Creation Of Collective Identity Research Articles

Erken Cumhuriyet Dönemi Tiyatro Oyunlarında Köken ve Medeniyet Miti

In this article, traces of the myth of origin and civilization, which became the sacred narratives of the new regime at the time of the proclamation of the Republic, will be revealed through Early Republican Era theatre plays. The article will emphasize the contribution that the myth of origin and civilization made to the process of construction of Turkish identity, as well as the effective part that it played throughout the nation-state building process by its creation of collective identity and historiography as well as its effect on the field of art. Furthermore, this paper will use examples from theatre plays of the period to analyze the reflections of the process of nation-building upon the theatre plays of the era, and to examine the relationship between the state and the theatre as well as the effects of the myth of origin and civilization (a necessity for the nation-state ideology) on the playwrights of that time. In addition, the way in which political myths become a necessity for playwrights will also be analyzed. 

Museus, Memórias e Narrativas

O objetivo desse texto é proceder a uma reflexão sobre o papel da memória na (re)constituição das identidades coletivas e as consequências das disputas pela memória em sociedades pós-coloniais. Isso significa entender como os registros memoriais e documentais nos museus digitais tem estimulado novas discussões nos campos da antropologia, museologia e história.

Charisma, collectives, and commitment: hybrid authority in radical feminist social movement organizations

The primary goal of this article is to add to the literature on the role of social movement organizations in facilitating movement involvement and activism. Using Weber’s definition of domination and delineation of ideal types of social action as starting points, my specific focus is on those SMOs that exhibit authority that is situated in the whole (collective) and manifests an extra-ordinary (charismatic) hold on the members/followers. I suggest the term ‘collective charisma’ for this hybrid form of organizational authority exhibited in a subgroup of SMOs. Examples from the radical U.S. feminist movement are used to illustrate how this particular organizational form shapes movement commitment, specifically the creation of collective identity, oppositional consciousness, and culture.

Marginal Revolution: Role of Intermediary in Integration of Street Vendors in Formal Economy

In this paper, using an institutional theory perspective, we contribute to the body of knowledge about the process of transition from informal to formal economy through the study of SEWA’s involvement in empowerment of street vendors in India. By situating our research in the context of institutional voids and deep poverty, we draw attention to the role of intermediary in empowering of disempowered actors in an informal economy. Through our case study, we identify three processes through which the non-marginalized actor achieves empowerment of the street vendors: (i) creation of collective identity among street vendors; (ii) regulatory entrepreneurship that involves initiating and influencing creation of national laws regulating street vendor activities; and, (iii) making sure that the law becomes available and meaningful to the vendors.

Elite and ethical: The defensive distinctions of middle-class bicycling in Bangalore, India

This article applies social practice theory to study the emergence of sustainable consumption practices like bicycling among the new middle classes of Bangalore, India. I argue that expansions of bicycling practices are dependent on the construction of defensive distinctions, which I define as distinctions that draw equally on lifestyle-based and ethics-based discourses to normalize bicycling among Bangalore’s middle classes. With their environmental discourses and signage, middle-class cyclists make claims to being ethical actors and ecological citizens concerned about global environments. Their high-end bicycles and special gear enable them to maintain their social status in personal and professional circles, despite adopting what is an essentialized and stigmatized mobility practice in a social context where personal automobiles are a dominant symbol of respectability and propertied citizenship. These defensive distinctions are anchored in communities that facilitate social learning, skill-building, and the creation of collective identities. I highlight the importance of considering the role of ethical discourses in consolidating “low-status” social practices among “high-status” class fractions and discuss the implications of promoting sustainable consumption through the othering of the poor. By applying a social practice analytic to study middle-class bicycling practices, this article makes a significant contribution to the growing literature that investigates the applicability of practice-based approaches to environmental behaviors and sustainable consumption in a novel context.

The place of social capital in the prevention and control of occurrence of crime in society

The crime rate in the society is as one of the criteria for measuring the level of social capital in communities. Low levels of social capital known as one of the reasons for the increase in crime and social ills in the society qualitatively and quantitatively. Social capital through the creation of collective identity, empathy, trust and altruism can be destroyed areas of social ills, help to strengthen healthy behaviors in society. Accordingly in the present study examined an attempt to explain the concept of social capital, its dimensions, its relationship to crime in communities, using existing theoretical foundations.

