Coherent Identity Research Articles

Å arbeide med verdier i kirken

The aim of the article is to investigate how the use of supervision in ethical reflection can facilitate value-consciousness in religious organizations. In turn, this contributes to our knowledge about the role of values and purpose in such contexts. This conceptual article presupposes that all types of lead- ership and organizations are value-based since values are inherent in actions and interaction. Neutral zones void of values do not exist, which challenges organizations and leaders to attend to the question of which values influence and characterize them and their work, and be conscious about such dynam- ics. The author discusses how managerial efforts on explicating the coherence of acclaimed identity (values-for-practice) and realized behaviour (values-in-practice) is required due to developments inter- nal of religious organizations as well as a response to wider societal and cultural changes. The central concept in this article is value-consciousness applied through a practice perspective on religious or- ganizations. The article presents a model of supervision in ethical reflection and discusses its rele- vance in a church context. The author substantiate this as a concrete tool for explicating values in con- gregations and in the practice of church employees and leaders.

Benefits and Costs of Social Media in Adolescence.

In 2015, American adolescents aged 13 to 18 years reported using social media 1 hour and 11 minutes a day, 7 days a week. Social media are used for a variety of activities, including sharing information, interacting with peers, and developing a coherent identity. In this review of the research, we examine how social media are intertwined with adolescent development and assess both the costs and benefits of adolescent social media use. We include suggestions for further research and recommendations for clinicians, policy makers, and educators.

Being both – A European and a national citizen? Comparing young people’s identification with Europe and their home country across eight European countries

It is a well-established fact that forming a mature and coherent political identity is one developmental task in adolescence and young adulthood. However, given different degrees of commitment on the regional, national, and European level, the question remains whether young people’s identification varies among those spheres? Drawing on data from the European Catch-EyoU-project, it was the goal of this study to examine whether young people can be classified according to their identification toward their home country and Europe and how these types are associated with age, gender, country as well as political interest, tolerance, and political participation. The study is based on adolescents and young adults from the Czech Republic, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Estonia, Italy, Portugal, and Sweden (N = 9339; Mage = 19.62; 59.1% female). Cluster analysis revealed five types of young people’s identification with country and Europe which showed significant associations between group membership and tolerance, political interest, and participation. The implications of distinguishing types of identification and their associations with political outcomes are discussed.

A Universal Intervention Program Increases Ethnic-Racial Identity Exploration and Resolution to Predict Adolescent Psychosocial Functioning One Year Later.

Ethnic-racial identity formation represents a key developmental task that is especially salient during adolescence and has been associated with many indices of positive adjustment. The Identity Project intervention, which targeted ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution, was designed based on the theory that program-induced changes in ethnic-racial identity would lead to better psychosocial adjustment (e.g., global identity cohesion, self-esteem, mental health, academic achievement). Adolescents (N =215; Mage =15.02, SD =.68; 50% female) participated in a small-scale randomized control trial with an attention control group. A cascading mediation model was tested using pre-test and three follow-up assessments (12, 18, and 67 weeks after baseline). The program led to increases in exploration, subsequent increases in resolution and, in turn, higher global identity cohesion, higher self-esteem, lower depressive symptoms, and better grades. Results support the notion that increasing adolescents' ethnic-racial identity can promote positive psychosocial functioning among youth.

Se parler malgré tout

Se parler malgré tout

Testimony, Memory and Solidarity across National Borders: Paul Ricoeur and Transnational Feminism

In many ways, globalization created the problem of representation for feminist solidarity across the borders of the nation state. This problem is one of presenting a cohesive identity for representation in the transnational public sphere. This paper proposes a solution to this problem of a cohesive identity for women’s representation by drawing on the work of Paul Ricœur. What these women seem to have in common are shared political aims, but they have no basis for those aims. This paper provides a basis for these aims by turning to Ricœur’s work on collective memory from Memory, History, Forgetting. The paper concludes that it is the shared testimony through narrative hospitality, which can provide a foundation for a social bond for those with common political aims. More specifically, this common knowledge provides a justification for the representation of women and their allies in the transnational public sphere.

