Binding fear : on community building practices and discourses in a disadvantaged neighbourhood

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Binding Fear:

On Community Building Practices and

Discourses in a Disadvantaged Neighbourhood

Fenneke Wekker

Student number: 10071504

Master thesis, Research Master Social Sciences, 1 July 2015, University of Amsterdam

Word count: 24.139

Supervisor: Prof. J.W. Duyvendak Second Reader: Dr. O. Verkaaik info@fennekewekker.nl

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Abstract

This ethnographic account explores the mechanisms of in- and exclusion that are involved with practices and discourses of community building at a neighbourhood restaurant in Amsterdam-North. By doing participant observation, writing extensive field notes and conducting fourteen in-depth interviews with the restaurant manager, a social worker, and regular visitors, I gained important insights in the advantages and empowering effects of professional, state-supported community building in a disadvantaged neighbourhood, as well as in the tensions and contradictory outcomes of it. The core argument of this study is despite the well-intended and well-organized attempts of the restaurant management to organize an inclusive and heterogeneous local community through practice, an exclusive and homogeneous community was established through reiterating and reproducing discourses of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘otherness’, and by indirectly facilitating the construction of collective fear for ‘ethnic and racial others’ among visitors.

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Acknowledgements

First of all, my gratitude goes to my respondents. My thesis would not have been possible without their generosity and willingness to include me in their midst. I would like to thank my supervisor Jan Willem Duyvendak for his bright mind, his critical eye and his valuable comments on earlier drafts of this thesis. Furthermore, I would also like to thank five people who have deeply inspired and influenced me since I started studying sociology: Fatiha el-Hajjari, Bart van Heerikhuizen, Lea Klarenbeek, Robbie Voss and Ilios Willemars. It is because of them that I lost my hart to sociology and academia. Finally, my special gratitude goes to my beloved husband Rogier in ‘t Hout, and my wonderful children Rosa and Minne, for their everlasting support, their sweetness and for making me so happy.

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Introduction: Being the Other on the Other Side

Wednesday evening at 5 p.m., my journey to Amsterdam-North on the other side of the river IJ begins. It is winter and it’s getting dark quite quickly now. I’m cycling through the city’s centre, crossing the Dam and Damrak. Shops are closing, people are hurrying for their busses and trams, tourists are looking for cafés and restaurants to eat and drink. Lots of sounds ring my ears: chaotic traffic sounds, laughter and shouting in languages I do not understand, the claxons of taxi’s, the bells of the trams, the sirens of a police car in the distance. I’m approaching Central Station now and try to find my way through the crowds. At the back of the station, at the river side, the ferries depart to Amsterdam-North. My ferry turns out to be situated at the very end of the dock. I have to hurry now. People are pushing and pulling to get their bicycles and scooters on board in time. The bell rings, the engine starts and the ferry is on its way.

The calming waves and the sudden darkness of the river are overwhelming and seem to affect everyone on board. No one talks or shouts anymore, an almost complete silence has taken over. With the familiar sounds, crowds and chaos of the city fading away, I am crossing a natural border – to the other side of Amsterdam.

(Research Diary, 13-01-2014)

Binding Fear is a study on community building in a ‘disadvantaged’ neighbourhood in

Amsterdam-North. The account presented here explores the inherent contradiction that seems to be embedded within all practices of community building: the construction of a ‘constitutive outside’ and the inherent exclusion of ‘others’.

As an ‘outsider,’ living on the opposite side of the river IJ, but working as a professional in Amsterdam-North at the time, I started visiting a local neighbourhood restaurant in May 2006. It was located in a community centre called ‘Living Room of the Hood’. The first time I attended the three-course dinner at the neighbourhood restaurant, I felt quite uneasy. From my perspective, the visitors of the restaurant seemed a very homogeneous and closed group. People would look at

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6 me and ask why I had come to the restaurant and whom I was working for. Obviously, they could tell from my appearance—a middle class woman in her forties, with light coloured skin and wild curly hair—and my behaviour that I was not ‘one of them’. There had to be a reason for my presence: “You seem like a social worker to me”, one visitor guessed. Another visitor started joking: “For people like you, Amsterdam-North is always ‘the other side’ of the IJ, but from our point of view, you’re from ‘the other side.’” A loud laughter. What was it about me, that I could not enter the restaurant without being noticed? Why was I so promptly designated to be ‘different’, why couldn’t I ‘pass’ for a common visitor? Why couldn’t I be a resident of Amsterdam-North and common visitor of the restaurant, just like them?

The neighbourhood restaurant is part of a national organisation made up of more than 30 restaurants across the country. The restaurants are mainly located in ‘deprived areas’ and actively aim at countering loneliness and isolation among (elderly) residents, but above all they attempt to facilitate encounters between people of different cultural backgrounds and generations “in order to reduce mutual fear and incomprehension” (interview restaurant-manager Amsterdam-North). By building a local community, it is believed, the neighbourhood will become a better place to live, social cohesion and social control will increase, and residents will know where and how to find help and support if needed. On a weekly basis social organisations or, for example, bank employees come and visit the restaurant, to give lectures and information on certain themes such as: how to manage your budget, how to have a proper diet, how does the local police force operate, or how to broaden perspectives on migrants and the multicultural society. Besides offering residents a place to have a proper, wholesome meal for a small price, and organizing informative activities, the neighbourhood restaurant also provides internships and work placements for students, as well as for people who are part of a naturalisation, reintegration or rehabilitation program.

As I found, this national social initiative is generously supported by municipalities as well as by large insurance companies, private banks and local social organisations. In Amsterdam-North, a regular group of about 30 – 50 people visits the three-course dinners three times a week at the neighbourhood restaurant. The dinners cost four euro for those living below subsistence level, which turned out to be 99,9% of the visitors. Regarding the regular number of people attending the dinners, the fact that the initiative has been running for ten years now and financial

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7 support is continuously being re-generated, I would say the neighbourhood restaurant can be called a success.

It struck me, though, despite the well-intended, well-organized and persistent attempts of the restaurant management to reach out to a plurality of residents, only a quite homogeneous and select group of residents attended the three-course dinners regularly. Whereas the statistics show that the large proportion of residents of the residential area where the restaurant is located is of ‘non-Western descent’ (www.noord.amsterdam.nl, visited 20-04-2015), mainly white, ‘native Dutch’ residents visited the community restaurant—many of them not even living in this specific neighbourhood, but rather in adjacent or even more distant areas. Although many ‘ethnically diverse’ activities were being organized around the dinners—a Moroccan night, a Brazilian choir, a Surinamese meal—aiming to attract residents of non-native Dutch descent, these inhabitants would not join the community restaurant on a regular basis. Why?

