maybe not research related...

This is probably a sign that I am spending too much time puttering (e.g. watching television and playing around on the internet), and not nearly enough time doing proper research, but... I saw this commercial on tv the other day and thought it was hilarious. So, yeah. You can probably understand most of it, even if you don't understand Dutch.

Now, back to more serious tasks.

happy (belated) birthday amsterdam!

This morning I read in the Stadsdeel nieuws (a local community-type paper put out by the city, so not all that interesting) that it was Amsterdam's birthday yesterday. The first known written document in which the name 'Amsterdam' was recorded was written by Floris V, and set out toll priviledges for the city. It was dated 27 oktober 1275. What's that? Like 734 years? I don't think 734 is a very important birthday, since I didn't hear anything about it until this morning. I guess once you hit 730 you kind of keep quiet about it until you turn 750? Still a pretty flat city for being so far 'over the hill'.

the last moroccan leaves the netherlands, but rhiannon misses her flight to rome

I missed my flight to Rome this weekend and am feeling very silly about it, since I have only myself to blame. I left too late from my house, forgot that there would be a long queue at the ticket counter (which I have to use since I don't have a Dutch bank account and therefore can't buy a ticket from the automaat), and then of course, missed the earlier train to the airport. I had so little time left and so much to do at a very large airport, that I missed it. And, fun fact: if you miss the first leg of a round trip flight, the whole ticket is invalidated. SO, considering the 400 EUR was a little much to pay to catch the later afternoon flight, I'm cursing my time-management skills from rainy Amsterdam this weekend, instead of catching up with good friends and acquainting myself with robust Italian reds served by tall, dark and handsome Italian men in Rome. So, I have learned my lesson about travel-preparedness, and will have to look forward to gracing the ancient city with my presence another time.

But, speaking of international flights (insert awkward segue here), I stumbled upon the following during a morning scan of the Dutch news earlier this week:

"Last Moroccan Leaves the Netherlands"

The link goes to a Radio Netherlands Worldwide article about a video launched by the enthusiastic and creative people behind munt.nu. The website is in Dutch, but for those of you who know even less Dutch than I do, its creators want to analyze and challenge current public attitudes and create interesting debate. They're also a bit funny (check the English-language RNW article). The video, Kop of Munt (Heads or Tails, embedded in the sites of both links, also in Dutch, but easy to figure out), poses the question of repatriation: What if all Moroccans left the Netherlands?

Repatriation is actually discussed as a serious solution in some circles in the Netherlands, to what is seen as the problem posed by immigrants and their lack of integration/ assimilation into mainstream Dutch society. Muslims, espcially Moroccans - generally seen as the 'worst' group of immigrants - are usually the main target of repatriation rhetoric. The claim is that if they don't feel at home here (and don't try to feel at home by adopting mainstream Dutch attitudes, which also makes native Dutch feel less at home themselves), they should go 'home' (that is, to a place where they feel at home, regardless of place of birth). The populist right wing party, PVV, headed up by the controversial Geert Wilders often espouses this view or something akin to it.

I found a postcard in Utrecht that ridicules this point of view with the text (Dutch, but I have cleverly provided a translation for my three readers):

Remigratie / Remigration
een eenvoudige oplossing voor een complex probleem:/ a simple solution to a complex problem:
maar dan wel consequent/ but there are consequences
Amerika voor de indianen/ America for the Indians
Azie voor de aziaten/ Asia for the Asians
Australie voor de aboriginals/ Australia for the aboriginals
Zuid-Afrika slegs vir swartes/ South Africa for the blacks (in Afrikaans)
de Zuidpool voor de pinguins/ The South Pole for the penguins
Nederland weer onder water/ The Netherlands again under water

Anyway, unlike the postcard, what makes the video created by munt.nu really interesting is that it shows more than one side of the likely outcome of all Moroccans leaving the country. The images also highlight how integral Moroccans (and by extension, all immigrant groups) have become to Dutch society, whether or not all members of Dutch society consider them 'integrated'.

on the subject of casual sex/ on the casual subject of sex

When I was still in Canada, going through the seemingly endless preparations to come here, I would usually get thrown a knowing smirk when I told people I was going to be doing fieldwork in Amsterdam. The reason why? Ask your average North American (or possibly anyone else in Western Europe, or maybe even anywhere) what comes to mind when they think of Amsterdam, and you're probably going to hear two words: pot and prostitutes.

