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The Game of Participation in Amsterdam East: An Alternative to the Neoliberal or a Neoliberal Alternative?

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Abstract

With a point of departure in a Bourdieusian framework, the chapter studies dynamics between participatory policymaking and the citizenry’s political agency in a gentrifying neighborhood in Amsterdam East. The analysis shows that gentrifiers, through their community building efforts and resourcefulness, are capable of creating political opportunities for the citizenry to become co-producers in the field of local policy implementation; this enabled social mobility and a creation of a civic democratic culture. At the same time, this alternative field of participation is not immune to reproducing effects related to gentrification and voluntarism.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In particular, the governmentality perspective highlights the prevalence of the two simultaneous albeit contrasting processes of administrative decentralization and the recentralization of state control. The former is understood as the involvement of civil society and market actors in governance and/or devolving state functions to sub-national levels. The recentralization of political control manifests in the dominance of neoliberal discourse on appropriate individual and civic conduct and in the performance-driven institutionalized audit culture (see also Kokx & Van Kempen, 2010; Swyngedouw, 2005; Taylor, 2007).

  2. 2.

    Both respondents were extensively interviewed during the fieldwork. The names are pseudonyms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

    Zsuzsa Kovács, Peer Smets & Halleh Ghorashi

Authors
  1. Zsuzsa Kovács
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  2. Peer Smets
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  3. Halleh Ghorashi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zsuzsa Kovács .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Danish Centre for Rural Research, University of Southern Denmark, Esbjerg, Denmark

    Jens Kaae Fisker

  2. Urban Studies URBEUR, University of Milano Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Letizia Chiappini

  3. University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, NSW, Australia

    Lee Pugalis

  4. Dipartimento di Architettura e Studi Urbani, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Antonella Bruzzese

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Kovács, Z., Smets, P., Ghorashi, H. (2019). The Game of Participation in Amsterdam East: An Alternative to the Neoliberal or a Neoliberal Alternative?. In: Fisker, J., Chiappini, L., Pugalis, L., Bruzzese, A. (eds) Enabling Urban Alternatives. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1531-2_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-1531-2_7

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  • Print ISBN: 978-981-13-1530-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-13-1531-2

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