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Imagineering: Social Engineering Through Gendered Mythmaking

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Gender in the Post-Fordist Urban

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Abstract

This chapter outlines the symbolic dimensions of the genderfication project. As cities today are widely considered to be products, the urban experience is commodified into marketable symbolic items by urban entrepreneurs. This chapter investigates forms of place marketing and looks into gender as a repertoire for contemporary imagineering. The 2008 festival “La City” in Rotterdam is analysed as an attempt to introduce a new symbolic economy: one that is to accompany a service-based and post-Fordist economy and labour market. This analysis shows how the city uses femininity as a marketing strategy to “cleanse” Rotterdam of its working-class mythology as well as construing a hegemonic gender identity capable of excluding precarious groups.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    www.rotterdamdurft.nl Het verhaal van Rotterdam, retrieved June 6 2008.

  2. 2.

    Groeten uit Rotterdam/Greetings from Rotterdam. A song by the local Group De Berini’s. Translation author.

  3. 3.

    Evaluation report “La City” Rotterdam Marketing Bureau, Karin Akkerhuis. http://www.bds.rotterdam.nl/content.jsp?objectid=203286. Retrieved October 10, 2009.

  4. 4.

    www.lacity.nl retrieved July 10, 2008.

  5. 5.

    Marianne van den Anker, the alderwoman in a newspaper article in newspaper Algemeen Dagblad: “Zet eens een rondborstig gebouw neer.” June 2008.

  6. 6.

    www.rotterdam.info La City Campaign. “The City as Woman” translations author, italics author). Retrieved July 10 2008.

  7. 7.

    La City flyer, June 2008.

  8. 8.

    Evaluation Report La City (see above).

  9. 9.

    Evaluation Report La City (see above).

  10. 10.

    Evaluation Report La City (see above).

  11. 11.

    Guestcolumn of Ambassador Helene di Firenzi in: Uitagenda Rotterdam, number 10 (1), 2008, pp. 41.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

    Marguerite van den Berg

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  1. Marguerite van den Berg
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van den Berg, M. (2017). Imagineering: Social Engineering Through Gendered Mythmaking. In: Gender in the Post-Fordist Urban. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52533-4_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52533-4_3

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-52532-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-52533-4

  • eBook Packages: Social SciencesSocial Sciences (R0)

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