Neojihadist Visual Politics: Comparing YouTube Videos of North Caucasus and Uyghur Militants

YouTube videos offer a rare opportunity to gain an insight into the sequestered world of neojihadism. This study examines and compares the lines of the visual narrative associated with two Asian insurgencies that help to form the global Islamic social movement: the insurgency in Chechnya (North Caucasus) and that in Xinjiang (China). The purpose of the article is to describe the narratives used by the Islamic militants addressing the conflict and to identify similarities and differences in the use of visual rhetorical techniques by neojihadist groups to propagate their worldview. The study of the visual narratives promoted in the videos will help to provide a better understanding of the impact of the neojihadist narratives on the creation of collective identities. Our findings suggest that these narratives have similar features, which can be identified in a set of sub-narratives. Within the common pattern, however, significant differences can be found, especially in the interpretation of the videos by the audiences.

Mobilization and the Creation of Collective Identities: War and Popular Theatre in 1914

Mobilization and the Creation of Collective Identities: War and Popular Theatre in 1914

Mobilization and the Creation of Collective Identities: War and Popular Theatre in 1914

Mobilization and the Creation of Collective Identities: War and Popular Theatre in 1914

Conceptualizing Professional Diaspora: International Medical Graduates in Canada

This paper applies the concept of diaspora to the analysis of the creation and maintenance of an ethnically diverse community of internationally educated medical graduates residing in Canada. Traditionally, the research on diaspora concerns ethnic communities that preserve their homeland ties while residing in foreign countries. We suggest, however, that ethnic roots are not imperative for the analysis of diasporic communities when other forms of shared values and meanings can become a basis for creation of collective identity. Reconfiguring both the homeland and host country as places of geographical and professional belonging provides opportunity to conceptualize an ethnically diverse group of immigrant physicians residing in Canada as professional diaspora. Probing the interviews with 67 international medical graduates living in Canada, we demonstrate (1) how they create medical diaspora, (2) what myths and sensitivities they share in constructing their professional and/or geographic homelands, and (3) the relationship they develop with their hosting society. We suggest that in spite of the increasing mobility of internationally educated health care providers, the analysis of professional diasporas could become a useful tool for analyzing complex relationships between home countries, hosting countries, and international travelers.

Collective Identity in the Virtual Islamic Public Sphere

/ This study utilizes a textual analysis of selected threads from the Arabic discussion forums of two of the most popular Islamic websites — Islamonline.net and Islamway.com — to explore the potential impact of the new Islamic virtual public sphere, and the reconfiguration of the ‘virtual umma’ (Islamic community) online, on the creation of collective identities. The study also assesses whether the discourses and deliberations taking place in these two sites’ discussion forums exemplify an ideal Habermasian public sphere, through shura (consultation), ijtihad (interpretation) and ijma (consensus), as defined within the Islamic context. Findings indicate that there is an uncritical, unquestioning type of emotional consensus among posters who did not exemplify a truly rational-critical debate, particularly when it came to issues of political salience. Discussions among the posters show that they consider being a ‘Muslim’ as the most important ‘identity signifier’ in their lives. However, in some cases, especially while discussing political issues of a ‘pan-Arab’ nature, a parallel ‘Arab’ identity also emerged, confirming the parallelism and interrelatedness of ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ identities, and the overlap between mediated ‘Arab’ and ‘Islamic’ public spheres.

A model of relationship between collective identity and language in pluricultural and plurilingual settings: Influence on intercultural relations