At the same time, it was very clear that the visitors who did attend the restaurant regularly felt a strong sense of belonging and became increasingly loyal to the restaurant. When I began revisiting the restaurant after several years, in January 2014, many of them were still there.

For the scope of this study, I focused on community building practices and -discourses during dinners at the community restaurant. Although I am very curious to find out why residents with non-Dutch backgrounds do not choose or wish to join in, I have started by exploring the practices, discourses and boundaries of the established restaurant community first, to learn more about the ‘established and outsiders relations’ from the inside (Elias and Scotson 1994). Are there any inherent aspects involved with the community building practices and/or discourses that might discourage ‘ethnic and racial others’ from becoming part of this community? What are the precise aims of the restaurant management, and what means do they employ to achieve their goals? How do these aims and attempts correspond with the motives and practices of the regular visitors? Why do they attend the three-weekly dinners? Do they perceive of themselves as a community? And if so, what binds them? Furthermore, I explored if and how I could become part of this community myself—being the designated ‘outsider’ that I am. Would I be able to ‘pass’ the invisible boundaries I experienced initially and become included by the visitors? If so, on what terms? What mechanisms and practices of inclusion would be involved in that process?

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8 Methods

Between January and December 2014, I visited the neighbourhood restaurant about 30 times, with a concentration of three visits a week between August and October 2014. During these three months I actually became part of the community, to a certain extent. I started to experience a sense of belonging, was welcomed by the visitors as ‘one of them’ and became familiar with the common knowledge, narratives, humour, practices and discourses that turned out to be key elements of the established community. By doing intensive participant observation, having conversations with many visitors, restaurant employees, social workers and volunteers, writing extensive field notes and conducting fourteen in-depth interviews with the restaurant manager, a social worker, as well as with regular visitors, I came close to an understanding of the multiple boundary making processes that were at play at this particular restaurant.

This study argues that, despite the attempts of the restaurant management to organize an inclusive and heterogeneous neighbourhood community through practice, an exclusive and homogeneous community was established through reiterating and reproducing discourses of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘otherness’. Notably, there seems to be a relation between building a community of ‘disadvantaged citizens’ and at the same time depicting and ‘targeting’ them as—as I will show below—‘narrow minded’, pathological, and sometimes even morally inferior, and the ways in which this class of residents tend to construct a sense of fear of and aversion against Muslims, foreigners and blacks. I suggest, the well-intended, but forceful attempts of the management to ‘open up the world views’ of the restaurant visitors by ‘confronting them with diversity’ in order to enhance social cohesion, do 1) establish a cultural distinction between the working class visitors and the ‘advantaged’ middle class professionals who are institutionally legitimized and entitled to set the norms and transform the lives of the former accordingly, and 2) implicitly and indirectly sustain the boundaries between the visitors and ‘ethnic and racial others’. This results in a strong sense of bonding among the white working class, ‘native Dutch’ visitors, rather than

bridging differences between residents of various classes or different ethnic and cultural

backgrounds (Putnam 2000 & 2007; Varshney 2001), as aimed for by the restaurant management. The next chapter discusses only a small part of the large body of scholarly work on organizing and building communities. It focusses on the promises and perils of community building in urban settings in general, and more specifically on state-supported social interventions

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9 which aim to organize people who are assumed to be incapable of organizing themselves. In Chapter Three, I will elaborate on the practices, rituals and activities that are central to the community building neighbourhood dinners in Amsterdam-North. I will explore the ways in which the restaurant manager attempts to bind visitors together and simultaneously tries to improve their conducts, moral standards and lifestyles through mandatory collective activities. Chapter Four deals with discourses of ‘disadvantage’ and ‘otherness’, that turned out to play a crucial role in the establishment and sustainment of a community of white working class residents, and the construction of its constitutive outside: i.e. ‘ethnic and racial others’. In the concluding chapter, I will discuss the possibilities and advantages of community building, as well as the contradictions and mechanisms of exclusion that are involved with its practices and discourses. Finally, I will address the question if and how professional community builders could achieve to organize heterogeneous and ‘diverse’ communities, whereas they are institutionally legitimized and supported to work according to their own normative and moral frameworks. How can intracultural and ethnical social networks be organized, within an intercultural and -ethnical dominant field of power?

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Community Building and Urban Life

[Community building] enables people to break their crippling isolation from each other, to reshape their mutual values and expectations and rediscover the possibilities of acting collaboratively—the prerequisites of any successful self-help initiative.

Barack Obama In ‘Why Organize? Problems and Promise in the Inner City’, 2012

Community building is widely considered an effective means to improve liveability and social cohesion in disadvantaged and heterogeneous urban settings – by social scientists, policy makers, social organizations, as well as by residents (cf. Jacobs 1961/1989; King 2013; Minkler 2012; Wittebrood and Permentier 2011; Weil 1996; Mattessich et al. 1997; VROM 2007; Kleinhans and Bolt 2010).

City life, as is argued, exerts negative pressure on social cohesion: while living closely together, urban dwellers tend to keep their social distance. The opacity, chaos and complexity of large cities make it hard for city dwellers to navigate and ‘socially survive’ in this environment. Feelings of detachment, loneliness, anomie and a blasé-attitude towards others, can be only some of the consequences of living in the city (Wirth 1938; Durkheim [1893]2014 & ([1897]1951); Simmel [1903]2000; Blokland and Nast 2014).

The necessity of creating social networks for people to be able to feel safe and ‘at home’ in the city is stressed by many anthropologists and sociologists. Thereby, social networks can improve people’s personal circumstances and self-sufficiency (Putnam 2000), as collective or economic benefits can derive from the cooperation between individuals and groups. In that sense, strong social networks among friends and families (bonding), as well as between different groups of people (bridging) are perceived of as social capital (Ibid.; Bourdieu [1984]2010 & [1986]2011). Aldrich (2011) defines a third type of social capital, besides bonding and bridging, which is linking social capital. The latter, but weakest form of social capital, refers to benefits

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11 that can derive from the relationship between an individual or group and a government official or institutional leader.

Although social networks are considered indispensable for citizens to ‘socially survive’, to improve their lives, to provide them a sense of home and belonging, this latter state-of-being is clearly not self-evident in urban settings (Hansen and Verkaaik 2009; Duyvendak and Wekker 2015). Cities comprise of sites of enduring conflicts and cohesive social networks are no ‘natural’ aspect of city life (Durkheim ([1893] 2014). So how do urban dwellers manage to survive and create a sense of belonging, if the emergence of urban social networks is not self-evident?