Well, soft drugs and legal sex-work may be the reason many tourists come to the city (especially if they're not keen on, you know, history or art), most Dutch people aren't really bothered about either. So, while there are sex shops everywhere (I live above one), and windows aplenty in the Red Light District, and a few scattered here and there across the rest of Amsterdam and other sleepier cities, I can't help but continue to be a little surprised (in spite of myself) at how casually sex slips into the everyday here. A few weeks ago I watched the classic Dutch war film Soldaat van Oranje with my roommates. The basic plot follows a group of university friends, who break apart as each follows their own path over the course of the war - from Nazi sympathizers and Jews either killed or caught in the middle, to Dutch war resisters and heros. As a North American used to seeing a particular treatment of wartime heroics (usually, approached with reverence, tied to patriotism, nationalism, and bravery, etc.), I have to say that I was surprised at how much nudity was in film about the Dutch resistance during WWII. A few examples: an early scene where a Dutch regiment stumbles upon some young lovers getting it on in the hay, who pause to laugh at the joke of being discovered instead of the Germans the regiment expected to find, and then pick right up where they left off; a Dutch woman who found it hard to keep her shirt on for the better part of the film, whether to cheat on her fiance or to distract an evil and creepy Nazi, those breasts were there; a British officer who inadvertently flashed the Queen of the Netherlands while enjoying a tryst with one of the Dutch heros... I'm sure all this stuff happens during wartime, but classic American war films don't tend to show it, making it a bit novel for me.

Anyway, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a city like Amsterdam, in a progressive welfare state whose inhabitants are (generally) open about sex, is concerned about the sexual health of its residents in a similarly straighforward and routine way. My three flatmates and I all recently recieved letters from the City inviting us to be screened for Chlamydia. I asked my roommate about it, and she said it's a common test offered just about every year. The test is free, confidential, and organized through an online website. According to the site (and letter), chlamydia is the most common STD among sexually active people between the ages of 16 and 29, and so similar letters have been matter-of-factly sent to all people in this age category registered as a resident of the City of Amsterdam (and I think, also in Rotterdam). So, yeah. Sex. It's everywhere here. And no one seems to care.

kermis

So, I was walking down the street by the Dam the other day, as I am wont to do, and they had set up a bit of a carnival. Jammed it actually, onto Dam Square in a way that makes it seem like it's liable to overflow onto the streets and over the tramlines and tourists at any moment. I love the juxtapositioning of the old stone Koninklijk Paleis and the Nieuwekerk, with the gawdiness and larger-than-life lights and noise of the travelling fair.

Normally, I just kind of ignore whatever amusement is going on at the Dam, since only tourists really seem to participate anyway, but this was a little bit amazing. Plus, I wanted to see what kinds of games, and more importantly, food were to be found at a Dutch carnival. Luckily, I had some friends visiting from out of town and so got to play tourist (without the guilt that seems to come with it since I am trying to 'fit in'.)

So, just look at all the goodies! A huge candy stall! With lots of sugary sticks of things (including liquorice flavour, which is very popular here). Candy floss (of course), and popcorn were also present. But so was a dangerously delicious smelling warme waffel stand (which exclaimed that it was really what Holland was about in fancy, 'traditional' scroll-like script), a place selling
all kinds of deep-fried pastries, as well as a Vlaamse frites (Flemish fries) stand, a place with all kinds of sausages and meats, a nut shop and "Mr. USA" (which sold churros).





Quite interesting. I think that the frites stand was my favourite. I mean, look at it. It's got a cut-out of a woman in what I'm assuming is a traditional costume. Plus the chalet style. Which I haven't really seen either here or in Belgium (on my brief trip...).

