published_or_final_version / Urban Planning and Design / Master / Master of Science in Urban Planning

Decades of burgeoning humanism, intensifying lay piety, and an increasing anticlerical sentiment, paved the way for Martin Luther's reforming message when it reached the Low Countries in 1519. As ruler of the territory, Charles V resolved to curb the spread of heterodoxy via the promulgation of a series of anti-heresy edicts. Increasing in severity throughout his reign, these edicts gradually removed the prosecution of heresy from the jurisdiction of the church, placing it squarely under the control of secular officials. The success of Charles's religious legislation was therefore contingent upon the cooperation of primarily local, secular rulers. But municipal officials and their subjects viewed Charles's anti-heresy legislation as an unwelcome encroachment on their local autonomy, and a disturbing manifestation of the emperor's centralizing ambitions. Consequently, they formed a resolute front of determined resistance to the imposition of Charles's religious policies throughout his reign. This study examines the motivations underlying this opposition, as well as the specific ways in which such resistance manifested itself.Chronologically, the study addresses the years of Charles's reign (1515-1555) and geographically, the duchy of Brabant. This region, in the southern Low Countries (the modern-day borderland of Belgium and the Netherlands) was home to some of the most important urban centers in Europe. In the chapters that follow, the major Brabantine cities of Antwerp (the most lucrative commercial metropolis of the period), Leuven (home to the Catholic university and an important center of Roman theology), and Brussels (seat, after 1531, of Charles's central administration) will be examined in terms of their role in the religious controversy of the period, and the reactions of their inhabitants to the edicts promulgated by Charles.The anti-heresy edicts of Charles V represent one of the earliest attempts of a European ruler to establish a governmental policy for treating religious difference. This examination of the responses to these legal innovations provides not only a more detailed understanding of struggles for political autonomy, but a more nuanced view of belief and heterodoxy in this crucial period in the history of the early modern Low Countries.

The aim of my thesis is to approach the specifics of current Dutch drama. First part of my paper is based on the theoretical work of Hans-Thies Lehmann, Hugo Brems and Anja Krans describing the development of drama in Netherland covering the year 1969 to the turn of the millennium. Moreover, I am focusing on the major events, trends and characteristics following this period as well as explaining the term "post-dramatic theatre ", which I closely characterize. I've been following the change of the cooperation between dramatists and theatre groups regarding contemporary drama. In the second, practical part of my work I investigate whether or not the thoughts of the above mentioned theatre scientists and theorists are valid (and if so to what extend). I have examined this on a few pieces of work of four selected Dutch dramatists (Esther Gerritsen, Rob de Graaf, Maria Goos, Gerardjan Rijnders). I shortly describe the content and identify the most significant ideas of their work. I use information obtained from studying the theoretical work, newspaper articles, reviews, interviews with the artists and even their dramas. In the conclusion of my thesis, I then gather all the knowledge obtained by readings and analysis in the practical part. Moreover, I am describing the position of the Dutch dramatists in...

This dissertation focuses on the intercultural relations between the French-speaking and Dutch-speaking world in Holland in the first half of the fifteenth century. After a turbulent war of succession between the claimants Jacqueline of Bavaria and her uncle John the Pitiless, the counties of Holland, Zeeland and Hainault were incorporated into the largely francophone Burgundian empire. It has been suggested that this event marked the end of a flourishing period of cultural production in the Dutch vernacular at the court of Holland. However, as it seems, throughout the fifteenth century translations of French texts were produced for regional and local administrators. Possibly, the Burgundian regional government of Holland, which consisted of foreign as well as indigenous noblemen, may have played an important role in the dissemination of these texts. In this thesis, the subject is addressed by means of the contextualisation of the Middle Dutch version of Jean Froissart’s Chroniques. An analysis of documentary sources suggests that the comital residence at the Hague is best characterised as a multicultural environment inhabited by both bilingual and monolingual individuals. The results of an analysis of the variant readings in the French manuscripts of the Chroniques as compared to its Dutch counterpart show that the French manuscript which served as a model for the translation was probably produced between 1410 and 1418 by the Parisian libraire Pierre de Liffol. A comparison of the translated and original text shows that the translator wants to provide his readership with a text that is optimally intelligible and relevant to their context. Gerijt Potter’s modifications show that his intended audience was familiar with the habits of European courts and had a considerable geographical horizon. Because of the presence of doublets, repetitions and French loans, Potter’s style of writing resembles the official style of the comital chancery. However, a similar style is also found in other late fourteenth and early fifteenth-century translations. In The Hague the translation was probably dispersed (be it on a small scale) among members of the council and their contacts among the high nobility of Holland. Through the intensive contact between the regional councillors and members of local administration, the translation of the Chroniques became available to an audience in the cities.

