groeten uit amsterdam!

I have been back in Amsterdam since just before Koninginnedag (arriving very early on April 28th) and have the privilege of staying in the city until the end of May. Touching down in Amsterdam this second time, returning to the field, feels so different than when I came here the first time... way back in mid-July 2009. Then, I was nervous and excited, a little uncertain, and a whole gambit of other emotions. This time around, the only feeling that was really clear was that I was 'home' again.

True enough, I have been staying with my wonderful old housemates, easily slipping back into the daily life of the city I knew nearly a year ago. Of course, some things have changed: besides no longer having my own room and a new person (to me) in the house, some friends have moved away or no longer keep in touch, and some changes in the city itself have meant new routes to familiar places. Still, other things have remained the same: going to the movies on Tuesday evenings, baking pies, saying hello to the neighbours (by which I mean the guys who work downstairs in the sex shop), speaking Dutch badly, and research.

Speaking Dutch -- badly or not -- has become a pretty central part of my project. While I have kept up in reading the language over the last several months in Canada (and I think that my comprehension has actually improved), my speaking skills have gone a bit downhill since I haven't had anyone to practice speaking with. And it is this daily practice, and voluntary organizations that help newcomers to the Dutch language through setting up speaking partnerships or social situations where they can practice speaking Dutch, that I am looking more closely at this month.

When I lived in Amsterdam, I found my own speaking partner through the Gilde Amsterdam SamenSpraak program. Speaking once a week with Dennis, a volunteer, about whatever we thought was interesting that week -- from our families, to geography and vacations, politics, food, my research, Amsterdam and so on -- really helped to give me the confidence in speaking Dutch that just doesn't come from formal lessons. Gilde Amsterdam is not the only organization that has these kinds of speaking partnerships. In fact, the Taalcoachwijzer Amsterdam site, a website that provides information on language coaching initiatives in Amsterdam, highlights four other organizations with similar projects:

• Vluchtelingenwerk Amstel tot Zaan (Refugees Amstel to Zaan)
  
• SamenSpraak Oost-Watergraafsmeer (Speaking Together Oost-Watergraafsmeer)
  
• Mixen in Mokum (Mozeshuis) (Mixing in Mokum)
  
• Amsterdams Buurvrouwen Contact (Amsterdam Neighbourhood Women Contact)

The really interesting thing about these projects is that they rely on volunteers in order to work. People who are going through the inburgering process (civic integration) and people who just want to learn to speak better Dutch are paired up with native-speakers who volunteer their time, about an hour or 3 a week, to helping their new neighbours become better Amsterdammers through language.

The folks I have been able to talk to, both volunteers and organizers, have given different reasons for the volunteers' participation. These have been things like wanting to teach, having time on their hands and wanting to keep busy, finding it nice work, being proud of their city, etc. But so far, everyone has had one thing in common: the idea that language and the ability to communicate is the most important thing for integration, but also for living in a nice city.

I think most people in Amsterdam, and possibly the Netherlands (or in Canada, or elsewhere) would agree with that sentiment. So, I am wondering and trying to figure out while I am here, a bit more about these kinds of issues:

• what might be called the 'volunteering ethic' of Amsterdam (and the Netherlands);
  
• language-oriented volunteering programs;
  
• people's ideas, experiences and reasons for volunteering;
• how volunteering might relate to particular ideas of 'civic engagement' (being actively/ positively involved in the life of the city or country);
  
• how language matters at the everyday level and how it relates to people's ideas about integration.

For now though, my latest pie (strawberry-rhubarb with custard) is about ready to come out of the oven, so de groeten uit Amsterdam! Greetings from Amsterdam!

writing, writing, writing...

Well, I've been immersed for a few months in all the stories and interviews, off-hand remarks and seriously-meant discourse I gathered together in notes, electronic sound files, hundreds (maybe thousands?) of photos, and wisps of memory in my noggin. I wrote and re-wrote and re-organized and re-typed a lot -- most of which probably wont really make it into the final draft, or even the first draft of what will eventually become MY DISSERTATION. But, now that I have gone through all my data, and been thinking in circles about it, spinning my wheels for a couple months, my supervisor has granted me permission to go back to reading things I haven't already written. So, I'm going back to the history of certain things, pouring over articles and dusty books, and hopefully will soon be writing the ''boring'' parts of what will eventually become (dramatic pause) MY DISSERTATION.