Anyway, it was quite fun, and I went on both the gigantic swings (at 60m in the air, freely circling over the tops of all buildings in the vicinity, exciting and a bit scary) and the 'Diamond Wheel' ferris wheel. I was a little sad to see that all the horses on the carosel, which was beautifully painted, had been replaced with things like fire-trucks with flashing lights, but you can't win em all...

cold comfortable

It is cold in this city! And cold in my room. The thermostat is in a different part of the house, and on a different floor. So while the kitchen is always nice and toasty, my room is quite chilly. Brrr. I am also without mitts here, which I have since learned are very important, especially when one rides their bike through the city streets. (Does one need mitts yet in Canada? Not including Alberta, land of the early snows...) This point was further impressed upon me as I biked between print shop and cafe this afternoon. I spent an hour or two at a nice cafe at the start of the Singel called Cafe Cobalt. I'd been there once before. It's really close to the tourist-saturated streets, and yet just far enough off the beaten path to be, in my mind, a bit of a local gem. It has huge windows, nice, slightly mis-matched wooden chairs and tables, very high ceilings with thick, ancient, buttery-coloured wooden support beams. Nice food (two kinds of pie, and cute spelling mistakes on the English-side of the menu, i.e. where the Brittanica tosti comes with, among other things, cheese and union). Good coffee with a nice thin little almond buiscuit...

It was kind of an appropriate place to start leafing through the pages sent out for UvA's Culturalization of Citizenship reading group I've happily been invited to attend at the end of the month. This month we have the good fortune to peruse a couple of chapters from a book still being written by J.W. Duyvendak. The few pages I managed to read in the fading light of the autumn afternoon over a koffie verkeerd (literally 'wrong coffee', but basically a cafe au lait) and mozerella tosti, discussed the idea of home and belonging in the globalization era - where things, ideas and people have become increasingly mobile, what does it mean to call a place 'home'? While social scientists have for a long time been interested in how ideas of home and belonging have been thought about and expereinced by people on the move (myself included), we should be turning our attention back to the oft-overlooked populations of people who 'stay at home'. How are they now thinking about 'home' when everything around them is moving about? (It's amazing how many people I am coming across now who are all interested in the same questions that I am - when it rains, it pours, eh?) One interesting point was the example of Starbucks. For highly mobile people (and some less mobile people as well), Starbucks, in all its generic sameness, can be a space of comfort and home, no matter where you are in the world. But for the more rooted among us, the arrival of Starbucks in the buurt might be seen as unwelcome, and threatening the character of the neighbourhood and local shops, like the one I was in today. Kind of interesting to think about, as a metaphor for other kinds of changes, but also quite literally. Especially when most of the independently owned cafes I've been in here all serve just about the same thing (though Cafe Cobalt's chocolaade taart seems a bit special), and though the biscuit flavour may vary, you'll inevitably get served one with your koffie.

giving thanks

Yesterday, I made my first Thanksgiving Dinner! I think it was a success: more than enough food for all, no major disasters, plenty of friends, good conversation, I more or less didn't mangle the chickens while carving, and I managed to figure out how to use our house's little combination microwave-convection oven.

It was a little funny though, to be celebrating this holiday in a country where not only have the leaves not turned colour (yet?), but where people are only really familiar with the American version (and therefore wondering why this crazy Canadian was doing it so early in the year...). I've been trying since I've been here to blend in with the locals, but there are just some things that I occasionally long for from home. Like when I combed the Albert Heijn (local grocery store chain) for something resembling a box of mac and cheese. Or, in this case, Thanksgiving. I spent two weeks preparing and contemplating how I could pull off such a meal: Was the combi-oven in my kitchen big enough? Can you even find turkey in the Netherlands? What about chickens? Where is there a butcher that I can buy chickens from? What about cranberry sauce? They use Celsius, here. So as a Canadian cook, how does that convert from Farenheit? Is pumpkin pie off the menu?? In the end, it all came together nicely. Two pricey, but delicious organic chickens, mashed potatoes and veggies from the organic market on the Nieuwmart. And yes, cranberry sauce - but it's called 'cranberry compote' and parades itself around in a much classier way than the tinned and jellied stuff at home. A nice cherry vlaai - pie, essentially - stood in for the classic Thanksgiving dessert, and was accompanied by some pepernoten (a yummy Dutch holiday treat, like little ginger nuts/ cookies, that is in the stores two months before the arrival of Sinterklaas, and a bone of contention for some).

