On Dutch windows

On Dutch W i n d o w s

H e r n a n V e r a The University of Florida

ABSTRACT." In The Netherlands, living room windows are big, left uncovered day and night, and elaborately decorated. This pattern, which is widespread in all urban and rural regions in this country, disappears abruptly as soon as the border into Germany is crossed where windows are generally smaller, consistently covered, and more sparsely decorated. Going south into Flanders, the disappearance of open and decorated windows is gradual but noticeable.

The cognitive and sensory meaning of a single object in material culture, the Dutch window, is examined as a concrete articulation of the boundary between the public and private realms by ~hinking it with" successive conceptual frames in sociology. Assum- ing that material objects are embodiments of ideas, the study focuses on (a) the norms for looking and for looking out of the windows, (b) the territorial boundary being established and, (c) the information game played through the windows in a context of the notion of privacy~ Photographs of the cultural objects under consideration, i.e., Dutch windows, are presented throughout the text as reminders that the cultural and material realms are sensually linked. The study concludes that objects in material culture must be examined in terms of the active, purposive acts we accomplish by adapting the objects to our practical and expressive needs.

One salient feature of the Dutch habitat is its windows. They are big, left uncovered day and night, and passionately decorated. Their size and openness permit an abundance of natural light, but also effective visual control from the inside out to the street and from the street into the living room area. At night, when the interior lights shine, the big uncovered windows afford a view of the interior from the outside, and ff the dwellers choose to flatten their noses against the glass, they can see the vast expanses of the dark exterior. To be sure, these visual exchanges apply principally to the windows of ground-level living rooms facing the street. The custom of decorating living room windows

The author thanks Frank Bovenkerk, Sjoerd Groenman, Jaber Gubrium, Sidney Homan, Joseph Vandiver, William and Helga Woodruff and two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on earlier versions of this paper.

An earlier version was presented in session a-125 of the XIth International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnographical Sciences, held in Quebec in August, 1983.

An important part of this research was completed while the author was Visiting Senior Lecturer at the State University at Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1978.

Address Correspondence to Prof. Hernan Vera, University of Florida, Department of Sociology, Gainesville, FL 32611.

Qualitative Sc~otogy, 12(2), Summer 1989 215 © 1989 ttuman Sciences Press

216 QUALITATIVE SOCIOLOGY

and, to a lesser extent, all other windows with elaborate curtains, plants, flowers, statuettes, porcelain, handicrafts, posters, and a number of other objects gives the occupants of a house an opportunity for individual and familial self-expression. It also provides a degree of aesthetic and practical control over the transparency, size, and shape of the window.

Oversized, uncovered, or lavishly decorated windows can be found occasionally in other countries. In Dallas, Texas, there is a neighborhood where the very rich leave huge ground floor windows open providing generous views of their overfurnished parlors that poorer people come to admire. The American expression "picture window" refers to an oversized window left uncovered to offer a view of the exterior. The expression ~2ace curtain Irish" characterizes an individual's social sta- tus by a tradition of window decoration. In Nubia, in some courtyards, where all occupants belong to the same family, windows are also kept open.

In The Netherlands, any traveler will notice the combination of decoration, size, and little-obstructed view into interiors as a unique cultural pattern. Widespread in all urban and rural regions of The Netherlands, this pattern disappears abruptly when one crosses the border into Germany (De Weert, 1976; p. 14), where windows are generally smaller, consistently covered, and more sparsely decorated. Going south, into Flanders, the disappearance of open, decorated windows is gradual but noticeable.

Theme and Method

This paper reports an exploratory study of the meaning of a single object in material culture, a research strategy that can be traced to Marcel Mauss. I The study is not concerned with finding the truth about Dutch windows conceived as a part of the world external to the researcher's experience. Rather it conveys a focused encounter with this world, and an effort to make sense of that encounter in sociological terms, both textual and visual. Thus, this report is not the product of a "data collection" venture to test a theory and achieve closure of an analytical field, but of an effort to open a field for further inquiry. This purpose does not make the study an atheoretical endeavor or one in which a theory "emerges" as observations are methodically organized. On the contrary, I have sought to render a material object intelligible by "thinking it with" successive conceptual frames, each in its own right a potential direction for sociological research. A give and take

On Dutch Windows 217

between data and concepts, text and visual materials is presented as a commentary on the meanings of the windows.