So, what was the point then, of all that ''hanging out'' with my notes? Why spend all that time writing pages and pages that wont be read by anyone but my supervisor and myself? The point of all this dwelling has been to ground what eventually becomes my dissertation in all this good, thick (nicely narrative) description and avoid producing a bad, thin (too theoretical and flighty) ethnographic account. To not come at it from theory and just plug in the data, so to speak, but to make the data speak for itself. Kind of important, I suppose, when you spend a year of your life engaging in research, which on top of paying attention to everything, asking a lot of 'dumb' questions, trying out my Dutch, doing (and eating) everything people invited me to try, etc. is really a whole lot of talking with people who want to help you out, share their time, opinions and experiences with you.

So, I think this brings me to the topic of this post: writing. Well, writing ethnography well. Because in the end, my big, scary, capital-letters DISSERTATION -- the culmination of 5 years of work, maybe 6 by the end of it (yikes, I know!) -- is also supposed to be a work of ethnographic brilliance disguised as a dissertation. But the question of how to get started writing at all, let alone how to get started on writing something worthy of the time and effort, of the people whose lives inform my project, and in the end, something worth reading... that's kind of a different question all together.

In October, while I was doing all this dwelling in my notes business, I ran into my old Theory prof in the hall of the department. After welcoming me back from the field, Ken asked me: "So, is it all written yet?" I laughed off the ridiculous question (I'd only been back a couple of months) by saying, "Of course! Well, almost... Ha ha." But then a kind of great thing happened, Ken gave me a couple of interesting bits of writing advice, places to start writing.

"Just start writing!" he said. "Automatic writing. Just start in the middle of a sentence. Don't even bother with the beginning of the sentence. You can come back to that later. Just start in the middle of the sentence and keep going."

"Hmmm," I pondered. "That's pretty interesting... I'm kind of in the middle of transcribing right now."

"Forget that! Don't transcribe! Just write!"

"Well," I apologized, "I'm not really transcribing, just sort of listening and taking notes on things and only transcribing the bits I think I might quote..."

"Don't even do that! You don't even need to look at your notes. All the important stuff is up here," he says, pointing wisely to his head. "You know what Geertz used to do when his students came back from the field? He asked them to give him all of their notes. Everything. And then he locked them up and told them to go write their first draft."

As Ken is telling me this, I am picturing the great mahogany desk covered in stacks of files and books, with one of those green-glass shaded secretary lamps, and potted plants sitting across a wide windowsill that I somehow imagine every great and well-respected anthropologist must have in their office. I know of course that this can't be the case. University budgets and all. But nonetheless, there is a shadowy figure of Geertz taking the precious stack of his student's papers, notebooks, tape-recordings, scribblings, maps, clippings, etc. I can picture the cautious pride and humility in their eyes as they trustingly turn these sacred things over to their supervisor change to horror, as he surreptitiously swivels in his great chair, and locks them in an equally imposing and dark-wooded cabinet behind him.

"What? He just takes all their notes? But what if they need to quote someone?"

"It doesn't matter. All the important stuff is already in your head. You'll be surprised at how much you actually remember. He used to say just make it up. Just make a note in your draft that this quote is made up, and when you get your notes back you can check it. And you know what? When the students got their notes back, those made up quotes were almost written verbatim."

"What? Wow."

"Exactly. All the important stuff is already up here."

Hmmm, good advice. But where does one start, really? Well, luckily, Marshall Sahlins gave Ken some more advice that actually became a starting point for him in writing the non-ethnographic novel version of his own dissertation. He said, just take a moment, a moment or an image that keeps coming back to you, haunting you, over and over again. Take that moment or image and just start writing from there. You'll know what that thing is. Whatever it is. Because it stays with you. And you'll be surprised at how much just pours out of starting with describing that thing.