Reflecting on how much I put into making Thanksgiving here has me thinking a bit more about this the importance and meaning of 'home'. Questions of belonging have to do with comfort, and a sense of rootedness, in a way. Something useful to think about when talking to people, certainly, but it's also made me think a little bit more about, I guess, the routes my thinking has taken in preparing for this project. After reading so many different things over the past three years, I've moved away from some of the ideas that have really intrigued me in the past, namely citizenship's substantive or cultural aspects. While I certainly wont be dropping all the things I've been pondering lately out the window, I am a little bit excited that I've come back to these older ideas, seeing how they're still so relevant and can frame my thinking in new and useful ways. Like making Thanksgiving dinner here, thinking more about how citizenship comes into play here feels little bit like coming home.

when *still* in doubt...?

It's been a pretty odd week for me, in more ways than one. This city keeps surprising me in interesting ways, like when walking down the Harlemmerstraat to find myself some chickens for Thanksgiving dinner (now in Amsterdam!), I came across a rather large concert or barrel organ, not an uncommon sight here actually, blaring Michael Jackson's Thriller. It kept me smiling and yes, giggling, for about half a block. Of course, not all surprises are as pleasant, and the theme of doubt has kind of threaded its way through the past week, also in more ways than one. Newly single -- the result of unspoken yet lingering, and no longer avoidable doubts about our relationship on the part of my partner -- I spent the week trying to immerse myself in bringing clarity to the most significant doubt in my own life: choosing a neighbourhood to call my research-own in this incredible city.

I've been here the Netherlands for about two and a half months now, and in Amsterdam for about two months. I feel fairly acclimatized: I know my way around a bit, I'm the proud owner of an oma fiets (a very Dutch bike), I can speak and understand 'een klein beetje' of Dutch (of course, not as much as I'd like), I bought a bunch of notebooks and new pens, I have a few friends, and a couple favourite cafes, I've spoken to some professors at UvA, and I even have an interview lined up in a week or so. So, now it's really time to get into what I said I came here to do. Right... So this week, I have sifted through lots and lots of statistical information on the various districts of Amsterdam, trying to get a better sense of what each is like. I've looked at demographic info (percentages of autochtonen/ natives, non-Westerse- and Westerse-allochtonen/ foreigners), income levels, voting patterns, length of residence in the neighbourhood. Two things have come out of it: 1) I'm amazed at the sheer volume of statistical information the City of Amsterdam keeps on file and public, and 2) I'm still unsure about where I want to situate myself. I kind of have it down to two districts, Amsterdam-Noord and the Oud-Zuid, though both are quite large, and quite different. There are pros and cons for each, of course. And in talking to various people about my dilemma, suggestions for even more neighbourhoods keep cropping up: the Jordaan (seen by people from the Jordaan as the 'real' Amsterdam), Westerpark, De Baarsjes... What's a girl to do?

The Noord is a place apart. It's the only district that you have to cross the IJ to get to. It used to be a completely different village. It's mostly working-class, although there are some quite affluent neighbourhoods within the district. It is demographically mixed in terms of ethnicity (i.e. autochthon/native/white, allochthon/foreigner/immigrant...), but there seem to be neighbourhoods where there's a high concentration of either native Dutch or immigrants. According to the data collected from the 2009 EU elections, there's quite a lot of support (as high as about 35%) for Geert Wilders' far-right populist, anti-immigrant/ Muslim PVV. Interesting. I was told in a conversation with someone at UvA that this is one of the few neighbourhoods, even the only neighbourhood in the city, where people spend their whole lives. People grow up there, settle there, raise their kids there. This is in some ways exceptional in a city where most people come from somewhere else, whether it's from elsewhere in the country or in the world. Another thing that I am not sure if I should consider, is that Amsterdam-Noord has already been the subject of anthropological study by Dr. Erin Martineau. (Does that matter? It's not like a bajillion anthropologists haven't already studied Papua New Guinea, and still people do it...)

