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Dick Houtman

Biographic Data

ID100607
NAMEDick Houtman
GIVEN NAMESDick
FAMILY NAMEHoutman
SIGNATUREHOUTMAN D
AFFILIATIONSKU Leuven
ORCID0000-0002-4151-0125
VERIFIEDYes
TOTAL WORKS61
TOTAL CITATIONS847
AUTHOR COUNT60
EDITOR COUNT1
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1992
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2025
H-INDEX13
  • The Good, the Bad, and the Unsustainable

    Maddalena Simeon, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Food Culture & Society•2025•References: 10

    status: Published online

  • Do ‘spiritual’ self-identifications signify affinity with New Age religion? Survey evidence from the Netherlands

    Paul Tromp, Anna Ple et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Contemporary Religion•2024•References: 5

    sponsorship: This research was supported by KU Leuven (grant number 3H160220) as part of thefirstauthor's PhD project on religious decline and religious change in Western-Europe. (KU Leuven|3H160220)

  • The specter of authenticity

    Open Access•G Watts, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•History of the Human Sciences•2024•References: 18

    In a long-forgotten essay, Alvin Gouldner defended the distinctive contributions of Romantic social science. Today, half a century later, very few would risk making a similar plea. Owing to its deconstruction, the discourse of Romanticism has increasingly fallen out of favor in the social sciences, meaning social scientists have progressively come to see Romanticism as less a resource for critique than a bourgeois ideology warranting critical scr…

  • Prophets, puppets, and pinheads

    Open Access•Jolan Urkens, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Public Understanding of Science•2023

    This article studies resemblances between academic postmodernism and today’s popular contestations of the authority of science by means of a qualitative content analysis of 657 critical online comments on a Belgian newspaper article about the COVID-19 crisis that features a prominent Belgian virologist. The comments portray scientists as (1) prophets who pretend their knowledge to be superior to competing understandings of the world; (2) puppets …

  • Purification or Pollution? The Debate over ‘Workplace Spirituality’

    Open Access•G Watts, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Cultural Sociology•2023

    The commentary on ‘workplace spirituality’ is deeply polarized. Among advocates, the integration of spirituality and work is hailed as the ultimate cure-all for the problems facing the modern work organization. Conversely, critics see it as yet another form of capitalist appropriation. This article advances a neo-Durkheimian cultural sociological analysis of these polarized responses. Proponents espouse a schema of purification, which holds that …

  • Toward electoral (ir)relevance of moral traditionalism? Religious decline and voting in Western Europe (1981–2017)

    Open Access•Anna Ple, Paul Tromp et al.•ARTICLE•Politics and Religion•2023•Cited by: 1•References: 52

    This article tests two contrasting hypotheses about changes in the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism–progressiveness, which pertains to attitudes toward matters of procreation, sexuality, and family and gender roles. While the “cultural turn” literature expects the electoral relevance of moral traditionalism to increase over time alongside that of all other cultural issues, studies inspired by secularization theory rather predict a decr…

  • Religious and secular value divides in Western Europe

    Open Access•Anna Ple, Paul Tromp et al.•ARTICLE•International Political Science…•2023•Cited by: 5•References: 37

    Studies on cultural divisions in Western European politics typically combine two different value divides. The first divide is moral traditionalism versus progressiveness, which pits the religious and the secular against each other on matters of procreation, family and gender roles. The second one is authoritarianism versus libertarianism, which captures the opposition between the high- and low-educated about basically secular attitudes towards ma…

  • The spiritual turn and the disenchantment of the world

    Open Access•G Watts, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•The Sociological Review•2023•Cited by: 6•References: 54

    There is little question that organized religion as embodied in the Christian churches has not fared well in recent decades. Yet, precisely the period when the decline of organized religion hit its stride - the 1960s and 1970s - also witnessed the rise of what Ernst Troeltsch referred to as 'mystic religion', only now it goes by 'spirituality'. Indeed, recent empirical studies suggest that, in addition to secularization, we are also witnessing a …

  • A Smaller Pie with a Different Taste

    Open Access•Paul Tromp, Anna Ple et al.•ARTICLE•Review of Religious Research•2022•Cited by: 1•References: 10