Running into Ken in the hall again the following week, he was shocked that I still wasn't finished my dissertation, given all the great advice he had imparted to me the week before. Never worry. He had yet another strategy for churning out a brilliantly ethnographic dissertation. And this one works, because he had done it himself.

When he was still a grad student struggling with writing THE DISSERTATION, he was talking with yet another mentor. Well, complaining. And his mentor said, rather bluntly, "Ken, you talk a lot. Why don't you just come to my office some day, and we'll sit down with a tape recorder. I'll ask you questions and you can talk. And then just transcribe everything. And then that's your thesis."

"So," said Ken, "you just need to find someone who knows enough about your work in order to ask some really insightful questions. Then you can just talk it out. Record it, transcribe it, and that's your thesis."

Sounds simple enough. Besides, if everything is all in your head anyway, it seems like a good way to get it all out in the open.

The next week, I had parked myself in our graduate student lounge. As I sat on the burgundy sofa reading something or other not related to my own thesis, Ken stopped at the door.

"What have you got for me this week?" I asked. I kind of like that each week I am getting a new gem of writing advice from someone so unconnected to my official committee.

"Oh, nothing... Well, actually, emulation. Just pick an author, any author whose style you love, and emulate their style. Or write out parts of their books. Isn't that what Hunter S. Thompson did?"

"Oh, I don't know."

"Yeah, he did. Hunter S. Thompson wrote out whole passages, books even, of Ernst Hemingway. That's how he got a feel for his style, for the shortness of the words and sentences... You need to think of an author whose style appeals to you."

"Uh huh. That's interesting. I never thought of doing that."

"What is your favourite ethnography? Or it doesn't have to be anthropology. It's maybe better if it isn't. Whose your favourite author?"

By this time I had slotted the bookmark back into my Dutch translation of Pride and Prejudice. I had picked it up at an odd little second-hand shop one day in Amsterdam. Now that I was supposed to be dwelling in my fieldnotes, and explicitly not reading anything academic related to my research, I thought it was a good time to get back into fiction. I had sort of given up on reading new fiction two years ago. Under the weight all the reading I was required to do for my comprehensive exams, even reading for fun seemed like work. When I was in the field, I hardly read anything for fun at all, with the exception of the books I devoured during two glorious vacations: one curled up in a family room at Christmas and the other on a beach in France for two weeks. But now, faced with the question of who was my favourite writer, in anthropology or otherwise...? I hadn't read in so long, I wasn't even sure anymore...

"Um, Jane Austen?" I replied, somewhat weakly.

"Hmm, that's probably not the best writing style to adopt. Who else?"

"Well, I used to really like Tom Robbins," I say, thinking back to a highschool book report. It was one of the most enjoyable things I remember writing, because I allowed my style to be infected with the excessively, drippingly descriptive and playful style of the author. Fun, but maybe not appropriate now. "But, I kind of don't think that he'd really be a good author to emulate either."

"Ha, no. You're right. But there's got to be someone else."

"I'm not sure..."

"Yes, you know who you like. There's someone."

"Erm, I am kind of reading some books by a Dutch author, in English. Geert Mak?" Several people had suggested his work to me because it was so popular. I had read Amsterdam and am still working through the brick of detailed human history called In Europe. Every chapter opened by describing the author's travels through Europe, each city's landscape, smells, atmosphere... And then weaves the lives of historical figures, important events, and the experiences of normal people into that richness. Yeah, Geert Mak could work. "He's a popular historian. But I like his style. He writes really accessibly. Lots of description, but it's nice."

"See, there you go. Hey, we should be writing these things down. We should write an article about it or something."

"I am." I laugh. "They're all in my little black notebook," I say as I fish it out of the depths of my bag.

"Well, good..." He said smiling as he disappeared from the doorway.

The last bit of writing advice came a bit out of the blue. It came out of Ken telling me the following week when I saw him in the department, "I don't have any writing tips for you this week."

I quipped, "Oh, that's okay. I'm not writing this week." It was a Thursday. It was the last week before Christmas holidays and I had been spending some time with a good friend of mine who was visiting from out of town for a couple days. I was on campus because I needed to invigilate an exam and then take my stack of 50 or so exams home to grade before catching an early flight to my parents' on Monday morning. Three days to mark fifty exams wasn't going to be fun, but also wasn't impossible. But, obviously I didn't have time to write!