Katherine Schultz (1999) argues that urban residents shape legible group identities among themselves. Through imagining (collective) identities, they shape pathways which provide direction while living in a complex and multi-layered social reality. In a similar vein Thomas Blom Hansen and Oskar Verkaaik suggest in their article “Urban Charisma: On Everyday Mythologies in the City” (2009) that cities should be regarded as ‘performative spaces’; spaces that are only readable, and liveable, through repetitive circulations of narratives about ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Seen from a political perspective, organizing local networks in urban settings is also considered necessary (Obama 2012; VROM 2007; Minkler 2012; Walter and Hyde 2012). A professionally organized local community could provide urban dwellers legible and durable pathways through urban social life, as is assumed. They enable residents to create a sense of belonging to the place and to exert social control (Blokland and Nast 2014). In neighbourhoods that lack social cohesion residents tend to feel unsafe and withdraw from public (and thus democratic) city life. Especially when public space is ‘taken over’ by particular groups –for example ‘ethnic youths’—feelings of insecurity and detachment tend to increase among other residents (Binken et al. 2012; Burgers et al. 2012). This is seen as problematic, because:

[N]eighbours should feel a sense of belonging where they live, and once they do they will engage, or so the argument goes; once they engage, the neighbourhood will be on its way up.” Therefore, “[…] urban policies aim at strengthening local community, [presuming] that personal networks are a necessary condition for well-functioning neighbourhoods.

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12 Hence, community building, feelings of belonging and social engagement are seen as prerequisite for urban neighbourhoods and its dwellers to function well.

Problematizing community building

However, there is yet another aspect to community building that we must take into consideration: the exclusiveness of communities. I define a ‘local community’, thereby following Smith et al. (2007), as being characterized by “a common identity, interests and collective practices of individuals sharing a bounded area” (Smith et al. 2007: 22). Urban dwellers, indeed seeking for local networks themselves, tend to connect to people like themselves (VROM-raad 2009). Many scholars have shown that a sense of community among one group of residents, inherently involves the exclusion of others (Elias and Scotson 1994; Binken et al. 2012; Hage 1998; Besnier 2009). In a setting characterized by heterogeneity, such as the city, the creation of heterogeneous communities might therefore, seemingly paradoxical, be impeded (Blokland and Nast 2014: 1143). Although strong bonds among people who can identify with each other easily are depicted as the strongest type of social capital (Aldrich 2011), it is also shown that very cohesive in-groups can reinforce hatred, violence and aggression against ‘others’: they lose their capacity to deploy bridging social capital and can, therefore, become isolated from the general public (Fukuyama 2001).

Strong moral bonds within a group in some cases may actually serve to decrease the degree to which members of that group are able to trust outsiders and work effectively with them.[…] At best, this prevents the group from receiving beneficial influences from the outside environment; at worst, it may actively breed distrust, intolerance, or even hatred for and violence towards outsiders.

(Fukuyama 2001:14)

In other words, the very strength of those internal bonds do create a gulf between members of the group and those on the outside (ibid.: 15).

Cohesive communities, thus, exist due to the boundaries they create. The establishment of group boundaries and the definition of group membership simultaneously creates a ‘constitutive outside’ (Butler 1998; Hansen and Verkaaik 2009; Jaworski and Coupland 2005; Schultz 1999;

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13 Meder 2010). To know who ‘we’ are inherently involves knowing who ‘the others’ are—i.e. who ‘we’ are not. More strongly put, belonging to a community consists to a large extent of knowing who one does not wish to identify with. The particular knowledge of ‘the others’, that is needed to establish who ‘we’ are, is provided by and constructed through repetitive circulation of powerful narratives about the presumed characteristics of those ‘others’ (Elias and Scotson 1994; Besnier 2009; Jaworski and Coupland 2005). Hence, while community building increases a sense of belonging for the in-group, it obstructs the integration of the out-group.

Again, from a political perspective, states and state-supported organisations might aim to organize individuals who are incapable of organizing themselves. But at the same time:

States do not have many obvious levers for creating many forms of social capital. Social capital is frequently a byproduct of religion, tradition, shared historical experience, and other factors that lie outside the control of any government.

(Fukuyama 2001:17)

Furthermore, Fukuyama (Ibid.) points out that:

Policy makers […] need to be aware that social capital, particularly when associated with groups that have a narrow radius of trust, can produce negative externalities and be detrimental to the larger society.

It is therefore suggested that, although social capital and community formation is of great importance for neighbourhood development, it is more likely that trust, safety and a stable environment for public interactions will arise spontaneously as a result of iterated interactions of residents (Fukuyama 2001; Blokland-Potters 1998 & 2006; Fischer 1981)

State-supported community building in Amsterdam-North

Amsterdam-North has a long history of nationally and locally state-supported social interventions which aimed to improve the lives of and socialize the ‘disadvantaged working class’ according to middle class moral standards and norms of conduct (De Regt 1995; Dercksen and Verplanke 2005). Since the 1920s, this working class area was designated to house ‘unsocial’ families, who

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14 were joined together under surveillance of a female superintendent in so-called woonscholen (‘schools for dwelling’). As a precursor of today’s social work, the mothers were ‘re-educated’ in housekeeping, raising their children and providing a ‘good home’ for their husbands, in order to keep them out of the café’s (Dercksen and Verplanke 2005: 105-187). Today, working class families in Amsterdam-North are generally still described as ‘unsocial’, and many of these families are currently the focus of (nationally coordinated) social interventions, which aim to improve their lives, working habits and moral standards (VROM 2007; Wittebrood and Permentier 2011; Kan and van der Veer 2013).

In 2007, five neighbourhoods in Amsterdam-North were designated as ‘Empowered Neighbourhoods’ by the current department of Housing, Neighbourhoods and Integration (Wonen, Wijken en Integratie). The Empowered Neighbourhoods Policy (‘Krachtwijkenbeleid’) was implemented in forty deprived neighbourhoods across the Netherlands and aimed at resolving cumulating problems in these areas, such as impoverishment, massive unemployment, high rates of criminality, large numbers of school drop-outs, increasing domestic violence, nuisances caused by youths, and an alarming lack of social cohesion and feelings of insecurity among residents (VROM 2007; Wittebrood and Permentier 2011). Among these designated neighbourhoods was the area in which the neighbourhood restaurant of our concern is situated.

An important aspect of the policy program was its focus on community building and the creation of empowered local networks. The current Minister Vogelaar at the time, allocated a

Figure 1. Neighbourhoods in North Amsterdam (source: buurt-online.nl/amsterdam/noord)

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15 sum of 95 million euros to neighbourhood initiatives that would enhance cooperation and cohesion among neighbours. In order to encourage (groups of) residents to display self-sufficiency and responsibility, activities such as neighbourhood gardening, computer-lessons, street barbecues and neighbourhood dinners were abundantly subsidized, and facilitated by local social organizations (www.rijksoverheid.nl, visited 25-06-2014).

