extent to which citizens support or oppose welfare benefits (shorthand: benefits). To properly understand this support or opposition, it is important to consider what benefits actually mean to citizens. Indeed, because citizens' understandings of benefits are likely to vary, there may be similar (different) levels of support for very different (similar) reasons. Consequently, in‐depth insights into these understandings are required to properly grasp public attitudes on welfare benefits. Therefore, this study adopts an inductive approach, holding focus‐group discussions with Dutch citizens with different social backgrounds (48 respondents/11 gatherings). Three distinct discourses were identified: (1) benefits as self‐responsibility and reciprocity; (2) benefits as participation and solidarity; and (3) benefits as well‐being and self‐actualization. These diverging discourses each involve closely intertwined understandings of the function of benefits, their relationship to work and welfare deservingness. We discuss the relevance of our findings and make suggestions for future research.