Experts & Expertise

• Americanization
• Cultural sociology
• Culture
• Culture and internationalisation
• Globalisation of economy and society
• History
• Social sciences

Associate professor of social sciences at Tilburg University since March 1991.

Taught previously at the University of Utrecht (Psychology and Society, Faculty of Social Sciences, October 1977 - July 1979) and Erasmus University Rotterdam (Sociopsychology; Cultural and Mental Aspects of Industrial Societies, Faculty of History, August 1979 - February 1991).

Holds MA degrees in sociology and psychology and a PhD degree in the social sciences (all three cum laude) from Tilburg University. Doctoral dissertation, Staal en Arbeid [Steel and Labor] (Leiden: Brill, 1986), the first volume of his two-volume history of managerial policies, changes in the quality of work and industrial accommodation processes of workers in the Dutch steel industry, Hoogovens (now Corus Holland), IJmuiden (1924-1966).

From 1987 to 1991 two research projects in the history of the human and social sciences:

1) The reception of psychology and sociology of work from America in Western Europe, and the Netherlands in particular (including formulation of framework for the study of the applied behavioral and social sciences of work at the crossroads of managerial behavior control of workers and employees' attempts at workers' control and social emancipation);

2) Kurt Lewin's work on field theory and child development (including films) in Germany and on social psychology of work before and after his refuge from Nazi Germany to America, as well as his intellectual collaboration regarding social psychology with the Marxist social thinker Karl Korsch.

In the same period theoretical-methodological reflections on the integration of psychology, sociology, and societal history; on social-psychological experiments on obedience in the Milgram tradition, as well as oral history, biographical research, and youth studies.

From 1988 to 1991 secretary of Cheiron-Europe, International Society for the History of the Behavioral and Social Sciences.

In the academic year 1991-92 fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NIAS) and participant in the international theme group The Reception of American Mass Culture in Europe (focusing on youth cultures and popular music).

In the summer and fall of 1992 research scholar in the Fulbright Exchange Program at the Center of Popular Culture, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, Oxford, Ms.

In the summer of 1994 visiting professor at the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University, Muncie, Indiana, focusing on comparative research on work, culture and community in industrial towns in the United States and Western Europe, against the historical background of the renowned Middletown Studies by Robert S. Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd.

From the mid-1990s on, various theoretical and empirical explorations of U.S. society and culture, and analyses of the histories and theories of cultural studies and American studies in Western Europe and the United States.

In addition, since the late 1990s, in-depth studies of processes of Americanization both at home and abroad, and of distinctive features of American society, politics, labor and culture from a critical social-emancipatory perspective.

Work in Progress:

"The Culture of Performance, Infotainment and American Politics as Realized Dystopia" (conference paper American Culture Association)

chapter "Globalization" in Blackwell Companion to Popular Culture

essay "Cultural Imperialism" in International Handbook of Media and Communication Theory (Blackwell Publishers)

member of advisory board of Journal of American Culture

member of editorial advisory board of Journal of Popular Culture

member of editorial board of Popular Music and Society