The theme is that culture is not just a set of ideas, but is embodied in objects, so that material objects, such as windows, can be read for cultural understandings. In particular, I argue that the Dutch window, as a threshold that can be kept open or closed in everyday life, is a statement on the Dutch sense of the boundary between the public and private. The customs of decorating these -windows show how a material object can be adapted to familial and self-expression.

My interest in Dutch windows had been prepared by the idea that in the cities of Western Holland one should be able to "read" (Clay, 1980, pp. 11-16) some of the architectural signs that accompanied the birth of capitalism (Weber, 1978, pp. 240-41; Riemersma, 1967). Although I never engaged in such reading of Dutch architecture, this idea served to orient my initial observations. Capitalism brought a dramatic change in existing notions of the private and public, of what is individual and what is communal (Max Weber, 1978, pp. 378-79; Marx, 1973, pp. 491-514). Could the windows offending my learned notions of privacy be traced back to the same ~'cultural force" that resulted in the invention of capitalism?

The starting point for my inquiry is the notion that a city's layout- its streets, the size, shape and location of buildings, and other such architectural s igns-are among the most permanent ciphers that ideas and relations have left behind. Theoretically, this notion proposes a certain autonomy of objects from the society that produced them. Thus, the architectural window can be examined as it stands and is perceived today, independently from the meaning it had in the culture that produced it. However, material objects can also be thought of as car- tiers of ideas (Douglas & Isherwood, 1979) with definite influences on human action far beyond the time and space of their production. As suggested by Mukerji (1983, pp. 15), objects of material culture should be privileged objects of study, because they exert '~both a physical and symbolic constraint" over human ac t ion . . . Once it is produced, it is a part of the world in which people must func t ion . . , and to which they must adapt their behavior."

Data for this research were gathered by various means. First, there was the interaction with actual Dutch windows. Some were photo- graphed, initially quite randomly, and later in more systematic fash- ion. Second, pivotal information was collected in numerous informal conversations and interviews in which I mentioned my fascination with Dutch windows. Many of these conversations were with faculty and students at the State University at Utrecht, in The Netherlands, but also with people I met in trains, buses, markets, museums, the


beach, and the streets. I kept a diary of these interactions, initially quite detailed, but progressively less so, as the information became repetitive. The bulk of 250 or so conversations took place during a four- month stay while I was a visiting professor at the State University of Utrecht. Third, I obtained valuable information and insights from two meetings. One was a social gathering of the departmental faculty, students, and their families (some 35 people), at which faculty members gave presentations of their research. I presented a slide show and commentary on Dutch windows. This was a most important event in the research process, because it enabled me to share my observations with a group of Dutch sociologists, cultural anthropologists, architects, social workers, psychologists, and other professionals. They corrected several of my misperceptions, contributed many supporting anecdotes, gave me precise information, advice on other sources of information and alternative views as well. The other meeting was with nine members of the architecture faculty of a major Dutch university, to whom I presented some of my observations and from whom I received valuable information and insights. Fourth, I conducted formal interviews with one researcher and three government employees who were also dealing with Dutch windows. I also gathered information from three salesmen of construction materials, two marketing specialists, one realtor, people living in different neighborhoods from my other informants, and from elderly people (only a few of whom I had met at the University). The latter interviews were easy to conduct in butcher shops, bakeries, and the like. However, in working class neighborhoods the proportion of people who spoke English was much smaller than at the University, where virtually everyone spoke English. Reliance on interpreters only partially removed the language barrier. Fifth, as will be reported, I quantified certain phenomena through systematic counting. Sixth, at ten museums in The Netherlands, I traced the artistic and social history of the Dutch window, a project not fully reported here.

The Cultural Pattern

The smaller windows in Germany and eastern Belgium may be explained partly by the continental climate. Walls are thicker there too. However, the eastern part of The Netherlands is in the same isothermal zone as Germany and its southern part in the same isothermal zone as Belgium. The window culture does not accompany these climatic areas, but follows the political frontier. The ubiquity of the large, decorated windows and associated rituals within the political


boundaries reveals a cultural homogeneity of recent origin, created in the 20th century by national laws, military service, wage regulations, and obligatory education, i.e. by the rise and growth of a national welfare state (Groenman, 1981). According to De Weert (1976, pp. 16) the single family house was the most important aspect of governmen- tal housing policy in The Netherlands between 1930 and 1940. After World War II the government built concentrated housing for many socioeconomic levels, implementing a policy guided by concepts such as equality and uniformity.

