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This essay takes its point of departure in images of the victims of the 2023 Turkish-Syrian earthquake. It examines their rhetoric, comparing them to those of Alan Kurdi, the Syrian toddler who washed ashore on a Turkish beach in 2015, and contrasting with the narrative techniques employed by two contemporary novels. It combines cultural critique with an inquiry into the role of art as an agent of change to imagine new ways of doing citizenship and promoting social change in times of crisis, in line with Rosemarie Buikema's mission to develop new and multilayered scenarios for change and transnational justice.

In this essay I discuss Buikema's ideas about the specific function of literature in times of social upheaval and political violence. Buikema resists the current tendency to reduce engaged novels to their political views and statements about the world. To their author's intentions, basically. A literary analysis has to do justice to the ways in which political themes are represented, which largely escape authorial control. Close (inter)textual analysis can arrive at different experiences of a work of art. Buikema illustrated this conviction with an analysis of Coetzee's Disgrace. I continue her analysis and read Disgrace for its stunning literary representation of hegemonic masculinity and how a white macho man is transformed and healed. Women and blacks guide him in this process.

Framed against Timothy Clark's comments on the potency of ecocriticism, in this contribution I first zoom in on how cultural critique according to Rosemarie Buikema can contribute to discussions on matters of common concern. I then sketch two lines of argument that emerge from her work: firstly, the way in which art and culture can break through societal silences and, secondly, the importance of history and the past for cultural production in the present. Both issues are important where it concerns climate change and the Anthropocene. They lead to the essential question when thinking about ecocriticism: not 'where goes cultural critique' (the 'quo vadis' question), but what kind of critique is necessary?

The standard picture of public governance in the Dutch Republic (1579-1795) is one of consultation with multiple stakeholders, peaceful negotiations with representatives from a range of governmental institutions, and agreements and compromise. This picture has been the subject of much debate among historians and other scholars. One question concerns the extent to which this kind of governance evolved from the traditional practices of water authorities, as these institutions emerged very early, at the end of the thirteenth century. A further question is whether it is correct to assume that these peaceful negotiations did in fact involve participation by a wide range of societal stakeholders. This book contributes to this debate by presenting the results of new research into the development of governance by water authorities prior to 1800. In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, these institutions changed as a result of ecological, socio-economic and political developments. The central question is how these developments affected the evolution of and governance within the water authorities. The research focuses on two inter-local water authorities: first, the water authority of the Bunschoten Veen and Velden dikes in the Province of Utrecht; and second, the water authority of Mastenbroek polder in the Province of Overijssel. How were landholders represented in such authorities, and what was the relationship between developments in representation and participation in decision-making? The positions and backgrounds of the board members of these two water authorities were investigated, as well as the process of decision-making. The theoretical framework was provided by theories of consociationalism (Lijphart 1968 and Putnam 1993), in which peaceful governance is defined in terms of consensus politics or politics of accommodation. A set of criteria was formulated to assess the occurrence of participative decision-making by stakeholders. These criteria were tested against the discussions and decisions found in ...

Reading the news about Iran today one can hardly imagine that relations between the Netherlands and Iran were excellent until 1979. Mohammed-Reza Pahlavi, the last shah of Persia, was known in The Netherlands as a visionary and reformer. Persia was represented as a mythical land with an ancient civilization. The Dutch royal family enjoyed visiting the shah, and large and small Dutch companies were successful in Iran.

When in the 1970s awareness spread about repression under the shah, the Dutch government was faced with difficult choices. How could these relations be continued, now that public opinion had turned against it? The Dutch government decided to ignore the criticisms, and firmly held on to the idea of the shah as an enlightened despot. As such, it did not see the Iranian Revolution coming, and suffered the consequences.

The standard picture of public governance in the Dutch Republic (1579-1795) is one of consultation with multiple stakeholders, peaceful negotiations with representatives from a range of governmental institutions, and agreements and compromise. This picture has been the subject of much debate among historians and other scholars. One question concerns the extent to which this kind of governance evolved from the traditional practices of water authorities, as these institutions emerged very early, at the end of the thirteenth century. A further question is whether it is correct to assume that these peaceful negotiations did in fact involve participation by a wide range of societal stakeholders. This book contributes to this debate by presenting the results of new research into the development of governance by water authorities prior to 1800. In the late Middle Ages and Early Modern period, these institutions changed as a result of ecological, socio-economic and political developments. The central question is how these developments affected the evolution of and governance within the water authorities. The research focuses on two inter-local water authorities: first, the water authority of the Bunschoten Veen and Velden dikes in the Province of Utrecht; and second, the water authority of Mastenbroek polder in the Province of Overijssel. How were landholders represented in such authorities, and what was the relationship between developments in representation and participation in decision-making? The positions and backgrounds of the board members of these two water authorities were investigated, as well as the process of decision-making. The theoretical framework was provided by theories of consociationalism (Lijphart 1968 and Putnam 1993), in which peaceful governance is defined in terms of consensus politics or politics of accommodation. A set of criteria was formulated to assess the occurrence of participative decision-making by stakeholders. These criteria were tested against the discussions and decisions found in ...

In dit omvangrijke en ambitieuze boek proberen de auteurs de lezers in 440 pagina's inclusief een cd-rom uit de doeken te doen hoe een interactieve kwalitatieve analyse uitgevoerd kan (en moet) worden, met als resultaat een zogenaamd 'System Influence Diagram' (SID). Een SID is een representatie van de werkelijkheid of zoals de auteurs omschrijven: 'The SID is a visual representation of the "theory in perception", grounded in the specific experiences and logic of the participants' (pagina 48).

