DUTCH RURAL IMAGINATIONS

Imagining the Rural in Contemporary Dutch Culture

This subproject focuses on the Netherlands, where, despite the country being highly urbanized and globally oriented, national identity (as well as the branding of the country for tourism through images of windmills, tulips and clogs) remains strongly linked to an image of rural life (Terlouw 2013). Given its rapid urbanization in the second half of the twentieth century, rural issues have not been particularly high on the Dutch political agenda (Strijker 2015). The Farmer’s Party lost its last seat in Parliament in 1981, and the separate Ministry for Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality, which had existed since 1935 (under various names), was abolished in 2010, with rural matters placed under the auspices of the Ministry of Economic Affairs. However, following several recent livestock disease crises, earthquakes caused by gas extraction in the province of Groningen, disputes about potential fracking sites and refugee/immigrant centers, and debates about rewilding projects (Lorimer and Driessen 2014; Peeren 2019), rural policy is gaining prominence in public debates. Moreover, an idyllic image of a lost rural past is presently being appealed to nostalgically in service of a growing populist nationalism, most notably by Geert Wilders and his anti-immigration, anti-EU Party for Freedom (Vossen 2011).

In the cultural imagination, the Dutch regional novel or streekroman, considered a trivial form of romantic fiction aimed at women readers (van Buuren 2005), is the genre most associated with rural settings and it remains popular–the work of Gerda van Wageningen, for example, has sold over 2.5 million copies. In the 2000s, however, more and more respected literary authors began setting their novels in rural parts and engaging topical rural policy discussions (Fortuin 2014). This has been seen as part of an international rise of new rural genres explicitly engaging contemporary globalization processes (Neervoort 2011) and functioning as a testing ground for understanding the impact of these processes, including at the affective level (Fortuin 2014).

In the same period, rural imaginations also increased in Dutch films and on television. Nanouk Leopold’s adaptation of Gerbrand Bakker’s rural novel Boven is het stil (The Twin) was nominated for the main prize at the 2013 Dutch Film Festival and the reality-TV program Boer zoekt vrouw (Farmer Seeks a Wife) has been the most-watched television program in the country for several years, regularly drawing over 4 million viewers. Through the format of a dating show, Boer zoekt vrouw depicts the disjunctions between the globalized actuality of contemporary Dutch agriculture and the idyllic way in which farm life is imagined by the farmers’ prospective partners, who mostly come from urban areas (Peeren and Souch 2019; Van Keulen and Krijnen 2014).

This subproject explores what aspects of Dutch 21st-century rural life do and do not become visible in prominent rural imaginations and to what extent these imaginations are linked to nostalgia and escapism (as in populist politics). It uses the theoretical framework outlined above; rural studies research on Dutch rural functions (Daalhuizen and Heins 2003; Markantoni et al. 2013), identities (Haartsen et al. 2000), experiences (Steenbekkers et al. 2006) and discourses (Frouws 1998), as well as migration to and from the rural (Bijker et al. 2013; Thissen et al. 2010); and research on past and present Dutch rural imaginations in film, television and literature (Karel 2015; Oppewal 2006). The latter, when compared to the other four national contexts, is relatively scarce, giving the subproject an important gap to fill.

References:
Bijker, Rixt Anke, et al. “Different Areas, Different People? Migration to Popular and Less‐popular Rural Areas in the Netherlands.” Population, Space and Place 19.5 (2013): 580-593.
Buuren, Johanna Maria van. “De taal van het hart: Retorica en receptie van de hedendaagse streekroman.” Dissertation. University of Groningen, 2005.
Daalhuizen, F., and S. Heins. “Werken en wonen op het platteland.” Theoretische en empirische aspecten van plattelandsvernieuwing. Ed. F. Boekema and J. van Brussel. Maastricht: Shaker Publishing, 2003. 74-93.
Fortuin, Arjen. Zwijgen, zwoegen, slaan en sterven. NRC. 18 April 2008. Web. 12 September 2014.
Frouws, J. “The Contested Redefinition of the Countryside: An Analysis of Rural Discourses in the Netherlands.” Sociologia Ruralis 38 (1998): 54-68.
Haartsen, Tialda, et al. Claiming Rural Identities: Dynamics, Contexts, Policies. Assen: Van Gorcum, 2000.
Karel, Erwin H. “Boer en gezin. De sociologisering van het boerengezin.” Historia Agriculturae 44 (2015): 103-130.
Keulen, Jolien van, and Tonny Krijnen. “The Limitations of Localization: A Cross-cultural Comparative Study of Farmer Wants a Wife.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 17.3 (2014): 277-292.
Lorimer, Jamie, and Clemens Driessen. “Wild Experiments at the Oostvaardersplassen: Rethinking Environmentalism in the Anthropocene.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 39 (2014): 169-181.
Markantoni, Marianna, et al. “Contributing to a Vibrant Countryside: The Impact of Side Activities on Rural Development.” Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie (2013): n. pag.
Neervoort, Hans. “Het hemd is nader: De streekroman als natuurlijk, nationalistisch fenomeen.” Stilet: Tydskrif van die Afrikaanse Letterkundevereniging 23.2 (2011): 48-60.
Oppewal, Taeke. Zolang de wind van de wolken waait: Geschiedenis van de Friese literatuur. Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2006.
Peeren, Esther. “The Affective Economies and Political Force of Rural Wildness.” Landscape Research 44.7 (2019).
Peeren, Esther, and Irina Souch. “Reality TV, Romance and the Rural Idyll: Competing Genres in the Dutch Version of Farmer Wants a Wife.” Journal of Rural Studies 67 (2019): 37-45.
Steenbekkers, Anja, et al. Thuis op het platteland: De leefsituatie van platteland en stad vergeleken. SCP, 2006.
Strijker, Dirk. “Platteland genegeerd.” Boerderij, 10 March 2015. Web.
Terlouw, Kees. “Performing Identities on a Dutch River Dike: National Identity and Diverging Lifestyles.” Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism 13.2 (2013): 236-255.
Thissen, Frans, et al. “Migration Intentions of Rural Youth in the Westhoek, Flanders, Belgium and the Veenkoloniën, The Netherlands.” Journal of Rural Studies 26.4 (2010): 428-436.
Vossen, Koen. “Classifying Wilders: The Ideological Development of Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom.” Politics 31.3 (2011): 179-189.

Background image: De Kolonie Fredriksoord [sic], drawn by H. P. Oosterhuis and engraved by Dirk Sluyter,
ca. 1818-1820. © Koloniën van Weldadigheid – Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.