Notions Of Identity Research Articles

Becoming a good citizen: non-governmental organisation social work with ‘unaccompanied’ young people in kinship care

The aim of this article is to examine how establishment in Swedish society is interpreted and what values are considered important from the perspective of a non-governmental organisation mentoring programme, and how the non-governmental organisation’s work towards establishment among ‘unaccompanied’ young people is carried out. The results are based on analysis of the non-governmental organisation’s policy documents, conversations and semi-structured interviews with the employed mentors. Bridget Anderson’s concept of a ‘community of value’ is used to critically analyse the data. The results show how the mentoring programme supports establishment, as well as the importance of mobility within the city and of building networks and knowledge about everyday life in Swedish society, all of which highlight certain values as more important than others for establishment in Sweden. The mentoring work is intended to overcome boundaries but risks reproducing boundaries whereby the young people need to create a belonging based on an idealised notion of ‘Swedishness’.

‘There is a secret in love’: gender, care and HIV management in South Africa

Research within geography and cognate disciplines have worked to demonstrate the important ways care(ing) informs the emotive, bodily and obligatory nature of gendered health. Although acts of care shape gendered health inequalities and possibilities for reconfiguration, scholarly research tends to focus on individual caregiving and receiving relationships within the domestic sphere, eliding more complicated, contradictory and uncomfortable questions of care that emerge in and through the wider social context. South Africa’s HIV/AIDS epidemic provides important opportunities to engage contradictions in care since expanded access to antiretroviral therapy allows women to care for their health with increased confidence. Drawing on qualitative research with women in South Africa, we argue that while new HIV management regimes rework opportunities for women to care for and enhance bodily health and wellbeing, they paradoxically conflict with women’s ability to care for and maintain their gendered selves, generating possibilities for harm, conflict and abuse. New biomedical modes of care mean women are often forced to make contradictory decisions between caring for their health but losing idealized notions of the gendered self, or caring for their gendered self, but undermining their possibilities for health. This article concludes that future geographic research on gender-health-place interactions should extend the practice and politics of care by illuminating how constructions, experiences and enactments of gender, health and disease mediate encounters with care and the institutions that attempt to manage them.

Narrating homes in process: Everyday politics of migrant childhoods

This article considers participation by migrant children in home-making as a practice of everyday politics, which is both agentic and interdependent. It highlights the contested and fluid nature of the concept of ‘home’, and the multiple resources involved in its constitution. It focuses on one child’s meaning-making work in the context of idealised notions of home foregrounding the nuclear family, privacy and fixity. It argues that his narratives, intersected by those of his mother, tactically re-territorialise an institutional site by constructing belongings through relationships, encounters and movements.

The competences of successful safety and health coordinators in construction projects

The construction industry is among the most hazardous industries, with a fatality rate in Europe 3.4 times higher than average. While the occupational safety and health (OSH) coordinator has been a key actor in European efforts proposed to improve OSH in the industry since 1992, it is important to study the competences needed for the successful coordination of OSH in the construction industry. Existing literature on OSH coordinator competences are examined, and an expert survey is used to identify the competences characterising the most successful coordinators in Denmark. Finally, observational case studies of the perceived most successful coordinators in the Danish construction industry are used to exemplify the newly identified competences. The most frequently mentioned competences, not covered in previous research, are “innovativeness,” “having overview,” “persistency,” “thoroughness,” “sociability,” and “being systematic.” The results demonstrate the important “practice of knowing,” rather than possessing formal knowledge, education, and/or skills. The most important practice of knowing for the coordinators is likely that of the ability to transfer knowledge into practice. Future research, education and legal requirement in this field could benefit from a focus on what practices of knowledge actually work in real-life settings, rather than focussing on idealistic notions of these qualities.

Satire, masculinity and the rhetoric of conflict resolution in War Chhod Na Yaar and Kya Dilli Kya Lahore

Unlike its western counterparts, Hindi war films constitute a rather peripheral genre, one that has understandably received scant critical attention over the last two decades. The conventional aesthetic registers and thematic templates of these films reveal an explicit engagement with questions relating to heroic masculinity, exceptional leadership and nationalist triumphalism. And yet, movies such as War Chhod Na Yaar (‘Quit the war, dude’) () and Kya Dilli Kya Lahore (‘Delhi and Lahore are not so different after all’) () categorically denounce idealistic notions of armed conflicts and sensationalized portrayals of ostensibly justified violence. This article examines the rhetoric of conflict resolution that constitutes the organizing principle of these two films. It demonstrates how War Chhod Na Yaar discursively satirizes the earlier Hindi war films through a pronounced emphasis on the fanciful camaraderie that exists between the respective battalion captains of India and Pakistan. By contrast, the anti-war rhetoric of Kya Dilli Kya Lahore is not only historically situated within the larger framework of Partition narratives, but is also facilitated by an alternative configuration of masculinity that resists territorial divisions in favour of affective solidarities and shared lived experiences.

