Boundaries Of Identity Research Articles

I'd rather be a cyborg than a celebrity: Black feminism in the digital music industry

This essay argues that Black feminist artists in the digital music industry embrace cyborg politics to disrupt celebrity conventions in ways that draw attention to the complexity of identity and oppression. I draw attention to Black feminism as a movement for challenging intersecting oppressions, particularly for Black women, as well as a drive to celebrate Black women's contributions to the music industry. Donna Haraway's conceptualization of the “cyborg” can offer significant insight into how artists in the digital music industry transcend boundaries of identity to renegotiate the ideas of celebrity and fame. The cyborg is a fluid being that embraces the interconnectedness and interplay between technology and the body. By embracing cyborg politics, those who occupy space in the music industry and online can resist the commodification of their bodies to machinery alone and retain their humanity in the celebrity machine.

Intersection of Identities in Personal Stories about Reincarnation in the Druze Community in Israel

Belief in reincarnation in the Druze community exceeds the bounds of the official religion, and its personal story gains significance among the secular community members. Though this belief is responsible for marking the boundaries of religious, national, and gender identity, and serves as a cohesive and comforting social factor, it also raises social and psychological tensions among families and individuals who find themselves living a double life story. This study attempts to investigate these aspects among the Druze society by analyzing a collection of personal stories of men and women about their experiences of reincarnation, which I collected from members of the Druze community in Israel. These stories are called among the Druze “alnutq” / النُّطق (speaking), a concept that expresses the soul's ability to recall and talk about its past life in the previous incarnation. By collecting the stories from people mentioned in the previous incarnation, I concluded that they are saturated with internal tensions and provoke objections, and their acceptance is almost always controversial. At the same time, the stories, the beliefs, and the values they are based on have a role in maintaining the borders and organization of the Druze community.

Investigating the Underlying Factors and Outcomes of the Madheshi People's Movement in Nepal (2007-2008)

The study focuses on the Madheshi People’s Movements in the Tarai region of Nepal during 2007 and 2008. The key issues investigated include the catalysts behind these movements, their influence on Nepalese politics, and the sustained implications for Madheshis and other marginalized communities. The primary aim of this research is to discern the causes of the Madheshi People’s Movements, understand their impact on Nepalese politics, and evaluate the lasting effects of the achievements stemming from these uprisings. Utilizing semi-structured interviews, Focus Group Discussions (FGD), questionnaire surveys, and an extensive review of secondary data, the research unfolds the transformative nature of the Madheshi People’s Movement of 2007. The methods employed provide a comprehensive understanding of the socio-political landscape surrounding these movements. The research identifies three core elements contributing to the initiation of the 2007 and 2008 Movements: perceived discrimination against Madheshis, radicalization of regional and ethnic issues influenced by the Maoist rebellion, and the precedent set by the People’s Movement of 2006. The Madheshi People’s Movements significantly impacted Nepalese politics, leading to the declaration of Nepal as a federal state and notable electoral success for Madheshi political parties. However, internal divisions emerged within the Madheshi identity, with marginalized communities distancing themselves from the Madheshi label, posing a potential threat to the movements' achievements. While the Madheshi People’s Movements brought about crucial changes in Nepal's political landscape, the emergence of internal dissent among Madheshis calls for a strategic repositioning of Madheshi political parties. To preserve their achievements, these parties must transcend identity boundaries and represent the interests of all marginalized communities in Nepal. Failure to do so risks eroding the gains made through the identity politics initiated by the Madheshi parties.

Deciphering the Boundaries of Ottoman Armenian Female Identity in Zabel Yesayan’s My Soul in Exile

Deciphering the boundaries of female identity in the history of thoughts has been a deep-seated problematic issue since the mainstream, throughout the centuries, put strong emphasis on non-feminist discourses. When specifically focused on the Ottoman Empire, the circumstances, and obstacles that women encounter had no difference than their European counterparts. Ottoman Empire which was a land of different cultures, religions, and ethnic groups, witnessed a fundamental shift in terms of women rights in the 19th century. As a pattern of the Empire, the Ottoman Armenian women writers shed light on some postcolonial issues as well as feminist ones almost a century ago before it is theorized. The concepts of unhomeliness and hybridity as universal ideas are proven to be also timeless in the works of Zabel Yesayan, an Ottoman Armenian women writer, particularly in My Soul in Exile. This study aims to analyze the cultural richness of the women’s rights movements in the Ottoman Empire fed by different shareholders, such as Ottoman Armenian women writers in this particular paper. To have a better and deeper understanding of cultural and historical roots of women’s rights movements consolidates the construction of a stronger female identity since it will prove where we started and how we proceeded. Consequently, this paper intends that hearing multiple voices raised from the same geographic location, as well as being aware of and informed about different challenges, would be a watershed moment in the history of women, consolidating our steps and enriching our cultural heritage.

