Daan Beekers MPhil
- Telephone:+31 20 59 83547
- Room nr:z-203
- E-mail:d.t.beekers@vu.nl
- Unit:faculteit der sociale wetenschappen (afd. sociale en culturele antropologie)
- Position:PhD Candidate
Specialization
• Europe (Netherlands), anthropology of religion
• Christianity, Islam, youth, piety, religion and public domain
• West Africa (Nigeria), youth, livelihood, patronage (prior research)
PhD Project
There is a remarkable and renewed interest in religion among the younger generations in the Netherlands today. Most conspicuously, teenagers and young adults of Christian and Muslim backgrounds often continue to practice, and identify themselves with, the religion that has been passed on to them. This research seeks to get a better understanding of the ways in which these young believers experience and practice their religion in the context of a society that has witnessed major processes of secularization and that can be characterized by (moral) liberalism, consumerism and religious pluralism. In this way, it seeks to explore what may be gained from an explicit and systematic comparison of Christians and Muslims in contemporary Western society.
The focus of this study is on those young Christian and Muslim adults who strictly profess their faith, or seek to do so, by explicitly expressing a religious identity and by treating religion as a guiding principle in everyday life. Through intensive ethnographic research, it will examine in what ways emergent repertoires of religiosity among them are characterized on the one hand by 'a turn to the self', prioritizing personal choice and private experience, and, on the other hand, by 'a turn to society', reasserting religious values and norms in social life and the public domain. Related to these, it will investigate to what extent such religious repertoires indicate the reconfiguration of religious subjectivities, communities and authorities.
The research is financed by the NWO (open competition 2008) and supervised by Professor Birgit Meyer and Professor Anton van Harskamp. It is associated with the Centre for Comparative Social Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences) and affiliated with the VU Institute for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society (VISOR).
Link to CCSS personal PhD Programme
Papers and publications
Publications (Source: METIS VU)
• 2009 (with Bas van Gool) conference paper, ‘Governing good and governing well’: the first global dialogue on ethical and effective governance, VU University Amsterdam, 28-30 May.
• 2008 Children of a ‘Fallen House’: Lives and Livelihoods of Youth in Nigeria. MPhil Thesis. Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology. University of Oxford.
• 2007 ‘Verwante vreemden: jonge moslims in een ontkerkelijkte samenleving’, in: F. Guadeloupe en V. de Rooij (eds.) Zo zijn onze manieren: visies op multiculturaliteit in Nederland. Amsterdam: Rozenburg Publishers. Pp: 149-56.
See personal website for full-texts.