Situating Race in Cultural Competency Training: A Site of Self-Revelation

Indigenous cross-cultural training has been around since the 1980s. It is often seen as a way to increase the skills and competency of staff engaged in providing service to Indigenous clients and customers, teaching Indigenous students within universities and schools, or working with Indigenous communities (Fredericks and Bargallie, “Indigenous”; “Which Way”). In this article we demonstrate how such training often exposes power, whiteness, and concepts of an Indigenous “other”. We highlight how cross-cultural training programs can potentially provide a setting in which non-Indigenous participants can develop a deeper realisation of how their understandings of the “other” are formed and enacted within a “white” social setting. Revealing whiteness as a racial construct enables people to see race, and “know what racism is, what it is not and what it does” (Bargallie, 262). Training participants can use such revelations to develop their racial literacy and anti-racist praxis (Bargallie), which when implemented have the capacity to transform inequitable power differentials in their work with Indigenous peoples and organisations.

Before and After The Network


 
 
 How do we think about networks under post- digital conditions? What does this imply for research? 
 This journal issue takes as its outset, the call of the transmediale festival to “[leave] be- hind a decade marked by a backlash against the Internet and the network society” in order to re-evaluate the limits of ‘networks’. It refers to Robert Filliou’s “The Eternal Network,” an idealistic notion from the 1960s, pointing to the interconnectedness of everyday-life actions across an emerging global world at that time. This is a good reminder that network cultures exist beyond the technical reality of network culture as we now know it despite our primary identification of networks with social media and planetary computation. By drawing on the legacies of critical and autonomous network cultures, the aim was to make the limits of Internet-based networks visible but also highlight alternatives. Is there a conceivable counter-power to networks? Which alternative technological models and cultural narratives are needed to construct the principles of end-to-end communication anew? How might the critique of networks extend to non-western contexts and reflect the limits in a global perspective?
 
 
 
 To answer such complex questions, this editorial begins by reflecting on the periodizing logic that invites us to leave behind “the backlash against the Internet.” What comes before and after the network?
 
 
 
 
 

Gendered isolation, idealised communities and the role of collective power in West Bengal self-help groups

Empowerment and power have long been fervently contested in feminist theory and geography. Much debate focuses on whether empowerment is mainly monetary or more holistic and emancipatory. In both cases, most of the literature centres on individual empowerment and internal ‘power within’. Much less attention, however, has been given to the idea of ‘power with’ and how friendship, solidarity and emotional connections are fundamental to empowerment and yet are highly vulnerable to outside influence. Drawing on field research from Self-Help Groups in West Bengal, this article highlights how the formation of ‘power with’ is particularly important in contexts of gendered isolation, where patriarchy is enacted through the spatial control of women and removal of women from the public sphere, illustrating that communities in the Global South are not necessarily sites of collective unity and cohesion. These findings contest both idealised notions of community and mainstream theories of power and empowerment and in turn, provide crucial insights for feminist geography and power theory.

Re-purposing the Portrayal of Eminent Monks in Memorial Steles: Strategies of Identity Legitimation in 17th Century Korean Buddhism

Steles are the ultimate medium for touting the illustrious life of eminent monks. The engraved biographies of these monks on these steles are a record of the most prestigious monks and are thus representations of ideal images held at the highest esteem. In the case of Korean Buddhism, steles played an important, if not central, role in forming ideal images and identities. However, the method of constructing ideal images was by way of secular claims such as highlighting the official titles bestowed by the monarch or the great deeds in service of the state. The images of these monks were also the result of adopting the then current ideal Confucian images and virtues. <BR> Expressed differently, the claims etched on the steles of eminent monks while advancing idealistic notions were an amalgamation with situational conditions. It is clear that the secular claims were integral as a form of buttressing the claims of ideals— a tight balance of idealism and realism during the tumultuous times of enormous sociopolitical change. The conditions were such that while it was important that uniquely ideal Buddhist images were claimed, it also had to adopt images from the dominant ideology at the time, Confucianism.<BR> This paper is an attempt to bridge the ideal and pragmatic facets in the establishment of the Buddhist identity at a time of turbulent change which will provided a nuanced understanding of Buddhism set within the socio-historical setting of the late-Chosŏn period (1600–1910). While this paper focuses on epigraphical texts for the espoused images of eminent monks, it is an attempt to explain the aim of the steles and the rhetorical narratives that are contained in these texts.

