Enters December and the flow of traditions conquers veins and brain. Not only to run to every discount, and to find that elusive present for yet another forgotten family member, but also to take a shot at the good old political analysis of compared anthropology. If you happen to be interested in the ethnicity and culture battlefield, each December brings the repetition of discussions on the patriarchal associations of xmas figures. Here in The Netherlands we will read, again, analysis on the -facepainted- black helpers of Sint Klaas. Are they redolent of dark colonial times? Or simply the recreation of the dirty chimneys through which presents are brought down? Eternal December dilemma.

Now, if you are more interested in emancipation, empowerment and the like, December brings yet another opportunity to reopen the contrasts between America and Europe. This season the battlefield opened -at least in my own limited view- with a rather simplistic article in The Economist, describing the empowerment of dutch women (whom work less than their North American counterparts and accordingly should be less empowered) as based in their agenda management capacities. Dutch women might not have a lot of money, but they own their time, suggested The Economist. Later on, the traditional fray was joined by a column in Slate, where in a more surprised than commiserating tone, a North American woman living in NL contemplates her friends as having wonderfully busy free time outside their professional lives: going to concerts, visiting friends, drinking fancy teas and the like. Perhaps the North American version of women libs went wrong after all, muses the Slate writer.

Twittering on these (thoughtful if not original) analysis brought some reactions to my timeline. Mostly curious. After all I live here in NL already ten years, and I should be capable to set the record straight. Is it true, then? Are dutchies liberated from the demanding rat race of capitalism? Do we live in some sort of relaxed bliss? (probably with some whiffs of relaxing marihuana). Do women go that much to concerts and skating events, just like in that post-medieval painting? I should, of course, resist the temptation of walking this trodden path. But after all, this is just my blog, and I can always write couple of thoughts at the margin. Let's give it a shot.

To begin with, it is true that the newcomer to The Netherlands hardly fails to perceive, and to be surprised by the real amount of worked hours. Take any publication of the OECD, or make a survey between your dutch friends: to work five days a week is an exception, not a rule. Compared with many other developed countries, The Netherlands, or rather, the Netherlanders do not put that many hours in the grind. Which in itself is not that much a macro-economical problem, since the levels of dutch productivity balance out the time expend outside the office. The economy of The Netherlands remains strong, or resilient, and I have yet to read a serious report claiming that going from 32 to 40 hours of work will make the dutch economy a favor. 

Of course, as in any macro-economical analyze, this state of affairs hides a broader reality. When any cultural analyst talks about the dominant 32 hours a week work of NL, he or she is talking about the professional middle class, that segment that after attend university, manage to secure jobs that will place them in the average, or slightly above the average income of the country. A whole segment of the population, perhaps smaller than in other countries, perhaps not, do work 40 and 60 hours a week to make ends meet. But anyway this little piece now does not concern the toils of the very poor. The question for the comparative anthropologist is: why would the educated dutch keep her income so low? Why doesn't she work another day and earns more... Perhaps shattering that glass ceiling?

The answer to that particular question might have, indeed, long term cultural reasons. After all, the Netherlands is a country with a huge middle class that desires nothing else... than being middle class. The chances to end your life after a reasonable life sustained by a reasonable job after a reasonable education are pretty good, as good as bad are the chances of descend the ladder and end up impoverished. So the narrative of this particular country do not have a lot of space for the self-made rich man, that mythical figure of the USA depicting a dock hand working his all way to the top of world multimillionaires. Why would it? The most likely to happen here is that the dock hand will have access to some level of education, and meanwhile expending his whole life working in the docks... will go on receiving a reasonable salary. He will not be squeezed by shattering poverty, by freezing winters and deadly summers. Not very likely. He would climb some steps in the ladder, and meanwhile not becoming rich, he would certainly not suffer the extremes of poverty. So I believe that the north american dream has never hold much appeal in the dutch: why would you have to work your back to a breakpoint? Because you are miserable? But you aren't.

This narrative, which is certainly arguable when considering the fate of migrants or very low educated workers, is quite true for the middle class. If you live in the States you might still believe, or might need to believe, that years or toil will lift you up from the sordid fringe towards the clouds of the billionaires. But in NL you know that this is not very likely to happen. The mobility from middle to upper class is almost inexistent, and with it is also inexistent the public narrative of big toil and big success. The big dutch capitals are family capitals, in the hands of transnational conglomerates since generations ago. We have no Gates nor Zuckerbergs. And if you come to think about it... Would you want to become one of those, if you know that 32 hours of work will leave the remaining 136 for you to do pretty much whatever you want?

What I actually think is that despite the whole individualization of the society narrative of our years, in The Netherlands a strong conservative ideal is very much alive today. The ideal of the social fabric of the small town, I mean. In a small town, pretty much nobody wants to be much richer than the neighbor. The big shots of the town have always been big shots. But we normal people? What we want is to be able to visit our friends and to keep their standards as much as they keep ours. Middle standards that is. We are unlikely to become plain peasants now, and we are certainly not going to own the whole town. Why should be toil more than needed to stay where we are, then?

Of course, as the political developments of the last decade shows to anybody trying to predict the development of this country, I can be as deluded as the next chap. But given that we are in December...