This article is focused on Professor Buikema's intellectual oeuvre and the relation between art and politics as it materialised in MOED (Museum of Equality and Difference). Astrid Kerchman and Rosa Wevers, MOED's former project coordinators, reflect on their collaboration with Buikema through an interview with artist Iris Kensmil on the important role of art in complex social issues relating to emancipation, representation, and resistance. Drawing on the interview with Kensmil and Buikema's Revolts in Cultural Critique (2020), Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken reflects on the meaning of feminist leadership within an institutional context.

Urbanity and migration are considered to be two basic components in definitions of modernity. They force us to reflect on how the boundaries between the local and the global are determined and surpassed. Often this results in politically charged discussions about transnationality and national identity, monolingualism and multilingualism, inclusion and exclusion. The contributions to this issue of CLW demonstrate that literature can play a significant role in this debate. The authors highlight the representation of city and migration in a wide variety of novels published in Dutch, English, German, Spanish and French with a particular interest in political commitment.

"Historical research into disasters and disaster processing has expanded enormously in recent years. The threat of climate disasters and pandemics is raising awareness that disasters have a major impact on community development. The period 1755-1918 also saw numerous disasters that affected Dutch society, such as the Leiden gunpowder disaster of 1807, several cholera outbreaks and large-scale river floods. Volcanic eruptions and flooding were recurring phenomena in the colonies. And then there were major international disasters, such as the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Spanish flu in 1918. Crisis and Catastrophe examines the influence of these catastrophes on belief in God, solidarity and charity, and local and national identity formation. Attention is also paid to the cultural representation of disasters in literature, paintings and memorial books."

Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell's auto-ethnography as part of ethnography
Beyond navel-gazing and narcissism.Ferrell's auto-ethnography as part of ethnography
The labeling of auto-ethnography as navel-gazing does not do justice to the variety with which auto-ethnography is applied. A distinction should be made between emotional and analytical auto-ethnography. In the first form the central person of the researcher plays the central role, in the second auto-ethnography is applied to get a better understanding of the social world which is being studied. In this article the author discusses the second approach by using the work of Jeff Ferrell. Ferrell is a well-known cultural criminologist, who focuses critically on the cultural understanding of social life. By looking at how Ferrell applies auto-ethnography, insight is gained into the added value of this method for qualitative studies: (1) the integration of the personal experiences of researchers in texts in order to achieve a richer description of the social worlds they explore, (2) making explicit the role of the researcher in publications, and (3) developing new (more appealing) forms of representation.

Trust in citizens' outlooks
Trust in citizens' outlooks
Since 2008 the Netherlands Institute for Social Research | SCP conducts the Citizens' Outlooks Barometer (COB), which explores current trends in public opinion in the Netherlands. In the COB quantitative and qualitative research methods are combined to signal trends and new issues, to explain group differences, and to investigate the feelings and arguments behind public concerns. We use focus groups and open-ended survey questions for qualitative research. A main topic in COB has been the development and diversity of trust in political institutions. By combining numbers and arguments, we have tried to put political trust in perspective (it is often more a diffuse image than a deep conviction) and give a better understanding of the (asymmetric) reasons for trust and for distrust. We deal with the usual problems of representation and generalization in qualitative research as good as we can by discussing interpretations in our diverse research team. A main challenge is now to develop more systematic and less time-consuming ways to analyze large sets of open answers in surveys.

The central aim in our NWO 'Comprehensible Language' project (2012-2016) was to investigate to what extent Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) intentionally and unintentionally affect political knowledge and political attitudes. In this article, we present an overview of four years of research. First, we investigated reasons for use of VAAs, distinguishing three types of users: checkers (well-informed, enjoying to check the VAA), seekers (looking for political information to base their vote on) and doubters (looking for information but cynical about politics). The proportions of these groups differ for first vs. second order elections. Second, we investigated whether VAAs increase users' political knowledge. We found that users report an increase of internal efficacy due to their VAA use, but we did not find an increase in actual political knowledge. Third, a field experiment showed systematic effects of framing variation on the answers to VAA assertions, which might suggest different underlying knowledge representations. Finally, think aloud research showed that users experience considerable problems with understanding the assertions semantically and pragmatically, as well as with interpreting the results screen. Additionally, we found that users view the result screen as an end point rather than as a starting point for deliberation. We discuss some implications for theory and practice.

The Anti-Revolutionary People behind the Voters. Fact or fiction? The Electoral Support of the ARP around 1885 and in 1918The rallying cry 'The people behind the voters' symbolised the political discrimination against the anti-revolutionaries. The restricted franchise, based on tax assessments, was supposed to favour the liberals. It is, however, doubtful whether this rallying cry represented any real form of discrimination or whether it should be regarded instead as part of the self-image of the antirevolutionaries. This is hard to determine. The number of seats gained during elections is not a very good benchmark because the absolute majority run-off system (constituency voting system with a second ballot) forced political parties to look for electoral cooperation. The size of the electoral support, on the other hand, can be estimated, when the election results of several carefully selected constituencies from the 1880s are compared with the election results of 1918. At this point, the votes were being cast under the regime of proportional representation and universal male suffrage. The anti-revolutionary electoral gains in 1918 turned out to be so small, that the rallying cry 'The people behind the voters' must be regarded as being out of touch with reality. Already, under the very restricted suffrage of the 1880s, the anti-revolutionaries had almost reached the peak of their electoral support.