Refigurative politics: understanding the volatile participation of critical creatives in community gardens, repair cafés and clothing swaps

ABSTRACT Collective alternative everyday practices (CAEPs), such as community gardens, clothing swaps or repair cafés, have become a prominent sight in the critical-creative milieus. So far, CAEPs have been mostly conceptualized in terms of prefigurative politics, i.e. as the strategy to change society through an everyday conduct that fully reflects idealized notions of the Self and society. However, there is increasing evidence of practitioners who engage in rather irregular, spontaneous ways and remain bound to an unsustainable consumer lifestyle. Scholars have identified such volatile participation as a problem for mobilization, but have not answered a) how the lack of continuous embodiment can be understood from a social movement perspective, and b) what the political quality of this behaviour might be. In this article, I address these research questions by drawing on theories of the late-modern subject and existing qualitative studies. Late-Modern Subject Theory assumes that individuals increasingly construct themselves through the market and in a multi-faceted way, due to processes such as commercialization, flexibilization and acceleration. From that perspective, volatile participants attempt to mobilize an idealized Self but are unable to do so persistently, due to the structural constraints (such as lack of time resources) and personal liberties (such as excess of consumer options) that define everyday life in late-modern society. The result are figurations of utopia that are bound to fail, but repeated ever again. These ‘refigurations’ maintain a political element through conveying a critique of and an alternative to the status quo, if only for a moment.

Exploring RuPaul’s Drag Race as a platform for public debate: Conforming and resisting idealised notions of drag (commentary)

Exploring RuPaul’s Drag Race as a platform for public debate: Conforming and resisting idealised notions of drag (commentary)

Children through the Looking Glass

In recent decades social scientists have taken a renewed interest in Western conceptions of the child, revealing often contradictory notions of children as either lacking or capable, innocent or knowing, vulnerable or dangerous. The fine-art photograph offers visual anthropology a way to explore these contradictions and shifts in attitude. This essay addresses the question through the changing representations of children in 19th- and 20th-century art photography. Reaching back to the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, it examines images of children by Lewis Hine, Edward Weston, Helen Levitt, Sally Mann, Anthony Goicolea, and the Russian collective, AES + F, arguing that in these photographs the child has increasingly been perceived as mysterious and threatening to adult ideas of sexual and social order. The essay concludes with the case of Jacques-Henri Lartigue, who among all the noted photographers of children was the only one who brought a child’s perspective to the portrayal of childhood experience. If contemporary photographers have persisted in conveying disturbing and idealized notions of childhood, it may require another Lartigue to restore the balance.

Public Spheres, Counterpublics’ Fears and Syncopolitics

This article explores the often normative and idealist notion of the public sphere at its possible breaking point by analysing the online reactions to two tabloid articles about a 2016 performance of Dancing with Strangers: From Calais to England by Instant Dissidence. It first looks at how a comment platform could be perceived as a subaltern public sphere and as a substitute for a live audience in order to reconsider the notion of the counterpublic. For this, it examines the dialectical tension between politics and aesthetics within a subaltern online public sphere not immune to all kinds of extremism. This leads to an attempt to consider online hostile lay critics as a potentially legitimate public to address the dilemma faced by contemporary artists when engaging with society in an all-inclusive manner. Finally, this article offers a different reading of Instant Dissidence’s performance and of the possible reasons for the commentators’ rage and alienation and proposes syncopolitics as a way out of both online polarisation echo chambers and the public engagement conundrum.

Peer Idealization and Internal Examples in the Epistemology of Disagreement

The epistemology of disagreement has developed around a highly idealized notion of epistemic peers. The analysis of examples in the literature has somewhat entrenched this idealization, when using cases of extant philosophical disputes between named interlocutors. These examples make it hard to emphasize the ordinary ways in which discussants, as disciplinary colleagues, may be wrong. Overlooking these possibilities is probably made easier by widespread attitudes in philosophy about the importance of genius or raw intelligence in doing philosophy. The use of such internal examples needlessly limits consideration of the full range of epistemically relevant features of disagreements.

