The critical situation of the Belgian town Doel is a result of numerous attempts by the Belgian state to expand the nearby harbour and to sacrifice Doel for this expansion. The plans were developed in 19651, but the town still exists due to fierce local resistance, although Doel is mostly empty and half-demolished. It seems as if all the attempts to save Doel have only led to more uncertainty, which created the biggest drama for the citizens of Doel. Zygmunt Bauman calls these times liquid modernity, arguing that “it seems like we are living on quicksand. Every move that you want to make to stabilize your position may have quite the opposite consequences… You sink even deeper than before.”2
His explanation for liquid modernity is that politics are still as localized as they have always been, but the power that the government used to have went up to global levels. Those powers ignore local customs and populations and cannot be coerced into a direction by the local politics. As a consequence, the human measure as point of departure gets lost. Citizens of Doel got snowed over by the big interests of economic growth and development by harbour expansion.
Another explanation for the loss of the human measure is provided by James Scott. He argues that it is the result of the well-intended governmental efforts to improve human condition by state simplification.3 We feel like this is also very applicable to the case of Doel, since the process of simplification also involves disregarding historical, geographical and social contexts at the local level.
Scott makes several propositions that governments should take into account to bring back the human scale in their effort to serve society. First of all, governments should take small and reversible steps, in order to be able to monitor developments and adapt to changing situations. Secondly, surprises should be taken into account explicitly, instead of assuming that everything will go as planned.
In Doel, the government tried to take big steps and clear decisions under the assumption that everything would go according to their plan. As a result, they didn’t consider reversing these steps, and all inhabitants were urged to move before it was certain what would happen with the place. If the government would have taken smaller, reversible steps, decisions could have been adapted.
Last but not least, Scott argues that humans should be considered as a source of inventiveness, rather than an obstacle. The government could have involved the citizens of Doel much more, as it was likely from the beginning that they would have ideas about the the plan. This could have lead to a less uncertain and painful situation of Doel being a half-demolished ghosttown.
Despite the well-intended efforts of the Belgian government to serve the greater good, citizens of Doel got snowed over by big interests and got traumatized by the feelings of uncertainty and powerlessness. Because of the many different processes and stakeholders involved in Doel, it makes it useless to simplify. Simplification has an adverse effect, rather than clarifying, it makes it unclear what's going on and who's in control. But it’s not too late to change the game: by following up on Scotts advices of taking small, reversible steps based on surprises and human inventiveness, it is still possible to bring back the human measure as point of departure and to do justice to the (former) citizens of Doel. Let’s keep in mind Bauman’s liquid modernity and make sure Doel doesn’t sink any deeper in the quicksand!
Nynke Brombacher, Rosalie Hegemann, Rianne Kat
References:
1 De teloorgang van een Scheldedorp, VRT Nieuws, 28 augustus 2009
2 Bauman, Z.(2011). 'No one is in control. That is the major source of contemporary fear' https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73Nmv-4jvSc
3 Scott, J.C. (1998). Seeing Like A State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University press. Yale
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