Apparently, that's not an answer an academic should ever give.

"What?!" Ken's eyes widened, and he launched into an unexpected last piece of writing advice for the year. "You have to write every day! Even if it's nonsense. Made up words. even if it's just meditating in front of the computer screen. But you have to write every day. You have to write for at least five minutes every day."

"Even on the weekends?" I ask, hopefully. Surely, even the most dedicated writers get a weekend.

"Even on the weekends!" he laughed. And he told me about how his father-in-law came home everyday and would retire to his study (again, I am picturing the rich mahogany - what is it with my imaginary academics and dark wood furniture?), pour himself a drink and write for an hour, or fifteen minutes, or something -- every day. "That's how you write 19 books."

Well, if writing a little bit every day will get you 19 books over the course of your career, I'm sure it's sound advice for finishing one dissertation. Even if, like imagining the obligatory mahogany furniture of academics, it keeps showing up in my thoughts in those terrible capital letters. Breaking it down a little bit every day and writing -- whether pure gold or pure rubbish -- has got to help.

But for now, I'm going back to the advice of my supervisor and am going to read for a while. And then, when my wheels stop spinning the avalanche of brilliant, rich, grounded, insightful ethnographic prose will come pouring out... Right?

present in the past

Since returning to Canada I've been having a hard time living here. Don't get me wrong; I have a great place to live a fantastic roommate and friend to live with, and enough money to support myself. What I mean is that I have been having, I think, a hard time accepting that I have to be in Toronto on an emotional level.

Rationally, it makes complete sense that I live here now - my sources of funding require me to be here, my resources in terms of libraries and supervisory support are here, and frankly, I ran out of long-term visa options that would allow me to stay in the Netherlands even if everything else was in order. And, while it was suggested by a colleague that I should just stay in Amsterdam forever (a tempting thought!), I have to admit that I needed the geographical separation from the site of my research to actually be able to think about it and analyze it in the ways I need to. In short, in terms of actually completing my dissertation in a timely fashion, I need to physically be in Toronto.

Yet, analyzing all this data requires me to dwell on everything I've learned and experienced over the past year. I have to pour over my old journals, collected papers, articles, meeting notes, etc. sifting through all those details and memories to try to extract the research gold that will form the very foundations of my dissertation.

Doing ethnographic fieldwork is, I think, a bit different than other kinds of research in that your own reactions and emotions, experiences and memories, questions, and yes, even crises (real or imagined) all come to form the archive of your research. Try as you might, these things all creep into how you understand what you're studying and how you study it. And, really, these can turn out to be some of the most important things! The sheer amount of information you absorb simply by living your daily life comes to be important in ways you never would have expected at the time.

Now, I have to say that when I first entered the 'field' I think that I had some ideas about what I would be doing and how I should be doing it that were just plain romanticized, ridiculous, or wrong. I had read a bit of another PhD dissertation by an American anthropologist who had done her fieldwork in Amsterdam. In it she described how she had been surprised to find that the fieldwork experience in a Dutch urban centre was very different than she had originally imagined:

Unknowingly, I had continued to imagine my fieldwork as if it were to take place in a small town filled with lively streets, welcoming people, and conviviality. But, instead of informally socializing with people, I had to schedule appointments; generally speaking, just “dropping in” on someone is frowned upon. Instead of being constantly surrounded by people and struggling to find private moments, I found myself alone most of the time, except when I sought out interviews, committee meetings, and public gatherings. Instead of being able to integrate myself into daily neighborhood life, becoming inconspicuous over time, I found I was often the only person lingering around outside, with no one to observe. (Martineau 2006:12)

Armed with this knowledge on how to 'do' fieldwork in Amsterdam, I thought I had things all figured out. Of course, later I realized that I too held idealized notions about anthropological fieldwork. For example, my choice of waterproof hiking shoes that I thought I would need in the perpetually rainy climate of the Netherlands (the romanticized field!) were actually very uncool and definitely marked me as a foreigner (which was often pointed out by some of my more blunt Dutch friends - who, like all Dutch people wore very fashionable shoes), and that I only needed to wear my rain pants once during the whole year (also very uncool). But perhaps the biggest error in judgment came from my ideas about what an anthropological archive was. I thought that my field-journal should only be filled with important facts and observations that clearly related to my research questions. When I started writing in my journal I promised myself that all the mundane details and emotional crises not directly related to my research (e.g. 'culture shock' and 'ethical dilemmas') would never make it into this archive.