Due to economic crises and an enduring public and political critique in regards to the costly endeavour of the Empowered Neighbourhood Policy, the entire program was ended prematurely in 2010. Despite the efforts of the national and local government to improve social life in Amsterdam-North, the residential area in which the neighbourhood restaurant is located was proclaimed to be the ‘worst neighbourhood of Amsterdam to grow up in’ by the Verwey Jonker Institute in 2012, due to extremely high rates of unemployment, poverty, child abuse, youth criminality, school drop-out levels, and very low scores on social cohesion and liveability, compared to other neighbourhoods in Amsterdam and the Netherlands (Steketee et al. 2012: 25; Het Parool 2012; Kan and Van der Veer 2013; Van Ankeren et al. 2010; Nul20.nl, visited 06-06-2014).

Since the problems maintained in all five deprived neighbourhoods, the local municipality of District Amsterdam-North decided to design their own ‘Northern Empowered Neighbourhoods’-program (‘Noordse Krachtwijken’-plan). The objective has been to improve social and living standards “back to Normal Amsterdam Level” (Normaal Amsterdams Peil,

NAP) (Candido 2010; Nul20.nl, visited 06-06-2014). Several social and financial interventions

did bring some results: between 2011 and 2013 liveability in Amsterdam-North has increased, residents feel more safe in the streets at night and are more positive about their personal futures (Kan and Van der Veer 2013: 9). In 2014, the neighbourhood in which I conducted fieldwork was proclaimed ‘Focus Neighbourhood of 2014’ by the municipality; a more focused attempt was made to improve social life in this particular residential area (noord.amsterdam.nl, visited 06-06-2014).

The implementation of the neighbourhood restaurant in this working class area in Amsterdam-North, must be seen in the light of decades of ‘social interventions’, initiated by the national government and pursuit by social organisations, sponsors and the local municipality of Amsterdam-North. As I will show below, many of the middle class, normative assumptions that

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16 used to underpin the interventions of the past, can still be found in the current attempts to build a community at the neighbourhood restaurant in situ.

Before embarking on the ethnographic chapters, it remains to be said that in order to grant my informants and the neighbourhood restaurant anonymity, I have deleted the names of the particular neighbourhood in Amsterdam-North and organisations involved, as well as changed all personal names.

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3

Community Building Practices

With dinner starting within one hour, a few people are already waiting in the hallway. A small group of middle-aged men is drinking beer in silence. An old woman of, I assume, Surinamese descent sits apart. A little further, an old man is dozing off. No one says ‘Hi’ when I enter the hallway. We all just wait and stare in silence.

At six o’clock, the manager invites us into the dining hall. He has a loud and energetic voice, makes jokes, knows all the visitors by name and welcomes me warmly. In the dining hall, five tables are nicely set up. Most people have fixed places; they walk straight to ‘their’ tables.

I decide to sit down at a table with five elderly women. One elderly man is welcomed by the women and sits down next to me. When a second elderly man asks if he can sit down with us, one woman replies: ‘No, that place is occupied.’ Another woman swiftly puts her bag on the last empty chair. It stays unoccupied for the rest of the evening. The man has dinner by himself at another table.

For the first four weeks of my research I did participant observation only. I wanted to gain some trust first, to allow the regular visitors time to get used to my presence, and to give them the opportunity to ask me questions before I started questioning them. At the same time, I needed some time to get used to them as well—I was still an outsider. Every week I tried to sit down at a different table, meeting and having dinner with different (groups of) visitors.

Focusing on the community building practices that were deployed during the dinners at this particular restaurant, there appeared to be a complex range of practices, organized and unorganized, intended and unintended, foreseen and unforeseen, that gave shape to the construction and constitutive boundaries of the restaurant community and—as I learned—its several sub-communities. I can distinguish four types of practices which were especially influential in the emergence of community and a sense of togetherness: firstly, the procedure of

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18 the dinner night itself; secondly, the various ways in which the tables were set up each night and the way in which the available space1 was appropriated; thirdly, the activities organized by the manager; and fourthly, the ways in which visitors created a sense of togetherness and community among themselves. These four types of practices were strongly intertwined, reciprocally strengthening and not easy to grasp when treated as distinctive practices only. The combination of interrelated practices gave shape to the salient contours, boundaries and characteristics of the particular (sub)community that was built at the neighbourhood restaurant in Amsterdam-North.

The dinner procedure

The first, grand practice of community building was, what I call, the dinner procedure. Led by the restaurant manager, Robert, this procedure achieved a sense of togetherness among visitors.

Dinners at the community restaurant had an extraordinary ritual character. Each night the dinner tended to follow a fixed ‘procedure’, in which certain elements were being repeated and performed smoothly by the manager, as well as by the regular visitors and volunteers. It was through these rituals, that regular visitors have become familiar with the ‘do’s and don’ts’ of the neighbourhood restaurant, and, foremost, it was through this ritual that it was easy to distinguish between those who were ‘new’ to the practice and those who already ‘belonged’ to the restaurant ‘community’.

The very first time I participated, I was kindly helped by an elderly couple, who taught me when to be silent, when to start eating, and what to do or say at the right moment. ‘Sacred’ elements, such as a short moment of silence before dinner, a mandatory applause for the cook and volunteers, but also some normative imperatives, such as ‘women first’ and ‘enjoy your meal’, were being repeated at every course.

1

During the three months in which I conducted intensive fieldwork, the community center—where the

restaurant is located—was being rebuilt. This meant that the dining hall was not available during some amount of

time and that the manager and volunteers had to re-arrange the table setting each night, enabling all the visitors to

have a proper place to sit. Despite the, sometimes, chaotic circumstances at the community center, a regular group of

about 30 visitors remained attending the community dinners. Thereby, community activities were still being

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19 The restaurant manager turned out to play a crucial and very active role in leading and establishing the restaurant-ritual. By determining the procedure of the dinner and the way in which the tables were set up, by organizing activities, making jokes at the right times, by telling stories, walking past the tables and listening to people, he turned out to be the driving force behind it. The result was a tangible sociability and engagement among the visitors.

The dinner procedure goes as follows:

Once everyone has settled down and found a place to sit, restaurant manager Robert welcomes the visitors and introduces them to the volunteers of that day. The volunteers stand in a row, slightly behind the manager, wearing an apron with the restaurant logo on it. The cook of the day—the only paid employee, besides the restaurant manager—is then invited to present the three courses of the night. The three courses mainly consist of soup as a starter, rice, pasta or potatoes with meat or fish and fresh vegetables as the main course, and a dairy product, such as yoghurt or custard with preserved fruit for dessert. The visitors then give the volunteers and cook a nice applause. While the volunteers turn back to the kitchen to serve the first course, the restaurant manager asks all the visitors to respect a moment of silence. After a short while, the manager wishes all a nice meal. He himself, successively, helps the volunteers serving the plates. The three courses follow quite swiftly. If there are any activities organized, they take place between the courses. In contrast to the organized start of the dinners, they end quite abruptly. Before everyone has finished their desserts, most people have already left the building. Within one hour the restaurant is empty again, while the volunteers are finishing the dishes and cleaning up the tables.

