Transforming the Public Sphere

Grever Maria Grever, Waaldijk Berteke Waaldijk, Hoyinck Mischa F. C. Hoyinck, Chesal Robert E. Chesal

Description

In 1898, the year Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands was inaugurated, five hundred women organized an enormous public exhibition showcasing women's contributions to Dutch society as workers in a strikingly broad array of professions. The National Exhibition of Women's Labor, held in The Hague, was attended by more than ninety thousand visitors. Maria Grever and Berteke Waaldijk consider the exhibition in the international contexts of women's history, visual culture, and imperialism.A comprehensive social history, Transforming the Public Sphere describes the planning and construction of the Exhibition of Women's Labor and the event itself-the sights, the sounds, and the smells-as well as the role of exhibitions in late-nineteenth-century public culture. The authors discuss how the 1898 exhibition displayed the range and variety of women's economic, intellectual, and artistic roles in Dutch culture, including their participation in such traditionally male professions as engineering, diamond-cutting, and printing and publishing. They examine how people and goods from the Dutch colonies were represented, most notably in an extensive open-air replica of a "Javanese village." Grever and Waaldijk reveal the tensions the exhibition highlighted: between women of different economic classes; between the goal of equal rights for women and the display of imperial subjects and spoils; and between socialists and feminists, who competed fiercely with one another for working women's support. Transforming the Public Sphere explores an event that served as the dress rehearsal for advances in women's public participation during the twentieth century.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Países Bajos
• Netherlands
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Duke University Press
• Date de parution: 23 juin 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780822385547
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

T R A N S F O R M I N G

T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E

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n

n

T R A N S F O R M I N G

T H E P U B L I C S P H E R E

                         

       ’            

n n n

 

  

Translated by Mischa F. C. Hoyinck

and Robert E. Chesal

                  

Durham and London 

©  Duke University Press

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper  Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan.

Typeset in Scala by Tseng Information Systems, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data appear

on the last printed page of this book. First published in the

original Dutch asFeministische openbaarheid. De Nationale

Tentoonstelling van Vrouwenarbeid in , in  by

Stichting beheer/, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The Dutch text was revised and updated before translation.

The English translation from the Dutch original as

well as the illustration inserts were supported by a grant

from the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds. This translation

was supported by a grant from the Netherlands Organization

for Scientific Research (Nederlands voor Wetenschappelijk

Onderzoek;). In addition, the Vereniging Trustfonds and

Faculty of History and Arts, Erasmus University Rotterdam,

and the Research Institute for History and Culture

provided support for promotion and distribution

of this book.

Acknowledgments,vii

Abbreviations,xi

Introduction,1

1. Feminists and the Public Sphere,9

2. An Illustrated Women’s Conference,25

3. A Panorama in the Dunes,67

4. The Exhibition Experience,111

5. Colonialism on Display,135

6. Exhibition in Print and Visual Impressions,171

7. Creating a Counterpublic,193

8. After the Summer,215

Notes,225

List of References,271

Index,297

Illustrations fall after pages 116 and 148

CONT E NT S

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A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

n n n

This study of the Dutch National Exhibition of Women’s Labor would not have been possible without the documents so wisely collected and saved by the exhibition organizers. Nearly all of these documents are now care- fully stored at the International Information Center and Archives of the Women’s Movement (Internationaal Informatiecentrum en Archief voor de Vrouwenbeweging;) in Amsterdam. Historians in the Netherlands should consider themselves lucky to have access to such a professional institution housing archival materials about national and international women’s organizations, an institution that also constitutes a veritable trea- sure trove of biographical information about feminists and other women. Thesupported us in every possible way, granting us unlimited use of its pictorial archives. We are particularly grateful to Joke Blom, Yolande Hentenaar, Lizzy Jongma, Annemarie Kloosterman, Heleen Massee, Ann- ette Mevis, and Susanne Neugebauer. The’s Web site (www.iiav.nl) offers a virtual tour of the  exhibition. We are indebted to the following archives and libraries for their assis- tance: The Hague Municipal Archives (Kees Stal), Enschede Municipal Archives (A. M. Roding), and the municipal archives in Amsterdam, Den Bosch, Den Helder, Groningen, Kampen, Leeuwarden, Leiden, Nij- megen, Nunspeet, and Oldenzaal. We would also like to thank the staff at The Hague Municipal Museum (Haags Gemeente Museum), the Interna- tional Institute of Social History (Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Ge- schiedenis), the Archives of the Dutch Royal House (Koninklijk Huisar- chief ) in The Hague, the Royal Tropical Institute (Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen) in Amsterdam, the Royal Institute of Linguistics and Anthro- pology (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal- Land- en Volkenkunde) in Leiden,

