The rise and decline of national habitus Dutch cycling culture and the shaping of national similarity 1

The rise and decline of national habitus: Dutch cycling culture and the shaping of national similarity Giselinde Kuipers Author Accepted Manuscript (AAM) Published in European Journal of Social Theory 16(1): 17-35 Permalink: https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431012437482 Abstract Why are things different on the other side of national borders; and how can this be explained sociologically? Using as its point of departure Dutch cycling culture, a paradigmatic example of non-state-led national similarity, this article explores these questions The first section introduces Norbert Elias’ concept of ‘national habitus’, using this notion to critique comparative sociology and argue for a more processual approach to national comparison The second section discusses four processes that have contributed to increasing similarity within nations: growing interdependence within nations; increasing density of networks and institutions; vertical diffusion of styles and standards; and the development of national wefeelings Together, these processes have contributed to the development of national habitus: increasing similarities within nations, and increasing differences between people living in different countries These processes have reached their apex in the second half of the twentieth century The third section explores how these processes have diminished since the 1960s, leading to increasing variations within countries, and growing similarities between comparable groups in different countries Both the rise and decline of national habitus are illustrated by changes in Dutch cycling culture Particularly important is the breakdown of trickle down, as a result of the rise of the egalitarian informal ethos This analysis poses new challenges for sociologists: first, about comparative research; second, about the diffusion of styles and standards, and third, about the consequences of the decline of national habitus for social inequality – as evidenced by the growing rift between ‘locals’ and (bike-loving) ‘cosmopolitans’ Keywords: national habitus; comparative research; bicycle; Netherlands; globalization; trickle down Upon crossing a national border, many things visibly change – the landscape, public space, people’s appearance and comportment Across the border, people often speak a different language Road signs change, as retail chains, licence plates, colours of trains and buses, and uniforms of police officers and postmen Billboards, newspapers, advertisements, radio channels and cell phone networks are different on the other side There are often noticeable differences in building styles and use of space Many such national differences can be traced back to interventions of national institutions like the government, the educational system, cable companies or retail conglomerates – national institutions the regime of which stops at the border Some things, however, stop at the border without direct intervention of governments or businesses An example of this is the omnipresence of bicycles in the Netherlands Everywhere in the country, for instance at every Dutch railway station, one can see endless rows and piles of bicycles In Dutch traffic, cyclists are everywhere Immediately after crossing the border, in Antwerp or Aachen, the bikes are gone Unlike road signs and cell phone networks, this cycling culture is not a regime enforced by governments or companies Most people in the Netherlands use a bicycle simply because this is what one does when going from one place to another Cycling is part of the Dutch national habitus It is neither conscious lifestyle nor political statement It is not associated with a particular social class or region In the Netherlands, the bicycle is a means of everyday transportation, not just for students, sportsmen or the ecologically minded, but everyone: for men in suits, professionals, officials, even the Queen and her family (Ebert 2004; Stoffers & Oosterhuis 2009) This particular understanding of cycling ends at the Dutch border This article explores the dynamics of national differences, as exemplified by Dutch cycling culture: why are things different, and why people behave differently, on the other side of national borders? How can this be explained sociologically? How such national patterns emerge? How durable are they? In order to answer these questions, I employ the concept of ‘national habitus’, coined by Norbert Elias (1996[1989], 2000[1939]) The concept of national habitus allows us to investigate the processes contributing to the development of national similarities within countries, not only in institutions and physical surroundings, but also in people’s behaviour Moreover, it allows us to go beyond understandings of national differences purely in terms of institutional structures or national ‘value orientations’ Comparative research is increasingly central to social science In Europe, where national sociologies increasingly orientate themselves towards international sociology, many sociologists have found that cross-national comparison is the only way to ‘sell’ Dutch, Danish or Swiss findings to international scholars Similarity of inhabitants of the same country is an important, often implicit, assumption in comparative research But what, exactly, we compare when we compare countries? In the 21 st century, can we assume that people in a given country are somehow similar? Despite mounting critiques of methodological nationalism, nation-states are often used rather unreflexively as the unit of comparison Here, I propose a relational and processual understanding of national similarity, asking not what national habitus is, but how it has come into being, and how this is related to wider social processes and relations This approach challenges static culturalist views of national value orientations and identities, as well as the statist bias of