The special feature of this neighbourhood restaurant is its focus on interaction and conversation among all visitors. Unlike ‘common’ restaurants, it was hard to sit and have dinner just by yourself, or privately with your partner or among friends. The plenary elements of the dinner made everyone aware of the presence of all the others and do create a tangible sense of togetherness and social cohesion, as I experienced. I suggest, the dinner procedure can therefore be best understood from a Durkheimian perspective:

There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the collective ideas which make its unity and its personality. Now this moral remaking cannot be achieved except by the means of

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20 reunions, assemblies and meetings where the individuals, being closely united to one another, reaffirm in common their common sentiments […].

(Durkheim, 1912, quoted in Calhoun et al. 2012: 252-3)

According to Durkheim, society is in need of rituals and regular meetings, such as the neighbourhood dinners in Amsterdam-North, in order for individuals to create a moral collectivity. Without the latter, society would atomize and individuals would fall into a lost state of anomie. Without the regular reaffirmation of common norms, common sense, and a collective moral, Durkheim argues, there can be no society and individuals will be left on their own, without guidance, conduct or support (Durkheim 1912 and 1897).

The result of rituals, in which the ‘sacred’ norms and practices of a given collectivity are reaffirmed, is a strong sense of togetherness, a sense of community (Durkheim 1912). The dinner procedure at the neighbourhood restaurant clearly entailed some sacred elements—such as the moment of silence, the volunteers standing in a row behind the manager, the applause, the ‘women first’-imperative, the ‘enjoy your meal’-uttering before starting dinner, etc.—about which no one thought to complain, which were never disturbed or undermined, but rather accepted as ‘common sense’ and ‘common norms’. All regular visitors knew what was expected of them and cooperated actively to re-establish these expectations. I, as a newcomer, was actively included in the ‘ceremony’, helped and instructed by the man and his wife at my table. The result for me, as I became more familiar to the ritual, was that I slowly started to become part of the restaurant community as well. I started to know the common norms, the common practices, the common sentiments, and I actively reaffirmed them by participating in the dinner ceremony each time I attended it.

Another aspect of collective ceremonies, as Durkheim (1912) spells out, is their coercive power; it is almost impossible not to participate and re-establish the norms and practices that are embedded in collective ceremonies. In Chapter Four, I will show how difficult it was (also for myself while becoming included as a regular visitor), not to reaffirm and incorporate the collective norms and ideas of the restaurant community, even if one would individually reject such norms and ideas. Durkheim sees this as a core feature of what he calls a ‘social fact’; it cannot be reduced to the individual’s will and psyche. The norms and ideas that arise from

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21 collective ceremonies exert pressure on the individual from the outside, and successively regulate the behaviour, thoughts and feelings of the individual (Ibid.).

Hence, the dinner procedure indeed aroused the sense of community and togetherness that was aimed for by the restaurant management. Through the collective practices, a collective morality was created that became perceived of and experienced as a ‘fact’: a ‘natural’ morality on how to behave, to think and feel—a morality which could hardly be challenged individually. At the same time, I learned that some sub-communities did find ways to resist the coercive character of the general dinner procedure and the organized activities. As a group, some visitors managed to refuse to join in activities or to (loudly) reject the moral imperatives embedded in lectures and speeches by the manager and social workers. In Chapter Four, I will discuss ways in which individual visitors attempted to counter the collective morality by negotiating different accounts of what it means to be a ‘morally good’ and ‘respectable human being’. But first, I will elaborate further upon the emergence of various sub-communities within the neighbourhood restaurant, and some of the tensions and acts of resistance that were involved with it.

The setting

The main hall of the community centre is being transformed into a restaurant three times a week. Four to five square tables are nicely set up, dependent on the number of reservations. Each table is suited for eight persons, with two people sitting on each side. Bottles of water are being put on the tables. Red tablecloth, napkins and candle-lights establish a nice, festive atmosphere in the main hall of the community centre.

As I learned, people stick to ‘their’ tables firmly. The combination of visitors who ‘belonged’ to the same table only changed slightly during the course of my fieldwork. First, there was the table with elderly women (70 years and up) only, who called themselves ‘our little club’. There was only one man, Piet (79), who was allowed to sit at ‘their’ table sometimes. Other men were systematically rejected and abandoned. “We don’t know the others”, one woman explained, “we know them only by face, but not by their names.” It became clear that these women do meet each other regularly, also outside this particular restaurant. They told me they also have dinner together on the days in between these dinner nights, at different community centres. “Yeah, you have to attend to it, otherwise you’re just sitting at home”, one woman stated. The ladies of Our Little Club meet each other several times a week, at the different community centres in the

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22 neighbourhood, and at the shopping centre. They told me it is because of the cosiness (gezelligheid) that they are employing all these activities together, “otherwise we would all be sitting at home by ourselves.”

The second ‘fixed’ table was—in the words of the involved visitors themselves—the ‘cosy table’. This table distinguished itself because of the loud laughter, the excited talks and engaged and energetic atmosphere among the visitors. This table was always packed, it seemed as if everyone wanted to take part in this small group. Many times I witnessed how other visitors were refused, because all the chairs at the table were already occupied or ‘reserved for themselves’. For me, also, it took several times, and more than one rejection, before I managed to sit down at the Cosy Table. Only when the restaurant manager decided to re-set the tables and allow more people to sit at one table, there was a place for me. Later, when I gained their trust, it was easier to arrange a place for myself at the Cosy Table; the visitors would just move their chairs to the side and allow me to put an extra chair in between them.

The key figures—or gate-keepers—of the Cosy Table turned out to be Pim (56) and Frits (67), a homosexual couple called ‘the Boys’, who talked and laughed easily and were able to establish a strong sense of sociability and togetherness at the given table. In the beginning of my fieldwork, the other regular visitors at the Cosy Table were only ‘younger’ women (between 45 and 63 years old), among them two who are physically disabled. During the course of my research, two men—a young mentally disabled man (31) and an older hearing-impaired man (67), were ‘adopted’ by the Cosy Table, “Because they had a fight at their own table, and they would have stopped joining the dinners otherwise”, Pim explained to me.

