Brief Autobiography
After highschool I decided to work as a waiter for a year. I started in an upmarket posh hotel in the south of Amsterdam and soon discovered the difference between the purposeful lunches of businesspersons and the extravagant high teas of the rich elderly ladies. After that, I moved on to a traditional Dutch workmen's bar in a village near Leiden, where I saw old farmhands and construction workers drink beer with jenever on the side, to summon up the courage to go to work every morning. These experiences made me interested in sociology, or more specifically, in culture, class and place.
In the first years of my sociology study at the University of Amsterdam I devoted most of my time to modern and classical theory, but I soon regained my interest in the everyday reality of people - to venture out into a particular area, to observe people and to make them talk about their actions and thoughts. In my major fieldwork project, I interviewed inhabitants of Amsterdam's postwar Nieuw-West area about the difficulties in day-to-day interactions between the older, typically modern generation and the immigrant families from Turkey, Marocco and Surinam. I also developed an interest in urban issues and policies.
I spent my internship within a research company that specialised in qualitative urban research and advice. After my internship I was hired part-time as a researcher. I have conducted research in many types of places, such as inner city areas, postwar housing areas, and suburbs. Interviews and focus groups were the key ingredients of the research strategy. In most cases, a local government or national institution had a specific research question. This question was then broadened to include other factors. What types of inhabitants live in this area? Which groups are increasing, which groups are decreasing in size? What are their lifestyles and class positions? What planning and housing issues can be expected to come up? The answers to these broader questions then were used to help answer the specific research question.
In 1998 a long term project at Reijndorp was concluded with the publication of the book 'Buitenwijk', which is about the latest generation of suburbs in the Netherlands. The central issue is that urbanity is not restricted to the city and that with this development, modes of spatial identification have changed and become important as a means of residential and occupational choice. The book was widely covered in the Dutch national press and has contributed to the current debate on urbanity and suburbanity.
My emperical work permitted me to focus my university study on theory. In my view, an understanding of the ideas of sociologists such as Giddens, Bourdieu, Elias and Bauman will put specific urban phemomena into a broader societal perspective. I graduated on the spread of highly educated new urbanites in the inner urban areas of Amsterdam and many other cities. The motives of these new urbanites relate to their class position. When my thesis was awarded the University of Amsterdam Sociology Thesis Award, it was recognised for the combination of theorical and emperical inputs and for the combination of specific urban concepts and more general sociological perspectives.
My current Oases Project is a continuation of previous research and insights. I have also worked as an editor in Dutch for planning reports and professional articles. Currently I am on the board of Rooilijn, a Dutch journal on urban planning.
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