TMT's cognitive frame and breakthrough innovation

PurposeThis paper aims to reveal how different types of events and top management teams' (TMTs’) cognitive frames affect the generation of breakthrough innovations.Design/methodology/approachDrawing on the event system theory and upper echelon theory, this study chose a Chinese manufacturing enterprise as the case firm and conducted an exploratory single-case study to unpack how breakthrough innovation generates over time.FindingsBy conducting the in-depth case analysis, the study revealed that firms do not produce breakthrough innovation in the catch-up stage and parallel-running stage but achieve it in the leading stage. It also indicated that when facing proactive events in the catch-up stage, TMTs often adopt a contracted lens, being manifested as consistency orientation, less elastic organizational identity and narrower competitive boundaries. In addition, they tend to adopt a contracted lens when facing reactive and proactive events in the parallel-running stage. In the face of reactive and proactive events in the leading stage, they are more inclined to adopt an expanded lens, being manifested as a coexistence orientation, more elastic organizational identity and wider competitive boundaries.Originality/valueFirst, by untangling how TMT's cognitive frame functions in breakthrough innovations, this paper provides a micro-foundation for producing breakthrough innovations and deepens the understanding of upper echelon theory by considering the cognitive dimension of TMTs. Second, by teasing out several typical events experienced by the firm, this paper is the first attempt to reveal how events affect the generation of breakthrough innovation. Third, the work extends the application of the event system theory in technological innovation. It also provides insightful implications for promoting breakthrough innovations by considering the role of proactive and reactive events a firm experiences and TMT's perceptions.

The shame of knowing and not knowing: race and social class group dynamics

The purpose of this article is to reflect on how racial and cultural stereotypes so deeply embedded in our daily experiences frame and impact our thoughts, emotions, and behaviours. There are moments interpersonally and in groups when embedded assumptions and stereotypes seem to clash at the boundaries of social identities and roles, a space that can be shaming because we think we should know better. In this article I share journal entries of a group of women who I invited to work with me on a research team. I offer journals of our experiences of difficult moments at the boundaries of race, ethnicity, and social class as opportunities for learning. The journals provided an opportunity to share often unspoken thoughts and feelings about our racial and cultural points of disconnection.

חרדיות מודרנית בישראל: מבטים על הפילנתרופיה היהודית באמריקה

In this paper, we explore modern Haredi identity by focusing on the views of the new Haredi civic leadership in Israel (the homeland) on Jewish-American philanthropy (the diaspora). Drawing on ethnographic data, collected through interviews with 10 Haredi civic leaders and participant observation in a workshop that joined representatives of the two groups, we uncover the tensions which seem to constitute the symbolic boundaries of modern Haredi identity. One boundary relates to the dialectics of preservation and transformation: maintaining Haredi culture while pursuing a change in Haredi society in order to set it back on the right path. Another boundary refers to the dialectics of integration and distinction: the new Haredi civic leadership believes that Haredim can contribute to Israeli society as a whole but they should be able to do so while maintaining their Haredi values and Haredi way of life. The third boundary consists of the dialectics of differentiation and cooperation: The rejection of liberal Judaism (which Israeli Jews associate with American Jewry) alongside the willingness to cooperate with Jewish-American philanthropy. This study sheds new light on the issue of modern Haredi identity as it looks at how Haredi views of the diaspora serve identity construction processes in the Haredi society.

