Construction Of Individual Identities Research Articles

The Individual Identity Construction of Chinese Fans of American TV Series in Social Media

The Individual Identity Construction of Chinese Fans of American TV Series in Social Media

“All sisters must experience the endorphin rush!” A virtual discourse-ethnographic study on neoliberalism female fitness community on Bilibili

ABSTRACT Taking Bilibili as the analyzing platform, this study explores the linguistic and cultural features of neoliberalism female fitness communities on social media in China. By combining Discourse-Ethnographic Analysis (DEA), Corpus-assisted Discourse Analysis (CADA), and sentimental analysis, this study explores the construction of individual identities, societal values, and collective identities within these communities, as well as the ways in which members establish relationships and engage in fan-idol dynamics. The study reveals the presence of postfeminist biopedagogies, peer surveillance, and the formation of a fandom-centered discourse influenced by neoliberal and postfeminist values. Meanwhile, the use of terms like “sister” fosters pseudo-kin relationships, conveying both closeness and fellowship while challenging male-dominated societal norms. The findings contribute to understanding female fitness communities on social media, highlighting the construction of identity, relationships, and social values in digital spaces.

¡Nakíssimo! Transnational Identities, Cultural Tourism, and the Aesthetics of Consumption in NaCo Clothing

The NaCo apparel company in Tijuana, Mexico, created a line of clothing and accessories that traded on a bilingual and bicultural identity construction in the late 1990s and 2000s. An examination of this clothing and its connection to the slang term naco reveals interesting aspects of the way national and ethnic discourses construct identity through the flow and consumption of transnational products. They are indicative of how these identities and the consumption of these products produce different identity narratives in the presence of the particular national configurations of race and ethnicity in Mexico and the United States. In an increasingly globalized world where people and cultural products move with increasing ease, NaCo products demonstrate that borders continue to exercise an enormous influence on these same products and how they are consumed. NaCo’s clothing and its consumption as a cultural act point to the enduring influence and importance of the nation, its identity narratives, and cultural codes as a locus of individual identity construction.

Living in Two Languages: Regimes of Language and Identity Constructions of Maltese-English bilinguals:

Abstract: The study explores how the multi-layered language attitudes and ideologies of bilinguals born and raised in Malta are linked to space and individual identity construction. Through narrative interviews, it investigates the subjective experiences of bilingualism in Malta, addressing the following questions: How do bilingual Maltese-English speakers author their identities in terms of their language use? How do they construct categories of belonging and position themselves within the linguistic space? To what extent can linguistic spaces act as triggers for the creation of power structures, identity concepts and multilingual patterns? Through the analysis of participants' identity negotiations, this study demonstrates that space assumes a dual role, ‘constitutive’ and ‘constituting’, in shaping identity and language use. Employing strategies for self-positioning and external positioning, identity construction and membership categorisation participants show how language can act as ‘entrance fee’ to space, how different languages can constitute ‘bilingual selves’ of a ‘glocal’ identity and how transgression in space can act as renegotiating process of identity.

Majke na Instagramu - strategije reprezentacije majki male dece

The use of internet-based social networks intertwines with the mundane, and the practices and contents originating from the networks are a crucial part of individual identity constructions (Van Dijck 2013). Instagram is a social network on which users post images and short videos of users, and therefore identity and social constructs are built using visual means (Serafinelli 2018). Stemming from the theoretical framework of culture studies which focus on the social-contextual specifics of using social networking sites, the aim of this research is to offer an insight into the way one specific group - mothers of young children (from new-borns to five-year-olds) builds and presents their identity on Instagram. This research has attempted to answer the questions of how mothers of young children describe the practice of using Instagram, the way they present themselves and their children, how they establish the border between (semi-)public and private, how they observe their audience on Instagram. The basic research method consists of individual in-depth interviews with twenty mothers of young children who are active users of the internet-based social network Instagram. It has been determined that the mothers of young children use Instagram in order to present their way of life after founding a family and the challenges they face. They emphasize that their children are a crucial part of their identity, and that a photo without them is, therefore, pointless. The mothers are cautious when it comes to the content they post on their profiles, as their children's safety comes first. Due to the presence of photos of their children, most decide to make their profiles private and allow access to the photos only to certain people. The method employed to analyse the transcripts was discourse analysis.