To obtain an idea of how widespread were the customs associated with the window, I conducted a survey, during the course of seven days, of streets in several neighborhoods in Utrecht. 90% of 785 ground floor residential windows had some decoration in addition to straight curtains hanging on the window fringes. On the average, 70% of these windows were left open to view after dark. Observations conducted on single days in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Soest, Zandvoort, Eindhoven, Hilversum, and Delft yielded similar results. By contrast, about 80% of the windows of non-residential buildings, such as banks, restaurants, repair shops, private and public offices, schools, and convents, blocked the view in their windows with sheer curtains, shutters, and the like. Nonresidential windows are not discussed here in spite of their interest.

When I presented this paper at the World Congress of Anthropology in 1983, a Dutch scholar who was present noted that red light districts in The Netherlands share a "window culture" with other such districts in Nordic countries. As is well known, in these districts, prostitutes, in attire that exalts their charms, exhibit themselves behind large windows. The windows reveal, more often than not, a cozy room outfitted with a basic bed, a lavatory, bidet, bottles of disinfectant soaps, and body oils. A curtain is drawn when the woman attracts a customer. The windows are seldom decorated and are kept closed except when their proprietor is open for business.

Although the history of the Dutch window exceeds the scope of this paper, the explanations given to me about the possible origin of the architectural feature, need to be reported, albeit briefly, as expressions of the pertinent stock of knowledge, or mythology. Thirty people whom I asked about the origin of the Dutch window replied that they did not know when the custom originated. Nineteen of them ventured wild guesses, dating the origin as recently as after the Second World War and as far back as the 16th century. Four college students thought that the custom represented a collective and protracted reaction to the forced covering of windows (as protection against air raids) during the German occupation of World War II. Two colleagues at the University


and three shopkeepers posited that the windows originated in a prescription by Calvin to the inhabitants of Geneva. Early Calvinists had been commanded, so this account goes, to leave their windows open so their private lives could be inspected by church elders and the community at large. Although resisted in Geneva, the rule was supposed to have been enthusiastically adopted in The Netherlands when Calvin- ism was introduced in the 16th century.

A study of 19th century aquarelles and etchings of the western region of The Netherlands showed that oversized, open, and elaborately decorated windows could be seen as early as the second half of that century. A walk through the streets of Amsterdam in which particular attention was paid to the dates engraved on the fronts of houses suggests that oversized openings were a feature of palatial residences by the eighteenth century. Three elderly informants con- firmed, through their recollections, that the window customs existed long before the Second World War. While the influence of Calvinism cannot be overrated in anything Dutch, the account of Calvin's prescription 2 does not take into consideration that transparent plate glass did not become a staple in home construction until the 19th century. As early as the 17th century, residences of the rich had plate glass, but with poor transparency. Without transparent plate glass, Dutch windows could have been left open to view only on a few mild summer days a year.

Norms for Looking In and Looking Out

Windows provide rooms with ventilation, light, and view. When windows reach the size of the contemporary Dutch window, about twelve square meters on the average in 1970 construction (De Weert, 1976; pp. 16), ventilation becomes comparatively less important. In fact, many of the front room windows being built in The Netherlands are true glass walls that cannot be opened for ventilation, but provide only light and view.

To understand how visual control of the exterior is facilitated by big windows, one must consider what happens behind two very different types of Dutch windows. First, consider nineteenth century second floor windows that have been fitted with very popular devices called spionnetjes, little spies. These are flat or slightly convex mirrors, some fifteen by twenty centimeters (6" x 8") mounted to the outside wall by an arm about thirty centimeters (12") long. To observe the street for a length of half a city block or so, the gadget must be adjusted to a


precise angle in line with a point inside the room. The manifest use of the spionnetje is to inspect people who ring the bell or knock on the street door without walking downstairs. In the homes I visited, I always found a comfortable chair placed at the precise spot from which the street could be seen reflected in the mirror. Due to the height and small size of the reflecting pieces, people in the street cannot see the observer. 3

By contrast, wide windows, 4 such as those in ground floor living rooms in modern developments, only allow a view of the street directly in front of them. However, the dweller need not remain immobile at a precise spot, but can go about a number of activities in the room, such as cleaning, talking on the telephone, socializing with friends, and the like, without forfeiting the vista of the street. Judging from the homes t lived in or visited, and from reports of informants, over half of Dutch homes have telephones placed on the front window sill. This was explained to me as a way to save the space that a telephone table would occupy. It was also explained that the most comfortable chairs in the house are close to the front window. The position of the phone trans- forms the space near the front window into the t rue communications center of the home.