Ересь и адиафора в лютеранской догматике

This article is a historical, philosophical, and religious analysis of the reception of the concepts of "heresy" and "adiaphora" in Lutheran dogmatics. There is tension between the condemnation of heresies in Lutheran confessional books and the unconditional recognition of heresies as such by all Lutheran denominations. The problem of understanding the term "heresy" among Lutherans is considered, and a conclusion is made about the similarity of the terminological reception of the Reformation period with the era of the early church, when the lack of a clear definition of the concept of "heresy" did not prevent it from being used in a polemical sense, loading it with negative connotations in order to emphasize the unity of true Christian teaching. Such Lutheran confessional books as "Augsburg Confession", which is a sufficient basis for confessional self-determination and is recognized by all conservative and liberal Lutheran denominations, and the "Formula of Concord", which strictly defines the boundaries of Lutheran confessional identity, are studied. A number of historical examples of heresies mentioned and condemned by Lutheran theologians in the corpus of religious confessional writings are considered. The fact of the practical acceptance of church tradition by confessional Lutherans, in particular the results of the first ecumenical councils, the patristic tradition as evidence of faith and understanding of Holy Scripture, as well as a number of other significant aspects of church heritage, is emphasized. The change in the context of the use of the concept of "adiaphora" is analyzed, a conclusion is made about the preservation of the semantics of the term "adiaphora" in essence, and it is proved that the ethical context of its use among the Stoic philosophers and in the patristic tradition is transformed into a dogmatic one in Lutheranism. It is emphasized that this paradigm contributes to the formation of a tolerant attitude among Lutherans towards dissent and heterodoxy, which opens up opportunities for interreligious dialogue and the development of interchurch communication. A generalizing conclusion is made about the role of discussions of early Lutheranism in the formation of key tenets of Lutheran teaching and Lutheran confessional identity.

In the Castle of My Skin: (Re)Inscribing an African “Feminist” Identity in Changes and Faceless

ABSTRACT The analysis of African feminism in literary works is now a well-established area in literature. Most of the research on Changes and Faceless focuses on a thematic or stylistic study of the text. An often-underexplored area is how these two authors utilize the element of characterization to (re)inscribe the boundaries of African-centered feminist identities. To fill this gap, this article comparatively analyses the portrayal of “feminist” identity in Aidoo’s Changes (1994) and Darko’s Faceless (2003). The article reaffirms the stance assumed by Nigerian theorists like Nnaemeka, Ogundipe-Leslie, and Akachi that the feminist in Africa is accommodative, compromising, and collaborative. Using negofeminism (No ego feminism) theory as an analytical framework, this article reveals that in Faceless, the female characters who survive and thrive are those who live out the very tenets of the theory. In Changes, Esi is isolated in the end because she chose individualism over communalism. Consequently, this article extends the scholarship on literary representation of African feminism in women-authored novels. This validates the conclusion that African feminism as portrayed by Aidoo and Darko is truly representative of indigenous societies.

Intersectionality Gets Fashionably Fat

The authors’ research project, Sizing Up Gender, explored the experiences of thirteen participants at the intersections of gender expression and fat. Through a series of photographs of participants and their garments, the project pushed the boundaries of art, identities, representations, and research. This article seeks to consider the ways in which innovative arts-based practice with a deep focus on justice and anti-oppression can allow for a thickening of intersectionality research. The blending of art and research practices, such as those under discussion here, can simultaneously maintain a commitment to the genesis of intersectionality’s critical potential while allowing the term to evolve and consider heretofore undiscussed terrain.

A Demographic Sampling Model and Database for Addressing Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Bias in Popular-music Empirical Research

This report summarizes the development and application of a demographic encoding model designed to assist researchers in aligning dataset diversity with real-world diversity in popular-music corpus studies. Drawing on sampling strategies in machine-learning research and encoding procedures in health sciences and the humanities, the model and its associated open-access data provides researchers with a tool to generate more inclusive databases along the parameters of race, ethnicity, and gender. The model itself attempts to reconcile the intersectional boundaries of personal identity with the binarity required by statistical encoding and analysis. Importantly, it facilitates a mindful approach through conditional parameters; for example, by minimizing the risk of tokenizing minoritized artists in multi-member ensembles by considering said artist’s agency and demographic proportion within the group. Applying the model to artist samples from various popular-music corpora affirms the underrepresentation of non-white and non-male artists in related research. In response, the report outlines how a researcher might utilize intentional demographic sampling when developing future corpus-based popular-music studies.

