Construction Of Self Research Articles

How does China appraise self and others? A corpus-based analysis of Chinese political discourse

Political discourse is a major site where ideological construction of both Self and Others is carried out. Based on a corpus of 98 political texts issued by Chinese governing bodies from 2000 to 2018, this study adopts Appraisal System to analyse the lexical items that indicate attitudes towards China and other countries with a view to revealing the ways in which China and other countries are appraised in Chinese political discourse. It is found that (1) Chinese political discourse does represent the ideological square of positive Self-presentation and negative Other-presentation, but more frequently it negatively evaluates China’s things (appreciation) rather than its behaviours (judgement) while more negative appraisals are used to describe Others’ behaviours rather than Their things, (2) interestingly, while China upturns Others’ negative profiles, it also upscales negative presentation of Self; likewise, China mitigates negative presentation of both Self and Others, (3) Chinese political discourse allows more external voices when expressing its attitudes towards Self. The analysis shows that the producers of Chinese political discourse skilfully use appraisal resources, sometimes implicitly, to construct a subtle but dynamic ‘Self versus Other’ ideological structure in Chinese political discourse, which enhances the understanding of China’s moderate view on itself and others in its pursuit of national interests.

Identity tensions in dual career: the discursive construction of future selves by female Finnish judo athletes

To date, few studies have explored how changes in the practices, policies, and politics of sport and education may be implicated in how young athletes think about and plan for the future. Drawing on cultural praxis and feminist poststructuralist frameworks, this paper explores whether and how dual career (DC) policies and practices in Finland guide female judo athletes’ imaginings about their future. Discourse analysis was used to analyse interviews with three adolescent (aged 16) and three young adult (aged 20, 23, and 27) elite female judo athletes. Differences were found in the ways the athletes in the different age groups constructed their future athletic, civic and gendered selves. We argue that some female judo athletes may experience identity tensions and lower their athletic aspirations in seeking to meet the new societal expectations embedded in the DC discourse. We conclude with recommendations for future policy and practice.

The institutionalisation of commercialism in the audit profession

PurposePrevious literature on the commercialisation of the audit profession has focused on the coercive force of macro-institutional structures. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the agency of individual auditors and examine their active construction of the commercial self in a Big Four audit firm in China.Design/methodology/approachThis paper applied a qualitative research approach to data collection and analysis. A total of 17 interviews were conducted with senior auditors, managers, directors and partners to generate a rich narrative.FindingsThis study analyses prevalent discourses identified in the Chinese organisational setting and finds that, within the “clan-like” structure of the audit engagement team, three recurring discourses (i.e. the client relationship, adding value and career) were powerful scripts in constructing individual subjectivity wherein the “professionalism” ideal was re-enacted to rationalise the incorporation of more commercialistic elements.Research limitations/implicationsThis study collected interviews representing various perspectives within a Big Four audit firm in China. Nonetheless, the scope of this study was limited to certain types of audit firms at certain times.Originality/valueThis study demonstrates that the scripts are not just a matter of self-presentation, but important sources of self-formation and self-definition. Rather than being imposed externally, “commercial selves” are actively constructed by individual auditors, leading to the institutionalisation of commercialism in the audit profession at the micro level.

Understanding the archival fonds as autobiographical text through three discourses

Over the last few decades, textual criticism has shifted its focus away from the reconstruction of final authorial intentions in favour of exposing the multiplicity of intentions concurring in the formation of literary texts. A similar shift in focus can be tracked in the theoretical literature on lifewriting exploring the nature of autobiographical texts. There, the notion that such texts function as sites for the revelation of a unified authentic self has been displaced by an understanding of them as sites for the construction of multiple selves. Both these shifts resonate, in turn, with a growing body of archival literature investigating the multiple layers of agency implicated in the construction of archival fonds. Drawing on the insights of textual criticism, lifewriting scholarship and the archival theory of arrangement, this article considers the ways in which personal fonds in general and writers’ fonds in particular may be understood as autobiographical texts.