People who look out from behind a wide window make their presence patent to those in the street. Inhabitants of dwellings with a ~'sun- through design," in which another window of similar size opens at the back of the living room, make their presence even more obvious to people on the street. They can disguise their observation of the street by going about, or pretending to go about, domestic chores, s Spionnetje users are tess conspicuous, bu t pay for this advantage with immobility.

The view gained through windows has important consequences for the control of activities in the street and in the semipublic spaces of modern developments, buitenwijken, or residential quarters. The play of children in these spaces can be efficiently overseen by the coopera- tive concern of several mothers. The comings and goings of neighbors and strangers are bound to be noticed. A number of ~'eyes upon the street" is a most effective way to keep tabs on everyone who occupies the public spaces. Jane Jacobs (1981) coined the phrase %yes upon de street" to call at tention to the importance of informal surveillance of public areas for the control of public behavior, including street crime. In small settlements, controls on acceptable public behavior operate through a web of informal sanctions which are powerful because people know each other. Cities, which "must control not only the behavior of the people of the city but also of visitors from suburbs and towns who want to have a big time away from the gossip and sanctions at home, have to operate by more direct '~straightforward methods" (Jacobs,


1986, 35). The Dutch window is as straightforward a method for such control of behavior as one can get. The casual enforcement of civility allowed by Dutch windows equips the urban environment to deal with strangers and to even make them a further asset for safety. Following Jacobs' idea, the peculiarity of Dutch windows can be held partly responsi- ble for the minuscule crime rates in The Netherlands, an idea mentioned by two of my colleagues. Others have seen the wide open window as a sign of the historical Dutch obsession with their children (Schama, 1987, pp. 481-516), who are well supervised through these windows.

During the night, given the poorer i l lumination of the outside, the open window does not contribute so directly to the security of the street, yet, it reminds the passerby of the presence of the others inside the houses. The control of the street during the hours of dusk and early evening might take other forms. A cultural anthropologist who did research in semi-rural towns of The Netherlands told me he used to wager with a fellow researcher on the length of t ime it would take occupants to f lat ten their noses against the window to peek outside after they heard a car park in the street. Invariably, it took th i r ty seconds or less. In the late hours of the night, when the interior lights are off, a person on the street cannot tell whether he or she is being observed from inside a house.

With unobstructed windows, the passerby can observe the insides of l ighted houses and flats. But if viewing from the inside out was unproblemat ic-a l l whom I asked readily contributed explanations and anecdotes about the ways they looked o u t - t h e view from the outside in presented a number of problems.

Some informants described how, when the weather was pleasant in the evening, couples like themselves would '~go for a walk around the neighborhood." This, it was later explained to me, was a code name for going to see what neighbors were doing inside their homes. Other anecdotes i l lustrated how a drawn curtain on a front window, is such an anomaly tha t it at tracts attention. The following excerpt is taken from a conversation with a woman who entertained a male friend in her home while her husband was away on business. It i l lustrates some of the dilemmas tha t accompany visual permeability between private and public spaces.

I didn't know what to do. The first day my friend came-to protect my privacy just in case he wanted to kiss me or something, you know-I closed the curtains. The next day, I couldn't stand the thought of meeting my neighbors face to face. I felt that everyone looked at me with suspi- cion and that someone was going to make a loud joke about my drawn curtain. I was so terrified that I pretended to be in a great rush. I even failed to buy bread because at the bakery there were others waiting to be served and I would have had to talk to those I knew. This was all in my head, but for his next visit I left the curtains open.


Neighbors were not the only potential viewers tha t my informants mentioned. Potential thieves create a security problem hard to resolve when a family leaves home on vacation. Three informants told me tha t the Utrecht police had advised them not to draw the curtains, but to leave the electric lights on continuously or controlled by a t imer if they could not get a house sitter.