War and Politics on Water: An Eco-Critical Critique of Animation Movie Rango

Since its release, critics have evaluated 'Rango' from technical, artistic, thematic, psychological and feminist perspectives. However, the role and purpose of nature in 'Rango' remains unexplored. This study, from an eco critical perspective, aims to discover the aqua politics of the elite to exploit the local community through controlling water resources. This qualitative research is carried out within the framework of literary and semiotic, fiction and history of the genre, animated movies. It is premised upon an explanatory and interpretative analysis of the chosen movie. The current research also evaluates the impact of water politics on the construction of individual identities. In addition, there search looks at issues of Eco feminism addressed in the movie. After watching the movie and reading the text of that movie, semiotical and close readings have been applied to explore the water politics,aqua politics, and Eco feminism. The study concludes that in the contemporary technological advance area in which other than super-power of the world, like America, Russia and China, the other less powerful yet potentially threatening countries of the world that possess weapons of mass destruction can prove highly dangerous for the world peace and, while the water resources are assuming prime importance in developing the energy resources of different countries.

What is the Role of Memory in Consumer–Brand Relationship? Insight from sport industry

We live in a time when symbolism is of enormous priority. Memories are a particularly important part of the construction of individual identity and the subsequent relationships established, personal and with the loved brands. Previous research in psychology and neurosciences on negativity effect claims that negative events have more impact than positive ones. In an emotional context like the sports industry, being a fan has implications at all levels: psychological, mental and behavioural. Deepening the theme of memory from a psychological perspective, the present study theorises about the hypothesis of positivity effect in memory in the behaviour of sport fans in consumer neuroscience studies. Theoretical contribution and managerial suggestions are presented, in addition, as direction for further research.

“We are different, that’s a fact, but they treat us like we’re different-er”: understandings of autism and adolescent identity development

PurposeA key development in early adolescence is the active construction of individual identity; for autistic young people, integrating the idea of “being autistic” forms part of this process. The purpose of this paper is to explore identity development from a contextualist perspective, foregrounding young people’s experiences within mainstream educational settings.Design/methodology/approachA longitudinal, qualitative methodology was used: semi-structured interviews were conducted annually with 14 autistic young people, their parents and teachers between school years 6 and 9.FindingsYoung people felt different from their neurotypical peers and their acceptance of their diagnosis changed over time as they managed their developing personal and public identities. In pursuit of being treated “normally,” many camouflaged their differences at school, which sometimes involved opting out of school-based support. Adults described their own understandings of autism and discussed the responses of others in the school environment to autistic differences.Originality/valueThe influence of sociocultural discourses of autism on young people’s identity development is discussed and implications for both school based and post-diagnostic support for young people and their families explored.

Disentangling Identity Transitions in Founder Identity Construction

Understanding the processes underlying founder identity construction is central to entrepreneurship because founders establish and grow their firms based on identity. When individuals construct a founder identity, they need to identify with new roles (macro transitions) and also to manage multiple roles (micro transitions) subsequently. Although entrepreneurship literature agrees on the importance of founder identity, it has largely overlooked how founder identity is constructed. Through a longitudinal field study of 21 founders, we present a model that portrays founder identity construction as an interplay of micro and macro role transitions, where identities carried over from prior occupations impact the individual identity construction process. Newly adopted roles can trigger substantial changes in definitions of self because comparisons with previously held identities can support or hinder founder identity construction. Our contributions extend founder identity theory by illuminating how multiple identities and identity management strategies influence founder identity construction and what it means to be a founder.

Beyond the Binary: Troubling Blackness through an Exploration of Institutional and Individual Identity Construction in Ghanaian Higher Education

The influence of Western ideologies in Ghanaian higher education is undeniable and scholars have long called for a reframing of higher education policies to reflect the desires, culture, and institutions of Africa. Using a historical and reflective narrative approach, this article explores institutional identity within the higher education context in Ghana, West Africa. Because U.S. policy theories often attempt to ignore the influence of values on the policymaking process, this article aims to understand how institutional identity in higher education is influenced by conceptions of race. Revealing that her individual notions of identity are fluid and a product of both Western and African beliefs, the author concludes that her willingness to challenge these concepts was deepened after being immersed in the Ghana Study Abroad in Education experience and in (re)membering her African cultural connections and concludes with policy recommendations for balancing the needs of identity development with a culture of institutional collectiveness.

