ABSTRACT
I felt as though I was conducting some sort of archeological study of civil society when I arrived at the neighborhood center in Amsterdam Oud-West. I was to visit an interviewee from Kommittee Marokkaanse Arbeiders Nederland (the Committee of Moroccan Workers in the Netherlands). KMAN was established in a squat in 1975. A few years later it opened its headquarters just outside the historic center of Amsterdam. With the support of subsidies and many Moroccan and native volunteers, the association organized frenetically and created an extensive infrastructure of neighborhood subcommittees, working groups and consulting hours. Almost nothing of this was left when I conducted my interview in 2006. Its only regular meetings took place in this neighborhood center which provided KMAN space alongside many other small associations from the neighborhood. KMAN notices were on the front door. I also found a brochure of the City Moroccan Council (Stedelijke Marokkaanse Raad, SMR) listing a nine-digit phone number, which means it must have been printed before 1995 (when phone numbers were extended by a single digit).