Mademoiselle de Montpensier: Writings, Châteaux, and Female Self-Construction in Early Modern France. Sophie Maríñez.

<i>Mademoiselle de Montpensier: Writings, Châteaux, and Female Self-Construction in Early Modern France</i>. Sophie Maríñez.

Children's representation of self in social media communities

Abstract This is a study of how children represent themselves when performing participatory identities in social media communities with relevance to constructing a learning self. Data was generated by filming eight children (6–11 years of age) talking about and showing their multimodal self-representations. On their out-of-school learning journeys, the children came into presences as ‘a someone’, in social media communities. The theoretical foundation informing the study is Wenger's theory on learning as social participation. Multimodal interactional analysis was applied to move the analysis beyond transcripts of texts to include actions children take with or through multimodal mediational means. The results display significant aspects of children's learning trajectories in self representation, presented as: Input from comments, understanding the other, preparing for a performing self and taking actions. Out of these acts of participation, three different participatory identities were constructed: the user, the producer and the designer. The main results show how children through participation, widen their learning repertoire and critically reflect on space and place. This research adds to the educational field by presenting children's experiences from navigating new worlds and enacting participatory identities, which is of relevance for their ongoing construction of a learning self.

Traversing the soft/hard power binary: the case of the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute

AbstractSoft power and hard power are conceptualised in International Relations as empirically and normatively dichotomous, and practically opposite – one intangible, attractive, and legitimate, the other tangible, coercive, and less legitimate. This article critiques this binary conceptualisation, arguing that it is discursively constructed with and for the construction of Self and Other. It further demonstrates that practices commonly labelled and understood as soft power and hard power are closely interconnected. Best understood as ‘representational force’ and ‘physical force’ respectively, soft and hard power intertwine through the operation of productive and disciplinary forms of power. We illustrate this argument by analysing the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. Both governments exercise representational force in constructing their respective versions of events and Self/Other. The soft/hard power binary itself plays a performative role as the Self is typically associated with soft power and the Other with hard power. The operation of productive power, moreover, privileges the attractiveness of the former and the repellence of the latter, and disciplinary power physically enforces these distinctions on subjects in both states. Finally, reinforced Self/Other distinctions legitimise preparations for violence against the Other on both sides, thus exposing how fundamentally entangled soft and hard power are in practice.

Big yellow sanctuary: cross-dressing, gender, and performance in self-storage in the UK

Finding safe spaces to perform one’s identity is a widely acknowledged issue for individuals who cross-dress because it remains a taboo practice in much of society. It is therefore often kept a ‘closeted’ secret from family, friends, and colleagues. Prior work in other contexts has shown that domestic materiality underwrites identity work, and through their careful display and arrangement possessions can reconcile fractured selves. However, whilst home is a key site for the (re)construction of self, it is not necessarily a safe, private and autonomous haven for all of its occupants. This paper builds on the concepts of identity management and home-making, by focusing on the ways self-storage acts as a quasi-domestic space in which to safely store, conserve and try on material aspects of self which are ‘out of place’ in the user’s domestic life. Drawing on an in-depth, object elicited interview with a cross-dressing man, this paper argues that self-storage is a place of transformation and performative potential, a sanctuary in which to be or become somebody else. Furthermore, it uses the example of cross-dressing to scrutinise and subvert the conceptualisation of ‘man caves’.