Objects of mestizo memory

This visual essay explores the relationship of racialization and family archives based on an inquiry into my Guatemalan father’s collection of media artifacts. The media objects include VHS tapes, photographic prints, and legal documents. All of the images presented are from my father’s media archive, and they are presented in relation to a series of textual reflections. These reflections are drawn from my own experiences producing oral histories with my tía Marta in Guatemala, my father’s reflections on his archive of media objects, and a review of colonial texts that elaborated the descriptions of ethnoracial categories related to “mestizaje” in Central America. Taken together, this image-based and textual exploration presents the reader with an opportunity to reflect on the contingent, fraught, and open-ended process of racialization, as well as on moments of foreclosure where boundaries of ethnoracial identity are demarcated and reified. The essay meditates on ways that utterances and dialogue about family archives constitute sites of racialization. There is a corresponding video essay featuring my father’s narration along with his interaction with his archive at the link below: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwPmMwBJc-k .

Gender Confirmation Work, Rest, and Symbolic Boundaries in (Trans)Gender Support Groups

Research on transgender identity and community boundaries has developed steadily over the last decade, but many of the inquiries center around personal identity boundaries and development rather than collective boundary drawing. To understand how and why gendered symbolic boundaries are drawn and enforced in shared spaces, I collected and analyzed qualitative data from thirteen in-depth interviews with trans people in gender support groups in the United States. I investigated the symbolic boundaries that members of gender support groups draw around who “counts” as trans, who is welcome in the groups, and factors that influence boundary drawing. I found that trans participants engage in high amounts of emotional work, that I term gender confirmation work, to uphold their gender identities in a cisnormative world. Consequently, gender support groups function as space of rest from work, and boundaries are drawn to ensure rest inside the groups. My study on gender support group membership boundaries advances new terms to describe trans people’s response to gender-based harm. My findings also demonstrate how trans people—a marginalized population—employ group strategies for navigating cisgender-dominant society.

Tactile technologies of the self: connection, hapticscape and self-development narratives in Cape Town’s Afro-Latin dance scene

Drawing on ethnographic research within the salsa, bachata and kizomba (SBK) scene of Cape Town, this article examines the values and narratives of personal development that Cape Town’s adepts of Afro-Latin dance elaborate around the emic notion of “connection.” I describe how this multisensory experience is informed by an ethic of personal development and self-transformation, which at the same time reflects the influence of global neoliberal entrepreneurial paradigms — together with the hopes, values and hampered dreams of Cape Town’s post-apartheid middle classes. Narratives and descriptions of the hapticscape and multisensory knowledge built through the search for connection highlight how these encounters give shape to intimate spaces where salsa amateurs can imagine, materialise and embody the multiple injunctions they navigate and can reconfigure the boundaries of intimacy, identity and otherness in the post-apartheid city.

“I am Latina and Latinx”: A Narrative Study of How Three Latina/Latinx College Students Create Identity Boundaries

The term “Latinx” has gained much popularity in some higher education spaces, yet its meaning to and use by those categorized as such has remained unexplored. In this study, we employ narrative inquiry and the lens of Critical Race Feminism to understand how Latinx has evolved into an identity for three individuals who embrace Latinx as a third-gender space. This study presents the narrative of three self-identified Latina/Latinx students about their use and definition of “Latinx.” From these lived experiences, we learned how some users of the term might leverage it as a tool to negotiate their dynamic Latina/Latinx identity development. This article shares three findings detailing how participants define the term Latinx, the boundaries developed to claiming Latinx identity, and how they used the term and identity Latinx to educate others and/or disrupt dominant ways of knowing. Last, this study ends with a discussion of the implications of this study for education research, practice, and policy.

Research: Solidarity-as-Project: Charting Democratic Co-inquiries in an Asian American Girl and Woman–Centric English Education Community

Informed by AsianCrit, sociocultural literacy studies, and solidarity scholarship, this article examines how an Indian American woman scholar-practitioner and eight Indonesian American girls collectively engaged with civic learning in an out-of-school critical English education space. The researcher offers the construct of solidarity-as-project by tracing examples of how the facilitator and participants crossed boundaries of identity and experience to interdependently learn about and centralize Asian American civic legacies. The researcher also considers the complications of power and diversity in those co-learning processes. The article concludes with recommendations for how English teacher education can orient teacher candidates toward enacting solidarity-as-project alongside Asian American girls and young women.

