Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0034/00348.txt

Text File | 1991-06-24 | 28KB | 439 lines

$Unique_ID{COW00348}
$Pretitle{370}
$Title{Belgium
Chapter 2A.   Society and Its Environment}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Jenny Masur}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{belgium
population
percent
wallonia
women
flanders
belgian
brussels
rate
per}
$Date{1984}
$Log{Renaissance Architecture*0034801.scf
Figure 3.*0034802.scf
Figure 6.*0034806.scf
}
Country:     Belgium
Book:        Belgium, A Country Study
Author:      Jenny Masur
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1984

Chapter 2A.   Society and Its Environment

[See Renaissance Architecture: Renaissance architecture, Sint-Truiden, Limburg
Province (1665)]

     Located in a strategic position in Europe, across the North Sea from
Britain, between France and the Federal Republic of Germany, Belgium is small
and densely populated. Like other West European countries, Belgium has a high
standard of living and a well-developed social security system. As elsewhere
in Europe, an aging and stabilizing population has caused a crisis in social
security and an influx of migrant labor. Cosmopolitan and urban, Belgium has a
university that attracts students from all over the world and a capital that
is the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European
Communities. At the same time, the society is marked by extreme social
compartmentalization; Belgium's small size is in no way correlated with its
complexity. A clear example is Belgian education, having separate Dutch and
French systems, as well as parallel, nonsectarian public schools and mostly
Catholic private schools. Until the late 1960s the system was segregated by
sex, and because of ongoing reform it has secondary schools of both the
traditional and innovative types. The universities demonstrate Belgian
particularism in regard to their language (French and Dutch), region
(Wallonia, Brussels, and Flanders), worldview (freethinking and Catholic), and
relationship to the state (public and private).

     The regions of Wallonia and Flanders are quite distinct in a number of
ways. Flanders is flat, partially coastal, and more densely populated than
Wallonia, which is more broken in terrain and was able to provide the
resources that were necessary for the country's early industrialization. There
have been differences in the roles of Flanders and Wallonia in the
industrialization and prosperity of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
although demographic and religious trends in the two regions have been
converging. Easily classified both historically and in 1984, individual
Belgians were not confused about their identities as French or Dutch speakers;
as Bruxellois, Flemings, or Walloons; as shopkeepers, workers, white-collar
employees, or farmers; or as Catholics or nonbelievers.

     Conventional wisdom has held that the competing loyalties of language,
class, religious or philosophical persuasion, and region have balanced each
other, permitting the continuing unity of Belgium. Yet, it is hard to speak
of "Belgitude" - what is common to all Belgians-except on the level of values.
The language cleavage seems to overshadow all others. French is spoken in
Wallonia, Dutch in Flanders, and both are spoken in Brussels. Historically,
French was the language of the dominant elite, so Belgians have not been able
to be neutrally bilingual. The implications of linguistic identity have not
necessarily been the same for Dutch and French speakers. Since the
mid-twentieth century, to speak Dutch has been to participate in the Flemish
community and feel the claims of Flemish identity, but to speak French may or
may not have inspired ties to Wallonia, the Walloon dialects, or the culture
emanating from Paris. The Flemings have perceived a continuing process of
"Frenchification," forcing them to become bilingual at great cost. The French
speakers feel threatened by growing Flemish political and economic gains and
are reluctant to consider Dutch on a par with French.

     Belgians seem to take the concept of class for granted. It is not,
however, cut and dried. Objective divisions of Belgians into socioeconomic
classes by educational level, occupation, and income might not agree with
their subjective designations. The typical Belgian would consider himself or
herself middle class and demonstrate that status through his or her standard
of living but hesitate to discuss class. This hesitancy does not seem to
interfere with the desire for social mobility, achieved through higher
education or even a shift in language loyalty from Dutch to French.

     At first glance, Belgium seems religiously homogeneous; a vast majority
are reported as Catholics. Some, however, are only nominal Catholics, and
others are anticlerical or at least freethinking. The importance of the
Catholic church was still an issue in 1984 because of the segment of the
population that historically had been anticlerical, opposing the church on
political and philosophical grounds. It was also an issue because of the
widespread belief in the church's loss of influence. The decline in attendance
at mass and acceptance of dogma must be weighed against the large membership
in Catholic organizations and the Catholic symbols, concepts, and rites of
passage shared by many Belgians.

     The nuclear family remains a basic unit in Belgian life, but it is the
two linguistic communities and the form of social organization that some
Belgian sociologists call the social "pillars" that make the society unique.
The pillars are three similar complexes made up of political parties, unions,
cooperatives, and a gamut of other organizations; they are divided according
to religious and political worldview-Catholic, Socialist, and Liberal. The
pillars began because of two splits: on the one hand, between the Catholics
and the atheists, freethinkers, and Freemasons; on the other hand, between
the working class mobilized by the Socialists and the working class included
in the multiclass Catholic organizations. Although the Catholic pillar is
multiclass, the Socialist pillar is primarily working class, and the Liberal
pillar, middle class. (For the formal names of the three traditional political
groupings, see table A; Political Parties, ch. 4.)

     The Belgian, regardless of regional, linguistic, or religious
affiliation, is likely to be enmeshed in the social world offered by one of
these pillars. He or she will be born into a hospital affiliated with a
pillar, will vote for a pillar party, will read a pillar newspaper, will
arrange a vacation through a pillar agency, and will even find friends and
jobs through the pillar network. The compulsory national health insurance is
mediated through pillar mutual aid societies. Changing pillar affiliation is
a question not only of changing an individual's vote but also of changing
social patterns. Because a pillar is a theoretical construct, however, it is
not completely clear how it influences social interaction on a day-to-day
basis or how the organizations comprising a pillar actually intermesh.

Geography

     About the size of Maryland, Belgium is located in north-central Europe.
It is small but densely populated, having nearly 9.9 million inhabitants for
only 30,519 square kilometers of territory in 1983. Its borders are formed by
the North Sea and the neighboring states of France, the Netherlands, the
Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany), and Luxembourg. Except for the
North Sea, Belgium has no natural frontiers. The Belgian Lorraine is a
continuation of the French Lorraine and Luxembourg; the high plateau is a
continuation of West Germany's Eifel uplands; and the Kempenland continues
into the Netherlands, which also shares the coastal polders and the deltas of
the Schelde and Rhine rivers. The present-day borders of Belgium are more or
less those of the eighteenth-century Austrian Netherlands, the bishopric of
Liege, and the duchies of Brabant and Luxembourg. The border with the
Netherlands dates from the Peace of Westphalia (1648), the border with France
from the Treaty of