My questions on peeking into homes elicited sharp and hostile responses as often as they elicited stories and norms. "Here we greatly respect each other's privacy," "what people do in their homes is their business, I don't care," ~Toreigners might look in, I don't," were some of these responses. In my field notes I recorded a conversation tha t illus- trates the contradictory att i tudes provoked by the public acceptance of the private sphere as forced on everyday life by Dutch windows. After showing me from her window how her neighbors were attentive to children playing in the street, a woman reacted, with no slight irrita- tion, to my question about people looking inside of homes:

I feel uncomfortable talking about these things. For you, because you are a foreigner, this appears new and you feel compelled to peek inside houses. But I was raised among these windows. As a child I played surrounded by them and think nothing of it. When I walk the streets, I have no interest whatsoever in observing what my neighbors are doing inside their houses. If I ever look through their windows it is for other purposes, like when, the other day, I was not carrying my wrist watch and wanted to tell the time on the grandfather clocks some of my neighbors have, or, when I look inside as I go by to see if my friends are at home so I can wave at them. To look into other people's homes is not Dutch at all and I find it quite disgusting.

The visual exchange through the window takes the form of a communication game, whose rules require tha t no one admit it is taking place: Look but don't look, even though the open window is a blatant invita- tion to exchange information. From this general requirement, some more precise rules derive. Thus, I was taught by several friends tha t the observation of interiors should be done only in the most tactful ways. One was not supposed to tu rn the head sideways, but ra ther glance imperceptibly. By no means should one stand squarely in front of a window. 5 In t rying to do so, I alarmed and embarrassed my walking companions. One must pretend, for instance, to be waiting for one's dog by making appropriate gestures and noises while obliquely looking inside. People inside must also dissimulate the act of their observation. This is not hard to achieve by pretending to be busy in arranging the window decoration or some other chore. A man who instructed me in the ~art of observing from within" told me tha t at t imes while sitt ing at his desk he had to %ngage in acrobatics to find


out whether something of interest was going on outside without being obvious about it."

The violation of these rules is perceived as an act of hostility. When visiting some friends, I saw their child, who had been playing in the street, run inside the house noticeably displeased because the lady across the street ~had stood in front of her window with her hands so, on her hips." The parents commented that the neighbor was over- protective of her new car and did not like children playing soccer or hide and seek around it. I had more than my share of ~hands on hips looks" when photographing windows. Late one summer morning my attention was drawn to a part icularly beautiful window. In the t ime it took me to set the camera, perhaps some 45 seconds, at least seven women came to stand squarely behind their windows, conspicuously staring at me and making their presence known. A man who was tending his yard, a retired accountant, approached me to inquire, quite courteously, what I was photographing. He was also interested in my occupation, in the use I would make of the pictures, and so on. His delight at my fascination with the windows in his block and enthusias- tic volunteering of ideas for plants and flowers I could photograph in his garden did much to put me at ease. After leaving me, he waved to some of the women in the windows as two others crossed the street to ta lk with him. The smile that ensued greatly reassured me, but in the future I was carefully inconspicuous when photographing windows in non-touristic streets. When I related this incident to a government- employed professional, who photographs housing projects as par t of his occupation, he told me that this had happened to him twice. To fore- stall angry questions, he normally phones in advance to warn dwellers of his visit. The reaction of my friends' child, my own feelings, and the responses to my clumsy window photography show how revealing that one is watching, from either side of the glass to the other side, is interpreted as an act of hostility that has broken the delicate rules of the communication game.

These communication games and the way their rules are enforced must be understood as a method of regulat ing public tolerance of the private realm and private acceptance of the public domain. In this context, the Dutch window can be understood to achieve its sensory qualities by constituting the dividing line between two types of territory.

The Territorial Boundary

Windows as openings in the solid structure of a house, are a threshold between the private interior and the public exterior. In territorial


terms, public realms, such as streets and parks, are those to which there is unrestricted access, but which allow only a narrow lat i tude of behavior. Pr ivate territories, by contrast, have restricted access, but allow a wider range of behavior while also providing a sense of inti- macy and control (Lyman & Scott, 1967). In the peculiar pat tern of Dutch life, the windows do not affect the physical access of persons, bu t ra ther modify the behavioral lat i tude allowed in both public and private places. No doubt, the Dutch reserve many activities for visually shielded environments. Making the interior available to external in- spection, however, amounts to incorporating the inside of a house into the public domain. At the same time, adding the street to the visual reach of persons inside the house semi-privatizes that territory.

Dutch interiors become a par t of the streets, giving them a physiog- nomy unique to this country. This becomes even more readily observ- able at Christmas time. Although the weather conditions would advise that curtains be drawn for energy conservation and thrift, windows are left exposed to exhibit the seasonal decoration of the interiors, presided over by fully t r immed and lit Christmas trees. The brilliance of the lights, the colors of the decorations, the custom of using adhesive tape to simulate traditional window panes on the massive, one piece modern glass, and the placing of lights around the frame, all dramatize how the interior and the window itself form part, of the street 's land- scape. This is t rue in a tess dramatic way in all seasons.