viii



the Boymans van Beuningen Museum in Rotterdam, the State Documen- tation Center for Art History (Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Docu- mentatie) in The Hague, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Many people also allowed us to use their private collections: J. R. Bien- fait in Eindhoven, Cees Goekoop in Amsterdam, N. M. Hugenholtz in Glimmen, J. H. H. van Roosmalen in Tilburg, Henk Tattersall in Enschede, C. M. van der Broek in Bennebroek, and O. Vermeulen in Laren. Many colleagues generously supplied us with their own research find- ings and advice: Marga Altena, Liesbeth Bervoets, Mary Blanchard, Ma- rieke Bloembergen, Mineke Bosch, Anje Boswijk, Rahany Gramberg, Cora Hollema, Frida de Jong, Jeroen Kapelle, Eva Lous, Ingeborg Nödinger, Jannie Poelstra, Harry Poeze, Monica Soeting, Dineke Stam, Inge Stemm- ler, Twie Tjoa, and Elisabeth Wohofsky. At various stages of our research, colleagues and friends provided valu- able comments on the text and other forms of support. We are very grate- ful to Saskia de Bodt, Jan Brabers, Marianne Braun, Rosemarie Buikema, Fia Dieteren, Annemarie Kloosterman, Susan Legêne, Elsbeth Locher- Scholten, Annette Mevis, Karen Offen, Hans Schraven, and Gloria Wekker. The Dutch-language publication was sponsored by the Dutch Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, Directorate of Equal Opportunity; the Prince Bernard Fund (Prins Bernard Cultuurfonds); and Reaal Verzeker- ing NV. This translation was sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (Nederlands Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek) and the Prince Bernhard Fund. We would like to express appreciation to Hans Blom, the director of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (Nederlands Instituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie,), for suggesting that a historical study of the  exhibition be conducted. Marti Huetink frombeheer pub- lishers in Amsterdam (now named) was responsible for the beauti- ful Dutch edition and proved tremendously helpful in preparing the manu- script of this translation. We would not have reached the publication stage without the warm interest and support of Frances Gouda at the Univer- sity of Amsterdam and Antoinette Burton at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Our editor at Duke University Press, Miriam Angress, brought great enthusiasm to the project. We would like to thank Mischa Hoyinck and Robert Chesal for their painstaking professionalism in trans- lating this book. They showed a great deal of creativity and patience in their continuous effort to understand the arguments we wanted to convey.



ix

Many colleagues and students provided a daily source of inspiration during our work on this revised edition. These included the Women’s Studies Department and the Department of History at Nijmegen Uni- versity; the Faculty of History and Arts at Erasmus University, Rotter- dam; the Utrecht University’s Women’s Studies Department; the Media and Re/presentation Institute; and the Research Institute for History and Culture. Very special thanks go to Rosi Braidotti (Utrecht University), Willy Jan- sen (Nijmegen University), and Selma Leydesdorff (University of Amster- dam) of the Dutch Research School of Women’s Studies (Nederlandse On- derzoekschool voor Vrouwenstudies). Cooperation between the various women’s studies departments at Dutch universities has created a public domain in which knowledge by and for women is key. In a sense, this co- operation continues the ideals put forward by the Dutch National Exhibi- tion of Women’s Labor in .