Between continuity and change: The EU's mechanism of differentiated value integration

AbstractHow does the European Union integrate new values into the text of its treaties? A growing body of literature indicates that, in the past three decades, new norms and values have entered the EU's discourse, resulting in what is usually termed ‘normative power Europe’. Yet the research and knowledge to‐date about the EU's discursive assimilation of new values and norms is surprisingly poor. As any institutional change, such integration has the potential to undermine the coherence of the EU's identity and thus also its objective to ‘speak with one voice’. This article explores the EU's discursive management of the continuity‐versus‐change imperative by analysing the integration of new values into the text of its treaties. This issue is addressed based on a quantitative content analysis on the full texts of European founding treaties between the 1950s and 2009. Findings show that the distribution of the EU's values in the text is not uniform: while the language of market economy and democracy is pervasive, the values of peace, European identity, rights and social justice are mentioned less frequently and in restricted linguistic environments. To account for the differences in the integration of values into the EU's treaty discourse, the article develops the notion of a discursive mechanism of differentiated value integration (MDVI). This rationale echoes the logic of differentiation in policy implementation employed by the EU. It is claimed here that, applied in the European discursive arena, MDVI allows radically different readings of the same text. This helps the EU to maintain a coherent value identity while at the same time enabling change.

Accompagner les professionnels de santé dans la révélation de l’erreur : de la révélation à soi à la révélation à l’autre

Error disclosure is now an ethical and professional obligation for health professionals and seeks to improve quality and safety in healthcare. Literature has highlighted the numerous benefits of error disclosure and several authors have described the options for handling this situation. However, it is not quite that simple to be honest and open and follow a protocol that instructs professionals to explain, support and apologise in situations where they are subject to criticism. While the many personal, institutional and social factors that hinder open disclosure have been identified, little attention has been paid to the obstacles associated with the psychological impact of disclosure, thereby limiting the debate on how professionals might be supported in their efforts to cope with error disclosure. The psychological impact of error on professionals is a well-established fact. Physicians are “second victims” likely to be emotionally affected by medical error. Emotional distress, anger, isolation, fear, guilt and shame can be intense, suggesting that, far from being an isolated act in professional practice, a medical error is a life event that modifies the psychological balance of a professional. Studies in the humanities have shown how work shapes individuals’ identities. The choice to heal and care for is indicative of the ideals related to professionals’ life histories, cultures, family models and representations of health and disease. Work and, more specifically, recognition at work from their peers, patients and relatives enables health professionals to support their ideals and establish a coherent identity, and to belong to a workgroup. The error foreshadows a rupture which plunges the professional and the team in a state of vulnerability that rules out the professional's or the team's possibility to be part of a process of disclosing the error. In these conditions, a policy of security of care also involves a guarantee of the caregiver's and the team's psychological security. The term psychological security was developed by the psychoanalysis who emphasised the individual's need to evolve in a “sufficiently good” protective environment that allows him/her to contain his/her emotions, while giving the individual the possibility to express and discuss them. This space implies a relation of trust between individuals. Trust refers to the idea that the individual can trust someone, it is based on the capacity to create relations. It is only through trust that the professional will be able to open him/herself to others and construct a space where the errors and the doubts that he/she has in the context of work are shared. But if trust is essential, it is also dangerous because it implies accepting the risk of being dependent on those considered as trustworthy and the risk that they will not live up to the professional's expectations. As a consequence, the professional will only have trust when he/she has evaluated the possibility of cooperation and more precisely, as stated by Hardin, a cooperation in which the professional's interests are “encapsulated interests”, in other words the interests of others. Therefore, this cooperation depends on each member of the team seeing his/her interests as being partially those of the others. Cooperation within a service reveals the relations of trust between the professionals and shows the relations of dependence that each one maintains with the others for the good administration of care. Thus the creation of relations of cooperation between the team members proves to be an important indicator to determine the professional's possibility to adhere to a process of disclosing the error. This approach shows that professionals must address multiple rather than single disclosures: to the self, and to others (colleagues, hierarchy, patients and families) who will mobilise specific knowledge, emotions and psychological defences. To avoid cases where disclosure takes on dimensions as tragic as the actual errors committed, it is important to pay attention to the psychic state of healthcare professionals by offering a space of free expression that enables them to better understand their feelings and gain a sense of support in order to restore their ideals and professional identities. Finally, it's important to emphasize that disclosure also depends on the preservation or restoration of the relations of cooperation within the team. Disclosure cannot be prescribed, it must emerge within a workgroup who allows the error to be thought over, communicated and shared. In this context, disclosure becomes a group rule that is known to all. A health professional who feels sufficiently supported might, in turn, support a patient and/or his/her relatives and engage in meaningful disclosure.

