Citizens have responded to newcomers in the Netherlands with acts of solidarity and programmes to support integration, often in response to increasingly restrictive government policies. In a previously published study by the primary author, a critical discourse analysis was conducted of texts used in …

This article starts from the observation that popular culture resides in a contradictory space. On the one hand it seems to be thriving, in that the range of media objects that were previously studied under the rubric of popular culture has certainly expanded. Yet, cultural studies scholars rarely study …

Background Refugees encounter texts such as course books, pamphlets and exams during mandatory integration in the Netherlands. Texts present explicit or implicit messages to refugees on “successful” integration and citizenship. The What’s the Problem Represented to Be? (WPR) approach from Carol Bacchi, …

Skyler White is a protagonist in the top-ranking television series Breaking Bad. She is also one of the most hated characters on television. This paper focuses on how the character of Skyler and Anna Gunn – the actor that plays her – are turned into a ‘composite celebrity’ in audience discussions. This …

In the wake of neo-liberal informed global trends to set performance standards and intensify accountability, the Dutch government aimed for ‘raising standards for basic skills’. While the implementation of literacy standards was hardly noticed, the introduction of numeracy standards caused a major backlash …

There are approximately 250,000 Orthodox Reformed Christians (ORC) in the Netherlands, who live according to a strict adherence to the Bible. The ORC dissociate themselves from the mainstream sport discourse in the Netherlands that regards sport as a societal good. We draw on post-structural perspectives …

Inspired by taxonomist Jack Goody’s theorizing of ‘ancient lists’ as ‘intellectual technologies’, this book analyzes listing practices in modern and contemporary formations of power, and how they operate in the installation and securing of the milieus of circulation that characterize Michel Foucault’s …

Audience studies is not the vibrant field it was in its 1980s and early 1990s heyday. Cultural studies today has a more balanced interest in production, audiences and texts. A renewed focus in audience studies on everyday meaning production, identity and relations of power could benefit from recent developments. …