Abstract The introduction of the Spanish Constitution in 1978, together with the development of the Statutes of Autonomy in the autonomous communities, established the co-official status of the regional language alongside Spanish. In one of these communities, Catalonia, located on the north-west boundary of the Lleida province, is the Aran Valley, where three languages coexist: Occitan-Aranese (regional language), Catalan (Catalonia's co-official language) and Spanish. The Valley of Aran is an ideal setting to study the construction of their collective identity and its relation to the language in an intercultural setting. As a result of immigration and the gradual decrease in the population born in the region, intercultural contact takes place among clearly distinct groups. In this work we present an analysis of the development of the Aranese identity and of the role language plays in this process and the way this process influences intergroup relationships. The study is based on a perspective that considers that the influence of language on the creation of collective identity is not a categorical and universal phenomenon [Fernandez, M. A. (2000). Cuando los hablantes se niegan a elegir: monolinguismo e identidad multiple en la modernidad reflexiva. Estudios de Sociolinguistica 1 (1), 47–58; Siguan, M. (1996). L’Europa de les Llengues. Barcelona: Edicions 62]. Rather, we view language as a socially constructed means of expressing community membership. In this way, language plays an important part in the formation of Aranese identity, but the meaning given by the population to the language varies according to whether residents identify themselves or not with the Aranese world. At the same time, language also interferes in the relationship between the different groups living in the territory.

IntroductionEvolution, public goods, and the state

F ifty years ago, the concept of a public good was understood only in casual terms. It took the formalizations of Paul Samuelson, Mancur Olson, and others in the 1960s to bring its remarkable properties to the full attention of the social science world. Those properties are its indivisibility — it cannot easily be divided up and parceled out to people according to their individual demand for it — its nonexcludability — people cannot easily be excluded from its use — and its nonsubtractibility — one person’s consumption or use of the good does not reduce the amount of the good available for the use of others. With these properties well in hand, scholars in various social science fields revolutionized thinking about public policy; 4, 5 the design of institutions; 7, 8, 9 obstacles and solutions to social dilemmas (prisoner’s dilemmas, public good dilemmas, commons dilemmas — articles on them now number in the thousands); the establishment of governments; 11 the outbreak of war; 13, 14 the failures of economic markets; 16 and so on. The concept of public goods was the centerpiece of the new field of rational choice, which made formidable inroads into the traditional fields of international relations, political science, economics, sociology, and psychology. The nearly moribund field of political economy was redefined and reinvigorated through exploration of applications of public good and related concepts. The articles in this issue attempt to extend the minirevolutions into yet another field, the field of evolutionary biology, by demonstrating (1) the crucial role that public goods may have played in the evolution of sharing behavior and collective identity, not exclusively, but primarily of the human sort; and (2) how public goods contribute to the explanation of evolved social behaviors, in particular, those behaviors that are precursors of the formation of the state. Foremost among them are religious ideology, national identity, and a host of behaviors that have resulted in the formation of the institutions of the state: law, hierarchy, and the structures and processes that provide and disperse public goods. This follows on Jared Diamond’s widely popular and well-reasoned books on the evolution of modern states and societies, and the conditions that provoke their collapse. In Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond describes in compelling fashion not only how varied ecologies created or stymied technological change, but also the conditions suited to the emergence of societies at various stages of development. In Collapse, he cites the general conditions determining the collapse of societies. Articles in this issue refer to what we believe is a crucial lacuna in Diamond’s work — the critical role of public-good provision as a purpose behind state formation, as an essential element of the creation of collective identities needed for state formation, and as a variable that lends support, and poses challenges, to the formation and maintenance of states over time. Peter Corning’s article on ‘‘Holistic Darwinism’’ warns us about overstating the importance of public goods. There are many paths to the evolution of human cooperation, affiliation, large-scale collective identity, and state formation, and activities that involve the dispersal of public goods constitute just one of those paths. Still, public goods seem to be at the heart of the rationale for state formation. Furthermore, their provision in the form of state institutions remains to be fully explained. The explanation of human cooperation, collective identity, as well as group and state formation, have been hampered by realization of the doi: 10.2990/26_2_2

Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures (review)

Twenty years have passed since Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities: Reflections of the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (1983) popularized the idea that the histories of print culture and nationalism are inextricably linked. Anderson observed that national identities are fundamentally discursive constructions, requiring an imagined rather than an experienced sense of collectivity and solidarity. The creation of collective identity on a grand scale became possible, he suggests, through a series of historical and political developments, including the emergence of "print-as-commodity" (37)--the mass production and wide dissemination [End Page 285] of text made possible by the invention of the printing press in the sixteenth century and the rapid rise of vernacular languages in print form in the decades and centuries that followed.