The Written Discourse of Female College Students about Formal Literacy and Self: A Study Analysis

Self is a fluid construct. Its construction and representation vary according to different contexts and other variables. Female self-construction and representation is a crucial domain which is affected by many social factors. The present research deals with construction and representation of self. The data for the present research has been collected from the 4 colleges, 2 belonging to urban area and 2 of peripheries. The participants of the research are girls of 1st year and 4th year. The present research analyses the construction and representation of self as a result of formal literacy. It also considers how formal literacy plays a role in the construction and representation of self. For the present research, the researchers have collected the data from the mentioned 4 colleges. The participants of the research are 200 female students, including 100 from 1st year and 100 from 4th year. The present research employs an amended model to analyze the data. The amended model consists of Fairclough's (2012) critical social analysis, Gee's (1999) cultural model of discourse and Street's (1984) ideological model of literacy. The data has been analyzed keeping into mind the 9 analytical devices i.e. implicature, identity, metaphor, comparisons, representations, back grounding, inclusion/exclusion, dialogically and difference. Moreover, the researchers have categorized the data into the dominant emerging themes, which have been classified and analyzed under separate headings, these dominant emerging themes are, religiosity, family background, identity (naming), desires and self, self through lexicalization, roles and relationships, conceptual metaphors and use of 1st person pronoun (I/we). The data has been analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Based on the analysis of data the findings of the research suggest that self is not an absolute term, its construction and representation keeps on changing because of different variables, one of them is formal literacy. Moreover, the study contends that construction and representation of self is an ever-ongoing process.

Prayer as a Religious Narrative: The Spiritual Self and the Image of God

This article examines William James’s study on prayer in The Varieties of Religious Experience by framing prayer as a form of religious narrative that demonstrates the religious person’s construction and development of the spiritual self. The author begins by reviewing William James’s theory of the self and discussing its significance for multiple constituents of the self. By assessing James’s distinction between the terms I and Me, the author discusses how James’s notion of multiple selves provides a helpful framework for understanding the narrative nature of the self. In the following section, he investigates how James discusses prayer as “the very core of the living religion” by looking at the prayers of George Muller and Karl Hilty in The Varieties. The author argues that the Jamesian understanding of prayer reveals a particular process of how one makes sense of oneself and one’s image of God.

Playful space invaders: skateboarding intersections and global flows

ABSTRACTThe current article links masculine leisure with bodily performances and playfulness connected to global neoliberal expressions of gender, class and ethnicity. This study draws from an analysis of a skateboard video of young white middle-class men skateboarding in an urban environment in one of Sweden’s greater metropolitan areas. An interview with the young man who created the video was also conducted. The analysis brings together lines of inquiry that concern young males’ playful use of urban space with the articulation of the visual culture of skateboarding as a homosocial, mainly white middle-class practice where bravery and risk-taking are essential articulations. We argue that the skateboarders articulate masculine subjectivity by a complex amalgam of playfulness, risk-taking, colonization of space and the visual style involved in their skateboarding. The construction and presentation of self in the skateboard video are integrated with the quest for individual identity, self-realization and meaning making that pertain to a global entrepreneurial mindset in which mainly white middle-class men are privileged.

Mother of a person: neoliberalism and narratives of parenting children with disabilities

Studying narratives is a tool for examining an individual’s construction of self. Personal narratives engage with cultural and institutional narratives. In this article, the author examines the personal narratives of caregiving from mothers with children with disabilities. Through interviews with 17 women, it is evident that personal narratives are a space where mothers engage cultural narratives of motherhood, disability and neoliberalism, along with institutional narratives of good motherhood. Within neoliberal ideology, there is an emphasis on self-sufficiency, independence and personal responsibility. Findings indicate that mothers can both resist and reframe notions of self-sufficiency and independence embedded in the neoliberal cultural narratives. Narratives of mothers of children with disabilities highlight how parenting cannot be accomplished in isolation and can be imagined as a collective and communal project.

