This article deals with the performance of ‘street credibility’. A dramaturgical analysis of the lyrics and videos of 15 rap artist from The Hague sheds light on the various ways they try to achieve a credible street reputation as rappers. In their frontstage presentation they highlight their street knowledge, strike violent poses, and claim affiliation to certain infamous local gangs or neighborhoods. Backstage, however, these performances are being deconstructed by other actors who participate in the local street culture and who form a critical, metaphysical audience of the presentations of the rappers.

In this article I will explore the concept of transgression within the realm of rock music using the biography of Lou Reed, known for such songs as ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and ’I’m Waiting for the Man’. I discuss Lou Reed’s social transgressions as a reaction to and resistance toward institutions of social control such as family, media and the music industry, which stigmatized him as an outsider. This study, which is based on secondary material, such as biographies, interviews and songs, shows how Lou Reed transgressed social norms with respect to drugs, sex, and gender.

Over the past couple of decades, the Netherlands unmistakably has developed into a Garlandian style culture of control. A distinct feature of this Dutch culture of control is the increasing interconnectedness between crime and migration in both public and political discourse. As a result of the growing urge to control potential dangerous others, various stop & search powers have been implemented. Besides by their proactive nature, these powers are defined by the fact that they give a fair amount of discretion to individual police officers in deciding who to stop. In this article, while drawing on criminological, sociological and social psychological literature on stereotyping and the rise of a crime complex, the authors will argue that the structural and cultural changes fuelling the emergence of a the typical Dutch culture of control might also affect the individual choices made by police officers in such a way that it fosters ethnic profiling.

It seems common knowledge among criminologists that our societies have to be understood in terms of securitization. This means that security is the defining and organizing concept in (social) policy making. In the Netherlands the process of securitization can be characterized as rather contingent. According to the author, it can be typified as ‘pragmatic securitization’. It is driven by the desire to show decisiveness and being in control of complexity of social order, rather than by ideology. Under the pressure of the economic crisis there is a growing interest in self-organization, civic power and civil society. These themes emerge along the issues of security and control. Is it possible then that security is exchanged by another big social theme?

By introducing the historical concept of timescapes, we will investigate the transformation of a security to a risk culture in Dutch post war history. We will test Ulrich Beck’s paradigm of the risk society with respect to the Dutch policy arena, and we will analyze what drove this postulated transformation in the Netherlands. In the Netherlands, not the 1970s/1980s, but the 1990s saw the onset of this change. Concrete trigger moments and the rise of a new populist movement around 1999 signalled the beginning of this new mode of risk governance that was consolidated after 2001. With this description, an attempt to historicize the development of an all encompassing national security culture is provided.

This introduction aims to position the present-day ‘liquid’ security culture in the context of cultural and political developments. Key-words in the cultural patterns in which the new ‘liquid policy’ and ‘new toughness’ is embedded are fear, precaution, late modern anomie and a social hypochondria towards everything that deviates from one’s ‘own’ culture and identity. These cultural phenomena have been translated in political terms, that are divided into neoliberal and neoconservative tendencies. The neoliberal turn in safety politics have resulted in a depoliticisation of democratic decision making, a desolidarisation of ideas on community safety and a deregulation of safety policies. Neoconservative tendencies are reflected in a resentment towards ‘the elites’, ‘the underclass’ and foreigners and a punitive populism, in which claims for stiffer sentences are continuously swept up, regardless of the effect they may have.