Anouk de Koning is professor of Power, Politics and the State in the department of Anthropology. Her research agenda focuses on the sociopolitical realities and futures produced in everyday welfare practices, both in and beyond the state. She currently leads two major research projects (2022-2027), Prototyping Welfare in Europe: Experiments in State and Society (financed with a Vici Grant) and Social Work and the Art of Crafting Resilient Societies (financed with a NWA Grant). These projects explore the new sociopolitical worlds brought into being in welfare experiments across Europe.
Trained in both cultural anthropology and social history, Anouk has conducted research on the relation between lived inequalities and sociopolitical regimes in urban contexts in Egypt, Suriname and the Netherlands.
This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthrop... more This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthropology. This is an increasingly critical area of study, as more than half of the world's population now lives in cities and anthropological research is increasingly done in an urban context. The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case studies drawn from a diverse range of urban settings in the global North and South. Accessible yet theoretically incisive, Introducing Urban Anthropology will be a valuable resource for anthropology students as well as of interest to those working in urban studies and related disciplines such as sociology and geography.
Across Europe, new welfare programs exemplify attempts to govern through community. This article ... more Across Europe, new welfare programs exemplify attempts to govern through community. This article asks how such governing through community is done in practice. Drawing on comparative insights from fieldwork with parenting support professionals and volunteers in Amsterdam, Milan, and Paris, we document not only how governing through community is actually done but also what new forms of entanglements and unruly effects such governing creates. We argue that intimate welfare landscapes organized at the scale of the neighborhood (1) entangle welfare actors in neighborhood-focused networked relationships; (2) tend to bridge, obfuscate, and dissolve boundaries between state agent and citizen and between state and society; and (3) rely heavily on affective labor and personalized relationships. We show that the reorganization of governance through neighborhood-based networks produces an unwieldy quagmire of networks and partnerships. Moreover, rather than creating self-caring communities, new welfare programs primarily draw increasing numbers into governmental roles. Finally, instead of being released from its welfare and social responsibilities, locally embedded professionals turn out to be particularly effective at bringing the welfare state back in.
This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthrop... more This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthropology. This is an increasingly critical area of study, as more than half of the world's population now lives in cities and anthropological research is increasingly done in an urban context. Exploring contemporary anthropological approaches to the urban, the authors consider: How can we define urban anthropology? What are the main themes of twenty-first century urban anthropological research? What are the possible future directions in the field? The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case studies drawn from a diverse range of urban settings in the global North and South. Accessible yet theoretically incisive, Introducing Urban Anthropology will be a valuable resource for anthropology students as well as of interest to those working in urban studies and related disciplines such as sociology and geography.
This article explores how notions of citizenship are negotiated in encounters between parents and... more This article explores how notions of citizenship are negotiated in encounters between parents and youth care professionals in Amsterdam in the context of heated debates over citizenship and belonging. We draw on ethnographic research on Egyptian migrant parents’ interactions with the welfare state, and on the work of youth care professionals. We found that both parents and professionals were invested in universal forms of citizenship. Parents wanted to be treated like their fellow citizens regardless of their background, while professionals wanted to care for all children. While parents feared and suspected that their children were subject to unfair treatment, professional practices left little space for disagreement or a consideration of racialized aspects of their encounters with clients. We conclude that notions of equal citizenship provide a primary, but uncertain ground for the elaboration of citizenship and belonging in parenting encounters, which is haunted by the spectre of ...
The intersection of race and the criminal justice system has been a longstanding topic of activis... more The intersection of race and the criminal justice system has been a longstanding topic of activism, public debate and research in the US context. In recent years, European countries have also seen a growing social and academic debate about the way racialized minorities are policed. Based on ethnographic research in Amsterdam, this article argues that in order to understand such racialized policing, we have to go beyond a narrow focus on the police itself, and instead examine the broader institutional landscape tasked with security. This institutional landscape is made up of penal and welfare actors who together enact what I call diffuse policing. Such diffuse policing envelops targeted persons and spaces in a dense web of surveillance, and disciplinary and reform interventions that are hard to escape or challenge. This article explores the cumulative effects of this dense security landscape, and argues that it produces significant inequalities among youths in Amsterdam.
In the Dutch and more broadly European context, urban policymaking has generally been studied thr... more In the Dutch and more broadly European context, urban policymaking has generally been studied through the conceptual lens of neoliberalism. While important, I argue that this neoliberal lens does not fully account for the design and impact of urban policies currently transforming cities like Amsterdam. Following Mustafa Dikec's (2007, Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics, and Urban Policy) understanding of urban policy as place-making practices that normalize particular distributions of people, authorities and spaces, I propose to focus on underlying visions of the normal and the good city that shape urban policymaking. Drawing on 18months of ethnographic research on Amsterdam's notorious Diamantbuurt, I argue that this vision is informed by neoliberalism and by racialized concerns with migrants and ethnic minorities. It entails particular classed and racialized preferences that normalize and underwrite the partial displacement that is underway in the neighbourhood.