Bruce D. Hayes, The Soul of Judaism: Jews of African Descent in America

American Religion 2, no. 1 (Fall 2020), pp. 192–194 Copyright © 2020, The Trustees of Indiana University • doi: 10.2979/amerreli.2.1.20 Book Review Bruce D. Haynes, The Soul of Judaism: Jews of African Descent in America (New York: New York University Press, 2018) Judith Weisenfeld Princeton University, Princeton, USA In December of 2019 American news media covered two stories featuring Black Jews. Black Hebrew Israelites, some of whom had been in the public eye the previous summer for their clash in Washington, DC, with white Catholic students from Covington High School, again made news when a former member of an Israelite congregation murdered four people in a kosher market in Jersey City, New Jersey. That same month, comedian Tiffany Haddish held a “Black Mitzvah” on her fortieth birthday to affirm her Jewish identity, embraced in adulthood after meeting her Eritrean Jewish father and studying Torah to prepare for the ceremony. These two quite different public representations of Black Judaism highlight the range of communities, experiences, and complex histories sociologist Bruce D. Haynes examines in The Soul of Judaism. Haynes presents his primary goal as exploring the “racial projects” of Jews of African descent. Using the concept sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant defined as linking race as representation to social structures that organize everyday experience through race, Haynes argues that Black Jews challenge hegemonic understandings of Judaism and offer “competing racial projects” that help to expand conceptions of Blackness and Judaism. Far from “the first volume to detail racial projects emerging within the context of religion” (22), as Haynes Judith Weisenfeld 193 claims, the book nevertheless contributes to our understanding of the complexities of interactions among religion, race, and ethnicity in American history. The book’s first four chapters provide broad historical background about the racialization of Jews and of Blacks and explores aspects of the history of Black Judaisms in Africa and the Americas, discussing the Beta Israel, the Church of God and Saints of Christ, the Commandment Keepers, and the Chicago-born African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem. Haynes’ account of Black Judaisms in the US synthesizes the work of historians, sociologists, and anthropologists, including Jacob Dorman, Tudor Parfitt, Edith Bruder, and John L. Jackson, among others. Haynes offers a useful sense of theological and political variety among the groups that have their origins in America, considers how the labels of Hebrew, Israelite, or Jew support different identity claims, and provides insight into how members of different groups evaluate the religiously grounded racial projects of other Black Hebrew, Israelite, or Jewish groups. The book’s original contributions come with the next two chapters that highlight Haynes’ method of “retrospective ethnography” and feature interviews he conducted in the late 1990s, a period in American history he frames as transformative in terms of the representation of Jews of African descent, situated within the broader context of the emergence of discourses of multiculturalism in the United States and the rise of the internet and its ability to connect people in new ways. In these chapters, he explores religion, race, and ethnicity among Black converts to Judaism and biracial Jews of African descent, offering a rich thematic portrait of identity construction and expression in the context of families and broader racial and religious communities. The variety of voices of Jews of African descent represented in Haynes’ study is the book’s great strength and he allows experiences that represent distinctive and evolving positions to come to the fore, revealing the sometimes-fraught nature of individual identity constructions that challenge prevailing racial and religious norms. The final chapter on “Black-Jewish relations” makes the most explicit use of the fact that the interviews featured in the book were conducted in the late 1990s to examine how Black converts to Judaism, biracial Jews, and Hebrew Israelites “negotiate black anti-Semitism and Jewish racism” (168). Although the context Haynes sets focuses more on public conflicts over antisemitism in Black communities than on discourses of anti-Blackness or expressions of racism among Jews of European descent, the interviewees highlight often difficult negotiations of relationship to Jewish and Black authenticity given the intra-community tensions that were prominent in the period. In the conclusion, Haynes...

Determinants of the remission heterogeneity in bipolar disorders: The importance of early maladaptive schemas (EMS)

BackgroundA crucial health issue is to understand the remission heterogeneity of Bipolar Disorders by considering symptomatology as well as functioning. A new perspective could be elements of the construction of individual identity. This exploratory study aimed to explore the remission heterogeneity of patients with BD in terms of Early Maladaptive Schemas (EMS) by preferring a person-oriented approach. MethodsThis study included euthymic patients recruited into the FACE-BD cohort. The remission was assessed by the Montgomery-Asberg Depression Rating Scale and the Young Mania Rating Scale for its symptomatic dimension and by the Functioning Assessment Short Test for its functional dimension. The activation of the eighteen EMS was assessed by the Young Schema Questionnaire 3 Short Form. Clustering was performed to identify profiles according to the patients’ remission. Clusters identified were compared on the EMS activation by using analysis of variance and post-hoc tests. ResultsAmong the 100 euthymic patients included, four profiles of remission were identified: cluster 1 “Global Remission” (34%), cluster 2 “Hypomanic residual” (20%), cluster 3 “Depressive residual and functional impairment” (36%) and cluster 4 “Global handicap” (10%). Two out of three EMS discriminated against these profiles. The activation of specific EMS clarifies the singularity of each remission profile. LimitationsFor the symptomatic dimension, cut-offs chosen could be discussed as well as the scale assessing residual depressive symptoms. ConclusionsThis study participates in a comprehensive model of remission by integrating the symptomatology, the functioning, and the EMS. Identifying and treating EMS may improve patients remission to reach recovery.