Of course, it wasn't too long after I was living in Amsterdam that this resolve quickly dissolved. I had an emotional crisis very decidedly unrelated to my ability to do research. Yet, it was then that I realized that contrary to the naive ideas I came to Amsterdam with, in fact everything I did and thought affected how I did research, and was usually worthy of making it into this archive in one way or another. So, yes, now I am pouring over not only interestingly productive frustrations with trying to learn Dutch (such as trying to practice with the woman at my local vegetable stall only to be replied to in English), or the experience of going to a Balkans Film Festival one weekend (an international event mainly in English), or learning the reason that the Dutch political cartoon characters Fokke en Sukke have exposed genitals (because of Dutch liberal sensibilities poking fun at the American Donald Duck who also doesn't wear pants), but also more seemingly unconnected jottings about things going on in my personal life and relationships.

So, with the process of analyzing my research data, I have to relive, remember, and dwell on what my life was like in the Netherlands. Really, it's no wonder that I'm having a hard time committing emotionally to Toronto. I am still in Amsterdam every day.

home-sick (a researchy post)

Where do you feel at home? Do you feel at home in your neighbourhood, in your city, in your province, in your country? Do you feel at home in other places, like at work, in school, at clubs or societies you might belong to? What does home mean to you?

These were some of the kinds of questions I asked during most of the interviews I conducted over the course of my year doing ethnographic research in Amsterdam. I wanted to figure out where people felt comfortable, where they didn't, and how this might contribute to their wider understandings of belonging. Now that I'm back in Canada after a year spent in the Netherlands, I am asking myself my own questions about what 'home' is.

So what does it mean to feel at home? People gave me lots of different answers in my interviews. Some said that they simply felt at home in their house, in their neighbourhood. They knew their neighbours, or their local cafes and markets. Others said that 'home' was less a place than people they knew: their family or friends, wherever they were in the country or world. Still others said that being at home was more about a feeling than anything else. This feeling could mean being surrounded by people with shared or similar interests, or a certain atmosphere, or landscape, or be completely indescribable and only known. Some could, for example, feel at home in Amsterdam, or in one of the other big cities in the Randstad, or in the Netherlands at large, or in Europe. They could even feel more at home in their vacation house in France, than in a small village just outside of Amsterdam. I think that feeling at home can be all of these things. In the Netherlands, I felt an incredible feeling of home whenever I stepped into a NS train and darted across the country. Or when I climbed onto my fiets and cycled through Amsterdam's cobbled streets and red-paved bike paths. Or when I climbed over the dunes to the North Sea and smelled the fresh and salty air (which reminded me taking that first deep breath of Nova Scotia when I leave the airport after flying 'home' from Toronto). In many ways - whether through a sense of place, people, or simply my senses - by the time I left Amsterdam I felt more at home there than I ever had during the three years I lived in Toronto.

But even if home can be a place, people, a feeling, I think that time also has an important role to play. Being home-sick is quite a different thing than being nostalgic, and the major difference is time. When you're home-sick, you're longing for this thing called 'home' only across distance. This can be cured relatively easily by either 'going home', or trying to 'bring home to you' (as in the case of my Dutch Thanksgiving last year). Longing for 'home' across time (and maybe, but not necessarily, across space too) is quite a bit more complicated. There is something to the phrase "you can never go home again" afterall... It makes for a very interesting kind of home-sickness, since you're longing for a place that might not even exist anymore. Yes, the streets might still be the same, the houses and shops and parks might still be unchanged, the same people you came to know, love, be annoyed by or avoid might even yet populate those houses and crowd the streets, but time nonetheless marches ever on, and things may never be the same again.