institutional approaches Moreover, a processual approach allows us to see habitus formation as social process, which may wax and wane I will address these questions by looking at national habitus formation in ‘bicycle country’ the Netherlands Rather than giving a full-fledged analysis of Dutch cycling culture, I take this as a paradigmatic case of non-state-led national similarity The Netherlands is one of the oldest, most stable, and – despite increasing globalization, migration, European integration, and internal polarization – most homogeneous nation-states in the world (Duyvendak 2004; Lechner 2007) With Portugal, Denmark, France, England (& Wales), and Japan, it is among the few countries to come anywhere near the ideal-type of the nationstate: stable boundaries, durable political system, and shared cultural identity (Tilly 1994) Therefore, it provides an excellent case study to explore the formation of national habitus, and the dwindling of this process in the past decades Many historians and sociologists have turned to the Netherlands to explore the rise of the modern nation-state (e.g Adams 2005; Israel 2001) The Netherlands also is a fitting case to explore the latest transformation of the European nationstate Today, the nation-state seems less potent in its role as producer of national similarities in styles, tastes, behaviours and opinions As I argue here, the processes leading to increasing national similarity have reached their apex in the 1960s Since then, these processes have eroded in the Netherlands, other European nations and – possibly – beyond This article, then, has several objectives First, it aims to reintroduce the notion of national habitus in comparative sociological research Second, it analyzes the shaping of national habitus: the processes that have led to increasing national similarities in the Netherlands and other (European) nations Third, it aims to show how these processes have eroded, due to increasing globalization, but more importantly (and unexpectedly): as a result of increasing egalitarianism and informalization, leading to the breakdown of trickle-down This development has considerable implications, both for comparative sociological research and for European politics and societies National habitus and Dutch cycling culture Sociological research has provided us with many examples of the impact of nationality Ever since Durkheim (1951[1897]), sociologists have known that even the most individual and solitary choice a human being can make varies greatly across countries: suicide Happiness, too, follows national patterns (Veenhoven 2006) Nationality even impinges upon our bodies: Obesity levels vary greatly across countries with similar income levels and social organization (Rabin et al 2006) The low incidence of obesity in the Netherlands is often explained from its cycling culture (Bassett et al 2008) Cycling behaviour also varies cross-nationally, as Table shows In the Netherlands a larger share of movements is undertaken by bicycle than in neighbouring countries, despite great similarities in wealth, climate and terrain As with all aggregate numbers, these are averages Within the Netherlands, people from Protestant areas cycle more than people from Catholic areas; people of Dutch descent cycle more than descendants of immigrants Increasingly, educated people cycle more than less educated people (Harms 2006; Pelzer 2010) However, Dutch people in all categories cycle more than people with similar backgrounds in other countries (Bassett et al 2008) [table about here] I propose to call such national patterning of behaviour ‘national habitus’ The notion of habitus has gained prominence in the social sciences through the work of Pierre Bourdieu (1979), but had been used earlier by Norbert Elias (1996[1989]; 2000[1939]) In The Germans, Elias analyzed ‘national habitus’, shared by inhabitants of a specific nation ‘Habitus’ – derived from ‘habit’ – refers to learned practices and standards that have become so much part of ourselves that they feel self-evident and natural Habitus is our culturally and socially shaped ‘second nature’ What we learn as members of a society, in a specific social position, is literarily incorporated – absorbed into our bodies – and becomes our self This incorporation we see in the ease with which Dutch cyclists move through busy traffic – sitting upright, rather than bent over the steering wheel in the manner of sports cyclists One realises that this is not self-evident when seeing another person lacking this ease, like the clumsy tourists on their rental bikes in the busy Amsterdam traffic Habitus is congealed history, absorbed into our bodies – our personal history, which in turn has been shaped by the history of the society of which we are part This larger history determines the ground-tone of our individual history Thus our ‘self’, our self-evident, automatic, yet learned behaviour, is partly determined by the country where we have grown up Sociological comparison and national habitus Until recently, most social scientific research ended at the national border Most researchers limited their data collection to one, usually their own, country Today, comparative research is the standard, especially in European sociology The use of ‘comparative’ in this context underlines the self-evidence of the nation-state – ‘comparative’ automatically implies cross-national comparison All research compares ‘Country’ apparently is a special category, eclipsing others – the framework in which everything else takes shape Ever since Marx and Weber, historical and national comparison have gone hand in hand in social scientific inquiry (Adams et al 2005; Elias 2000; Steinmetz 1999; Therborn 1995; Tilly 1992; Wouters 2007) Modern Western nations are alike, and in many respects have undergone the same processes Yet they all differ slightly Comparison allows us to isolate and highlight the dynamics of these social processes and mechanisms This ‘historical-comparative’ or ‘process-sociological’ perspective also is the point of departure for this article I see national differences are the result of relations between social groups and fields Hence, they are constantly in flux More recently, other versions of comparative sociology have emerged, partly fuelled by the increasing availability of large databases This comparative research is less attuned to the process character of national differences: it is often static and atomistic ‘Country’ is a column in a table, a ‘factor’ affecting individuals – although of course these individuals together make up a country Often, ‘country’ is conceptualised as policy context or institutional setting By ‘country’ researchers then really mean ‘state’ Countries, in this perspective, are essentially aggregates of institutions But institutions not emerge out of thin air They emerge and change in interaction with each other, and with national traditions, habits, and conventions (cf Lamont & Thévenot 2000) Other comparative research conceptualizes national differences as ‘value orientations’ (Hofstede 2001; Halman et al 2005) In this approach, countries produce individual ‘value orientations’ remarkably like psychological profiles While revealing and evocative, the mechanisms through which such patterns are produced remain unclear In effect, this approach produces classifications rather than theories Wimmer and Glick-Schiller (2002) have famously critiqued the unreflexive ‘methodological nationalism’ of much comparative research Making the nation the level of analysis often produces national effects – but that does not necessarily prove that ‘country’ is the determining variable The insufficient conceptualisation of ‘country’ or ‘national background’ in comparative research is problematic, but quite understandable Having done a lot of comparative research myself, I have found that cross-national comparison is rather like a constant Gestalt switch The same image seems to depict something different each time, and somehow one never manages to see the different images – the duck and the rabbit, the pretty young girl and the old woman with the crooked nose – simultaneously Yes - all the French have something in common Or no – it’s really all about age Or class! Or no – it is all so individual that one cannot really generalise much about anything Or it is all about the structure of a particular field, rather than the nation as a whole Then again, all Europeans seem so similar, so very European, when compared with Americans Partly, this constantly shifting perspective is inherent in doing research By continuously contrasting, looking for similarities and differences, patterns can be found and generalisations be made But above all it is a conceptual problem Existing theoretical frameworks in large-scale comparative research have insufficiently conceptualized how nation-state formation leads to similarities on the level of individual behaviour Hence, they are not attuned to variations and fluctuation in processes of national habitus formation This paper proposes to unravel the relation between state formation and individual behaviour – hence, the shaping of national patterns – by looking at national habitus as a long-term social process National habitus as social process: The shaping of national similarity Process sociology suggests that before asking what something is, one always should ask first how something has come into being From this perspective, the question about national habitus requires rephrasing Not what is national habitus? Nor what is the national habitus of country A, B, or C? But through which processes people in a country become alike? Under what conditions 10 does such a national ground-tone in behaviour, institutions and standards emerge? After all, country comparisons only make sense if one assumes that people within a country, on average, have more in common with each other than with inhabitants of other countries This dynamic approach opens up the way for the acknowledgment that national similarity is not an eternal, unchanging fact There are periods of more and of less national habitus, periods during which other processes have more impact After a long period of increasing similarity within nations, many countries now appear to be undergoing a movement towards ‘less national habitus’ In this article I distinguish four processes that, in Europe, have been central to the shaping of national habitus The first process is increasing interdependence (Elias 2000 [1939]; Tilly 1994) From the Middle Ages onwards, people have become part of increasingly larger social units – from village, to region, to nation-state With this growing interdependence, people became more aware of others, identified more with them, and increasingly adapted to them Through mutual adaptation and identification people become more similar, as people from different classes and status groups within a country This process of increasing interdependence on regional and national levels went hand in hand with the erosion of other interdependencies and identifications The elites of the early Middle Ages often maintained strong bonds, over long distances, with elites in other regions These ties became looser as the nobility become more involved with local bonds (Elias 2000[1939]) National integration also led to decreasing connectedness in border regions For instance, local dialects, which in border regions often were similar, disappeared with the increasing dominance of standardised national languages Nowadays, inhabitants of villages in border regions of different countries, who in previous 22 power in the early 21st century Although these parties focus on immigrants, their ascent is the result of migration and globalization as well as internal national developments: the breakdown of trickle down and growing distance between social strata National identification often is a side effect of national integration However, objective similarity and