Nieuws en pas verschenen   News and recently published

Being Dutch. More or less Lammert de Jong Until the 1960s the Dutch were a church-going and parochial people. Today the Netherlands is a secular society. Religion went out the window and was replaced by all sorts of transcendental animations. The security of God and the wonders of redemption and forgiveness no longer count when scripting one’s individual life story. In the process of secularization, Dutch identity lost its religious anchorage. The parish perished, and a new concept of being Dutch needed to be constructed. At first, the cause of good, go and green replaced religion. The Dutch believed in progress and reached for the best: public participation, generous public welfare, asylum for refugees, multiculturalism, environmental legislation, public transport, development aid, and the end of all war. In the 1960s and 70s the Dutch proclaimed a live and let live culture that allowed for a high degree of individualisation. The Dutch identified themselves essentially as people without borders who endorsed the Beatle’s dream of Let It Be!

New Princedoms Peter Herrmann, Brigitte Kratzwald, Wendy Earles This book, edited by Herrmann and with contributions from Earles and Kratzwald, revisits, with fresh insight, key sociological, philosophical, political and cultural theoretical frameworks of relevance to contemporary globalised world. The book is thought-provoking in its central thesis which posits that there is a tendency for the ‘re-feudalisation’ of production and reproduction and where economics is enmeshed with all elements of social life. Herrmann takes us on a journey of revisiting the concept of citizenship, that all important, and yet unclear concept. We are confronted with how citizenship is redefined in the face of modern globalised capitalism where the state is an instrument of global economics. The author visits key questions of rights, inclusion-exclusion within bounded territoriality and spatial boundaries in the context of globalisation where borders are porous. The notion of citizenship calls into question its inextricable links to the nation-state. Hermann challenges us to think through the complexity of this relationship including the technocratic nature of contemporary nation-states, what is the ‘common good’ and the relevance of collective rights.

Different Cultures, One World Henk Jochemsen and Jan van der Stoep (eds.) Our age of global technology is not only an age of promises, but also an age of major problems. We face an ecological crisis, a financial and economical crisis and a crisis in international security. At the same time religion has become a subject of public debate. Some scholars even speak of the ‘return of religion’. In his valedictory address at the Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR) Egbert Schuurman contended that the crises of our age are closely associated with scientific, technological and economic developments in the industrialized world. He proposed a dialogue between Muslim and Christian scholars on modern Western culture and in particular its technicistic character. This book is a response to the call of Egbert Schuurman. It incorporates contributions from Muslim as well as Christian scholars. According to the authors the current crises of the technological society have a spiritual root. They claim that religious traditions incorporate basic intuitions about life on earth that are indispensable for working towards a more sustainable and peaceful co-existence of people. From this perspective they want to join hands and unitedly face the challenges of living together as different cultures in one world.

Levende-doden. Afrikaans-Surinaamse percepties, praktijken en rituelen rondom dood en rouw Yvon van der Pijl Doodsrituelen hebben altijd tot de verbeelding gesproken van een bont gezelschap zendelingen, missionarissen, avonturiers, ambtenaren en antropologen, dat voet zette op Surinaamse bodem. Vooral het sterven en begraven van de Afrikaans-Surinaamse slaven en hun nazaten, de Creolen en Marrons, kenden een grote belangstelling. Lange tijd riepen de ‘zeeden en gewoonten’ van de ‘heidensche Afrikaan’ nogal wat weerstand op. Langzamerhand heeft de afkeer plaats gemaakt voor een zekere verheerlijking van de ‘traditionele’ doodscultuur met zijn prachtig uitgebreide en betekenisvolle ritus. Een dergelijke folkloristische zienswijze voedt evenwel de vermeende tegenstelling tussen gewone, oppervlakkige, seculiere doodscultuur in westerse samenlevingen en complexe, diepgaande, sacrale doodsrituelen elders. ‘Levende-doden’ tracht deze tweespalt te overstijgen door een geïntegreerde benadering van dood en rouw te presenteren, waarin aandacht is voor zowel ‘gewone’ (goede, natuurlijke) als ‘ongewone’ (slechte, tragische, bovennatuurlijke) dood en een scala aan doodsattitudes. De leidende gedachte daarbij is dat stervenden en nabestaanden altijd te maken hebben met conflicterende eisen, verwachtingen en verlangens, die geassocieerd kunnen worden met enerzijds conventionele autoriteitsclaims en anderzijds posttraditionele, individuele aspiraties. De levende-dode vormt hierbinnen het tweede leidmotief. Dood betekent niet noodzakelijkerwijs het definitieve einde van leven, maar eerder een continuering van leven in een andere vorm. De doden zijn niet dood, wordt wel gezegd, zij zijn levende-doden die kunnen interfereren in het dagelijks leven van nabestaanden – als spirituele entiteiten (‘geesten’) of als een voortdurende herinnering. Overledenen moeten daarom met grote zorg en respect behandeld worden.

Muslim Calvinism. Internal security and the Lisbon Process in Europe Arno Tausch (with Chr. Bischof & K. Mueller) Inward migration is a very considerable factor of economic growth in the world system. In the long run, the recipient countries enormously benefit. On the other hand, income inequality is being “transferred” from the poor to the rich countries. Pushing the frontiers of knowledge about Europe’s Muslim communities, the mainstream of Europe’s islamophobic decision makers are being asked in this book in terms of their alternatives for continued Muslim migration to a quickly aging Europe. In 2004, Europe’s natural population increase was just 400.000 children, while the population increase due to immigration was 1 900 000 human beings. Europe is thus bound to have a more active and long-term positive immigration policy. It would be simply unworkable to leave the neighboring contiguous regions of the Middle East and North Africa out in the “dark”, and to exclude the human potential of countries like Turkey because of short-sighted and unfounded Islamophobia.

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