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This article presents the value of ethnography for researching the non-medical aspects of care provided by midwives to women during labour.

The global interest in the search for and rescue of the Thai youth football team ‘the Wild Boars’, or the nationwide interest in the non-stop fundraising swimming-tour of Dutch swimmer Maarten van der Weijden, are examples of what in this lecture is called high density events: intense, often emotional occurrences, of an almost entertainment-like character, followed continuously by many. High density events shape and articulate ideas about who belong or do not belong to the (national) community. During such events, cultural forms, objects and practices are popularized, transferred and exchanged at a high pace, processes in which virtually anybody may become involved. Taking high-density events as object of research implies a focus on the making of heritage. In the repetitious, ritualized contexts of such events, certain cultural forms, practices and objects may become magnified and sacralised, to become heritage. Although any object or practice may be made heritage, the analysis should situate this making in its societal context, asking such questions as who were involved in the selection process, and why certain practices or objects are self-evidently attributed a heritage status and others not. With cultural identity becoming an ever more explicitly political issue, research into the making of heritage is the more urgent.

In musea, archieven en instituten hoopt het erfgoed van de toekomst zich op: van een sigarettenpeuk van de Theo van Gogh-herdenking tot kastanjes van de Anne Frankboom. Het gaat om objecten die verbonden zijn met intensieve, emotionele gebeurtenissen. Maar niet alles wordt bewaard. Welke processen bepalen wat wel en wat niet tot erfgoed gemaakt wordt? AB - In musea, archieven en instituten hoopt het erfgoed van de toekomst zich op: van een sigarettenpeuk van de Theo van Gogh-herdenking tot kastanjes van de Anne Frankboom. Het gaat om objecten die verbonden zijn met intensieve, emotionele gebeurtenissen. Maar niet alles wordt bewaard. Welke processen bepalen wat wel en wat niet tot erfgoed gemaakt wordt?

De uitnodiging van Joost Beuving (JB) om een reflectie te schrijven over zijn Big Data-artikel (2018) nam ik graag aan. Het idee dat een kwantitatieve econoom verwantschap zou claimen met etnografie, vond ik fascinerend; dat hij ook nog iets zou hebben met naturalisme, nam ik op de koop toe. Joost was ook zo vriendelijk mij het boek Everybody Lies van Stephens-Davidowitz (SD) toe te sturen.

This written version of various conversations came into being as a response to Dutch entertainer Claudia de Breij’s 2016 New Year’s Eve cabaret performance. We were enticed to write something about this performance because of the numerous ambiguities that were present in it. What was striking was the fact that we, a group of Dutch and Belgian academics and activists, working in different disciplines but united by our mutual interests in and passion for the themes of (super-)diversity, gender and sexuality, and religion and societal matters, each interpreted this performance differently. From a conciliatory, interconnecting cabaret performance in which alterity and difference were (re)presented as something positive, to a performance that confirmed already-existing stereotypes rather than subverting them: all these different interpretations and impressions are explained in detail in the following diffractive dialogue that was engendered by and through various conversations that took place in Utrecht, the Netherlands in January, May, August, and September 2017.

Beschrijving van melkproductie en ontwikkeling van de melkveehouderij in Nederlands Indië vanaf circa 1900 tot de jaren vijftig.

Het sluiten van het ADM-terrein en kraakpanden is de doodsteek voor Amsterdam, stelt Dimitris Dalakoglou.

Report of the NOSTER theme seminar Changing the Tacks: exploring new directions towards an interdisciplinary study of the lifeworlds of believers. This seminar was an interdisciplinary study meeting focused on the dialogue between systematic theology and anthropology of religion, organized by staff from the PThU and VU Amsterdam.

Social media in and around the emergency shelter for refugees near Nijmegen, the NetherlandsTo cope with the limited capacity of the established reception centres during the refugee crisis of 2015, the Central Agency for the Reception of Asylum Seekers (COA) set up emergency reception centers for refugees such as Heumensoord nearby the Dutch city of Nijmegen. At the peak of the crisis, the Heumensoord centre hosted about 3,000 asylum seekers. COA’s organizational approach to manage reception centers was characterized by a top-down policy. At the same time, host communities of local residents around the emergency reception center developed horizontal relations within and beyond the walls of the center, actively using available social media platforms such as Facebook. These horizontal relations enabled the development of social relations, and facilitated the exchange of goods and services. This article demonstrates the different communication strategies used by the stakeholders at Heumensoord, and how the different worlds of asylum seekers and the receiving, host communities came together. It also presents bottom-up alternatives to the top-down crisis approaches by unravelling cooperation options and the use of social media platforms that can lead to a more resilient interaction between asylum seekers and local communities.

Alvorens op de repliek in te gaan, moet het mij van het hart dat Beuving en De Vries (2017) hun eigen werk tekortdoen. Ze hadden kunnen stilstaan bij de positieve dingen die ik over hun boek heb gemeld, zoals de toegankelijkheid, de mooie verbindingen tussen methodologie en sociale theorie, de waardevolle hoofdstukken over interviewen, teksten, afbeeldingen en dingen, of de suggesties dat het boek waardevol kan zijn voor methodologieonderwijs.

Mattijs van de Port bespreekt waarom het medium film onmisbaar is voor zijn sociaalwetenschappelijk onderzoek en hoe het medium de wetenschap zou kunnen verbreden en verdiepen. Filmen betekent een afscheid van totaliserende vormen van weten en de erkenning van de pluriformiteit van kennis.

In dit boek geeft Sunier antwoord op de vraag wat voor religie de islam is, wie gezag heeft onder moslims, hoe moslims in het dagelijks leven met hun geloof omgaan, welke discussies er gevoerd worden en waar verschillen in opvatting en handelen vandaan komen. Gaat het om verschillende varianten van de islam? Hoe moeten we die verschillen verklaren? Niet de leer op zich staat centraal, maar de verhouding van de mens tot die leer in een steeds veranderende wereld.

This article takes the reader to Plaza Garibaldi, a famous square in Mexico City, where many poor and street poor dwell. The ethnographic material was gathered by extensive field work conducted from 1989 through 1996. It focuses on, and provides a contextfor, banda or street poor youngsters employing ‘survival’ activities (such as begging, prostitution, petty delinquency and hustling, and also legal pursuits). A highly differentiated reality turns out to lurk behind the concept of ‘street children’. On Plaza Garibaldi alone, more than 50 categories of poor children can be distinguished, 15 of which are discussed in more detail. The boundaries between and within the categories are defined by diverging life situations and lifestyles, while the (street) poor themselves actively identify and reinforce the differences, expressing them through finely tuned distinctions. The theoretical insight grasped from the material is that the phenomenon of street children can be understood as ‘ordered chaos’. This approach leaves room for power dimensions. Street children as well as many other agents try to impose their order on the youngsters’ life situations, which may therefore be subject to frequent and rapid changes. Street children also constitute a symbolically constructed bedlam. The meanings of ‘street children’ are not only shaped by the media or by charity organizations; neither are they only deconstructed by social scientists. Poor and street poor, adults as well as children, appropriate the concept too, and adhere their own meanings to it. In this orchestrated cacophony, chaotic and paradoxical noise interferes: shifting meanings, blurring and manipulated boundaries, evil that counts as good, and the difference of indifference.