This is something that people used to discuss now and then when I was in the field, especially when it came to talking about immigration issues. In many conversations about the problems that the Netherlands is facing with integrating (new and old) immigrants and minority ethnic communities (usually called 'allochtonen') into the country, a lot of autochtoon ('native') Dutch people seemed to say that part of the problem came down to nostalgia. Some allochtonen, especially those who moved into the bigger cities like Amsterdam or Rotterdam, just didn't bother letting go of how things were in the mother-country. They said that instead of integrating - learning to and actually speaking Dutch, adopting or at least respecting the 'progressive' social values of the mainstream Dutch - they just set up their own little ethnic neighbourhoods; mirrors of the norms and styles of living that they left when they moved to the Netherlands in the first place. And, the funniest thing about it I was often told, was that now a lot of these practices and values from the mother-country had actually changed there, becoming more liberal, while the immigrants who had come to the Netherlands 30 or 40 years ago were still clinging to the older ways and ideas! Hmmm. I'm not sure if that's entirely true (haven't done my homework here), but it does make for an interesting story about the tensions surrounding ideas of home.

Of course, these same Dutch people aren't immune to the power of nostalgia themselves. In fact, a lot of the momentum behind the new populist, far Right movements in the Netherlands (like the PVV and ToN - and I would say all of Western Europe, and well, in the US too) is spurred on more by a dewy-eyed sense of nostalgia (and anger) than fact. For example, stories about how things used to be better - safer, freer, more equal, more... something - before all these immigrants came really gloss over a lot of important information. One of the most cited 'problems with immigrants' I heard in the news and in general when I was living in the Netherlands, was that they clung to these 'backwards' ideas and practices regarding gender and sexuality. The Netherlands was/ is seen as this sort of bastion of liberalism, progressive values, openness, tolerance, etc. For generations, women have been the equals of men, and everyone, regardless of their sexuality is welcomed, respected, and even celebrated. In reality, it was only a very short time ago when things were quite the opposite. In fact, most of the contemporary values considered ‘typically Dutch’ actually emerged only as pillarization (verzuiling) waned. As the dramatic changes experienced across the West during the 1960s came to the Netherlands, older concerns for family, employment and economic security lost ground to concerns for the self and secularism (Lechner 2008:132). Thus, the characteristically broad threshold of tolerance that has become a ‘distinctively Dutch value’

was very nearly the other way around only a (historically) short time ago. Even after World War II, the Netherlands was characterized by traditional male-female roles; gender segregation in primary schools and in the church on Sundays; fear of nudity and sexuality; physical punishment for children; an ideology of family solidarity over individualism; and immense respect for authority. Paradoxically, the values now taken to be distinctively Dutch clash with traditionally Dutch values. (Sniderman and Hagendoorn 2007:129-130)

While Amsterdam might represent these ideals fairly well today, it's clear that these views aren't necessarily shared by everyone, regardless of how far back they can trace their family history within the Netherlands. Just hearing about people in small villages outside the Randstad or who live in the Dutch Bible Belt who might say they accept homosexuality and act in ways that highlight the limitedness of this acceptance kind of contradicts (or at least complicates) this image of a progressive moral majority. A recent example was the fallout from the election of a gay Carnival king who was refused communion in Brabant. Another example is how one of the political parties that ran in the June 2009 federal elections still wont allow women to be members. The point I'm getting at here, is that since nostalgia is so connected with our memories we often mis-remember, blotting out the bad and exaggerating the good. Nostalgia might even push us past this mis-remembering and convince us to long for something that maybe never was.

So, I guess this brings me back to the question I started with... what is 'home'? But, perhaps more importantly, how can we all live there together?

'home' again... now what?

Well, I've been back 'home' in Toronto, Canada for about two months now. My year in Amsterdam was truly the best year in my life. I learned a lot, met wonderful people, made amazing friends, and fell head over heels with the city. Now, after the whirlwind of visiting friends and family I hadn't seen in over a year, I'm finally settling in again to life in Canada and working on deciphering my fieldnotes and figuring out what I actually learned while I was away.

