Welcome

Jan Willem Duyvendak is Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA). He received his master’s degrees in both sociology and philosophy at the University of Groningen. His main fields of research currently are belonging, urban sociology, 'feeling at home' and nativism. In 2013-2014, Duyvendak was Distinguished Fellow at the Advanced Research Collaborative at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. In Spring 2016 he was Research Fellow at the Paris Institute for Advanced Studies. From July 2017 - July 2019 he was Executive Committee Chair at Council for European Studies. Since 2018 he is director of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (NIAS-KNAW). In 2021 he was elected member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and in 2022 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest books are Thuis. Het drama van de sentimentele samenleving (2017), Macht der gewoonten. Populisme in de polder (2022) and The Return of the Native. Can Liberalism Safeguard Us Against Nativism? (Oxford University Press (2022).

Debate night: Promises and Pitfalls of Liberalism.

 in Book

Navigating between nostalgic nativism and hopeful realism.

March 29, SPUI25 together with Amsterdam Centre for European Studies ACES. Sign up

Liberalism has been much maligned in the last decade for its failure to provide people with a sense of collective identity and meaning. But for many people, liberal ideas themselves provide this meaning. In this interdisciplinary exchange, two books are discussed that, respectively, explore the extraordinary rise of nativism in liberal societies, and the possibilities for revivifying liberal ideals in a changing world.

The event begins with a short introduction of The Return of the Native: Can Liberalism Safeguard Us Against Nativism? (Duyvendak & Kesic, with Stacey 2023) by one of its authors, Josip Kesic. This introduction is followed by two discussants and a response from Jan Willem Duyvendak. The Return of the Native explores the extraordinary rise of nativism in liberal settings, paying particular attention to nativist narratives that intertwine islamophobia, racism, populism and nostalgia.

De kloof tussen Amsterdam en het platteland is kleiner dan ooit, zeggen deze sociologen

 in Essay, Newspaper

‘De gewone man’ wordt volop gebruikt in het publieke en het politieke debat, zonder dat we precies weten wie daarmee wordt bedoeld. Sociologen Jan-Willem Duyvendak en Menno Hurenkamp schreven een boek over ‘het gewone’ en ander ‘populisme in de polder’. ‘Echt, de verschillen nemen alleen maar af. Nederlanders zijn steeds meer op elkaar gaan lijken.’

In Het Parool