Gendered contours of contemporary South Asian religious practices in the context of migration: second-generation Jain women and men in Britain and the US

ABSTRACTViewing religion through the social constructionist lens and adopting the methodological approach of ‘lived religion’, this article draws attention to the gendered contours of contemporary Jain practice. Although Jain dharma is a non-theistic, non-institutionalised religion, gender differences are embedded within lay practice in India. In contrast, analysis of qualitative data (interviews conducted with 50 second-generation, middle- and upper middle-class Jain women and men in Britain and the US) reveals a gender convergence in patterns of everyday religious practice and performance. I argue that the social turn in late modern societies, together with the dominance of a neo-orthodox approach among diasporic Jains, facilitates this convergence. Further, shifting patterns of religious practices suggest that religion is an important site for the negotiation of gender identities in the context of migration. The construction of Jain religious selves enables young Jains—both women and men—to navigate multiple and contradictory femininities and masculinities and to display more affective, relational, and compassionate selves in late modern societies.

Polyphony and polarization in public discourses: hegemony and dissent in a Slovene policy debate

ABSTRACT Contemporary public discourses are, despite the growing array of technologies and spaces for participation, becoming increasingly characterized by polarization – the formation of two distinct and relatively homogeneous ‘sides’. However, while such polarization may be commonplace, it is not an inherent property of discourse but rather a result of strategic polarizing actions taken by specific actors in order to establish control over the debate. In order to describe the process of polarization in a public discourse about language policy in Slovenia, this paper presents a theoretical framework based on Bakhtin’s concepts of heteroglossia (diversity of voices), polyphony (diversity of ideology) and dialogicality (relatedness of voices and ideologies) and on the central concepts of critical discourse studies (CDS). The case study is based on a qualitative analysis of a sample of 48 newspaper articles reporting on the language policy debate, collected from two major Slovene newspapers during 2016. Additionally, the case study also relies on field notes and transcripts obtained from a public hearing held in the Slovene parliament. The analysis of these two data sources uncovers a debate which was heavily polarized due to both ideological difference as well as continuous reinforcement of the Manichean dichotomy. In particular, the paper shows that this polarization was strengthened by explicit practices of identity construction and suppression of dissent which allowed the construction of a homogeneous Self and Other in discourse.

Adrian Piper's aesthetic agency: Photography as catalysis for resisting neo-liberal competitive paradigms

Abstract Contemporary neo-liberal society is ruled by the market. Davies, Chen and Lentin and Titley show that its objectification and categorization founds a competitive notion of agency that disables subjective construction of self and intersubjective understanding of the world. As the market's rules and norms are set by white patriarchy, its competitive paradigm structurally disadvantages others. Art too is objectified and categorized by neo-liberal institutions, equally embedded in white patriarchal market structures and severely limiting democratic public access to a diverse artistic field, argue hooks, Mercer and Piper. Yet, Piper's artwork shows, art holds emancipatory potential. Defined as transforming experience, its ambiguity provides a structure for constituting agentic subjectivity and intersubjective signification processes, defying objective/objectifying market workings. Photography's specific qualities allow Piper to democratize access to the paradigm she proposes. Her artistic choices may thus found the potential to publicly construct a notion of aesthetic agency as resistance to the neo-liberal market.

Selfhood and ‘Nostalgia’: Sensory and Material Memories of the Childhood Home in Late Georgian Britain

AbstractFocusing on autobiographies written from the 1790s to the 1820s, this article demonstrates that material, emotional and sensory memories of the childhood house and its location were integral to constructions of self. First, it traces the interplay between prevailing cultural forms, family memory and identity, and proposes that these changed over time, shaped by cultural, social and economic factors. Second, in analysing these personal memories, it contributes to the debates around the meanings of the ‘emotional disposition’ of nostalgia, arguing that it was central to the formation of both national culture and individual selfhood.