    Background The thesis of religious decline, central to secularization theory, has become massively contested among social-scientific students of religion. Its critics observe not so much decline, but rather change in the religious landscape of Western Europe, in effect pointing out that the decline of Christianity's traditional institutional, doctrinal and ritual dimensions should not be mistaken for a decline of religion tout court. Purpose In t…

  • Stage fright and romanticism in Il Giro del Mondo

    Open Access•F Cerchiaro, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Annals of Tourism Research•2021•Cited by: 3•References: 27

  • New Age Movement

    Dick Houtman•CHAPTER•The Sage Encyclopedia of the…•2020

    status: Published

  • Class

    Dick Houtman•CHAPTER•The Sage Encyclopedia of the…•2020

  • The “New” Cultural Cleavage in Western Europe

    Open Access•Anna Ple, Paul Tromp et al.•ARTICLE•Politics and Religion•2020•Cited by: 11•References: 32

    Moral traditionalism versus progressiveness and secular authoritarianism versus libertarianism are often understood as central to the same “new” cultural cleavage in politics. Despite the often-found sizable correlations between these two cultural value divides, the present paper theorizes that this relationship is not a cross-contextual constant, but rather a specific feature of secularized contexts where moral traditionalism is relatively margi…

  • Believing without Belonging’ in Twenty European Countries (1981–2008) De-institutionalization of Christianity or Spiritualization of Religion

    Open Access•Paul Tromp, Anna Ple et al.•ARTICLE•Review of Religious Research•2020•Cited by: 6•References: 44

    Extending and building on previous work on the merits of Grace Davie's theory about ‘believing without belonging’, this paper offers a comparative analysis of changes in the relationships between ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’ across countries. In doing so, two renditions of the theory that co-exist in Grace Davie's work are distinguished, i.e., the typically foregrounded version about a de- institutionalization of Christianity and its often unnotic…

  • Materiality and the Study of Religion

    Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Material Religion•2019

    status: Published

  • Buildings and Bibles Between Profanization and Sacralization

    Anneke Pons-De Wit, Dick Houtman et al.•ARTICLE•Material Religion•2019•Cited by: 3•References: 26

    Based on an ethnographic case study of three recently erected church buildings in the Dutch Bible Belt, this article demonstrates how orthodox Reformed congregations in the Netherlands define church buildings-especially the auditoria-and bibles as simultaneously profane and mediating the sacred. These at first glance ambivalent discourses are informed by a particular semiotic ideology, which maintains that material spaces and objects like these a…

  • The naked truth

    Liza Cortois, Stef Aupers et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Contemporary Religion•2018•Cited by: 2•References: 11

    To arrive at an understanding of what drives the much debated spiritual turn in Western Europe, we study the spiritual trajectories and identifications of mindfulness practitioners in the formerly predominantly Roman Catholic context of Flanders in Belgium. Fifteen semi-structured interviews addressed their religious and spiritual biographical trajectories as well as the symbolic boundaries they draw with adjacent religious and spiritual groups. …

  • Religious polarization

    Egbert Ribberink, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Contemporary Religion•2018•Cited by: 13•References: 29

    In light of recent claims about increasing religious polarization in secularized countries, we study the extent to which the non-religious contest religion in Western European countries and whether and how the Protestant and Catholic heritage of these countries plays a role in this. Analyzing data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 1998 and 2008) data by means of multilevel analysis, we demonstrate that religious polarization is s…

  • Farewell to the Leftist Working Class

    Dick Houtman, P Achterberg et al.•BOOK•Farewell to the Leftist Working…•2017•Cited by: 14

    Social conflicts and voting patterns in Western nations indicate a gradual erosion of working-class support for the left, a process that class theory itself cannot adequately explain. Farewell to the Leftist Working Class aims to fill this gap by developing, testing, and confirming an alternative explanation of rightist tendencies among the underprivileged. The authors argue that cultural issues revolving around individual liberty and maintenance…

