Denied ethnicism: on the Walloon movement in Belgium

The Walloon movement is the lesser‐known counterpart to the Flemish movement in Belgium. In contemporary political debate it presents itself, and is usually perceived, as a civic and voluntaristic movement predicated on the values of democracy, freedom, openness and anti‐nationalism. As such it is contrasted against its Flemish counterpart, which accordingly is characterised as tending towards an ethnic exclusivist form of nationalism hinging on descent, culture and language. However, the historical record behind these representations shows that the Walloon movement is rooted in ethno‐cultural as much as social politics, and that it has always contained both civic and ethnic elements to varying degrees. This article highlights the Walloon movement in order to analyse the language and national stereotypes in which national movements are characterised both in political rhetoric and in scholarly analysis. The case is particularly relevant for the problematic usage of the ‘civic–ethnic’ opposition, slipping between the discourses of antagonism and analysis; one type of such slippage is here identified as ‘denied ethnicism’.     

The IJsselcog project: from excavation to 3D reconstruction

The 15th‐century IJsselcog was lifted in 2016 from the river IJssel near Kampen (the Netherlands). From stern to bow and from starboard to portside about 70% of the original wooden hull is preserved. The combined approach of analogue documentation and photogrammetry enabled the research team to reconstruct the original ship in 2D and 3D, followed by a comprehensive study of its nautical characteristics. The hull volume and height were maximized by the shipbuilders using previously unknown construction elements in cogs, such as wales and vertical riders; shipbuilding traits that are generally applied to 16th‐ and 17th‐century carvel‐built cargo ships.     

The nation and the city: urban festivals and cultural mobilisation

This article attempts to map the relations between nation‐building processes in 19th‐century Europe and city cultures with their urban sociability. Three patterns are surveyed: [1] the modern‐national assimilation of medieval and early‐modern city cultures (sample case: Orléans and the French cult of Joan of Arc); [2] the modular replication across cities of urban festivals as cultural mobilizers (sample case: the spread of Floral Games festivals in Southern France and Northern Spain); [3] the reticulation of city‐based practices into a nationwide and nation‐building network (sample cases: the role of choral societies in German cultural nationalism; and its transnational knock‐on effect in the Baltic Provinces). By choosing the city as our social focus and placing it (or rather, its ideal‐type ‘Urbania’) alongside Gellner's ideal‐types of ‘Megalomania’ and ‘Ruritania’, we can avoid the finalism of studying regionalist and nationalist movements in the analytical framework of the post‐Versailles state system, and we gain a better understanding of the granulated, localized social basis of such movements and the translocally homogenizing role of culture.     

Decreasing house prices and household mobility: An empirical study on loss aversion and negative equity

This paper examines the effects of loss aversion and negative equity on household mobility. We stress the importance of studying these mechanisms simultaneously. By making use of a unique administrative data set of Statistics Netherlands, covering the period 2006–2011, we estimate the effects of loss aversion and negative equity. The results provide strong evidence for loss aversion, while less evidence is found for a lock‐in effect of negative equity. The results indicate that moderately underwater households do have a lower mobility, but heavily underwater households do not. Additional results indicate that the particularly high mobility of heavily underwater households is not default‐driven.     

Romanticism,music, nationalism

In manifold ways, the stylistic and performative features and evolving genre conventions of nineteenth‐century ‘classical’ music reflect the increasing grip of nationalism on cultural attitudes in Europe. Conversely, music could become an important medium for the expression and dissemination of nationalist ideals. A cross‐national, European‐wide survey of this interpenetration between musical and ideological developments is applied towards a tentative typological outline of ‘musical nationalism’.