Personal and cultural identity development in recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents: Links with psychosocial functioning.

This study examined directionality between personal (i.e., coherence and confusion) and cultural identity (i.e., ethnic and U.S.) as well as their additive effects on psychosocial functioning in a sample of recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents. The sample consisted of 302 recent (<5 years) immigrant Hispanic adolescents (53% boys; Mage = 14.51 years at baseline; SD = .88 years) from Miami and Los Angeles who participated in a longitudinal study. Results indicated a bidirectional relationship between personal identity coherence and both ethnic and U.S. identity. Ethnic and U.S. affirmation/commitment (A/C) positively and indirectly predicted optimism and negatively predicted rule breaking and aggression through coherence. However, confusion predicted lower self-esteem and optimism and higher depressive symptoms, rule breaking, unprotected sex, and cigarette use. Results further indicated significant site differences. In Los Angeles (but not Miami), ethnic A/C also negatively predicted confusion. Given the direct effects of coherence and confusion on nearly every outcome, it may be beneficial for interventions to target personal identity. However, in contexts such as Los Angeles, which has at least some ambivalence toward recently immigrated Hispanic adolescents, it may be more beneficial for interventions to also target cultural identity to reduce confusion and thus promote positive development. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Authenticity, Captioned: Hashtags, Emojis, and Visibility Politics in Alok Vaid-Menon’s Selfie Captions

Authenticity, Captioned: Hashtags, Emojis, and Visibility Politics in Alok Vaid-Menon’s Selfie Captions