  • Class and Politics in Contemporary Social Science

    Dick Houtman•BOOK•Class and Politics in Contemporary…•2017

    Dick Houtman argues that neither authoritarianism nor libertarianism can be explained by class or economic background, but rather by position in the cultural domain-- what he calls cultural capital. Although he examines all of the statistics and arguments of the conventional approaches with care and concern, Houtman convincingly demonstrates that the conclusions drawn from earlier studies are untenable at a more general theoretical level. Despite…

  • Why there is less supportive evidence for contact theory than they say there is

    Open Access•K Manevska, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•American Journal of Cultural…•2017•Cited by: 5•References: 39

  • Secular Tolerance? Anti‐Muslim Sentiment in Western Europe

    Open Access•Egbert Ribberink, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2017•Cited by: 15•References: 40

    The literature about secularization proposes two distinct explanations of anti‐Muslim sentiment in secularized societies. The first theory understands it in terms of religious competition between Muslims and the remaining minority of orthodox Protestants; the second understands it as resulting from value conflicts between Muslims and the nonreligious majority. The two theories are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of the European Values St…

  • Paradoxes of Individualization

    Dick Houtman, Stef Aupers et al.•BOOK•Paradoxes of Individualization•2016

    Paradoxes of Individualization addresses one of the most hotly debated issues in contemporary sociology: whether a process of individualization is liberating selves from society so as to make them the authors of their personal biographies. The book adopts a cultural-sociological approach that firmly rejects such a notion of individualization as naïve. The process is instead conceptualized as an increasing social significance of moral notions of i…

  • Paradoxes of Individualization

    Dick Houtman, Stef Aupers et al.•BOOK•Paradoxes of Individualization•2016

  • A necessary evil that does not "really" cure disease

    Open Access•Nadine Raaphorst, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Health An Interdisciplinary…•2016•References: 35

    Against the background of studies about the domestication of complementary and alternative medicine into biomedical settings, this article studies how biomedicine is integrated into holistic settings. Data from 19 in-depth interviews with Dutch holistic general practitioners who combine complementary and alternative medicine with conventional treatments demonstrate that they do not believe that conventional biomedicine 'really' cures patients. Th…

Next
  • The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition

    Open Access•Dick Houtman, Stef Auper et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2007•Cited by: 140•References: 20

    This article uses data from the World Values Survey to study the spread of post-Christian spirituality ('New Age') in 14 Western countries (1981-2000, N = 61,352). It demonstrates that this type of spirituality, characterized by a sacralization of the self, has become more widespread during the period 1981-2000 in most of these countries. It has advanced farthest in France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden. This spiritual turn proves a …

  • Some are more equal than others’

    Open Access•Jeroen Van Der Waal, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of European Social Policy•2010•Cited by: 105•References: 38

    Various studies have demonstrated that while the lower educated support economic redistribution more than the higher educated do, they nonetheless dislike welfare support for immigrants more strongly. This paper aims to explain this remarkably particularistic application of the principle of economic egalitarianism (‘welfare chauvinism’) by testing three theories by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population ( N = 1972). The first…

  • Class Is Not Dead-It Has Been Buried Alive

    Open Access•Jeroen Van Der Waal, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Latin American Politics and Society•2007•Cited by: 104•References: 26

    By means of a reanalysis of the most relevant data source-the International Social Mobility and Politics File-this article criticizes the newly grown consensus in political sociology that class voting has declined since World War II. An increase in crosscutting cultural voting, rooted in educational differences rather than a decline in class voting, proves responsible for the decline of traditional class-party alignments. Moreover, income differe…

  • Beyond the Spiritual Supermarket

    Stef Auper, Stef Aupers et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Contemporary Religion•2006•Cited by: 80•References: 7

    This article argues that New Age spirituality is substantially less unambiguously individualistic and more socially and publicly significant than today's sociological consensus acknowledges. Firstly, an uncontested doctrine of self-spirituality, characterised by sacralisation of the self and demonisation of social institutions, provides the spiritual milieu with ideological coherence and paradoxically accounts for its overwhelming diversity. Seco…

  • Why Do Churches Become Empty, While New Age Grows? Secularization and Religious Change in the Netherlands

    Open Access•Dick Houtman, Peter Mascini•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2002•Cited by: 59•References: 8