The social psychological counterpart of this cultural permeabil i ty of interior and exterior, private and public territories involves feelings of social integration. The members of a family who moved from a western urban center to a small town near the German border told me that, when they had just arrived, they used their living room curtains to leave only a small opening in the center of the window. After they ~'felt belonging to the community and had experienced the behavior of the neighbors," the same curtains were "put totally aside and were just a piece of decoration." Members of another family discovered, after a similar move, that they had progressively changed their window orna- mentat ion to fit the general pat tern in the new area. This pat tern required a larger proportion of ~white" (laced curtains, see photograph #1) than the one they were used to in their other neighborhood, where far more ~green" (plants, see photograph #2) was the norm. In working- class neighborhoods, the homes of gastarbeiders, ~guest laborers" from other, mostly mediterranean, countries, s tand out like a sore thumb. Their windows are usual ly fully covered, at t imes with the crude but effective device of a blanket or sheet hung across the opening. One guest laborer told me how, as a concession to the rearing of his Dutch- educated daughters, he was forced ~to live in fish bowl." He did not like it or think he could ever adapt to it.


Figure 1.

A class analysis of the Dutch windows would take us far afield. But it needs to be noted that Dutch windows play into individual, familial, and communal identities in ways which are, no doubt, complex and hard to recognize by outsiders. The earlier comment on the proportions of white and green in window decorations appeared trivial to me until I realized the feelings and reactions, often expressed with vehemence, that each decoration provokes in Dutch people. Some university students, for example, aimed sarcasm at the ~pretentious," ~ostentatious," or "conspicuous white windows of the established folk." Conversely, the ~green windows" of students were regarded with condescension by many possessors of white windows. A physician's wife, whose windows combined laced white curtains and pastel dry flowers, told me she had lived behind "a jungle" when a student, "it is something one overcomes with age."


Figure 2.

It must be emphasized that the visual permeability between private and public territories achieved by the open windows does not blur the distinction between private and public spheres in Dutch culture. On the contrary, the profuse decoration of the window, along with the personal and familial expression it requires, serves as a constant reminder of the separation between the private interior and the public exterior. Moreover, the custom of decoration highlights conscious control over the permeable boundaries between public and private do~ mains. Thus, although at first sight they appear to contradict notions of privacy, especially ones based on invisibility, the windows in fact enhance its extent and meaning by enticing openness and signaling a boundary at the same time.

The Information Game

The notion of control over the territorial boundary between private and public spaces permits a better understanding of the visual exchanges prompted by the window culture. Erving Goffman's (1959) work is relevant here. He developed the notion of ~communication


games" after observing interactions which took place through the windows of Shetland Isle in Britain. The windows on this Isle can be considered the polar opposite of Dutch windows: they are small and produce dark home interiors that remain invisible from the outside. Protected by this invisibility, the islanders observed approaching visitors unobserved, and watched them drop whatever expression they were manifesting ~and replace it with a social one just before reaching the door" (Goffman, 1959, pp. 8-16). However, Goffman continues, '~some visitors, in appreciating that this examination was occurring, would blindly adopt a social face a long distance before the house, thus ensuring the projection of a constant social image." Thus, the visitor ~reinstates the symmetry of the communication process, and sets the stage for a kind of communication game- a potentially infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation and rediscovery."

A similar ~infinite cycle of concealment, discovery, false revelation and rediscovery" takes place through the windows of The Netherlands, despite their differences from those Goffman observed. Crucially, though, Dutch windows do not give the interior observer the advantage that Goffman observed in Shetland Isle. Across Dutch windows, the asymmetry built upon an ability to observe while remaining unobserved is a fickle one. Except for the spionnetje user, the brilliant interiors created by the size and openness of the windows force the dweller to reveal his or her observing presence at all times. In contrast to the Shetland Isle windows, Dutch windows establish a symmetry between observers in the interior and the exterior. Though there is an equality in terms of how each actor-witness obtains information from the other when, as Goffman puts it, they ~check up the more controllable aspects of behavior by means of the less controllable." This symmetry represents an effective protection against surveillance by any one claiming a special privilege to amass information. In fact, ~disciplinary power," as Foucault (1977, pp. 170-94) has suggested, ~is exercised through its invisibility; at the same time it imposes on those whom it subjects a principle of compulsory visibility." Dutch windows subvert hierarchical observation to the extent that they make it impossible. No doubt, the observation to which the Dutch subject each other coerces behavior. However, to observe and be observed, individuals must assume a position of equality, grounded in the symmetry that they can observe only while being subject to observation. Politically, this symmetry is embodied in the democratic principles and constitu- tional guarantees that have been vigorously present since the 16th century.