What I've learned so far, is that no anthropologist ever seems to come back from 'the field' (wherever that may be) feeling like they got everything they could have. So far, all my colleagues in the same situation say the exact same things. Mostly along the lines of, "I know that if I had been there for another month or so, I could have gotten much more done!" I just hope that I have enough to be able to write something worth reading, and interesting enough to present to the folks back in Amsterdam in the spring...

It would be really great if what I ultimately produce could be more than just interesting. It would be wonderful if my dissertation could actually be more than just pretty academic musings and be, dare I say it, useful. This is something that I think a lot of social researchers think about. I would be really proud if my research could have positive implications for policy making or something in the Netherlands, (how cool would that be?) but I'm not entirely sure how to make that happen...

While I have always thought that I would want to stay in academia - become a professor and wear a tweed jacket with the leather elbow patches, etc. - the course I am TA-ing this year, Public Anthropology, is encouraging me to weigh some other options. The reality is that at least half of all professional anthropologists (i.e. folks with the letters PhD after their names) end up working outside of the university. While I like the idea of a career where I could not only research and write but also to teach, the researching and writing bits ain't bad. There are lots of great research institutes (like the Meertens in Amsterdam) out there, in addition to local and governmental organizations who hire social researchers. While some of these organizations do have more of an academic bent to them, a lot of their work funnels directly into making positive, useful changes in policy and other areas of society. That's pretty cool.

These decisions and job applications are more than a year away from becoming a reality for me. In the meantime, I have lots of notes to sift through, interviews to transcribe, literature to read up on, and research to write (and edit, and edit, and edit...). But, when the time comes, non-academic job options are something to consider. Besides, I heard you're allowed to have the elbow patches on your tweed jacket once you have your PhD, whether you stay in academia or not...

holidaze!

The end of April and beginning of May in the Netherlands is chock full of holidays! In fact, I've been so busy celebrating that I haven't had much time to write about them: Koninginnedag on April 30th (and to a lesser extent Koninginnenacht on the 29th), is quickly followed by the more somber Dodenherdenking on May 4th, only to be followed the next day by Bevrijdingsdag on May 5th. And as if that wasn't enough, the Christian holiday of Hemelsvaart crops up on May 13th giving everyone yet another day off (or 2)! I feel like a need a holiday from all these holidays! Or rather, I feel like I really need to stop celebrating and do some work...

It's not that I haven't been busy. In fact, many people have started responding to my request for interview participants, so my calendar is filling up with meetings and discussions with interesting people. (Thank you!!) But, in studying (among other things) ideas about the nation, it's been important to take a look at these holidays - Koninginnedag, Dodenherdenking, and Bevrijdingsdag - where the Dutch, who usually seem so somber and quiet about expressions of belonging at the level of the nation, actually come out of their shells a bit (though, I'm still waiting to see what happens during the World Cup...).

Koninginnedag (which I can finally actually say, after much practice!), Queen's Day, means that the Dutch landscape erupts in a riot of orange, as people celebrate the monarchy (the House of Orange). I bought an orange shirt so I could fit in with the locals, though I was also told I could don the red, white and blue of the Dutch flag instead. A friend who declares himself a Republican explicitly refused to wear orange in protest, though he did still participate in the fun of the day. For us, this included walking (or kind of slowly drifting with the crowds) through the city (celebratory beverages in tow). For others, especially children, it was clear that the day's activities encompassed the Dutch sense of enterprise: everything you could want was for sale, from little fleamarkets of old toys and treasures, specially-made kijkdoosjes (a box you could peek inside to see a scene for just 1 Euro), 'clean toilets' in people's houses (also available for a Euro), and of course lots of food and drinks (patatjes, taart, soft drinks, beer, poffertjes, and so on). Others set up chairs or small stages on the bits of street that they had claimed well in advance of the day (with chalk or tape marking out squares of the street as bezet) to sell things from, dance and play music, or just enjoy the view of passersby. On the Museumplein, thousands of people - mostly from outside of Amsterdam - gathered for the free all-day concert. Anyone with a boat spent the day puttering through the crowded canals. While I'm sure most people weren't really thinking about the monarchy, images of the royals were visible throughout the city and at least a few people were taking the opportunity to make political statements of some sort (i.e. the cut out of the PVV's controversial leader, Geert Wilders, who you could throw balls at for a small fee, and under which someone has scrawled the word mongol - slang for 'retard').

