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image copyright © Matt Kenyon |
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‘Occidentalism, Orientalism, and the idea of a postsecular Europe.’
Friday 30 October, 2009
Utrecht University, the Netherlands
Koen Leurs
"Online social networking sites as spaces of conviviality? Dutch-Moroccan youth on Hyves" (abstract)
In this paper I want to explore to what extent online social networking sites can be understood as spaces of conviviality. Through typing, clicking, hypertextual linking, ‘friending’ and circulating texts and videos, social network site users produce social spaces and perform their individuality in the midst of the increasingly grim political and societal atmosphere of racialization and Islamophobia in the postcolonial centers of Fortress Europe. I will zoom in on expressions of diaspora and youth cultural affiliations of Dutch-Moroccan youth circulating in the Dutch social networking site Hyves. My inspiration stems from Paul Gilroy’s writing on youth cultures, diaspora and the notion of conviviality. First, Gilroy stated that youth cultures may offer potential for contesting “ethnic absolutism, racism and nationalism” (1993b) on the basis of their glocal, hybrid and transnational orientations. Second, in his work on the Black Atlantic, he discussed “the changing same”, illuminating the complex relationship “between ethnic sameness and differentiation” (1993a; xi). The “changing same” hints at diaspora identities as unfinished processes of becoming, at the crossroads of “roots” and “routes”. Finally, the term “conviviality” offers a way to grasp interactional processes that render “multiculture an ordinary feature of social life” (2004; xi). I want to see whether this vocabulary is helpful in achieving greater understanding of Dutch-Moroccan youth as content creators and circulators in hypermediated environments.