Language and Identity: Multilingual Immigrant Learners in South Africa

Increased multilingualism and mobility have witnessed an increased focus on multilingual immigrant learners. This study aims to help educators understand experiences of immigrant students in South Africa that relate to language and identity by comparing such experiences across three different school settings: an urban school with a high (Black) immigrant and indigenous population, a former Indian school, and a former White school. Drawing on semi-structured interviews from a larger case study, this study makes visible the immigrant learner experience in multilingual settings in which xenophobic conditions arise. The findings reveal similarities as well as differences in individual identity construction and negotiation and its vital connection to language. Furthermore, they illustrate ways in which these learners must navigate xenophobic trends, exclusive language pedagogies, and language loss. The implications of this study point to a call for policy, practice, and research to take into account multilingual immigrant learners as well as a need to attend to the social construction of identities.

Identity play and the stories we live by

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to advance our understanding of identity play process by including the stories we live by in depth. Over the past decade, identity play literature has placed more emphasis on the role of self-narratives. Yet, the “stories we live by”, including the told or untold stories of past and imagined events of the future, have not been considered in depth in these self-narratives.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper draws on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures and attempts to include the stories we live by in scholarly conceptualizations and explorations of identity play processes.FindingsDrawing on the personal construct theory, narrative identity and constructivist psychotherapy literatures this paper offers a comprehensive conceptual model of how the stories we live by infuse individual identity construction processes. The model highlights the inter-connectivity among stories we live by, identity play, identity work, sensemaking and social validation. Looking through the lens of the personal construct theory and taking these inter-connectivities into account lead to the observation of temporality in identity construction and the plurivocality of self-narratives.Originality/valueThis paper looks at identity play through the lens of the personal construct theory. However, self-narratives are seen as a medium for manifestation of personal constructs. Thus, this paper also draws on the narrative identity literature and dialogical-self concept, which helps access the multiplicity of the self-narratives to widen our grasp of personal constructs. This paper combines discourse of deconstruction with the dialogical-self concept and provides more means for the explication of identity play.

Managing multiple identities

In this article, we offer an identity perspective on compliment responses (CRs). Our purpose is twofold: first, to enrich our understanding of CRs by addressing the bias in research towards CRs as an im/politeness phenomenon; second, to question the assumption of the correlation between CR strategies and identities and to challenge the essentialist view of identity implicit in previous studies. We propose a four-fold perspective on identity by incorporating cultural identity into the influential three levels of self-construal formulated by Brewer and her colleagues (e.g. Brewer & Gardner, 1996). We present it by illustrating the dynamic construction of individual identity, relational identity, group identity, and cultural identity through qualitative analyses of naturally occurring CRs in Chinese. We show that macro strategies (i.e. acceptance, refusal, and in-betweenness) and, by implication, micro strategies (e.g. upgrade) can all construct the above four identities depending on context. We argue that there is no such thing as a simple correlation between CR strategies and identities widely assumed in the existing literature.

Ideology and identity construction in Ibibio personal names

Existing studies on African anthroponyms have examined the implications of culture, history and language on individual identity constructions in personal names. However, few studies have explored the ideological processes involved in these identity constructions. To fill this gap, this study examines the concepts of ideology and identities in Ibibio personal names from ethnographic and ethnopragmatic perspectives. The data consists of eighty-five Ibibio personal names which were derived from oral interviews with Ibibio name-bearers and givers from Akwa Ibom State, South-eastern Nigeria. The names were categorized into four types: Christian religion, order of birth, endearment and character attribute, depicting the characteristics, cultural norms and religious beliefs of name-bearers. Family relationships, beliefs and knowledge of the culture are, therefore, important ideological indicators for constructing identities through naming. Thus, the names may either portray the bearer’s self-definition and identification or convey social biases. This article argues that identities constructed in Ibibio personal names are intrinsically localized within the name-bearers’ transfer of their cultural conceptualization of their personal names to their lived experiences. The study examines how these innate connections mirror the beliefs or ideologies of name-bearers.