    Research from the Netherlands has pointed out that the increased popularity of New Age since the 1960s by no means compensates for the dramatic decline of the Christian churches. From a theoretical point of view, however, it is more important to study why those remarkably divergent developments have occurred in the first place. This article does this by analyzing survey data collected among the Dutch population at large in 1998, focusing on a com…

  • Why do so many people vote ‘unnaturally’? A cultural explanation for voting behaviour

    Open Access•P Achterberg, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•European Journal of Political…•2006•Cited by: 47•References: 26

    The traditional class approach to politics maintains that the working class ‘naturally’ votes for left‐wing parties because they represent its economic interests. Such traditional voting patterns have, however, become less typical, giving rise to the ‘Death of Class Debate’ in political sociology. Against this background, using data collected in the Netherlands in 1997, this article examines why so many people, working and middle class alike, vot…

  • Ideologically Illogical? Why Do the Lower-Educated Dutch Display so Little Value Coherence

    P Achterberg, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Social Forces•2009•Cited by: 38

    In studies of mass ideology, it is often found that political values are ordered two-dimensionally among the public at large. In a first economic dimension, equality is contested; in a second cultural one, individual freedom is contested. While this general rule of two-dimensionality applies to the public at large, there are large differences between educational categories. While two-dimensionality is found for the lower educated, the higher educ…

  • Two of a Kind

    P Achterberg, Dick Houtman et al.•ARTICLE•Public Opinion Quarterly•2011•Cited by: 28•References: 26

    The literature on welfare state legitimacy generally views economic egalitarianism and support for the welfare state as closely related phenomena that can be measured by means of scales that are considered highly interchangeable. This research note argues that economic egalitarianism does not necessarily coincide with support for the welfare state. Moreover, our findings point out that, especially among those with the lowest levels of education, …

  • A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West

    Open Access•P Achterberg, Dick Houtman et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2009•Cited by: 25•References: 28

    Analysis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data collected in 18 Western countries in 1998 demonstrates that Christian desires for a public role of religion are strongest in countries where Christian religiosity is numerically most marginal. Moreover, Dutch data covering the period 1970-1996 confirm that the decline of the number of Christians in the Netherlands has been coincided by a strengthening of the call for public religion amon…

  • Lipset and “working-class” authoritarianism

    Open Access•Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•The American Sociologist•2003•Cited by: 20•References: 37

  • The Rise of the Penal State

    Willem De Koster, Jeroen Van Der Waal et al.•ARTICLE•The British Journal of Criminology•2008•Cited by: 18•References: 12

    Journal Article The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalization or New Political Culture? Get access Willem de Koster, Willem de Koster * *Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands; [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jeroen van der Waal, Jeroen van der Waal Search for other works by this author on: Ox…

  • Secular Tolerance? Anti‐Muslim Sentiment in Western Europe

    Open Access•Egbert Ribberink, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2017•Cited by: 15•References: 40

    The literature about secularization proposes two distinct explanations of anti‐Muslim sentiment in secularized societies. The first theory understands it in terms of religious competition between Muslims and the remaining minority of orthodox Protestants; the second understands it as resulting from value conflicts between Muslims and the nonreligious majority. The two theories are tested by means of a multilevel analysis of the European Values St…

  • Farewell to the Leftist Working Class

    Dick Houtman, P Achterberg et al.•BOOK•Farewell to the Leftist Working…•2017•Cited by: 14

    Social conflicts and voting patterns in Western nations indicate a gradual erosion of working-class support for the left, a process that class theory itself cannot adequately explain. Farewell to the Leftist Working Class aims to fill this gap by developing, testing, and confirming an alternative explanation of rightist tendencies among the underprivileged. The authors argue that cultural issues revolving around individual liberty and maintenance…

  • Religious polarization

    Egbert Ribberink, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Contemporary Religion•2018•Cited by: 13•References: 29

    In light of recent claims about increasing religious polarization in secularized countries, we study the extent to which the non-religious contest religion in Western European countries and whether and how the Protestant and Catholic heritage of these countries plays a role in this. Analyzing data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP 1998 and 2008) data by means of multilevel analysis, we demonstrate that religious polarization is s…

