From pastoral to georgic: the Dutch Jewish country house as a rhizome

ABSTRACT

Scholars often analyze houses’ “Jewishness” vis-à-vis Jewish law and rituals. For Dutch Sephardic Jews during the long eighteenth century, however, identity is better understood using a model of rhizome in which “Jewishness” consists of the deliberate interbraiding of multiple traditions. Jewish identity was inextricable from the cultures in which Jews lived. Jewish homes along the Vecht River near Amsterdam exemplify the rhizome model. They embody the same braided pastoral ideal found in eighteenth-century Dutch Sephardic literature and material culture. As Sephardic Jews relocated to Netherlands Antilles, the rhizome present in country houses shifted, taking into account Jews’ new role as slave owners. Thus while buitenplaatsen along the Vecht embraced the Jewish pastoral ideal of a retreat from mercantile life, landhuizen in Curaçao evoked a georgic ideal that channelled the residents’ gaze not on rivers, gardens, and grottos, but on guard stations, slave huts, and enslaved workers. Leisure became redefined as an ability to watch rather than retreat from labour. Taken together, Dutch Jewish country houses along the Vecht and in Curaçao challenge the notion that Jewish material culture has a “single root system.”     

Challenging the Universality of Job Resources: Why,When, and For Whom Are They Beneficial?

In this paper we introduce the topic of job resources and elaborate on their relevance for research and practice in work psychology. We start out with a brief overview of the historic and current understanding of job resources. Next, we discuss the need for a more nuanced perspective on the effects of job resources and present some ideas on how to move this forward. After these conceptual preliminaries, we introduce the papers in the special issue and conclude with a brief summary of the special issue's key messages.     

THE CORPORATE WOMAN OF THE 1990s

Attention to gender and the impact of perceived female/male differences on vocational choices, vocational behavior, and career opportunity peaked in the late 1970s and seemed to reach a plateau with the conclusion that most workplace gender differences can be accounted for by other variables, for example, job tenure and organizational level. Women who entered the workplace in the mid 1970s are now reaching the middle levels of organizations and provide a cohort group on which to test this hypothesis. This study examines gender comparisons on paper-and-pencil personality tests and interest surveys in a group of executive-level adults representing a wide variety of industries and job functions. Gender comparisons are discussed either as a function of occupational choice or membership in a minority group. Acknowledging and explaining gender differences where they exist can provide women with validation and support for their own experience.