It's All Their Fault

It's All Their Fault Peter Heinegg The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve. By Stephen Greenblatt, New York, NY: W.W. Norton, 2017. 419 pp. $27.95. A vivid, learned‐but‐lively survey of what may have been the Christian world's worst category error—confusing the etiological myths of Genesis 2.4b‐3.24 for a sequence of actual events—and its fateful repercussions. As in The Swerve (2011), Greenblatt seizes on a grand cross‐cultural meme (original sin, as found in Augustine's sublimely pessimistic writings—more or less the polar opposite of the liberating Epicurean materialism found in Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura) and rings the changes on its antecedents, its components, and its prodigious career. Actually, it would have helped if Greenblatt had started out by telling readers that an etiological myth doesn't aim to provide a scientific or factual or logical explanation of some important phenomenon, but instead meditates imaginatively on it. Thus, the author of the Yahwist creation story talks about “the man” and “the woman,” generic beings, not individual persons, no Mr. Adam or Ms. Eve. That unknown writer must have known that, left to themselves, a single pair of humans could never have gotten to a third generation without launching a deadly cycle of incest. But he (pace Harold Bloom) had other things in mind, perhaps most crucially the mystery of self‐consciousness, which elevates us to a godlike state, capable of moral judgment, but reveals the truth about death, and thus makes us literally mortals. This dark picture, as opposed to the Priestly creation myth (Gen. 1‐2.4a), with its bold gender equality and its happy ending on the Sabbath, where humans expressly imitate their Creator, does not, however, constitute a Pauline‐Augustinian “Fall” into permanent alienation from God, with a catastrophic burden of guilt. Greenblatt knows how this genre works, of course; and near the end of the book he talks about “just‐so stories,” but he might have done it sooner. Greenblatt begins by tracing the Bible to its presumed source: the crucible of the Babylonian exile. Crushed by military defeat and facing deracination and assimilation by a powerful, seductive enemy culture, the Jews (once they were set free by Cyrus in 538 BCE) had to forge a cohesive identity. They did so by “changing the story” through “the dream of the master text” that would bring together all the vital strands of tradition, to serve “as an alternative to the ruined Temple, a substitute for what had been lost.” The Bible was meant as a “counter‐narrative” to the Enuma Elish, the Atrahasis story, and the Epic of Gilgamesh. In those ancient Mesopotamian documents the Flood is caused not by Yahweh's furious indignation at human depravity, but by the gods’ disgust with the horde of raucous earthlings. Genesis borrowed many items from its pagan predecessors, like the figure of Utnapishtim (=Noah; but the Noachian covenant, with its noble theme of a new birth for humanity, introduces us to a friendly God who makes reliable treaties with his creatures). Greenblatt is distressed by the whole notion of cosmic punishment for sin, which would be picked up and vastly expanded by the Christine doctrine of the Fall and Redemption. That was a spectacular misreading of Genesis 3; it eventually gave birth to all sorts of literary and artistic splendor, but at the cost of imposing on believers a harrowing, demon‐ridden, life‐denying (see Nietzsche's Anti‐Christ) narrative, whose final refutation at the hands of Darwin Greenblatt chronicles and celebrates. The Jews, according to Greenblatt, rejected some of the positive features of Gilgamesh, for example, the intense, loving brotherhood of Gilgamesh and Enkidu, and especially the joyous humanizing of Enkidu through the ministrations of the hierodule Shamhat. By contrast, when Adam and Eve are initiated into the fullness of human self‐awareness, the result is “disaster.” On other hand, Greenblatt seems to slight the overwhelming bitterness with which both Enkidu and Gilagmesh lament the coming of death. The Yahwist myth of Adam and Eve proved to be irresistibly fascinating and gave rise to a host of different interpretations. One of the more curious responses came...

Antyczna tradycja filozoficznych sposobów życia jako wzorzec dla współczesności

W niniejszym artykule prezentuję filozofię rozumianą jako sposób życia i pytam o jej aktualność lub dezaktualizację we „współczesności”. Na początku definiuję to, czym jest filozoficzny sposób życia i czym on się charakteryzuje. Następnie wskazuję na dwa aspekty ludzkiej „natury”, które warunkują realizację tego sposobu życia: konieczność istnienia spójnej tożsamości i całościowego egzystencjalnego projektu (celu).W punkcie drugim ukazuję „współczesność” w jej napięciu między nowoczesnością a „ponowoczesnością”. Nawiązuję tutaj do charakterystyki tej ostatniej, sformułowanej przez Zygmunta Baumana. Natomiast w punkcie trzecim pytam o możliwość funkcjonowania filozofii, jako sposobu życia, w tak zdefiniowanej „współczesności”.Wskazuję, że wyklucza ona takie funkcjonowanie ze względu na postulowaną „płynną tożsamość”, a precyzyjniej mówiąc – na brak tej tożsamości i niemożliwość jej spójnego skonstruowania według przyjętego określonego wzorca. Z drugiej jednak strony zauważam, że – paradoksalnie – „ponowoczesność” może być przestrzenią realizacji filozoficznej egzystencji w momencie, gdy uznamy, że negacja, poczucie obcości i stawianie się w krytycznej opozycji wobec ustalonego porządku były charakterystycznymi cechami antycznego filozofowania, którego paradygmat swą atopicznością wyznaczył Sokrates. Zatem filozoficzny sposób życia możliwy jest do realizacji nawet w tej epoce, która sama ideowo zaprzecza takiej możliwości.