  • Deprivatization of Disbelief

    Open Access•Egbert Ribberink, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Politics and Religion•2013•Cited by: 13•References: 26

    This article aims to move beyond media discourse about “new atheism” by mapping and explaining anti-religious zeal among the public at large in 14 Western European countries. We analyze data from the International Social Survey Program, Religion III, 2008, to test two theories about how country-level religiousness affects anti-religiosity and its social bases: a theory of rationalization and a theory of deprivatization of disbelief. Hypotheses de…

  • A Cultural Globalization of Popular Music? American, Dutch, French, and German Popular Music Charts (1965 to 2006)

    Open Access•P Achterberg, J Heilbron et al.•ARTICLE•American Behavioral Scientist•2011•Cited by: 12•References: 28

    In this article, the authors address the question of whether and how the appreciation of popular music consumers has globalized in the four decades since the mid-1960s. They use information from American, Dutch, French, and German popular music charts from 1965 through 2006. They find no corroboration for an overall trend toward an internationalization of hits. However, important shifts are noticeable underneath the surface. For the period up unt…

  • The “New” Cultural Cleavage in Western Europe

    Open Access•Anna Ple, Paul Tromp et al.•ARTICLE•Politics and Religion•2020•Cited by: 11•References: 32

    Moral traditionalism versus progressiveness and secular authoritarianism versus libertarianism are often understood as central to the same “new” cultural cleavage in politics. Despite the often-found sizable correlations between these two cultural value divides, the present paper theorizes that this relationship is not a cross-contextual constant, but rather a specific feature of secularized contexts where moral traditionalism is relatively margi…

  • Tolerance in the Postindustrial City

    Open Access•Jeroen Van Der Waal, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Urban Affairs Review•2011•Cited by: 10•References: 60

    This article studies whether and why less educated natives are less ethnocentric in postindustrial Dutch cities than in industrial ones, as suggested by several theories in urban studies. A multilevel analysis of survey data collected among the native working populations (source: Cultural Change in the Netherlands Surveys 2004 and 2006) of 22 Dutch metropolitan agglomerations (sources: Statistics Netherlands Statline and Atlas of Municipalities) …

  • Neoliberalism and work-related risks

    Peter Mascini, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Risk Research•2013•Cited by: 9•References: 15

    Based on a representative sample of the Dutch population (N = 2467), we test four hypotheses about how utilitarian individualism influences the responsibilization of work-related risks (i.e. the risk of dropping out of work because of unemployment, disability, or sickness). The risk society hypothesis understands utilitarian individualism as a laissez-faire ideological orientation and assumes it to lead to individual responsibilization. The blame…

  • Rehabilitation and Repression

    Peter Mascini, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•The British Journal of Criminology•2006•Cited by: 9•References: 28

    For over a century, scholars and practitioners have assumed rehabilitation stands as the progressive opposite of repression. Elaborating on previous warnings and anomalous findings, a representative survey of the Dutch population (N = 1,892) points out that this received view is flawed. When measured separately, no significant correlation exists between support for rehabilitation and support for repression, rehabilitation is equally popular among…

  • Game over? Negotiating modern capitalism in virtual game worlds

    Open Access•J Harambam, Stef Aupers et al.•ARTICLE•European Journal of Cultural…•2011•Cited by: 8•References: 9

    Johan Huizinga’s claim that commercialization threatens the self-enclosed ‘magic circle’ of free play still permeates many contemporary games studies. Critiquing such generalizing and essentialistic assumptions, this article distinguishes four different ‘orders of commercialization’ that impinge on online game worlds and studies empirically how each of these is evaluated and negotiated by players themselves. Based on an analysis of World of Warcr…

  • State of Disgrace

    Roy Kemmers, Stef Auper et al.•ARTICLE•Parliamentary Affairs•2015•Cited by: 7•References: 18

    While it is widely acknowledged that politics and politicians have fallen from grace among large parts of the public in western democracies, it is less clear what the latter’s political discontents are about. To find out, we performed an interpretative content analysis of the letters to the editor of the largest popular Dutch newspaper in the 2000s (2000–2009). \n \nIt yielded three empirically grounded discourses of political discontents about ‘…