In this thesis, I seek to advance our knowledge about the factors that make people start and stop volunteer work, thus shedding light on the capacity of volunteering and voluntary associations to foster social cohesion. In particular, my goal is twofold: first, to reveal to what extent voluntary associations function as meeting places for people from different social backgrounds, and second, to assess the resilience of civic participation in the face of labor market experiences that might undermine such engagement. I make three core contributions to the literature on voluntary association involvement. First, I pay special attention to the organizational contexts in which volunteers are embedded. Second, I adopt a dynamic approach, analyzing decisions to start and stop volunteering. Third, I attempt to disentangle alternative mechanisms that could drive the associations observed between volunteering and its potential determinants. Analyzing data from The Netherlands and the United States, my findings expose limits to the integrative capacity of voluntary association involvement. As it turns out, the civic landscape is strongly segregated. People tend to sort into voluntary associations where they mostly meet people with similar characteristics as themselves. Such sorting occurs along multiple social dimensions, including educational attainment, religiosity, gender, and ethnicity. This constrains the opportunities for building relationships that cut across existing social boundaries. Indeed, these sorting processes can reproduce in the civic domain fault lines that dominate other spheres of life. Furthermore, civic engagement and participation in the labor market are shown to be strongly intertwined, with the former breaking down when labor force exits occur. Voluntary association involvement is, therefore, of limited value for drawing labor force outsiders into public life. However, this chain of events does not necessarily unfold, as long as labor force outsiders retain aspirations to participate in social life.

No description available.

A comparative history of the development of palliative care services and policies in England and the Netherlands during the post-war period is presented in this thesis. These countries were chosen as England is the country where the modern hospice movement started, whereas a different set of services developed in the Netherlands. Examples of questions addressed are why the service developments in these two countries differed substantially and how specialist services for the dying related to the health care system. Given the choice to study England and the Netherlands, attention had to be paid to the impact of the acceptance or rejection of euthanasia on the development of palliative care as well. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the thesis and its aims. It also includes a literature review and elaborates on the comparative research approach chosen. Chapter 2 discusses the development of palliative care services and policies in England. The main topics addressed are the establishment, expansion, and diversification of palliative care services by the voluntary sector and the governmental policies that led to an increasingly close connection between these voluntary organisations and the National Health Service. Chapter 3 is an intermezzo that discusses the main characteristics and developments of the health care system in the Netherlands. Chapter 4 considers the role of nursing homes in the development of palliative care in the Netherlands. It is concluded that these institutions cannot be considered the equivalent of the English hospices. Moreover, two projects to improve care for the dying and their attempts to obtain public funding are discussed. Chapter 5 focuses on various models for specialised services for the dying that were developed in the Netherlands during the 1980s and early 1990s. Major differences with the English hospice based model of palliative care existed as volunteers had a central role in providing palliative care in the Netherlands. Moreover, the Dutch government aimed to develop palliative care as a generalism rather than the specialism that it became in England. Chapter 6 covers the period from the mid 1990s to the present. The policy programme that the Dutch government initiated because of the imminent legalisation of euthanasia, and its impact on palliative care are the main topics. Conclusions, illustrations of the policy relevance of these histories, and suggestions for further research are presented in the final chapter.