The Oud-Zuid seems to be quite a bit more posh, though there are neighbourhoods within the district that reflect more average levels of income across NL. It's a much older part of the city, and is mixed as well. Historically, some areas (De Pijp) were the workers quarters during the 19th century, and now are becoming trendier. Voting patterns show that residents tend to support the status quo (i.e. the reigning centrist CDA).

So, what's important to me here? What is it that I find intriguing? What would make for a really interesting study? Maybe I'm too close to the problem to see it clearly. Really, I'm just not sure.

fieldwork blog? (reposted from fb)

So, still trying to decide if this blogging thing is for me, especially me in the field. I used to keep a blog (via livejournal), back when I lived in Halifax for my MA. Mostly I commented on news items I found interesting, including those that related to my research topic, and watched a few forums (one on anthropology, another broadly academic, and a third on Canadian politics), occasionally posting or commenting. For the most part though, I didn't write about my own research. So this is new for me, and a little bit strange... sounds like fieldwork?

The following bit has been reposted from Facebook, a more extensive pondering over whether or not a fieldwork blog is a good idea, or asking for trouble...

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Blogs seem to be pretty common things to keep when people travel, used to keep kind of a public journal of one's experiences and to share and receive comment on ideas. So, what about a fieldwork blog?

I've been thinking about this since I found a one of a friend. She uses it to kind of relate the things that she's done/ seen, as well as musings, anxieties and goals. It seems a little tricky though, since it can make the anonymity of those you interact with daily, people within the scope of the researcher's practice of participant-oberservation,

a little precarious. Is it productive, then? Or a wise choice? Pen and ink can be, if necessary, edited/ destroyed/ secreted away, but I kind of feel that cyber-space is forever.

At the same time, if people (friends, colleagues, loved ones) actually read the thing, it might be a way of getting useful feedback: critiques, comments, reassurances, support. It may also be a useful node for connecting to potential research sites and participants, in a way that traditional notebooks are not. I'm not talking about giving up on my little blue fieldnotebook, but wondering if we, as researchers, should be making the most out of the technological possibilities at our fingertips?

So, what about the fieldwork blog? Is it worthwhile? Is it something that more of us should be doing? If you knew people who were writing them, would you bother to read? Do you keep one (or are you a blogger in general)? Ideas? Comments? Discussions??

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If anyone else has a fieldwork or any other kind of blog they would like to share, please send me a link.

The thing about being a novice anthropologist, a novice anything really, is that you have to figure a lot of things out for yourself. Doing research, 'fieldwork', is like this too. Sure, we're all required to take methods classes before we are turned loose to get to the real work, but reading about things like interviews, life histories, kinship charts, and of course, ethical dilemmas, is nothing like actually doing this mysterious stuff we call fieldwork. At least, that's how I'm finding it. Shy by nature, I've never been one to just start talking to people on the street, unless it's to be helpful, like asking or giving directions. I asked some colleagues what I'm supposed to be doing, and among all the helpful answers came the classic response to the anthropologist's dilemma: When in doubt, map the city and make kinship charts.

So, here I am, one little Canadian, trying to figure out what's going on in a land that lies mostly below sea level, in a city where streets alternate between ridiculously picturesque and shockingly seedy, where the locals will always speak English to you and aren't necessarily from Amsterdam themselves, and where really interesting things have been happening politically and socially, not least of which being the national rise in far-Right/ nationalist political views and increasing concerns over the status and place of (non-Western) immigrants in contemporary Dutch society. So, what does it mean to belong in a place like this?