Asking for it: BDSM sexual practice and the trouble of consent

This article explores issues of consent in the context of BDSM. I argue that consent is a complex expression which must be thought beyond the ‘yes means yes, no means no’ that proliferates mainstream debates around consent education. This article draws on qualitative interview data to examine how BDSM practitioners talk about consent and consent violations. It examines how these discussions about consent within a BDSM context interact with non-BDSM discussions and how they do, or do not, inform each other. Though consent is centralized in BDSM as a practice of community-building, sometimes consent violations are ignored or dismissed because this community-building also relies on neoliberal constructions of the autonomous self and heteronormative accounts of desire to explain them. These findings have serious implications for better understanding not only of consent within this subcultural practice, but how heteronormative values saturate contexts where unequal power relations or hierarchies manifest themselves outside of this. By insisting on this nuanced understanding of sexual consent, this article transforms existing debates about consensual sexual practice by exploring consent as a grey area, and where violations are experienced as abusive and where they are not. It also offers pertinent insights into how mobilizing an ethical consent praxis might better attend to questions of consent.

Beefing-up, slimming-down and the somatic self of Japanese men in time of metabolic syndrome

ABSTRACTBased on a set of two, semi-structured, individual interviews with 21 Japanese men aged between 25 and 57, from Tokyo and Osaka, this paper explores the rationale underneath their eating habits and engagement in physical exercise. Ten and 11 of the men identified themselves as ‘beefy’ and ‘slim-muscular man’, respectively. The analysis of interview is grounded in symbolic interactionism and the construct of the somatic self. ‘Biopedagogy’, gender and emotion are three axes to grasp the participants’ embodied experiences [Harwood, V. (2009). Theorizing biopedagogies. In J. Wright & V. Harwood (Eds.), Biopolitics and the ‘obesity epidemic’: Governing bodies (pp. 15–30). London: Routledge]. Biopedagogy is underpinned by the concepts of Body Fat Index and ‘healthism’, as well as the viewpoint that dieting + exercise = bodyweight control [Crawford, R. (1980). Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life. International Journal of Health Services, 10(3), 365–388]. The men champion the understanding of ‘full-fledge man’ to convey a form of ‘hegemonic masculinity’ [Connell, R. W. (1995). Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press]. Embodied emotionality for these men could be referred to by the construct of the ‘male looking glass body’ which mostly entails homosocial synergy at a ‘bodybuilding habitus’ [Monaghan, L. F. (2001). Bodybuilding, drugs and risk. London: Taylor and Francis].

Forms of vitality revisited: The construction of an affective bodily self

This article outlines a socio-constructivist view of the ontogeny of an early form of psychological self-consciousness: an affective bodily self-consciousness. In so doing, it aims at contributing to a larger anti-Cartesian agenda, which rejects the claim of the primary nature of the knowledge of one’s own mental states. This will be pursued by seeking a synthesis of what may at first appear as a motley assortment of materials: the social biofeedback theory of parental affect-mirroring proposed by György Gergely and John S. Watson, Daniel Stern’s notion of forms of vitality, and Antonio Damasio’s concept of background feelings.

Battlefield situation awareness and networking based on agent distributed computing

The battlefield environment is complex and changeable, and there are complex terrain features and bad electromagnetic communication environment. At the present stage, the battlefield reconnaissance and communication network mainly depends on the cooperation of soldiers. With the development of unmanned aerial vehicle and pilotless technology, in the background of information warfare, the use of mobile agents to complete the formation of battlefield communication networks and the battlefield situation awareness has become a new trend. The Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) technology is becoming more and more mature, and its distribution, synergy, parallelism, robustness and intelligence provide the basic conditions for the construction of a battlefield self organizing network. In this paper, we use UAVs and unmanned combat vehicles to build a mobile ad hoc network that meets the conditions of the battlefield. The network can solve the problem of slow convergence or non convergence of the traditional self-organizing network without relying on the fixed basic network facilities, which has the characteristics of rapid expansion, strong destruction resistance and no centrality. So it can meet the needs of communication in the battlefield. In this process, we combine the A star algorithm with the ant colony algorithm to realize the real-time path planning in combination with the edge computing power of the agent and the battlefield situation collected by the sensor, and the battlefield aggregation and search task can be completed quickly. And according to the planned route, the route forwarding strategy under known path is used to complete the information transmission.