Alienation, Unhomeliness and Desire for Belonging in K.S. Maniam’s The Return

Malaysia is a multicultural and multi ethnic society in which national and ethnic identities are very critical and widely disputed issues. Accordingly, several Malaysian writers such as K.S. Maniam have addressed the issues in their literary productions. This paper intends to examine the dilemmas, agonies and desolations of Indian community in Malaysia which have been reflected in K.S. Maniam’s autobiographical novel The Return (1981). In the story, Maniam voices out the experiences of Indian minority in the troubled times of Malaysia and their struggle for assimilation and adaptation to the new land as well as their identity crisis. Central characters of the story, Ravi, Periathai and Naina as three different generations of Indian migrant in the landscape of Malaysia attempt to embrace the new land as their home and build their coherent or homogeneous Malaysian identity. This paper also explores Maniam’s protagonist’s (Ravi) identity conflicts and his endeavor to escape from his unsettled identity as an Indian Malaysian. Ravi seeks his identity in mastering English, the colonial language, yet this is the very point of his alienation as he finds out that all his preconceptions about language was false and illusionary.

Predicting Sense of Coherence and Sense of Identity among Transgender People – Role of Perceived Social Stigma and Social Support

&lt;div&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Sense of coherence is a global orientation expressing a person's pervasive and enduring feeling of confidence. The term "identity" refers to the capacity for &lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;self-reflection&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;and the &lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;awareness of self&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;. Stigma refers to a mark or sign of some sort that is seen as disqualifying individuals from the full social acceptance of the society. Perceived social support refers to an individual’s belief that social support is available, is generally considered positive or negative and provides what is considered needed by that individual. The present study is a quantitative study which adopts a correlational design in which perceived social support &amp;amp; transgender identity stigma are the predictor variables, and sense of coherence and sense of identity among transgender people, are the criterion variables. Purposive and snowball sampling techniques were used to include 120 transgender people aged between 18 – 50 years from in and around the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad. Analysis of results through stepwise multiple regression analyses showed that social support is a predictor of sense of coherence and its dimensions – manageability and comprehensibility; and sense of identity. Perceived stigma was a significant predictor of comprehensibility while enacted stigma, predicted sense of coherence and comprehensibility. The application value of the study findings are high when it comes to formulating policies to improve the status of transgender community, taking into consideration their plight and the dearth of psychological research with this marginalised group.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;/div&gt;

The EU's Peace and Security Narrative: Views from EU Strategic Partners in Asia

AbstractThe EU has consistently struggled to forge a foreign policy narrative which promotes internal cohesion and supports the EU's efforts to exert international influence. The 2016 EU Global Strategy is the latest iteration of collective efforts to tie strategy and purpose to the EU's coherent identity in the world. This study compares the EU's strategic partners of peace and security with narratives about the EU held in the EU's strategic partners in Asia. Whilst we find reasonable coherence in the EU's projection of the international system and its role in it, its identity as an actor, and its response to policy issues on the ground, views from Asia largely contest these claims. This article employs a strategic narrative approach to conceptualize and empirically trace how the formation, projection and reception of EU narratives are part of broader circuits of communication through which EU might be recognized, legitimized and achieve influence.

The EU's New Approach To the Two-State Solution in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Paradigm Shift or PR Exercise?

AbstractThe EU's consistent policy towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been that Israel's presence in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip (prior to the 2005 disengagement) and the Golan Heights is subject to the laws of belligerent occupation, that any purported Israeli annexation is illegal and null and void, that Israel's settlements in the Territories are in breach of public international law and constitute a serious obstacle to peace, and that Israel and Palestine should settle their conflict on the basis of public international law and through the two-state solution. In recent years the EU attempted to concretize this policy through its trade and trade-related agreements with Israel, withholding the benefits of EU-Israeli co-operation from companies and research institutions based in the Territories or operating therein, as well as from products produced therein (the New Approach). Thus, from the EU perception, the New Approach towards the long-standing conflict and its reliance on international law may be seen as an instrument to reinforce internal and external legitimacy, buttress identity cohesiveness and as a manifestation of its more robust effectiveness. But this article seeks to conduct a more careful and balanced analysis of the New Approach and in doing so to reveal that the EU's (almost) exclusive focus on non-governmental entities, such as corporations situated in the Territories, and on Territories’ products, is misplaced in terms of public international law and effectiveness. The New Approach's deficiencies,in abstractoandin concreto, as evaluated in this article, are likely to prevent it from serving as a paradigm shift in EU-Israel relations.

