This volume is intended as a helpful guide for anyone interested in exploring the culture and society of the Netherlands. Like any dedicated tour guide, it builds on inside knowledge and native familiarity. All chapters are written by experts in their field who bring their personal perspectives, enthusiasms and some local color to their topics. Rather than offering exhaustive, data-filled overviews, they engage in conversations with the reader about what they feel is essential to an understanding of the Nether lands. They may even politely try to persuade their readers of a few convictions and insights.

While building on inside knowledge, this volume anticipates the outside perspectives and expectations of new audiences as well. Some traditions, structures or cultural institutions that are simply taken for granted by the locals beg for explanation to newcomers and outside observers. More importantly, such a comparative perspective is essential to put the Netherlands on the global mental map. This volume, then, can best be understood as a helpful dialogue between knowledgeable connoisseurs and those on their way to becoming one.

It is tempting to start the journey with a conversation about Dutch identity. Global popular culture is full of references to articles or habits considered “typically Dutch.” For some foreigners, essential “Dutchness” is expressed in the omnipresence of bicycles, either the nameless thousands that are stacked near railway stations or the elegant transport bikes urban parents have acquired to transport their offspring to day care centers. Those interested in foodways may think of the many varieties of licorice known as drop, the addictive stroopwafels and pannenkoeken, or the nutritious stamppotten with mashed potatoes served in winter. To sports enthusiasts, the Netherlands may invoke the image of fans at international sports events who invariably manifest themselves in playful orange outfits, suggesting a sense of colorful and exuberant patriotism. Those with an eye for art may visualize the Netherlands as seen in the urban skating scenes painted by Hendrick Avercamp or the neatly arranged interiors of Johannes Vermeer. Others may compare the Dutch landscape to the squares and lines of Piet Mondrian and Gerrit Rietveld, constructed as it seems by the methodical Dutch engineers who are said to have carved their country out of the sea.