  • Christian Religiosity and New Age Spirituality

    Open Access•Dick Houtman, Stef Auper et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2009•Cited by: 7•References: 12

    sponsorship: The authors thank Roy Kemmers for this research assistance

  • The spiritual turn and the disenchantment of the world

    Open Access•G Watts, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•The Sociological Review•2023•Cited by: 6•References: 54

    There is little question that organized religion as embodied in the Christian churches has not fared well in recent decades. Yet, precisely the period when the decline of organized religion hit its stride - the 1960s and 1970s - also witnessed the rise of what Ernst Troeltsch referred to as 'mystic religion', only now it goes by 'spirituality'. Indeed, recent empirical studies suggest that, in addition to secularization, we are also witnessing a …

  • Believing without Belonging’ in Twenty European Countries (1981–2008) De-institutionalization of Christianity or Spiritualization of Religion

    Open Access•Paul Tromp, Anna Ple et al.•ARTICLE•Review of Religious Research•2020•Cited by: 6•References: 44

    Extending and building on previous work on the merits of Grace Davie's theory about ‘believing without belonging’, this paper offers a comparative analysis of changes in the relationships between ‘believing’ and ‘belonging’ across countries. In doing so, two renditions of the theory that co-exist in Grace Davie's work are distinguished, i.e., the typically foregrounded version about a de- institutionalization of Christianity and its often unnotic…

  • Citizenship and social justice

    Open Access•Ton Bernts, Leo D''Anjou et al.•ARTICLE•Social Justice Research•1992•Cited by: 2•References: 33

  • Welfare state, unemployment, and social justice

    Open Access•Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Social Justice Research•1997•Cited by: 6•References: 32

  • Why Do Churches Become Empty, While New Age Grows? Secularization and Religious Change in the Netherlands

    Open Access•Dick Houtman, Peter Mascini•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2002•Cited by: 59•References: 8

    Research from the Netherlands has pointed out that the increased popularity of New Age since the 1960s by no means compensates for the dramatic decline of the Christian churches. From a theoretical point of view, however, it is more important to study why those remarkably divergent developments have occurred in the first place. This article does this by analyzing survey data collected among the Dutch population at large in 1998, focusing on a com…

  • Lipset and “working-class” authoritarianism

    Open Access•Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•The American Sociologist•2003•Cited by: 20•References: 37

  • Class and Politics in Contemporary Social Science

    Dick Houtman•BOOK•Lirias (KU Leuven•2004

  • Rehabilitation and Repression

    Peter Mascini, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•The British Journal of Criminology•2006•Cited by: 9•References: 28

    For over a century, scholars and practitioners have assumed rehabilitation stands as the progressive opposite of repression. Elaborating on previous warnings and anomalous findings, a representative survey of the Dutch population (N = 1,892) points out that this received view is flawed. When measured separately, no significant correlation exists between support for rehabilitation and support for repression, rehabilitation is equally popular among…

  • Why do so many people vote ‘unnaturally’? A cultural explanation for voting behaviour

    Open Access•P Achterberg, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•European Journal of Political…•2006•Cited by: 47•References: 26

    The traditional class approach to politics maintains that the working class ‘naturally’ votes for left‐wing parties because they represent its economic interests. Such traditional voting patterns have, however, become less typical, giving rise to the ‘Death of Class Debate’ in political sociology. Against this background, using data collected in the Netherlands in 1997, this article examines why so many people, working and middle class alike, vot…

  • Beyond the Spiritual Supermarket

    Stef Auper, Stef Aupers et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Contemporary Religion•2006•Cited by: 80•References: 7

    This article argues that New Age spirituality is substantially less unambiguously individualistic and more socially and publicly significant than today's sociological consensus acknowledges. Firstly, an uncontested doctrine of self-spirituality, characterised by sacralisation of the self and demonisation of social institutions, provides the spiritual milieu with ideological coherence and paradoxically accounts for its overwhelming diversity. Seco…