A national committee organizes the events for both the 4th and 5th of May events: The Dodenherdenking is the national day of remembrance for those that died in World War II, which is followed the next day by Bevrijdingsdag (Liberation Day) where everyone celebrates their freedom with free concerts and outdoor festivals all over the country - at least, everyone gets to once every 5 years... While making 5 May a statutory holiday every year is now being discussed by the politicans, currently it's only students who get to annually enjoy this light-hearted day of freedom. Though, this year, everyone taking the train might have had the chance to see the travelling exhibition/ train for freedom sponsored by the committee. (I managed to miss it, but a friend stumbled upon it in place of her regular train to Utrecht during her morning commute one day.)

Unlike Bevrijdingsdag, Dodenherdenking events take place every year, with the royal family and notable Dutch people (such as politicans) attending a (televised) service in the Nieuwe Kerk followed by a procession to the national monument on the Dam, where wreaths were laid. This year was a little more eventful than anyone anticipated due to an incident during the 2 minutes silence that turned into a panic. I think that most people had the image of the tragedy of Koninginnedag 2009 in Apeldoorn in the back of their minds. Luckily, no one died, and no one was too seriously injured. In the aftermath, one of the most interesting things to have come out of this year's Dodenherdenking is the discussion around feeling safe in the Netherlands, and how more people feel less so than ten, or even two years ago. The reaction against this fear is also interesting. I went to Zwolle to celebrate Bevrijdingsdag the following day, and during one of the concerts from the main stage an announcer gave a short speech in the spirit of freedom about not being afraid and giving into fear.

I find this sense of fear interesting, especially since I personally feel exceptionally safe living in the Netherlands. It will be interesting to get some other perspectives on this though, like tonight, when I go back to 'work'. I'll be joining some people from my own neighbourhood during a schouwloop though the buurt. A couple locals, as well as a plain-clothes police officer and someone from the city will be strolling through the neighbourhood this evening, making note of anything that seems dangerous, or broken (i.e. street lamps), dirty (although with a garbage strike on at the moment, our clipboards might be full on this point), etc. I'm not entirely sure what to expect, but I think it'll be interesting. And, I've gotta say, that after so many holidays, it does feel good to be doing a bit of work!

getting the word out: interviews!

I've been here, in Amsterdam, hanging out, being a sociocultural sponge (or anthropologist as we're sometimes called), for a while now. In fact, my little red agenda tells me I only have about 100 days left (where did the time go?!) before I have to return to Canada and start making sense of all these notes, experiences, discussions, observations and ideas. Oh, and interviews!

Yes, I am now at the point in my research where I am actively trying to find folks to interview. I have done two interviews with very interesting people thus far, and happily have another two lined up over the coming weeks. But, I would really like to do more.

Although things have changed slightly since my initial research proposal in terms of finding people to tell me about their everyday lives and opinions about what it means to belong in Amsterdam and the Netherlands (shifting the focus from neighbourhoods to networks), I am still absolutely interested in talking to people who have some kind of professional interest in issues of 'Dutchness', citizenship, immigration and integration. Currently, I am trying to find people to interview who participate in voluntary work to discuss these things as well. I've contacted the organizers of the volunteer organizations I have been working with here - including the language-oriented programs of Gilde Amsterdam (SamenSpraak) and Hart Voor Amsterdam (Native Speaker Project) - and hopefully the replies will start trickling in very soon! (Thank you to Dominique at the Native Speaker Project for helping me to get the word out to the other Native Speakers!)

So, here's to getting the word out! If you know of anyone (preferably living in Amsterdam) who either has a professional interest (as a social worker, a language teacher, an inburgering-cursus instructor or participant, artist keen on representations of belonging in the Dutch context, etc.) or is involved in voluntary work who would like to have a bit of a formal chat with someone researching questions of feeling at home in Amsterdam and the Netherlands, please feel free to send them my way!