The table, where the fight had taken place, was the third and only table that I did not initially dare to sit down at—although I did eventually. At this table, which I call the Beer Table, six men (between 31 and 67 years old, originally among them the two men who were later adopted by the Cosy Table) drank many beers and ate their meals in complete silence. The only woman sitting at the table was an older woman (around 80 years old) called ‘Granny’ by the others. Granny, in contrast to the men at her table, was never silent; she shouted at the other visitors, at the restaurant manager and used discriminative language against the volunteers (most of them having a migrant background).

I was confronted with my own prejudices and morality here, since I considered the visitors at this particular table very ‘rough’. Some of them had a scruffy appearance, as if they

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23 never washed themselves, neither their hair nor clothes. Some of them had red noses, red faces and, in my perspective, aggressive looks due to their assumedly abundant use of alcohol. One visitor at the Beer Table was constantly shaking physically. But most of all, the old woman, Granny, seemed to be straightforwardly dangerous to me. It took me two weeks, only because Granny wasn’t there that night, before I dared to ask if I could sit down to table with them. None of the men reacted on my request. One of them turned his head away from me. I sat down anyway and they just acted as if I wasn’t there, avoiding any eye contact or conversation.

I learned about the fight at the Beer Table a few weeks later, when Granny had not shown up several times. The shaking man and the man who had turned his head away from me turned out to be brothers and now sat apart from the others. The hearing-impaired man and the young mentally disabled man were now sitting at the Cosy Table. The manager told me that Granny had said so many nasty things to the hearing-impaired man—whom he called Uncle Joop—to the extent that the latter had called Granny on the phone and announced that she was not welcome anymore. Apparently, Granny had taken his complaints seriously, since I never saw her again at the restaurant. The two other men, who had ‘belonged’ to the Beer Table, attended the dinners only irregularly from that moment on, sitting by themselves at a different table. The Beer Table, thus, definitively fell apart since Granny had left the restaurant.

But how did these fixed tables emerge in the first place? According to all my respondents, becoming part of a certain group all depends on where you sat down the first time:

A: I can still see myself entering the place for the first time. I was really frightened. I had been neglecting myself, not eating well, so my doctor had said to me: you have to go to the neighbourhood restaurant and get some wholesome food over there. But I didn’t dare to go in. I had this scooter, you know, because my legs always hurt…

F: And when you got in, how did you choose where to sit down?

A: It was Winny, she had a scooter also. She shouted: ‘Hey, come sit over here with your scooter!’ And then I just stayed with them. We are really the cosy table. We give each other flowers when one of us is having their birthday. Then, we’ll give Pim or Frits an euro each, and they will get us a bunch of flowers.

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24 Winny continues:

So, Annemiek and I were already sitting at the same table. And then I knew someone, and she knew someone and that person sits down to table with us. And that person brings someone else and at a certain point you have a group.

(Interview Winny)

The young disabled man gave me a similar account of the way he had ‘found’ his table—before his group fell apart due to the fight with Granny, that is:

V: I just sat down at this table. And these people always sit together, so now I am also ‘of this table’.

F: Do you ever change tables? Do you ever join another group? V: No.

F: But why not? Why do you always choose to sit at the same table?

V: Well, after a while you start having contact, you know. You start talking a bit. F: But wouldn’t you feel like meeting other people at the restaurant sometimes? V: No.

(Interview Vincent)

Or as Pim explained:

P: People always tend to flock together. Of course it’s no problem when other people sit with us, we like that as well. It’s not like we ignore people who normally do not sit with us. For example, Uncle Joop…he is new to our table. I asked him to come and sit with us, and he likes it very much. It was just bad luck that he ended up at the wrong table in the first place.

F: So you say, it is just a coincidence that Uncle Joop ended up at the ‘wrong table’? P: Yeah, in first instance, yeah, sure… You just sit down and then people don’t dare

to, to… walk to another table anymore. They’re stuck, so to say. So I said, come sit with us. Well, he loves it because we always make fun of things. It’s very cosy.

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25 F: Have you all become friends?

P: Well, we are friends, but we don’t visit each other at home. And that’s fine.

(Interview Pim)

Apparently, one can become part of a table by 1) just sitting down and not changing tables anymore, even if one does not like the atmosphere at the particular table. Or, 2) by being invited by someone to sit down to table with them. I found that, at the two tables where people were only ‘allowed’ to sit when they were invited—i.e. Our Little Club and The Cosy Table—the group was more cohesive and the atmosphere more ‘cosy’. At the Beer Table, though, anyone could sit down, but no one would bother to talk to you in first instance. Only after a while, as Vincent indicated, and as I myself experienced also, people would start to talk to you ‘a bit’.

Finally, there were two other tables: one for the volunteers, and one for the ‘loose visitors’, mainly single men and a few single women, who belonged to no particular table and/or wished to change tables regularly. One day, during dinner, I recorded my conversation with two of them, Annie and Piet:

F: Do you have a group of people with whom you regularly sit down? A: No, not at the moment .

F: Did you have one before?

A: Yeah, but they don’t come anymore. F: Why not?

A: They don’t like the food here. They want Dutch food […] Here it’s always pasta or .... It’s hardly ever plain potatoes with a meatball, you know. But I just keep on coming here.

F: And you, Piet, do you have a regular group? P: Well… no.

A: No, he hasn’t one either. We’re the floating tablemates (zwevende tafelgenoten), so to say…

P: Yeah, birds of a feather flock together, huh. F: Yeah?

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26 P: Yeah, and I think that makes sense. If I knew you were coming each night, I would wait for you, because I like talking to you. And when you like talking together, you sit together. That’s just the way it is.

(Recorded conversation with Annie and Piet at the ‘Loose’ Table)

Since it was hard for the ‘floating tablemates’ to get access to one of the three ‘fixed’ tables, and since they did not really seem to wish to become part of these groups, they sat together most of the time among an ever-changing combination of visitors, regular and non-regular ones.

Gender and sexuality

It took me several weeks before I came to understand another important aspect of the emergence and specific composition of the various ‘table communities’: the role of gender and sexuality. As I slowly became an insider, Piet, Bob, Kees and some other men started to open up to me, flirting with me and making remarks such as Bob’s: ‘I’m looking for a woman, you know. I’d marry you if you’d let me. But I guess you’re already married?’ ‘Yes, Bob, I’m married indeed’. At a certain point Piet sighed: ‘I think I am going to look for a different restaurant’. When I asked him why he would do so, he responded:

Shall I tell you? Okay, I shall be honest with you: I’m hunting women. And that’s why I think this place is boring, rusty, inveterate. Because there’s nobody. That’s why I’m looking for other places to eat, simply to meet nice women. One I can take home with me. Because now I come home, and I’m all by myself again.