  • Class Is Not Dead-It Has Been Buried Alive

    Open Access•Jeroen Van Der Waal, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Latin American Politics and Society•2007•Cited by: 104•References: 26

    By means of a reanalysis of the most relevant data source-the International Social Mobility and Politics File-this article criticizes the newly grown consensus in political sociology that class voting has declined since World War II. An increase in crosscutting cultural voting, rooted in educational differences rather than a decline in class voting, proves responsible for the decline of traditional class-party alignments. Moreover, income differe…

  • The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition

    Open Access•Dick Houtman, Stef Auper et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2007•Cited by: 140•References: 20

    This article uses data from the World Values Survey to study the spread of post-Christian spirituality ('New Age') in 14 Western countries (1981-2000, N = 61,352). It demonstrates that this type of spirituality, characterized by a sacralization of the self, has become more widespread during the period 1981-2000 in most of these countries. It has advanced farthest in France, Great Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden. This spiritual turn proves a …

  • ‘Stormfront Is Like a Second Home to Me’

    Willem De Koster, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Information Communication & Society•2008

    Although the subject of extreme right virtual community formation is often discussed, an online ‘sense of community’ among right-wing extremists has not been systematically analysed. It is argued that to study this phenomenon and to understand its backgrounds and function, the offline and online experiences and actions of those involved need to be taken into account. For this purpose, qualitative data has been collected on the web forum ‘Stormfro…

  • The Rise of the Penal State

    Willem De Koster, Jeroen Van Der Waal et al.•ARTICLE•The British Journal of Criminology•2008•Cited by: 18•References: 12

    Journal Article The Rise of the Penal State: Neo-Liberalization or New Political Culture? Get access Willem de Koster, Willem de Koster * *Department of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, PO Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands; [email protected]. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Jeroen van der Waal, Jeroen van der Waal Search for other works by this author on: Ox…

  • Ramp Findings and Making Sense of the ‘God Within Each Person, Rather than Out There’

    Paul Heelas, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Journal of Contemporary Religion•2009•Cited by: 4•References: 5

    This research note provides selected ‘belief’ data from the RAMP (Religious and Moral Pluralism) survey—data of an apparently arresting nature. The present discussion is primarily directed at offering several hypotheses to do with interpretations and explanations of the data. The overarching aim is to contribute to a research agenda which is of considerable significance for the sociological study of spirituality and religion, with profound implic…

  • Ideologically Illogical? Why Do the Lower-Educated Dutch Display so Little Value Coherence

    P Achterberg, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Social Forces•2009•Cited by: 38

    In studies of mass ideology, it is often found that political values are ordered two-dimensionally among the public at large. In a first economic dimension, equality is contested; in a second cultural one, individual freedom is contested. While this general rule of two-dimensionality applies to the public at large, there are large differences between educational categories. While two-dimensionality is found for the lower educated, the higher educ…

  • A Christian Cancellation of the Secularist Truce? Waning Christian Religiosity and Waxing Religious Deprivatization in the West

    Open Access•P Achterberg, Dick Houtman et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2009•Cited by: 25•References: 28

    Analysis of International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data collected in 18 Western countries in 1998 demonstrates that Christian desires for a public role of religion are strongest in countries where Christian religiosity is numerically most marginal. Moreover, Dutch data covering the period 1970-1996 confirm that the decline of the number of Christians in the Netherlands has been coincided by a strengthening of the call for public religion amon…

  • Christian Religiosity and New Age Spirituality

    Open Access•Dick Houtman, Stef Auper et al.•ARTICLE•Journal for the Scientific Study…•2009•Cited by: 7•References: 12

    sponsorship: The authors thank Roy Kemmers for this research assistance

  • Two lefts and two rights

    Dick Houtman, P Achterberg•ARTICLE•Sociologie•2010

    Resume Cet article developpe et teste la portee empirique de la theorie de la nouvelle culture politique (Ronald Inglehart et al.) en se fondant sur la partie neerlandaise de l’enquete sociale europeenne de 2002 (European Social Survey 2002). L’analyse est restreinte pour les raisons theoriques au vote pour les partis emblematiques de cette nouvelle culture politique — parti populiste (lpf) de droite, d’une part, parti ecologiste (GroenLinks), de…

