Henk A. Becker ~ Generaties van geluksvogels en pechvogels

Henk A. Becker ~ Generations of Lucky Devils and Unlucky Dogs

Paperback
16,5 x 24 cm
258 pag.
ISBN 978 90 361 0 277 3
2012

E-book ~  ISBN 987 90 361 0275 9

Silver-grey manpower is a gold mine to society. One by one, the baby boom cohorts will reach the age of 65 starting from 2010. They are large cohorts, relatively well educated and healthy with considerable pension and health care rights. In short, they are lucky devils. As a result of ageing, cohorts that were born in 1985 onwards and that enter the labour market as from approximately 2010 will be required to pay many additional taxes during the course of their entire working life spanning more than forty years. They are, in short, unlucky dogs. Redistribution of joys and burdens could trigger conflicts between generations. A better solution is to identify and deploy society’s hidden resources.

Taking this issue as a basis, the book in hand explores strategies that enable senior citizens and young people to give meaning to solidarity among generations, for a start in 2012 as the European Year for Active Ageing, but also as part of Europe 2020, the European Commission’s 2010-2020 strategy.

With these two strategies journalists and television producers will swing into action. In secondary and higher education as well as in universities more papers on life courses and patterns of generations will be written than ever before. Senior citizens’ unions but actually all social organizations will organize lectures. Educated laymen will wish to go deeply into this issue.

Henk A. Becker (1933) is Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He has worked on a research project focusing on generations since 1985.

Joseph Semah ~ On Friendship / (Collateral Damage)

A4 formaat
85 pagina’s
Full colour
ISBN 978 90 5170 673 4
Euro 19.50

Met drie teksten van Joseph Semah: Het naakte onverheelde vierkant (over Kazimir Malevich), Read Full Text (over Barnett Newman) en On Friendship / (Collateral Damage), over de rol van de CIA in de verspreiding van abstracte kunst.

Het boek bevat verder analyses van het werk van Semah van Emile Schrijver (algemeen directeur Joods Historisch Museum), Reflecties rond een ontluikende vriendschap en Toegang tot de tekst – Verdere kanttekeningen bij teksten van Joseph Semah van Arie Hartog (directeur Gerhard-Marcks-Haus, Bremen, Duitsland).

Uitgave: Stichting Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten, 2015
www.metropool-projects.com

Napoleon, the Simpsons and the Dutch

• by: Marc Resch

Illustration from Only in Holland, Only the Dutch

As time marches on, the Dutch will continue to perplex and astonish people throughout the world, although, paradoxically, they will carry on their cultural ideologies of striving to be just average and acting normal because that’s weird enough. People from all parts of the world will continue to envision Holland as this idyllic place full of fairy-tale images, tulips, windmills, cheese, picturesque landscapes and happy-go- lucky inhabitants. People will continue to envision the capital city, Amsterdam, as this insidious place where everyone is high on drugs, engaging in licentious street prostitution and killing their unborn and elderly.
People will also continue viewing the Netherlands as a bastion of liberalism where traditionalism is rejected and where socialistic policies are undermining capitalism and helping to steer the world towards communism. And people will continue to envision the Dutch as these strange people who still walk around in those infamous wooden shoes. The Dutch have been misunderstood since the beginning of their existence; some things just don’t ever change.

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