Beyond the expression of political principles, the equality that emerges across the windows has important consequences in the every-


day life of the Dutch. The symmetry of communication through Dutch windows, to follow Goffman (1969) once again, represents an interac- tional modus vivendi that requires that all actor-witnesses exhibit a permanent social face. The ubiquity of the window customs frustrates the use of "impression management" (Goffman, 1969, pp. 13) in reference to any particular potential witness. However, this modus vivendi enhances the possibility of "mistakes" (Goffman, 1959, pp. 14) in the disclosure of feelings, motives, and actions. It would make self-esteem impossible to maintain if there did not exist a widespread tolerance of others' mistakes.

In fact, the Dutch take great pride in the high degree of tolerance in their society. The tolerance represents, according to Goudsblom (1967, pp. 151), an expression of the "conscious commitment to the values of both unity and d ivers i ty . . , one of the key aspects of Dutch society." It

Figure 3.


extends from the forbearance of everyday gaffes to the indulgence of various religious and political ideas. The indispensable counterpart of this tolerance is a highly developed sense of privacy, which makes acceptable a variety of unorthodox life-styles, no matter how negro tively regarded by society's mainstream they may be. In this context, privacy must be understood as the freedom of the individual and group from the power of others in situations where they would be vulnerable. The power of surveillance over the lives of others is meaningless where information on those lives is so plentiful and readily available.

In this perspective, privacy must be conceptualized as '%he right of the individual to decide what information about himself should be communicated to others and under what conditions" (Westin, 1967, pp. 30). We cannot understand the Dutch window culture with notions of privacy as a purely emotional state (Jourard, 1971), as a mere exclusion or withholding of knowledge (Bates, 1964, pp. 423-37), or as sheer invisibility (Berardo, 1974), no matter how useful such ideas may be in other contexts.

Under the conditions of high population density that exist in The Netherlands, Dutch windows could also be understood as an adapta- tion to the constraints of limited space. The assumption here might be that as density increases so does the number of social obligations and the need to inhibit individual desires and control the amount of social stimuli (Galle et al., 1970). Density also might produce greater differ- entiation and specialization (Durkheim, 1969) and a shift in the media through which we orient ourselves to the milieu of our fellow human beings (Simmel, 1964, pp. 409-24). The orientation expressed in Dutch windows yields a balance of social discipline and individual freedom. It provides a guarantee against different forms of hierarchical surveillance and exposure while at the same time it preserves high degrees of social intercourse.

Conclus ion

The most extraordinary 16th century invention of the Dutch, according to Schama (1987, pp. 67), was their own culture. This invention associated 'tall those living within the frontiers of the new republic with a fresh common destiny" (Schama, 1987, pp. 67). Somehow, the cultural themes which emerged then ~remain vigorously alive today" (Schama, 1987, pp. 54). Among these themes are those for which The Netherlands is famous. In fact, one can still find the dikes with which they stole land from the sea, the windmills, the little towns, the lowing


herds. As Schama notes, one can still find that the Dutch suppose candor and caution to be national traits. The windows do not form part of that original set of cultural themes, but might express a modern version of another early trait, the one that the Dutch mentioned most frequently to me as explaining the unique pattern of their windows. The windows are said to express a '~compulsion to show off' their households, a trait which they claim can be traced to time immemorial. This is a good explanation, because the Dutch, early in their history~ made ~a fetish of the household" (Schama, 1987, pp. 566). Thus, the windows perpetuate a peculiarly Dutch world through the assimilation of new materials into historic cultural themes. In concluding, however, i would like to move beyond the ~household fetish" explanation to concentrate on the ability, which Schama (1987, pp. 67-68) also attrib- utes to the early Dutch, to manufacture a culture suited to pragmatic needs as well as the needs of identity. To do this, the windows must be seen as contributing a cultural object which is created and recreated every time a window is cleaned and its decorative elements rear- ranged. Indeed, this happens frequently judging by how spotless most windows are kept in The Netherlands.

