The Culturalization of Everyday Life: Autochthony in Amsterdam New West

By focusing on what I call the ‘culturalization of everyday life’ in a neighbourhood in Amsterdam, this chapter examines the dialectics of urban super-diversity. Rather than understanding super-diversity in terms of an increasing ‘normalcy of diversity’, I argue that the contemporary global city is characterized by a ‘dialectics of flow and closure’ where increasing heterogeneity goes hand in glove with an ever more powerful focus on locality, belonging and identity ‘fixture’. In the Netherlands today, a great deal of energy is invested in fixing, controlling and freezing identities. Dutch culturalism is a mode of controlling and fixing identity. The resulting focus on autochthony is a process of boundary-making between those who belong and those who are construed as guests or strangers