Suburban Identity in the Poetry of John Updike

Abstract This paper provides a close reading of a representative selection of suburban poems by the American writer John Updike (1932–2009). It also draws upon the existing scholarship by suburban studies historians (including Kenneth Jackson, Dolores Hayden, John Archer, and James Howard Kunstler), who have argued for the cultural importance of American suburbia in fostering identity, and develops the argument by literary critics including Jo Gill, Peter Monacell, and Robert von Hallberg, who have championed the existence of a viable suburban tradition in postwar American poetry. By scrutinizing poems from Updike’s early poetry, represented by “Shillington”, up to his closing lyric opus, “Endpoint”, the paper argues that Updike’s unrecognized importance is that of a major postwar poet whose lyric work chronicles, in memorable, diverse, and important ways, the construction of individual identity within suburbia, in a dominant setting for most Americans from the 1950s up to the present.

“The difference of colour”: reading and writing abolitionism

ABSTRACTThrough an analysis of words and images as they moved through material production, circulation, and reception, “The Difference of Colour” explores the literary and pictorial practices of African American women who read and wrote antislavery. Calling on antebellum Americans to join them in the struggle against slavery and racial prejudice, the women who formed Philadelphia’s Female Literary Association articulated a powerful antislavery at a series of sites ranging from oral to scribal to print. As printed words and images increased in number and extended their reach in the nineteenth century, they commingled with other forms that remained crucial in the construction of individual identities and discursive communities engaged in social and moral reform.

Da observação participante à pesquisa de campo - as contribuições de Claude Lévi-Strauss para a ciência antropológica

Anthropology is derived from Latin (anthropos = man; ogos = studies), study of man, is a science that has its evolution based on theoretical constructions, relief or structural and functionalism. Currently, anthropology is based on scientific and interdisciplinary research - social science that has man as an investigative object from his group condition; a human science studies man from an ominilateral perspective using this whole repertoire in the construction of individual identities and as participants in organized groups; and a scientific (natural) scientific investigation or somatic framework on the front sides of both its physical evolution and its genetics and its interactions with the surrounding environment. This investigative investigation is based on the methodological premises that guarantee a roll of technical tools with a view to meeting the demands of anthropological sciences. Structuralism, on the other hand, offers anthropology to the field investigative condition as one of the extremely relevant methodological tools for a research. Arguably, there is a prominent place for Claude Lévi-Strauss's indicators with undeniable and invaluable contributions to an epistemology and to various areas of the humanities, especially for research in anthropology. Given the above, this article aims to present an evolution of anthropology on the investigative method with special emphasis to Lévi-Strauss contributions to a foundation of his methodological approach. Therefore, the research method proposed for the elaboration of this document on the screen will be a bibliographic investigation.

“Appointment” and Spontaneous Field Situations: Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Hungarian Communities of American Industrial Towns and Mining Settlements

Abstract To create context, the study first recounts, in a nutshell, the emigration history of Hungarian Americans and the main features of their American integration. In addition to discussing the specific fieldwork goals and experiences, the article seeks to present the theoretical background of the fieldwork concept of the research. The author began his research in the United States in 2006, where he has been regularly returning to conduct ethnographic fieldwork ever since. From the great emigration wave that began at the end of the nineteenth century up until today, he examines the history, institutional networks, and socio-ethnographic aspects of Hungarian communities on the East Coast and in the Midwest, including acculturation, identity change, and contacts with the homeland. When developing his fieldwork concept, for his guiding principle he chose to combine the individual identity construction model with capsule theory. Hungarian American emigrants who have been forced to switch cultures have been living their lives in a “time and mentality capsule”. The part brought from the old country resides inside the capsule, while everything outside is part of the new environment. This duality can be complemented by the potential role of the local community, which directly surrounds the individual in the alien new country. Examination of this particular capsule is only possible in the field. In the course of fieldwork, the main question becomes: to what extent do the adopted patterns of behavior, the desire to meet American social expectations, and the efforts that are internally controlled and realized, allow a look into these capsules? Such fieldwork is characterized by a duality of scheduled appointments pre-arranged with prospective informants, and spontaneous field situations. In the Hungarian communities of industrial towns, fieldwork consisted predominantly (almost exclusively) of the “appointment” type of data collection, while in the case of former mining settlements on the brink of extinction, spontaneously developing ethnographic data collection was more typical. Participation in events linked to dates and venues, data collecting at these occasions, and getting acquainted with event participants for later interviewing is the third option besides the fieldwork situations mentioned above. Finally, the paper attempts to demonstrate through several examples of the ways in which fieldwork can enrich the information gained from documents with additional data, tangible memorabilia, and the memories related to them.