Feminist Disability Studies as Methodology: Life-Writing and the Abled/Disabled Binary

What does feminist disability studies contribute to feminist methods? Feminist disability scholars interweave life-writing about their experiences of disability or caring for a disabled person to challenge ableist stereotypes. As such, they foreground their own vulnerability to build disability identity and community. This style of life-writing, while essential, tends to calcify the dichotomy between the disabled and abled—a binary that the field of feminist disability studies aims to destabilise. Building on new work in feminist disability studies, I show how some scholars use life-writing to cultivate an estranging sensitivity. This new sensitivity builds on prior feminist disability studies scholarship to estrange us from 1) the idea that disability is a cohesive identity and community, 2) that disability is always a socially desirable position, and 3) that allegiance to disability rights insulates us from ableist anxiety. By embracing the tension between solidifying and destabilising the meaning of disability, feminist disability scholars can leverage life-writing as a tool of resistance and thereby lessen the threat of conformity that life narratives tend to produce.

Witless slaves or lively artifacts? A debate of the 1960s

During late modernism, the promise of, not only vaguely, but also precisely predicting the future had acquired enormous prestige. When evoked, this predictive project lent power, legitimacy, and a cohesive identity to endeavours in almost any realm of society and culture – including the discipline of architecture. In particular, in cybernetics, seen as a means of regulating and controlling complex systems, these optimistic ideas of ‘mastering the big picture’ flourished.Under the heading of ‘Cybernetics: Circular Casual, and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems’, the umbrella organisation Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation hosted ten conferences on this very topic between 1946 and 1951. These events, known as the Macy Conferences, provided a forum for the collation and presentation of existing research, and in retrospect can be seen to have been the most important ‘get-together’ of their kind, judged in relation to subsequent crucial findings in the history of science after the Cold War. Based upon the theoretical framework of the terms of ‘information’, ‘feedback’, and ‘analog/digital’, they searched for that single universal theory of regulation and control – which they claimed might be applied to any species, machine, economic or psychological process, aesthetic or sociological phenomenon. As a consequence, cybernetics transformed into a tool to describe and explain methodologies not only in its own core knowledge/ research area, but became seen as a subject capable of giving answers to societal questions of any kind. In doing so, cybernetics linked new scientific-technical methods with all issues of social relevance.

The intersection of abandonment, HIV-positive status and residential care for a group of perinatally infected adolescents

Although anti-retroviral treatments have significantly reduced the incidence of mother-to-child transmission of HIV and AIDS, there remains, for the foreseeable future, a group of adolescents who have been perinatally infected. Noting the paucity of information regarding the impact of paediatric AIDS and its intersection with residential care, this paper investigates the lived realities of 20 South African adolescents who were vertically infected with HIV and AIDS, were abandoned, and have been raised in residential care. The exploratory study highlights that for these youth the dimensions of their adolescence, HIV-positive status and associated abandonment as well as life in residential care are mutually reinforcing and interconnected. Issues of race and class also interact with these social dimensions. Ultimately, these dimensions intersect to create a particular form of social exclusion. Intentional, critical intervention is required on the micro level to support these teens develop a coherent identity. On the meso level, the residential facility should actively facilitate community integration, particularly with the adolescents’ communities (and where possible, families) of origin. Governments need to strengthen intersectoral, rights-based responses and in particular, address the consequences of cognitive impairment associated with perinatal transmission.