Ethnologia Europaea

The relation of the Dutch people towards their monarchy has always been ambiguous. The celebration of the monarch’s birthday has become a festive and massive expression of Orangeism, turning the event into a national feast day for all. The celebration is, however, characterized by a certain suspension of rules (“freemarkets”) and brings up forms of social inversion und charivaresque behaviour towards the House of Orange. This contribution examines to what extent this seemingly uncritical expression of contemporary Orangeism can be interpreted as a temporary symbolic “mobocracy” that helps to reconcile the nation’s republican traditions and strive for modernity with an anachronistic monarchical system.1

In a world increasingly challenged by neoliberal restructurings of labour markets within the global economy, labour organisation is continuously challenged. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Polish construction workers in Denmark, both at their place of work and in their homes in Denmark and Poland, this article traces the objective of creating “orderly working conditions” at insecure and temporary workplaces. The relational analysis – going into work organisation and work/family dynamics – shows how “Polishness” is used as a brand (that the unions need to adjust to) connoting flexibility and availability, and that the composition of the migrant family significantly impacts how migratory practices are made feasible and desirable.

Building on ethnographic work with German recreational cyclists, this paper analyzes competitive motives in hobby races and training. Laying open the construction of non-competitive recreational sports as part of the dichotomy between work and leisure, the analysis turns to competitive stimuli in performative experience and examines their effects. These range from short-term efforts in races and group rides to the structuring of training and race schedules. Looking at how motives fluctuate between different layers of competitiveness, three main developments and currents influencing road cycling are observed: the popularity and possibility of big urban events, the increase of quantification, the transparency and availability of data and knowledge, and the permeability of life worlds to competitive norms.

Building on an ethnographic study of older men playing billiards at an activity centre as well as document analysis of how the concept of activity has changed during the last sixty years, this article argues that active ageing policies have overlooked that activities are culturally significant forms of practice situated in socio-material collectives. Active ageing policies create a hierarchy amongst activities, wherein constant physical activity is at the core of a healthy old age. But in billiards, activity and passivity are meticulously composed into a rhythm that enables the players to engage for hours and that thus produces a collective practice. The article concludes that activity and passivity are entangled, and a game such as billiards contains qualities that could be translated into a revised active ageing policy.

The idea of a transnational cultural heritage has become topical in Europe because of the new EU heritage initiatives, such as the European Heritage Label scheme. Even though the scheme is administered at the European level, its implementation is transferred to heritage agents in the countries participating in the initiative. How do the heritage agents narrate the labeled heritage sites as European? Using the method of narrative analysis, this article identifies six key strategies of making sense of a European cultural heritage. Even though the scheme includes certain frameworks in which the heritage agents have to interpret and narrate the sites as European, it enables them to interpret the idea of Europe in their own way – and thus use their power to define a European identity.