identification not co-occur automatically The United States are a case in point: a diverse nation because of its migration history, but also because there never was one national elite capable of setting the national standard (Mennell 2007) Instead, strong national stories, rituals, symbols – often regarded somewhat mockingly by Europeans – have encouraged the formation of national identity Small, relatively homogeneous countries like the Netherlands (or Denmark) could afford to disparage orchestrated expressions of national identity The decline of national similarities and the increase of social distance make national identification less self-evident This has led to a quest for new national symbols Local and national governments reluctantly oblige (Verkaaik 2010) The heated European debates about national identity are manifestations of the fourth process leading to the production of national similarity: the production of national we-feelings The other processes – increasing interdependence, thickening of interdependencies, and vertical diffusion – tend towards less national habitus This set in motion a countermovement, a push for more national similarity that now is picked up by political leaders in various European countries The heated European debates, despite their shrillness, also point to renewal: a quest for new symbols, rituals, and stories, now that self-evident orientation points at the top of national societies have vanished However, the outcome of this political and social struggle is unclear yet – and many groups and categories are struggling to find their own position in this new debate 23 Always a potent symbol of the Dutch ‘imagined community’, bikes and their ‘others’ are invoked in this debate The ‘others’ are scooters: in popular national daily De Telegraaf scootertuig (scooter hoodlums) always refers to young men of Moroccan descent Newspapers regularly report about migrants and their descendants cycling less then natives, or – more optimistically - that cycling among migrants is increasingly comparable to cycling patterns among native Dutch.4 Here, as so often in this debate, the focus on differences between migrants and native Dutch effectively masks the growing rifts and dissimilarities between social classes Conclusion: Sociology, society, and the decline of national habitus The processes leading to greater resemblance among inhabitants of a country have not disappeared But they have weakened, and increasingly compete with other social processes The result is growing diversity within nations With the loosening of the orderly hierarchical grid of the nation-state social variations increase At the same time, people in different countries often come to resemble each other more, as a result of increasing international exchange Thus, fewer things really end at the national border, like the Dutch bicycle It is important not to overstate this development ‘Push factors’ towards national similarity are strong, and both the institutional and the cultural foundation of the European nation-states are still firmly in place Despite the fierce public debate of the past decade, the Netherland still is among the most homogeneous countries in the world Likely, it is because the Netherlands is such a stable nation-state that the changes in habitus formation are so clearly visible, and produce such turmoil Hence, this article is neither a plea for a post-national ‘cosmopolitan 24 sociology’ (Beck 2006), nor the heralding of a liquid society made up of footloose consumers (Bauman 2000) Instead, it is a plea for a more historicized, processual understanding of national culture: how and why people in the same nation become more – or less – similar? What are the mechanisms producing national similarity? What social processes contribute to the decline of national habitus? The changing nature of the nation-state presents both sociologists and societies with conceptual and political challenges With its assumption of likeness of people living in the same territory, the nation-state provided sociologists and lay people alike with a clear interpretive framework With all its paternalism, hierarchy, fixed frontiers, and subdued nationalism, the nation-state brought about social coherence and exchange, solidarity and emancipation As the current heated debates show, the redefinition of national identity is a deeply fraught issue In my view, these new political struggles are directly related to the withering of national habitus For sociologists, the changing nation-state creates many methodological, conceptual, and theoretical challenges Growing transnational convergence and intra-national diversity makes comparative research both more urgent and more complex ‘Country’ can no longer be the automatic and self-evident unit of analysis – neither in single-country nor in comparative studies The role of the national has become an empirical question, depending on what is studied, and where (cf Hannerz 2003; Wimmer & Glick-Schiller 2002) Some countries are more ‘national’, more inwardly oriented, homogeneous and integrated, than others Many topics probably cannot be understood anymore from an exclusively national perspective The growing diversity, the faltering of downward diffusion, and the loosening of the nation-state’s grid also raises new research questions First: how does 25 social and cultural diffusion and transfer happen these days? Whom people look to for inspiration? With the rise of the individualist, egalitarian ethos: from where people get their tastes, styles and standards? Not, as the egalitarian ethos has it, from ‘ourselves’ Variations are larger than before, but our frames of reference still spring from our social surroundings The simple but powerful mechanism of vertical diffusion competes more and more with various other forms of transfer – in various directions, in various ways, and through various media Both through media use, and through travel and migration, people increasingly find their