This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthrop... more This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthropology. This is an increasingly critical area of study, as more than half of the world's population now lives in cities and anthropological research is increasingly done in an urban context. The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case studies drawn from a diverse range of urban settings in the global North and South. Accessible yet theoretically incisive, Introducing Urban Anthropology will be a valuable resource for anthropology students as well as of interest to those working in urban studies and related disciplines such as sociology and geography.
Across Europe, new welfare programs exemplify attempts to govern through community. This article ... more Across Europe, new welfare programs exemplify attempts to govern through community. This article asks how such governing through community is done in practice. Drawing on comparative insights from fieldwork with parenting support professionals and volunteers in Amsterdam, Milan, and Paris, we document not only how governing through community is actually done but also what new forms of entanglements and unruly effects such governing creates. We argue that intimate welfare landscapes organized at the scale of the neighborhood (1) entangle welfare actors in neighborhood-focused networked relationships; (2) tend to bridge, obfuscate, and dissolve boundaries between state agent and citizen and between state and society; and (3) rely heavily on affective labor and personalized relationships. We show that the reorganization of governance through neighborhood-based networks produces an unwieldy quagmire of networks and partnerships. Moreover, rather than creating self-caring communities, new welfare programs primarily draw increasing numbers into governmental roles. Finally, instead of being released from its welfare and social responsibilities, locally embedded professionals turn out to be particularly effective at bringing the welfare state back in.
This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthrop... more This book provides an up-to-date introduction to the important and growing field of urban anthropology. This is an increasingly critical area of study, as more than half of the world's population now lives in cities and anthropological research is increasingly done in an urban context. Exploring contemporary anthropological approaches to the urban, the authors consider: How can we define urban anthropology? What are the main themes of twenty-first century urban anthropological research? What are the possible future directions in the field? The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case studies drawn from a diverse range of urban settings in the global North and South. Accessible yet theoretically incisive, Introducing Urban Anthropology will be a valuable resource for anthropology students as well as of interest to those working in urban studies and related disciplines such as sociology and geography.
This article explores how notions of citizenship are negotiated in encounters between parents and... more This article explores how notions of citizenship are negotiated in encounters between parents and youth care professionals in Amsterdam in the context of heated debates over citizenship and belonging. We draw on ethnographic research on Egyptian migrant parents’ interactions with the welfare state, and on the work of youth care professionals. We found that both parents and professionals were invested in universal forms of citizenship. Parents wanted to be treated like their fellow citizens regardless of their background, while professionals wanted to care for all children. While parents feared and suspected that their children were subject to unfair treatment, professional practices left little space for disagreement or a consideration of racialized aspects of their encounters with clients. We conclude that notions of equal citizenship provide a primary, but uncertain ground for the elaboration of citizenship and belonging in parenting encounters, which is haunted by the spectre of ...
The intersection of race and the criminal justice system has been a longstanding topic of activis... more The intersection of race and the criminal justice system has been a longstanding topic of activism, public debate and research in the US context. In recent years, European countries have also seen a growing social and academic debate about the way racialized minorities are policed. Based on ethnographic research in Amsterdam, this article argues that in order to understand such racialized policing, we have to go beyond a narrow focus on the police itself, and instead examine the broader institutional landscape tasked with security. This institutional landscape is made up of penal and welfare actors who together enact what I call diffuse policing. Such diffuse policing envelops targeted persons and spaces in a dense web of surveillance, and disciplinary and reform interventions that are hard to escape or challenge. This article explores the cumulative effects of this dense security landscape, and argues that it produces significant inequalities among youths in Amsterdam.
In the Dutch and more broadly European context, urban policymaking has generally been studied thr... more In the Dutch and more broadly European context, urban policymaking has generally been studied through the conceptual lens of neoliberalism. While important, I argue that this neoliberal lens does not fully account for the design and impact of urban policies currently transforming cities like Amsterdam. Following Mustafa Dikec's (2007, Badlands of the Republic: Space, Politics, and Urban Policy) understanding of urban policy as place-making practices that normalize particular distributions of people, authorities and spaces, I propose to focus on underlying visions of the normal and the good city that shape urban policymaking. Drawing on 18months of ethnographic research on Amsterdam's notorious Diamantbuurt, I argue that this vision is informed by neoliberalism and by racialized concerns with migrants and ethnic minorities. It entails particular classed and racialized preferences that normalize and underwrite the partial displacement that is underway in the neighbourhood.
