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Jan Willem Duyvendak: “What Does Remaking the Mainstream Exactly Mean?”
May 8, 2014 @ 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm
Building on the highly influential book by Richard Alba and Victor Nee Remaking the American Mainstream, Duyvendak asks himself in this presentation, in what ways ‘the mainstream’ is changed by (the incorporation of) minorities. He looks therefore at the strategies of various disadvantaged groups — not just ethnic ones, but also groups discriminated against based on gender, (homo)sexuality, religion, class, age — and the kind of changes that occur within the dominant society, ranging from fundamental shifts in the meaning of the very categories, to assimilation into the status quo. Duyvendak will discuss examples both from the US and the European context.
Jan Willem Duyvendak is Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Amsterdam and also the President of the Dutch Sociological Association. His most recent books in English include Crafting Citizenship: Negotiating Tensions in Modern Society (2012), co-authored with Evelien Tonkens and Menno Hurenkamp, and The Politics of Home: Nostalgia and Belonging in Western Europe and the United States (2011). His current project focuses on the key features of contemporary nativism in Western Europe and the U.S. He received his Ph.D. in 1992 from the University of Amsterdam. He will be with the Graduate Center for the full academic year.