standards and role models abroad – which means they can choose from a much wider variety Although there is much speculation and postmodern theorization about this topic, thorough and preferably comparative research on new forms of socialization and cultural transfer is surprisingly rare A second question this analysis evokes: How is the decline of national habitus related to social inequality? Distance between social classes appears to be on the increase, and in many European countries, social mobility is declining To what extent more diverse patterns of transfer, more informal and egalitarian norms, and diminishing influence of the nation-state affect social stratification? Does this affect inequality? After a long period of decrease, economic inequalities are increasing in (many) Western societies (Goesling 2001) In the Netherlands, too, inequality is on the rise (Velthuis 2011) This growing polarisation is often seen as the result of increasing globalization However, ‘globalization’ is a rather vague umbrella term that may refer to many mechanisms, ranging from increasing international competition and the outsourcing of cheap labour to decreasing national identification on the part of national elites (Brune & Garret 2005; Dollar 2005; Harjes 2007) 26 In the past, national similarity and identification has often gone hand in hand with growing equality and a redistribution of income and resources (Mennell 2007; de Swaan 1988) The growing inequalities suggest that the reverse is also true However, the literature on the mechanisms involved in the production of inequalities, and the relation between social distance and economic inequality, is inconclusive Certainly growing social diversity does not necessarily or automatically lead to more unequal access to resources The Bourdieusian zerosum game, where cultural difference automatically translates into social exclusion and economic disadvantage, in all likelihood worked better in the closed nation-states of the mid-twentieth century than in today’s more chaotic status systems The question under which circumstances social difference is transformed into power difference – and vice versa – is an important one, requiring more sociological study and analysis This question about the possible increase of inequalities leads to a final question: to what extent the social processes sketched here lead to new sources of inequality? Social transformations often lead to the emergence of new forms of ‘capital’, new sources of power, and hence to new elites Many critics have observed that globalization mainly benefits the well off Indeed, the growing distance between social strata increasingly marks a boundary between nationally oriented ‘locals’ and internationally oriented ‘cosmopolitans’ Weenink (2008) writing about Dutch bilingual education, pointed out how increasing globalization requires increasing ‘cosmopolitan capital’ Several other authors have pointed a growing divide between ‘locals’ and ‘cosmopolitans’ (Hannerz 1990; Lizardo 2005) The latter are characterized by their transnational orientation, but also by the informal and egalitarian ethos described here as typical of post-1960s educated elites This is the group that is becoming most similar across countries, and that has become furthest removed 27 from the ‘national habitus’ This, indeed, appears to be a new elite, tapping new power resources This cosmopolitan ‘creative class’ (Florida 2002) is the target group of city branding and planning efforts around the world The time-tested method for luring these new cosmopolitans is the building of extensive networks of bicycle paths From Paris to Toronto, from Rome to Krakow, and from Boston to Beijing ‘bicycle sharing’ programs are implemented – the twenty-first-century version of the Dutch white bicycle plan, first proposed by Amsterdam Provos in 1965 Because the international symbol – the shared hobby, and an important political and social project – of this cosmopolitan, green, egalitarian, and thoroughly informalised class is the symbol of status without ostentation, power refusing to acknowledge its power, that the Dutch have known for a long time The bicycle References Achterberg, P & Houtman, D (2009) ‘Ideologically Illogical? 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Allochtone kinderen en vrouwen krijgen fietsles De Volkskrant 15 June 2010; Karman, J ‘Lobby na onderzoek: autogebruik terugdringen, desnoods door hogere parkeertarieven, helpt iedereen, ook automobilist Fiets moet stad mobiel maken.’ Het Parool 15 April 2010; ‘Raad voor verkeer: Imago fiets en zuinige auto moet beter.’ Trouw mei 2010 Interestingly, this remark invariably provokes protestations among the Dutch Apparently, homogeneity is not a source of national pride Author bio Giselinde Kuipers is associate professor of sociology at the University of Amsterdam, and Norbert Elias professor in the sociology of long-term processes at Erasmus University Rotterdam She has done research in various European countries and the US, and has published widely on humor, media, popular culture and cultural globalization She is the author of Good Humor, Bad Taste: A Sociology of the Joke (Berlin/New York, 2006) Currently, she is writing a book about American television in Europe, and working on an ERC-funded research project on the social shaping of beauty standards in six European countries 36 ... Denmark 15 Germany Sweden Belgium Switzerland Austria France UK Ireland Canada Australia USA Spain Source: Bassett et al 2008: 799 Walk 22 16 23 23 16 12 21 19 24 13 35 Transit 8 11 45 17 11 11 12 ... towards the nation: the use of the bicycle in Germany and the Netherlands, 18 80 -19 40’, European Review of History 11 (3): 347-364 29 Elchardus, M & de Keere, K (2 010 ) ‘Institutionalizing the new... explain the Dutch fondness of the bicycle – and its ending at the national border? The wide adoption of the bicycle in the Netherlands can be understood from the country’s homogeneity and high