Pillarisation in perspective

Abstract

‘Verzuiling’ (pillarisation) was originally a methaphor launched in the media in the 1930s for the recurring four‐fold division in Dutch contemporary society in an orthodox Protestant, a Roman Catholic, a Social Democratic and a ‘neutral’ or liberal section (population groups as well as complexes of organisations). Since the 1950s it has also been a key concept in several scholarly works on Dutch society. A research project of historians and social geographers at the University of Amsterdam analysed ‘verzuiling’ on the local and regional level. None of the many theories and interpretations of ‘verzuiling’ proved to be tenable in these analyses. Maybe it is better to reduce the term to a metaphor again and to analyse the processes that together resulted in this four‐fold division in Dutch society on their own terms.

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