In this article I explore the seemingly contradictory notion of citizenship agendas for the abjec... more In this article I explore the seemingly contradictory notion of citizenship agendas for the abject. While abjection suggests a casting off or expulsion, citizenship implies inclusion. The youth and security policies that I argue can be read as citizenship agendas for the abject evidence this contradiction and the concomitant ambiguity. This article focuses on the workings of the ‘youth and security assemblage’ in the Amsterdam South District. This policy assemblage primarily targets ‘unruly’ young Moroccan-Dutch men from Amsterdam's notorious Diamantbuurt. In Amsterdam and elsewhere in the Netherlands, such young men have been portrayed as the ultimate troublemakers who have made urban lives unsafe and ‘terrorized’ entire neighborhoods. Through an ethnographic analysis of a public event that brought together various members of the youth and security assemblage, this article examines the tensions and organized distrust that these citizenship agendas for the abject carry within them.
New West Indian Guide / Nieuwe West-Indische Gids, 2011
This article explores the social history of Suriname’s first bauxite town, Moengo, founded in the... more This article explores the social history of Suriname’s first bauxite town, Moengo, founded in the late 1910s. It recounts the rise of a new industry that drew workers away from the plantations and urban artisanal occupations to work in a massive, highly organized and orchestrated organization-cum-social community. Using oral narratives about life in Moengo, as well as census and other statistical data, this contribution asks whether everyday life in the mining enclave echoed features of the plantation.
This special issue examines welfare programs as sites where Europe’s increasingly diverse societi... more This special issue examines welfare programs as sites where Europe’s increasingly diverse societies are being shaped and negotiated. It zooms in on parenting as a central governmental domain where concerns about, and hopes for, the future of society intersect with notions of citizenship, family care, welfare, and deservingness of public resources. In this introduction to the special issue, we draw out three paradoxical orders that shape the encounters between migrant parents and welfare actors we have studied. One is concerned with the tension between the universal and difference, the other with the re-articulation of the public and the private, and a third with irreconcilable social and institutional demands. This helps us understand how Europe’s diverse societies are being shaped on the ground, beyond the often strongly racialized, nationalist rhetoric that has come to dominate public debates.
GENEALOGIES AND POSITIONALITIES OF THINKING THE STATE
Inaugural meeting Anthropologies of the St... more GENEALOGIES AND POSITIONALITIES OF THINKING THE STATE
Inaugural meeting Anthropologies of the State network 30 October – 1 November 2019, Leiden University, the Netherlands
Network coordinators: Steffen Jensen, Morten Koch Andersen, Anouk de Koning and Martijn Koster
Call for Papers The first meeting of our EASA Anthropologies of the State network will be held in Fall 2019 in Leiden, and focuses on situated genealogies of anthropological thinking about the state. This meeting examines the embeddedness of approaches to the state in particular intellectual and everyday traditions and locations, those of the anthropologist and the sites where they work. The meeting opens with a public debate, in which we ask what anthropologists can contribute to an understanding of current political contestations over the state in political settings across the globe, particularly regarding the rise of authoritarian figures and new rightist politics. What kind of state, authority and politics do they promise? How can we understand their appeal and what forces work to counter these trends? See attachment for the full call for papers.
Panel at the 2020 EASA conference
Short abstract:
This panel aims to engage critically wit... more Panel at the 2020 EASA conference
Short abstract:
This panel aims to engage critically with the anthropology of the state literature by focusing on relational aspects of the state. Thinking of the state relationally allows us to explore the state in less normative ways and capture the boundary work needed to set the state apart from other entities.
Long abstract:
Phil Abrams and Tim Mitchells' seminal interventions, introducing a Foucauldian perspective to the study of the state, transformed political anthropology profoundly. This approach produced important and necessary insights but, at times, also reified the power of the state as a particular, almost universal instantiation of power, and more recently, neoliberalism. This panel aims to engage critically with the anthropology of the state literature by focusing on the relational aspects of the state as a way to explore the state in less normative ways. Thinking of the state relationally also draws our attention to the continuous elaboration of boundaries that sets the state apart from other entities, or, in contrast, may work to downplay such distinctions. It helps us see how, in multiple contexts, the state manifests itself as one formation among and in relation to others. Care, for example is often viewed through the lens of disciplinary power, but questions about who cares and how state officials care as representatives of the state opens up a different set of questions about affective investments and entanglements, and boundary work. Focusing on exchange relations between citizens and states and within the state itself beyond the aberration of corruption likewise opens up for thinking differently about the state. Similarly, exploring how brokerage is central to the working of states also foregrounds a relational perspective. This panel invites contributions that in these and other ways engage critically with the literature on the anthropology of the state by focusing on the relationality of state formation.
