ABSTRACT
In June 1959, Renee Fox took the ocean liner Niew Amsterdam to come to Belgium for the summer. It was because she wanted to know more about a society that was able to call back home young and brilliant physicians after their training in the United States. The lack of an anthropological tradition in Belgium explains why Fox's ethnographic work was never quite understood by her Belgian colleagues. Fox's approach to Belgian society could thus lead to the development of a new interdisciplinary field: Belgian Studies. In a few universities spread around the world, from Canada to Romania, there are departments or at least professors and seminars devoted to Belgian arts and literature. Renee Fox's role could thus be extremely important in the redefinition of the frames within which Belgium could be studied, both abroad and at home. Both conceptually and methodologically, her work on Belgium opens new vistas.