It was only then, that I began to see that Piet hadn’t sit down at the table of Our Little Club for some weeks now. He was always sitting alone, amongst other ‘floating tablemates’, who did not care to communicate that much. Apparently, the women of Our Little Club were not interested in his sexual advances. It was only then, that I began to understand the full magnitude of the utterings of the younger women, who were always so keen on sitting with The Boys, the homosexual couple at the Cosy Table:

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27 I’m here for my own good. For my own fun, and for the people I care about. Especially for the boys, they’re just…I can be myself with them. Why? Because they are married. I don’t have to think about what they’re going to say to me, don’t have to be aware if they are going to do something silly…don’t have to think ‘Oh god, what does he want from me?’, no. Because they are two men who belong together. And yeah, they’re really important to me, because they are sweet men.

(Interview Winny)

All the women I interviewed during the course of my fieldwork had histories with abusive and alcoholic husbands. Over the last years, their spouses had left them or had died due to their addiction. They were now all single women, living on their own. While at least five of the men I spoke to were explicitly seeking for sexual affairs with the women of the neighbourhood restaurant, the latter attended the dinners only to meet other single women and ‘sweet’—read: homosexual—men. Gender, thus, turned out to play a crucial role in the composition of the table communities and the strong resistance that was felt, again mostly by the women and The Boys, against changing tables—as I will elaborate upon next.

Changing tables

As time went by, the table setting changed, due to the restructuring of the main hall. The manager, then, created longer tables down the hallway, which allowed more people to sit at one table. As I learned, changing and re-setting the tables every now and then was one of the main strategies of the restaurant manager, to encourage encounters among residents and in order to make them meet new people:

Participation is important to me. So, if you don’t want to participate, don’t come for dinner. […] The moment we say: ‘Today we’re going to change tables’, everyone is going to sit down at a different table with people they don’t regularly sit down with […]. When someone responds by saying ‘I don’t wanna sit here or there’, just don’t come. Because you’re obstructing things then. In this restaurant you make a reservation for a meal, not

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28 for a particular place to sit. So, one time you can join your regular group, and the other time we do things differently. That’s how we mix people, that’s how the restaurant gets its added value.

(Interview Robert, restaurant manager)

In regards to the strong ties that had emerged between the tablemates at some tables, and the divisions that were made on the base of gender and sexuality, it might not come by surprise that many visitors I spoke to disapproved strongly of this ‘changing tables’-strategy:

W: And then our sweet Robert wanted to change us (wilde ons veranderen). He wanted to put different people together. So, he gave us a small piece of paper, one person a blue one, the other a red one and so on. So, I could not sit with the boys anymore. I said to Robert: ‘We’re not going to do that.’ ‘Yeah, but you have to get to know other people. We decided to do it like this, so you have to’. Well… Then I said: ‘I’m going home’. And I left the place. And the boys left also.

F: But why were you so repugnant to changing tables?

W: I’m not joining dinners only for the food, I’m here for the sociability too. It’s not that I dislike the other people, but it is only that tiny moment during the week, that we are able to sit together with our friends. […] And I know Robert can’t help it, he’s only doing what he’s told by his bosses […]: people have to mix and get to know each other... But that’s when I stopped coming for a while.

(Interview Winny)

Pim gave a similar account:

P: The people at our table…we’ve become a group, you know. We call each other on birthdays, we bring each other flowers, send a postcard. And if anything happens, we help each other out… you know. And he is trying to tear that apart…

F: Robert, you mean?

P: Yeah… But that won’t work. He tried it before, but then we became a bit angry… (Interview Pim)

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29 Interestingly, the kind of togetherness that has emerged at the Cosy Table, as described by Annemiek, as well as by Winny and Pim, corresponds neatly with the aims of the restaurant to create a local social network and to counter loneliness and isolation (see Introduction and Chapter Four). At the same time, some of the respondents experience the mixing-practice as an active attempt of the management to ‘tear their social network apart’. Whereas both the management and the visitors seem to be aiming for the same goal—creating a strong social network—it appears as if the forceful attempts to encourage visitors to open up to others and to broaden up their social network even further, rather stimulates the opposite: people start to resist and become unwilling to participate in these community building practices.

A social worker, who had organized a trip to the neighbourhood restaurant2 with her volunteers, gave the following account regarding the mixing tables-practices:

I had made a reservation for about twelve to fourteen people. We all looked forward to it, we really enjoyed going there, because we could have dinner with all of us for little money. Well, firstly, when we arrived… it turned out that we were not allowed to sit together at the same table. I didn’t understand it. This manager, Robert, was really strict about the table setting, but we just wanted a fun night out. Well, that was the first deception... Then, it turned out that someone at our table was going to lead a conversation with regard to some issue, I can’t remember what it was, and we had to participate in that. I didn’t know that. Nobody had told me, when I’d made the reservation. So I responded: ‘Well, I don’t know anything about a discussion’ and I just didn’t join the conversation. And then, after a while, after the soup, Robert came to me and said: ‘Next time you want to have dinner with your people, go somewhere else’. I was completely aghast. […] I just wanted a fun night out, I didn’t want to be forced to talk about some issue. None of my people did. We just wanted to chat about the things we’d like, asking each other how the other was doing and stuff… At another table, where some of my volunteers were seated, there was an icy silence. This wasn’t what we’d expected. […] I have always been very sympathetic to this neighbourhood restaurant initiative, so I really wanted to support them

2_{My respondent went to a different location in Amsterdam, which is also run by the same restaurant manager as}

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30 by visiting the restaurant with so many people, but now I got the feeling as if I was sucked into a sect, or something. I really had to do things against my will, and if not, I could better fuck off. We were really scolded, and in a very unpleasant way. […] Of course, I really understand the importance of organizing conversations about certain issues among residents, but I don’t want to be forced to participate.

(Interview Marieke, social worker)

On the one hand, the restaurant facilitates encounters among residents, it allows social networks and real friendships to emerge, it provides a platform for local organizations to strengthen their network of volunteers and, most of all, it offers a place for sharing stories, concerns, problems and fun—which seems the basis for the occurrence of togetherness. On the other hand, the goal of the restaurant seems to be defined within such a strict framework, the instructions of the management seem to be so strict, that building a local network among self-chosen friends or encouraging in-depth encounters between local volunteers that have been working together for quite some time, does not seem to fit this framework—apparently, a different kind of community or social network is aimed for: a community of strangers, rather than one consisting solely of familiar others.

With regard to many scholarly discussions on bonding and bridging social capital (Putnam 2000; Aldrich 2011), this distinction between the aims of most visitors and the manager can be understood as follows: while most visitors—mainly single women—are primarily interested in bonding with friends, to feel safe and experience a sense of belonging among people who can be trusted, the management seems to be especially aiming for bridging social capital, i.e. making them meet people who are not part of their in-group.