  • Religions of Modernity

    Stef Aupers, Dick Houtman•BOOK•Religions of modernity•2010

    Religions of Modernity' challenges the social-scientific orthodoxy that, once unleashed, the modern forces of individualism, science and technology inevitably erode the sacred and evoke the profane. The book’s chapters, some by established scholars, others by junior researchers, document instead in rich empirical detail how modernity relocates the sacred to the deeper layers of the self and the domain of digital technology. Rather than destroying…

  • Some are more equal than others’

    Open Access•Jeroen Van Der Waal, P Achterberg et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of European Social Policy•2010•Cited by: 105•References: 38

    Various studies have demonstrated that while the lower educated support economic redistribution more than the higher educated do, they nonetheless dislike welfare support for immigrants more strongly. This paper aims to explain this remarkably particularistic application of the principle of economic egalitarianism (‘welfare chauvinism’) by testing three theories by means of survey data representative of the Dutch population ( N = 1972). The first…

  • In Their Own Image

    Ineke Noomen, Stef Aupers et al.•ARTICLE•Information Communication & Society•2011

    This article relies on in-depth qualitative interviews with 21 web designers, active in the fields of Catholicism, Protestantism and holistic spirituality in the Netherlands, to study religious appropriations of the Internet. The authors found that these different religious groups embraced the medium of the Internet motivated by a common desire to make oneself heard in the cacophony of voices that has resulted from processes of secularization and…

  • Paradoxes of Individualization

    Dick Houtman, Stef Aupers et al.•BOOK•Paradoxes of Individualization•2011

    Contents: Introduction: the myth of individualization and the dream of individualism Agony of choice?: the social embeddedness of consumer decisions (with Sebastiaan van Doorn and Jochem Verheul) Beyond the spiritual supermarket: why new age spirituality is less privatized than they say it is 'Be who you want to be': commodified agency in online computer games 'Stormfront is like a second home to me': social exclusion of right-wing extremists Con…

  • Game over? Negotiating modern capitalism in virtual game worlds

    Open Access•J Harambam, Stef Aupers et al.•ARTICLE•European Journal of Cultural…•2011•Cited by: 8•References: 9

    Johan Huizinga’s claim that commercialization threatens the self-enclosed ‘magic circle’ of free play still permeates many contemporary games studies. Critiquing such generalizing and essentialistic assumptions, this article distinguishes four different ‘orders of commercialization’ that impinge on online game worlds and studies empirically how each of these is evaluated and negotiated by players themselves. Based on an analysis of World of Warcr…

  • Resisting Administrative Tolerance in the Netherlands

    Peter Mascini, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•The British Journal of Criminology•2011•References: 21

    Representatives of rightist-conservative political groups have denounced the Dutch policy of administrative tolerance (‘gedoogbeleid’) as a left-libertarian excess. On the basis of a representative survey among the Dutch population (N = 1,892), we demonstrate, however, that such resistance is not typically ‘rightist’ or ‘conservative’. Even though conservatives are more likely to oppose administrative tolerance as a general policy type, this is m…

  • Tolerance in the Postindustrial City

    Open Access•Jeroen Van Der Waal, Dick Houtman•ARTICLE•Urban Affairs Review•2011•Cited by: 10•References: 60

    This article studies whether and why less educated natives are less ethnocentric in postindustrial Dutch cities than in industrial ones, as suggested by several theories in urban studies. A multilevel analysis of survey data collected among the native working populations (source: Cultural Change in the Netherlands Surveys 2004 and 2006) of 22 Dutch metropolitan agglomerations (sources: Statistics Netherlands Statline and Atlas of Municipalities) …

  • Two of a Kind

    P Achterberg, Dick Houtman et al.•ARTICLE•Public Opinion Quarterly•2011•Cited by: 28•References: 26

    The literature on welfare state legitimacy generally views economic egalitarianism and support for the welfare state as closely related phenomena that can be measured by means of scales that are considered highly interchangeable. This research note argues that economic egalitarianism does not necessarily coincide with support for the welfare state. Moreover, our findings point out that, especially among those with the lowest levels of education, …

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