Fractured in-group identity (re)negotiation in an online white nationalist forum

This study investigates the construction and (re)negotiation of the identity boundaries in the context of a white nationalist online forum. Using over three million words of data, a corpus linguistic approach is combined with elements of critical discourse analysis, namely social actor (van Leeuwen, 1996) and transitivity (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004) analyses, to examine the positioning of social actors in relation to one another. The data shows that, despite an assumption amongst some scholars of a united and ideologically coherent in-group of extremists, forum members often disagree on the nature and boundaries of both their racial (white) and ideological (white nationalist) identities. This calls into question the value of the `in-group' concept as we currently understand it. Instead, the `in-group' in the far-right context should be seen as slippery and unfixed, comprising multiple overlapping but distinct identities.

The Image of the Violator of Ethno-Cultural and Ethno-Racial Identity Borders as Reflected by Xenopejorative Lexemes of the English and Russian Languages

The article examines how English and Russian speakers perceive going beyond the boundaries of ethno-cultural and ethno-racial identity, specifically in relation to pejorative vocabulary related to the conceptual field of hybrid identity, which includes pejorative names for subjects and results of hybridization. The study used the online Racial Slur Database (rsbd.org) as the source of English-language material, while the Russian-language material was collected empirically due to the lack of a corresponding database on the World Wide Web.
 The article attempts to identify the main models for naming subjects and results of hybridization in order to compare the image of this phenomenon in the English and Russian collective worldviews, and to understand the origins of a negative attitude towards violators of the boundaries between “Own” and “Alien”.
 The study concludes that while there are some similar models used in constructing pejoratively marked vocabulary of this kind, there is also a significant difference between the schemes for constructing such names in the analyzed languages. Finally, the article attempts to understand the linguistic, historical, and cultural reasons for the quantitative disproportion between the English and Russian xenopejorative lexical fund belonging to the conceptual field of hybrid identity.

Contesting the boundaries of marianismo and entrepreneurial identity: meanings of motherhood amongst Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs

PurposeTo critically analyse how Latin American migrant women entrepreneurs living in Ireland and the UK negotiate their entrepreneurial and motherhood identities in transnational settings. The paper explores (1) how motherhood influences the choices of becoming entrepreneurs; (2) how women reconcile the social imaginaries of motherhood from their country of origin in the new contexts of settlement; and (3) the impact of these transformations on their businesses.Design/methodology/approachThis paper draws on six biographical case studies (three in Ireland and three in the UK) and employs the theoretical lens of translocational positionality to analyse entrepreneurship as context-specific and relational processes that bring together a multiplicity of social and geographical locales.FindingsLatin American women entrepreneurs navigate their roles as “good mothers” and “good businesswomen” by simultaneously (1) complying with core values of marianismo that confine them to traditional gender roles and (2) renegotiating these values in ways that empower them through entrepreneurship. Finally, juxtaposing these two contexts (Ireland and the UK), this study (3) illuminates the similarities of the ever-continuing gender power struggles of egalitarianism for Latin American migrant women in both contexts.Originality/valueDespite the agreed need for exploring motherhood as one of the critical aspects shaping family and business cycles, this area needs to be sufficiently analysed in its intersection with ethnicity or migratory status, particularly with participants from the global South. This article aims at bridging that gap.

The radicals watched from the sidelines or the ambivalent citizens’ relations to radicalism in a poor Montreal neighbourhood

ABSTRACT This analysis seeks to understand the appropriation or rejection of radicalism by two groups in a poor and immigrant neighbourhood of Montreal. Yet although both defend the same causes and share the same progressive dimension, one presents itself as a group of non-radical citizens while the other presents itself as a group of radical activists. So for each group, what do these different definitions of identity enfold: citizens versus militants, non-radicals versus radicals? More than the acceptance and the use of violence, the investigation’s results reveal that the divergences observed illustrate a different construction of the intersection between social class, cultural or ethnic identity, and global and local boundaries. These different ways of conceiving the intersection shape specific democratic practices and relations to politics. This analysis outlines the relevance of not restricting the reflection on radicalism to a focus on the repertoire of collective action but rather exploring its meanings for citizens in their daily lives and its implications for their relations to politics. Finally, it also offers a concrete picture of left-wing ideological tensions and debates and how some grass roots organizations try (or do not try) to resolve them.