This thesis assesses the extent of social isolation experienced by Dutch and British ‘children of the red flag', i.e. people who grew up in communist families during the Cold War. This study is a comparative research and focuses on the political and non-political aspects of the communist movement. By collating the existing body of biographical research and prosopographical literature with oral testimonies this thesis sets out to build a balanced picture of the British and Dutch communist movement. The study is divided into two parts. Part I discusses the political life of communists within the wider context of the history of British and Dutch communist organizations (i.e. both communist parties and their youth organizations) from 1901-1970. Part II discusses the private and public life of British and Dutch communists in the period 1940-1970. The latter draws upon oral testimonies and questions if non-political aspects of communist life were based on a Soviet model. The experiences of communist children are explored into detail within the context of the following topics; political and cultural upbringing, prescription and aspirations, neighbourhood, school & education, work & employment, money & poverty and friendships & relationships. The interviews are being used as a means of testing the accuracy of two authors in particular; Jolande Withuis and Raphael Samuel, who both published pioneering works on communist mentality. The originality of this project rests in its approach; it is a comparative research inspired by both oral history and memory studies. Instead of emphasizing the idea of a unified and centralized (international) communist movement, this thesis argues that cultural, social and political differences between Britain and the Netherlands fundamentally influenced the nature and form of their respective communist movement and explain the discrepancy between the Dutch and British respondents' experiences. Applying the comparative approach this study challenges the existing definitions of communist identity and as such it contributes to recent comparative studies of the communist movement as well as studies of communist mentality.

This dissertation is an ethnographic analysis of Russian-speaking migrants in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in the context of European Union incorporation of Eastern European states, internal E.U. integration, and increasing surveillance of the E.U. outer borders. I investigate how these processes are causing Europeans to redeploy ideas of Eastern Europe as a cultural and political "other." European Union integration of individual countries' economies, governance, and national identities has not been a straightforward process. European Union and individual states reinvent their national identities by defending their geographic, cultural, social, and economic borders against Eastern and Southern "others." However, the discourses and policies relating to Eastern Europeans and other migrants result in adverse social and economic conditions for them in The Netherlands. My analysis is based on a total of fourteen months of ethnographic research with Russian-speaking artists, architects, sex-workers, street sellers, homeless people, businessmen, and scientists from the former-Soviet States in the Netherlands from 2001 to 2003. I found that most of these individuals faced some social exclusion in the Netherlands based on their identity as "Eastern Europeans," "migrants," and "newcomers." Dutch society has long been known as one of the most "tolerant" in Europe with its emphasis on human rights, support of development projects around the globe, generous social benefits for its population, and pragmatic attitude toward drug use and prostitution. However, the combination of the European Union's eastern expansion, post-September 11 fears of Islamic terrorism, history of East/West relationships, and recent growth of migration to the Netherlands have all tested Dutch tolerance. Eastern Europeans in the Netherlands exist in a liminal position; they may at times be marginalized because of stereotypes about them but they may also be "tolerated" when they follow Dutch cultural practices and do not become an economic burden to the Dutch state. Contrary to Dutch and European stereotypes, migrants are not necessarily poverty-stricken and many choose to migrate to the Netherlands because of personal connections or an interest in Dutch society. Ultimately, Russian-speakers' experiences of belonging (and not belonging) highlight the constructed nature of such notions as "Europe," "Western," "Dutch," and "cultural integration."

Throughout history the penal system has been viewed as the paramount means of dealing with criminals, though its function has transformed throughout time. It has served as a pit for detaining suspected criminals, a home for the vagrant, an institution for the insane, a dreaded place of repute, quarters for cleansing and renewal, and an establishment of cataloged charges. The trials and transformations of history have developed and shaped the institution that we recognize today. Presently, the United States prison population far exceeds that of any other country in the world. The political climate, tough on crime policies, determinate sentencing, and increasing cost of prisons have significantly increased numbers of various offenders in prisons and generated lengthy prison sentences; creating a proliferating annual prison population and a depletion of resources. As a result, this practice of essentially cataloging mass amounts of inmates appears to have resulted in a system whose practices, financial situation, depleting amount of resources and ultimately the inability achieve rehabilitation has resulted in a system accomplishing only incapacitation. However, other nations have created prison models that appear more successful, managing to lower prison populations while simultaneously lower crime rates. Comparing the United States to the Netherlands and Germany, countries that have been successful in these to lower prison populations while simultaneously lower crime rates, provides an opportunity for uncovering potential advantageous practices.