Distinct Collective Identity Research Articles

Is the classic diaspora transnational and hybrid? The case of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress

Scholars studying migration processes through the transnational prism have expanded the concept of ‘diaspora’ with a new meaning as a transnational, hybrid identity and condition, which has displaced the classical interpretation constructed around ethnicity and territory. By analyzing the activities of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which represents the organised Ukrainian community in Canada, an old-type diaspora, this paper argues that transnationality and hybridity have always been the inner attributes of diaspora identity and experience and stresses the importance of an essential characteristic of diaspora: the conscious effort to maintain a distinctive collective identity. Only if a community succeeds in maintaining its collective identity throughout multigenerational change can it qualify as a diaspora. These two dimensions – the self-consciousness of diaspora as a distinctive group and the survival of its distinctive identity through multigenerational change – set diasporas apart from transnational communities.

Boundary Work in Inclusive Religious Groups: Constructing Identity at the New York Catholic Worker

Many religious groups use symbolic boundary work to construct distinctive collective identity. While boundary drawing may be unproblematic for some, it can create conflict for groups. How do inclusive groups construct and solidify identity and commitment? If they use boundary work, how do they manage the conflict between exclusive othering and inclusiveness? I show that while members of the inclusive New York Catholic Worker use boundary work to construct distinctive identity, their boundary work takes place largely on an abstract level while they practice inclusion of the other in their concrete interactions. Building on Martin Buber's insights regarding the transforma- tive power of encounters, I argue that concrete practices of inclusion outweigh boundary drawing in inclusive groups like the Catholic Worker. Group ideologies that encourage practices that cultivate openness to I-Thou relations, such as Catholic Worker personalism, therefore provide an advantage in balancing inclusive identity with boundary work.

Defenders of Nature and the Comarca: Collective Identity and Frames in Panama

This article examines collective identities as both a resource and constraint in framing processes of social mobilization through a case study of Panama's Kuna Indians, one of Latin America's most effectively organized indigenous peoples. It highlights tensions between movement nurturance of distinct indigenous identity as intrinsically valuable and to a degree counterhegemonic and instrumental use of an environmental frame to advance indigenous land claims. This article also explores shifts in dominant discourse and institutional practices that provide both opportunities for identity-based movements as well as risks. One way identity groups address tensions between appropriation of externally generated frames for instrumental goals and the nurturing of distinct collective identities is to manage multiple frames aimed at distinct audiences with distinct content. errors are the sole responsibility of the author.

Democratic media activism through the lens of social movement theory

This article considers how we are to understand democratic media activism, which has recently burgeoned in Canada, the UK and the USA. What is its political significance and potential? Is it a new social movement, a new style of politics cutting across movements, or are new concepts needed? Drawing illustratively upon interviews with media activists, notably in Vancouver, we explore insights offered by social movement theory - including resource mobilization formulations and the new social movement theories of Melucci, Habermas, Cohen and Arato, and Fraser. While all these traditions offer valuable insights, media activism reveals limitations in existing conceptualizations. It has some of the characteristics of a movement, but lacks a distinct collective identity or niche within movement ecology. It may be destined to be a boundary-transgressing nodal point for other movements, articulating a coherent project for radical democracy, rather than a movement-for-itself.

Narrative, identity and change: a case study of Laskarina Holidays

PurposeThis paper aims to contribute to the understanding of organizational identity through an analysis of shared identity narratives at the UK‐based specialist tour operator Laskarina Holidays.Design/methodology/approachPredicated on a view of organizations as linguistic constructs, it is argued that individual and collective identities are narrative accomplishments, and that organizations tend often to be characterised by identity multiplicity.FindingsA case study is presented featuring three distinctive but interwoven collective identity narratives (which are labelled “utilitarian”, “normative” and “hedonic”), and these are contrasted with some “dissonant” voices. It is argued that change in organizations is, at least in part, constituted by alterations in people's understandings, encoded in narratives, and shared in conversations.Originality/valueThe research contribution that this paper makes is twofold. First, it makes an argument for theorizing organizational identities as narratives, constituted within discursive regimes, and continuously changing as they are created and re‐created by all participants. Second, it suggests that the narratological approach to theorizing and researching organizational identities is important because it both assists one's efforts to analyze identities as the outcomes of processes of hegemonic imposition and resistance, and allows one to read polysemy back into ethnographic research.

In the Bud? Disk Array Producers as a (Possibly) Emergent Organizational Form

This article develops and tests theory on when and where a new organizational form will emerge. Recent theory holds that as the number of organizations using a particular external identity code first increases beyond a critical minimal level, the code becomes an organizational form. Going beyond this formulation, we theorize about how an external identity code is established. We argue that when the identities of individual organizations are perceptually focused, they will more readily cohere into a distinct collective identity. We develop ideas about how two observable aspects of organizations might generate perceptually focused identities in a common market: (1) de novo entry and (2) agglomeration in a geographic place with a related identity. Using comprehensive data from the market for disk drive arrays, we test these ideas and an alternative by estimating effects of different specifications of organizational and product densities on rates of entry and exit for array producers. Overall, the analysis supports the notion that firms with perceptually focused identities aid in establishing an organizational form.

The ?Mythological Sabra? and Jewish Past: Trauma, Memory, and Contested Identities

THE JEWS' INTENSE PREOCCUPATION WITH the examination of their collective identity was highly pronounced in the early years of Zionist settlement in Palestine. For a society of immigrants in the process of defining its distinct collective identity and national foundations this preoccupation is hardly surprising. Although Israel has since achieved national independence and experienced major demographic, ideological, social, cultural, economic and political transformations, Israelis' passionate interest in re-examining their collective identity has not diminished. As a new series of popular publications on "The Israelis" demonstrates, this topic continues to attract public attention and to be prominently featured in Israeli popular and scholarly forums. 1 Various segments of Israeli society continue to debate the opposing orientations of continuity and change between their pre-Israeli past and their Israeli present. This article sets out to explore one particular aspect of this broad and complex topic.

Beyond compare? Women's movements in comparative perspective

Abstract. This article reviews a selected range of comparative political research on women's movements, a subfield of political science whose recent proliferation now positions it at the leading edge of women and politics scholarship. Recognizing that “women” as a category of research is of necessity heterogeneous and informed by differences of race, class, ethnicity, nationality, generation, and religion, the article argues that this complex intersectionality need not mean that women's movements are beyond the scope of comparative political research. Rather, as the research focus of women and politics scholars has become increasingly carefully specified, general patterns are evident in the research that should serve to advance the comparative study of women's movements and comparative political research more generally. The article focuses on definitional challenges and the limitations of conflating “women's movements”, “feminist movements”, and “women in social movements”, and discusses four major research arenas within which cross–national commonalities among women's movements are evidenced. These include the relationship between women's movements and political parties; “double militancy” as a potentially distinctive collective identity problem for women's movement activists; the extent to which political opportunities for women's movements are (or can be) gendered; and the relationship between women's movements and the state. The article concludes with suggestions for future research in the subfields of comparative women's movements and comparative politics.

Adaptive innovation among recent Eskimo immigrants in the eastern Arctic Canada

Within the past half century the Canadian Government and the Hudson's Bay Company have established a number of settlements in the Canadian Arctic with Eskimo families drawn from different areas. These include the settlements on Southampton Island and at Great Whale River, Resolute Bay and Grise Fiord. Although these families have been living close to each other for years they maintain distinct sub-cultural differences in dialect and customs. Some cultural exchange has undoubtedly occurred but very real forces presumably exist within the factions that prevent any general exchange that would obscure their distinct collective identities.