Book Description

Disorder and order are among the principles through which the articles in this issue are connected. Peter Jan Margry grasps the exuberant excesses surrounding the Dutch monarch’s birthday with the term “mobocracy” and sees in the suspension of rules a means to reconcile Dutch republicanism with the anachronism of a monarchical system. Ongoing disorder of a rather different nature is experienced by migrant workers from Poland in Denmark. Niels Jul Nielsen and Marie Sandberg accompany them at work and in their different home settings and analyse the divergent interplay of the Polish labour niche and family dynamics on different constructions of “orderly work conditions”. Stefan Groth uncovers the structuring power of new tools and events to measure performance in recreational cycling; competitive norms are shown to permeate a leisure activity. Old age, too, is not free from the structuring arm of social and health regimes. Through his analysis of billiards – a game favoured by the older men he studies – Aske Juul Lassen critiques aging policies striving to “activate” the elderly and overlooking the rhythms inherent to a traditional game – and activity. The issue concludes with Tuuli Lähdesmäki’s comparison of how local heritage actors choose to narrate the transnationally launched European Heritage Label. Within an initiative to foster Europeanization, she finds actors formulating European identities in different moulds.