I suggest, the aim of the management to encourage bridging social capital, in order to organize and build a local, self-sufficient community, corresponds with the professional and academic perspective that bridging capital prevents (further) societal isolation of strong cohesive in-groups and increases their chances to receive beneficial influences from the outside environment (Fukuyama 2001). The coercive attempts of the manager to impose these bridging strategies were met with resistance, though. They did not at all seem to correspond with the expectations, needs and concerns of the majority of the regular visitors.

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31 Organized activities

At dinner we always do something. That varies from a dance-show, or someone making music, to something educational, such as ‘how to manage my financial budget’… We always think of doing something nice during dinner, in order to complement and widen people’s worldviews.

(Interview Robert, restaurant manager)

During the course of my fieldwork, nine activities—approximately one activity per week—were organized by the restaurant manager, volunteers and social organizations; varying from a Brazilian choir to a lecture about wholesome food. I will address some of these activities here.

On two occasions new employees of a Dutch bank helped at the restaurant as part of their introduction week. This way, bank employees were enabled ‘to learn about life in these kind of neighbourhoods’ (interview Robert, restaurant manager). The bank employees had to help cooking, set up the tables, serve dinner, ‘mingle’ with the visitors, start conversations with them, and finally, do the dishes and clean the restaurant. A bank employee said:

We are obliged to employ one day of volunteering, to learn how to deal with people. For me that’s easy, because I love the people (het volk), I love the stories of the people. And I’m used to working with them. But you see, those two employees standing over there? They don’t like it…at…all.

(Conversation with bank employee, Research Diary, 27-08-2014).

Although some of the bank employees did not like the mandatory aspect of the ‘volunteering’, their presence always aroused enthusiasm among the regular visitors. So many young people on the floor, making the best of their introduction week, showing sincere interest in the visitors, and meanwhile openly flirting with each other (as one bank employee entrusted me “we’re having a good time, I slept with those two blond girls this week…”), brought about an atmosphere of excitement among my respondents.

Less popular were the organized activities, such as the quiz organized by bank employees within the context of the National Week of Children’s Books (Kinderboekenweek). The visitors

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32 were divided into small groups and had to answer questions about children’s books. Some of the visitors participated actively, but most of them just waited until the quiz was over. Pim explained his passive attitude: “You see, these activities are just part of it. They [the management of the restaurant, FW] have to do it, because otherwise they won’t get their funding. But it can be quite irritating sometimes”.

A few times, volunteers of the restaurant itself organized small games—‘say a number below twenty’—where people could win small prices, such as candles, sweets or Christmas lights. “Sometimes I like these activities, but not always,” Annemiek (63) told me. “You just participate, we all do. Sometimes you can win something, or we just make fun together. Well, it’s fine”.

One time, an organization came to talk about wholesome food and a healthy lifestyle. “It is important not to gain too much weight, to eat fresh vegetables and fruit regularly and to go to bed on time”, the leader spelled out in his short lecture. Jan (87), an old man who survived the Dutch ‘Hunger Winter’ during World War II, whispered to me: “I ate rat, I ate cat, I ate raw sugar beet, and they come here to tell me how to survive? How old do they want me to be?”

When the leader of the organization sat down at my table, after having given his lecture, he said to his colleagues: “I could see them thinking, ‘again some dude who comes telling me what I should do differently’” (“Ik zag ze denken, ‘weer zo’n knakker die komt vertellen dat ik het

allemaal anders moet doen’”). According to the remarks of Jan and the blank faces of the other

visitors, I guess he was right.

An activity that aroused stronger emotions and an atmosphere of sheer resistance, was the presentation given by the social organization ‘Inclusive Us’ (fictitious name). This initiative aims to bridge differences among citizens and create an inclusive society: a new idea of ‘we-ness’. Rather than maintaining cleavages between groups of people, ‘Inclusive Us’ intends to ‘deploy differences to make society a place for all of us’3. A short movie was presented, in which Dutch highly educated citizens with a migrant background made statements regarding an inclusive society; ‘a society in which ‘the stranger’ enriches us’.4

The movie concluded with the question: “who do you consider to be a worthy candidate to be enrolled in the ‘Inclusive Us-Naturalisation

3_{Organisation’s website, visited 03-09-2015} 4

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33 Program’?”. A black woman stated before the camera: “All those who signed the petition for the maintenance of Black Pete5 should follow a naturalization program straight away”.

The bombshell is dropped at my table. This is going too far. The little man, who always laughs, turns red. He has steam coming out of his ears. ‘Why are they always being so difficult!? Children don’t have any problems with it! They can’t pass on their issues on the children!’ The big man, who always smiles nicely at me, explains: ‘I’ve played

Sinterklaas. I’ve played Black Pete (Zwarte Piet) and the children love it. Even when

you’re completely black, they just come towards you. They’re not afraid’.

‘Yes,’ some others at the table confirm, ‘the celebration of Sinterklaas is fun, all children should be granted the experience of that.’ ‘I can’t believe they are even making a fuss about that’, a woman sighs.

So many discussions are taking place at the same time now, that it is hard to follow. On my right hand, a lady says to me: ‘Well, I think it’s all rubbish. It’s a children’s celebration and it should stay like that. But.. yeah…I’m not coloured, so I don’t know what kind of experiences these people have.’

Two things struck me especially during this activity. First, the strong outburst of emotions and the consensus on the issue of Black Pete; ‘Black Pete is not racist and ‘they’ [the black people] should stop making a fuss about it’. I figured, this was surely not the kind of consensus the filmmakers of ‘Inclusive Us’ had wanted to achieve. Instead of bridging differences and increasing mutual understanding, the movie aroused a strong sense of distinctiveness among my respondents. According to them, ‘those black people’ did not understand a thing about Black Pete and Sinterklaas, ‘they’ did not share ‘our traditions and culture’, so why should ‘we’ be naturalized, instead of them? Hence, the presentation of ‘Inclusive Us’ evoked a stark racial division between those who should adapt or be naturalized, notably, both by the black woman in the movie and my white, ‘native Dutch’ respondents.

5_{Black Pete is a black-faced figure, that plays the role of servant of the white Saint in the national celebration of}

Sinterklaas. This figure is recently highly debated because of its representation of supposedly racist aspects of the

Dutch society. As a response to the ‘attack’ on the figure of Black Pete, almost two million Dutch citizens signed the petition for maintaining the Saint’s black servant. The main argument of the pro-Black Pete movement is that

Binding fear : on community building practices and discourses in a disadvantaged neighbourhood

Binding Fear:

On Community Building Practices and

Discourses in a Disadvantaged Neighbourhood

Fenneke Wekker

Abstract

Contents

Acknowledgements

1

Introduction: Being the Other on the Other Side

2

Community Building and Urban Life

3

Community Building Practices