The first meeting of our EASA Anthropologies of the State network will be held in Fall 2019 in Le... more The first meeting of our EASA Anthropologies of the State network will be held in Fall 2019 in Leiden, and focuses on situated genealogies of anthropological thinking about the state. This meeting examines the embeddedness of approaches to the state in particular intellectual and everyday traditions and locations, those of the anthropologist and the sites where they work. The meeting opens with a public debate, in which we ask what anthropologists can contribute to an understanding of current political contestations over the state in political settings across the globe, particularly regarding the rise of authoritarian figures and new rightist politics. What kind of state, authority and politics do they promise? How can we understand their appeal and what forces work to counter these trends? In the following two-day workshop consisting of sessions with paper presentations, a keynote by Catherine Alexander (Durham University) and a round table discussion, we examine the specific contours of anthropological thinking about the state. We ask how the complex position and embeddedness of anthropological analyses-both of the varied and changing forms of states and various intellectual and social-historical genealogies-have shaped discussions of the state in anthropology in the last decade. And what other, differently positioned perspectives may further our understanding of states and state practices? We welcome more theoretical and reflective papers on the genealogies and positionalities of anthropological approaches to the state, as well as case discussions that demonstrate and explicate particular approaches. We hope to organize the presentations in several streams or session, some discussing regional approaches to the state, and others more comparative across such regional specificities, allowing us to reflect on similarities and differences in approaches to the state. We intend to explore possibilities for publications after the workshop.
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Books by Anouk de Koning
The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case studies drawn from a diverse range of urban settings in the global North and South. Accessible yet theoretically incisive, Introducing Urban Anthropology will be a valuable resource for anthropology students as well as of interest to those working in urban studies and related disciplines such as sociology and geography.
Papers by Anouk de Koning
The chapters cover topics such as urban mobilities, place-making and public space, production and consumption, politics and governance. These are illustrated by lively case studies drawn from a diverse range of urban settings in the global North and South. Accessible yet theoretically incisive, Introducing Urban Anthropology will be a valuable resource for anthropology students as well as of interest to those working in urban studies and related disciplines such as sociology and geography.
Issue edited by Martijn Koster, Rivke Jaffe and Anouk de Koning
Inaugural meeting Anthropologies of the State network
30 October – 1 November 2019, Leiden University, the Netherlands
Network coordinators: Steffen Jensen, Morten Koch Andersen, Anouk de Koning and Martijn Koster
Call for Papers
The first meeting of our EASA Anthropologies of the State network will be held in Fall 2019 in Leiden, and focuses on situated genealogies of anthropological thinking about the state. This
meeting examines the embeddedness of approaches to the state in particular intellectual and everyday traditions and locations, those of the anthropologist and the sites where they work.
The meeting opens with a public debate, in which we ask what anthropologists can contribute to an understanding of current political contestations over the state in political settings across the globe, particularly regarding the rise of authoritarian figures and new rightist politics. What kind of state, authority and politics do they promise? How can we understand their appeal and what forces work to counter these trends?
See attachment for the full call for papers.
Short abstract:
This panel aims to engage critically with the anthropology of the state literature by focusing on relational aspects of the state. Thinking of the state relationally allows us to explore the state in less normative ways and capture the boundary work needed to set the state apart from other entities.
Long abstract:
Phil Abrams and Tim Mitchells' seminal interventions, introducing a Foucauldian perspective to the study of the state, transformed political anthropology profoundly. This approach produced important and necessary insights but, at times, also reified the power of the state as a particular, almost universal instantiation of power, and more recently, neoliberalism. This panel aims to engage critically with the anthropology of the state literature by focusing on the relational aspects of the state as a way to explore the state in less normative ways. Thinking of the state relationally also draws our attention to the continuous elaboration of boundaries that sets the state apart from other entities, or, in contrast, may work to downplay such distinctions. It helps us see how, in multiple contexts, the state manifests itself as one formation among and in relation to others. Care, for example is often viewed through the lens of disciplinary power, but questions about who cares and how state officials care as representatives of the state opens up a different set of questions about affective investments and entanglements, and boundary work. Focusing on exchange relations between citizens and states and within the state itself beyond the aberration of corruption likewise opens up for thinking differently about the state. Similarly, exploring how brokerage is central to the working of states also foregrounds a relational perspective. This panel invites contributions that in these and other ways engage critically with the literature on the anthropology of the state by focusing on the relationality of state formation.