The elements used in decorating a window, their proportions, and their relations constitute a true language. With this language, the occupants deliver complex messages about their familial composition, social class, taste, and ideological persuasion. The presence or absence of dry flowers, the display of antique china, statuettes, the prominence of white curtains, green plants, and handicrafts were interpreted for my benefit by Dutch friends as indicative of various traits of the owners of a particular window. The message is not always delivered in the code that uses a variety of objects at the window. In a more direct method, posters with a variety of messages are displayed on the window (See photograph #3). Some of the posters merely contain the logo of an organization, such as a political party, others contain more precise messages, such as ~Stop the Bomb," ~Pray for Peace," ~Wote PVDA," ~Wote PSP," and the like. In whatever code, this ~window language" is a rich lode for semiological research.

Finally, I would like to look at Dutch windows as a living art form. When the Dutch window is conceived of as a work of art, one realizes that the uniformity of the architecture in Dutch neighborhoods, para- doxically, allows for freedom. On the architect's drawing table, the window is just an opening in the wall to allow for light and ventilation. In the occupied house, this opening becomes a sort of blank canvas for self and familial expression. This expression requires a large amount of care and energy to keep the glass spotless, the plants trimmed and watered, the curtains washed, the decorative objects dusted, etc. With


the rising cost of fuel, Dutch windows have also become expensive and a social problem of sorts. After the 1973 oil crisis, the government launched campaigns to persuade the Dutch to cover their windows for energy conservation. These campaigns met with failure. The relation between inside and outside with respect to the Dutch window had never been studied prior to the 1970s, when the subject was taken up with regard to the energy problem (DeWeert, 1976).

As works of art, the windows are more than expressions of aesthetic refinement, self-gratification, or conspicuous consumption. Marcuse (1978) sees art as a force tha t gives rise to something beyond itself, to another form of sensing and feeling, capable even of subverting what is thought dominant in the consciousness. The Dutch window, in conformity with Marcuse's view of art, '~opens a new dimension of experience." Like other forms of art, the windows enhance our perception of things even as they call us to come into conflict with them. This is what Marcuse called '~the hidden imperative of art." The window art, like other forms of art, finds its realization outside itself. Dutch windows reveal more than domestic scenes and dwellers who control the street with their eyes as they subvert the pleasures of conformity expressed in the larger, very homogeneous design of neighborhoods.

As an object of material culture, the window, as suggested by Mukerji (1983, pp. 15), appears as a physical and as a symbolic constraint in the local world to which people must adapt their behavior. In this perspective, the behaviors associated to the architectural opening appear as customary adaptations performing contemporary social functions, some of which have been examined here. Interpreted as a work of art, however, the Dutch window appears not as behavior adapted to physical and symbolic constraints, but ra ther as actions serving the purpose of individual and familial expressions. Seen in this way, Dutch windows call our at tention to the need of conceiving material culture in terms of the purposive acts we accomplish by adapting objects to our practical and expressive human needs.

Reference Notes

Marcel Mauss, in his course of ethnography at the Ecole Practique des Hautes Etudes, in Paris, used to say that a society could be understood starting from a single ceremonial feather. Cultural objects have a practical and theoretical importance, according to Mauss, because they are critical for discovering other aspects of a society, such as its economy, technology, ingenuity in invention, and the like (Mauss, 1967a, p. 17). For an elaboration and examples of the general approach see Mauss (1967b).

On D u t c h Windows 233

2. A perusal of the works of Calvin with the help of a specialist yielded no prescription of this sort.

3. One of the reviewers noted that these devices are common outside of windows on the upper floors oftownhouses in older parts of Philadelphia, where they are used only to check who is at the door. In the local culture, it is commonly said that these mirror- devices were invented by Benjamin Franklin.

4. To obtain an idea of how windows are distributed consider that in 1977, 24% of the dwellings in The Netherlands were flats, 53% semi-detached houses, and 20% detached houses, with 3% not determined (Social and Cultural Planning Office, 1978). Needless to say, not all dwellings have a view of the street and not all flat dwellers use spionnetjes.

5. A colleague told me that an American visiting professor of social psychology at Groningen had assigned his students the field experiment of standing squarely in front of windows. The students refused.

6. The population density in The Netherlands was 1,002.6 inhabitants per square mile in 1982, one of the highest in the world. For contrast consider that the population density of New Jersey was 988.6 inhabitants per square mile. (Newspaper Enterprise Association, 1984).

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Documents

On Dutch windows