Food and White Multiculturalism: Racial Aesthetics of Commercial Gentrification in Amsterdam’s Javastraat

• Published in: Space and culture 2021-08, Vol.24 (3), p.392-407
• Main Authors: Fiore, Elisa, Plate, Liedeke
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Ethnicity; Food; Gentrification; Inner city; Middle class; Multiculturalism & pluralism; Neighborhoods; Urban renewal
• ISSN: 1206-3312; 1552-8308
• DOI: 10.1177/12063312211001290

In this article, we use Hage’s (2000) critique of White multiculturalism’s orientalizing logic of ethnic enrichment as a lens to analyze the multicultural valorization through ethnic food of the Javastraat, the commercial artery of Amsterdam’s Indische Buurt district. Stemming from a larger ethnographic study of gentrification in the area, the article provides evidence of how racial aesthetics have served as the central guiding principle in the transformation of the neighborhood from a dark space of grime, crime, and decay to the current space of hipness, coolness, and global culture. While being celebrated as a living example of multicultural society in the inner city, we argue that the area embodies a multicultural reality in which White, middle-class residents, and visitors are the prime occupiers of space and aesthetic organizing principle of the neighborhood’s landscape.