Listing for change? Exploring the politics of relief lists in Bangladesh after Cyclone Sidr.

Ideal notions of efficient aid are challenged continuously by realities on the ground in the wake of major disasters, such as dire needs, limited resources, and opportunism. This paper demonstrates how 'relief lists' can be productive entry points for a systematic inquiry into the pervasive politics of disaster assistance. Through an analysis of qualitative data collected during the five years after Cyclone Sidr struck Bangladesh on 15 November 2007, it examines how relief lists featured in both physical and phantom forms and then developed beyond their transparency-making aims, becoming elevated sites of struggle for post-disaster resources. Three list processes, selected to indicate the temporal, material, and spatial dynamics of relief encounters, are assessed in depth. Although recipients of cyclone relief appreciated its value, the paper argues that list politics also stimulated structures of vulnerability, including inequality. Gradually, relief, as governed after Sidr, also served to restore the differential vulnerability of the country's coastal poor.

Transforming Teaching towards Empowered Learning: What #MeToo Taught Us about Anthropology

This article calls for revisiting how we teach anthropology in light of three mutually reinforcing “moments” – the #MeToo Movement, the development of the American Anthropological Association’s first Sexual Harassment and Sexual Assault Policy, and shifting student expectations regarding personal safety and wellbeing. By thinking anthropologically about anthropology, against a backdrop of larger questions for the discipline as a whole, we single out the consequences of the “lone anthropologist” trope as it reproduces idealized notions of fieldwork in ways that limit access to the discipline. We suggest ten practical strategies for changing normative pedagogies as a way to increase benefits and reduce harms as we work to minimize risk for sexual violence while preserving the benefits of immersive fieldwork. We conclude by exploring how the classroom itself is feeding back into transforming cultures and institutional structures.

A Critical Approach to Aging in Place: A Case Study Comparison of Personal and Professional Perspectives from the Minneapolis Metropolitan Area

ABSTRACT The concept of aging in place attracts older adults, scholars, policymakers, and service providers alike. Interviews with 125 independent-dwelling men and women (mean age 71 years) and ten policymakers/community service providers queried for elements of urban and suburban contexts that strengthen or weaken desires and abilities to age in place. Overall, interviewees emphasized the need for accessible and affordable housing, reliable services, robust transportation infrastructure, and suitable options for health and care. Perspectives of low-income participants diverged notably from mainstream conceptions: those in perilous-subsidized housing desired to move to safer and more comfortable settings and homeless participants did not have a stable home or community to age in place. Planning and implementation of aging in place framed in highly individualistic, resourced, and ableist conception did not address their everyday struggles, including the lack of affordable housing and defunding of supportive social services. The manuscript complicates idealized notions of aging in place and suggests new theoretical and empirical directions to expand the concept to become more inclusive and socially just.

Homeless Advocacy and the Rhetorical Construction of the Civic Home

Homeless Advocacy and the Rhetorical Construction of the Civic Home

Масонский дискурс о новой России: О своеобразии образа мира в русских масонских утопиях XVIII века

Идеалистические представления о государстве и человеке, сочетавшиеся с критикой существующего уклада жизни были важным компонентом споров конца XVIII века о новой России. Утопические повести А. П. Сумарокова, М. М. Хераскова, В. А. Левшина, А. Н. Радищева, в которых образ мира обоснован на убеждении о возможности восстановления уничтоженного порочной натурой человека гармоничного порядка мира, переводили на язык литературных образов и приемов, понятен как братьям масонам, так и профанам, ценимые масонами идеи свободы, братства и равенства. Мифический «золотой век» в понимании русских масонов относился как к прошлому, так и будущему. Восстановление гармоничного порядка гарантировалось духовным возрождением личности.

After Darwin

Abstract In the second half of the nineteenth century, many people lost their faith in the Christian God. Nevertheless, they were eager to show that this move towards a secular world picture did not mean the end of morality and that it could continue as much before. In a Darwinian age this was not possible and the Christian cherishing of the virtue of meekness was replaced by a moral respect for vigor and effort directed both towards self-realization and to the well-being of society. We compare the British moves to those promoted by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. There are significant similarities but also differences that reflect the British industrialized notion of progress versus the German idealistic notion of progress.