Identity Matters Research Articles

Cancer’s Uncertain Identity: A Narrative and Performative Model for Coping

I offer my former experiences coping with adolescent cancer as evidence to warrant my exploration into coping as a narrative and performative matter of identity. I articulate coping as performative and narrative apperception, wherein the act of coping can be a performative act reflexively tethered to narrative identity, and entrenched in sociocultural constructs. I argue that (a) a cancer diagnosis and cancer narratives are language in action; (b) there is a liminal and uncertain state of all cancer patients, and adolescent patients in particular; and (c) narratives and their discursive structures create, and are created by, performed actions, narratives, and identities.

East of West, West of East: a matter of global and local identity.

Research is a very personal matter. On the basis of experiences in different countries with researchers from different cultures over many years, some observations will be described. The conceptual frame of this attempt is to look for anthropological universals and cultural specifics. Much can be learned from spatial representations in the arts. Whereas in the West since Renaissance time the central perspective has become dominant in visual art, in Eastern landscape paintings the "floating view" is typical. The claim that the central perspective corresponds to geometric laws and matches how we see the world is misleading for at least two reasons: It violates mechanisms of size constancy, and the visual world is spatially reduced in pictures to the perifoveal region only. Research on spatial attention has disclosed two different attentional systems being responsible either for near-fovea vision or for the far periphery. This fundamental principle as a global characteristic of visual processing is neglected in Western art. In Eastern art with a floating view geometric laws are violated, and different potential perspectives are integrated within a holistic pattern. The semantics of what shall be expressed becomes important irrespective of physical parameters. The latter may also create the unique phenomenon of becoming subjectively part of the picture confirming personal identity. Cultural specifics like in the arts (what one might expect) can surprisingly also be observed in theoretical considerations about visual processing. Whereas in the tradition of Western science visual percepts are built up with local elements like feature detectors, in an important Chinese theory global topological features are analyzed first. An important task of the brain is to create the identity of a percept on the basis of spatially and temporally distributed neural activities. It is, thus, an important theoretical question how to deal with the challenge to create and maintain the identity of a percept for some time. It is suggested that one should leave behind a monocausal reasoning for such explanations but adopt for analytical strategies the concept of complementarity as a generative principle.

Hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope dynamics of hyper-saline and salt-saturated aqueous solutions

An attractive tracer of water-surface interactions in humidity exposure experiments are the stable hydrogen and oxygen isotopes in water vapor, though the conventional method of using salt saturated aqueous solutions to control humidity is likely to exert strong effects on the H and O stable isotope composition of the vapor. The magnitude of these effects are virtually unknown for hyper-saline solutions near salt saturation and beyond. Here we explore the hydrogen and oxygen stable isotope effects of salt-water mixtures from dilute to the salt saturation point and beyond for BaCl2, CaCl2, KCl, K2SO4, MgCl2, NaBr, NaCl, and NaI salts, of which the O isotope results on BaCl2, K2SO4, and NaBr are the first to be reported, and the first for H with BaCl2. We find that vapor humidity levels, and hydrogen and oxygen isotope effects in the vapor generated from dilute solutions to salt-saturated mixtures increase in magnitude by predictable linear trends. In the case of hydrogen isotope salt effects, the cation identity matters, as the effect becomes stronger with decreasing size and increasing charge (increasing ionic potential) in the sequence of: K < Na < Ba < Ca < Mg. For oxygen, the cation effect becomes stronger with increasing ionic potential, in the order of Na < Ba < K < Ca < Mg (irrespective of sign). Hydrogen and oxygen isotope effects in vapor from salt concentrations greater than the salt saturation point do not behave as systematically, with some of the salts displaying no increase in isotope effects beyond saturation, while others show an increase in isotope effects beyond salt saturation, especially in the case of hydrogen. We make specific recommendations on the salts that exert hydrogen and oxygen isotope effects with the least magnitude and most predictability for humidity levels from 26% to 92%. The use of salt solutions to create vapor at less than 100% and with specific δ2H and δ18O values that differ from that defined by the global meteoric water relationship also seems possible. Hyper-saline surface waters can exist at and above saturation, and thus these isotope effects may be present in them, as well as in minerals that form from these waters.

Moving Bodies, Piano Body

Pianists move. A lot. Non-pianists are often unaware of the extent to which piano technique involves the whole body—not just the fingers, hands or even arms, but the whole upper body plus the lateral movement of the whole torso—in the complex negotiation of the subtleties of sound production. However, the relationship is unlike that of most musicians with their instruments: due to its size and mechanics, the piano cannot be thought of as coextensive or even prosthetic. It is not, like many instruments, incorporated, after many years of practice, into our body schema. At the same time, as a pianist, any sense I have of myself as a creative entity is deeply bound to my embodied experience of the instrument, to the details of tone, resonance and touch. This contribution briefly explores these matters, drawing on images and words from Player Piano, a large-scale, theatrical piano performance, devised by the performer in collaboration with theatre makers Teresa Brayshaw and Hannah Butterfield, composers Edward Jessen, Annea Lockwood, Roger Marsh and Paul Whitty, and film maker Wendy Kirkup. Player Piano was developed as part of a research project examining the production of subjectivity in musical performance, partly by developing new musical performances that foreground matters of embodiment and identity.

How to Think About Social Identity

What does it mean to identify with a social group? Are individuals’ group attachments tied to material or nonmaterial payoffs? What is the existing evidence for social identification due to nonmaterial payoffs? When do identities matter and for what sorts of behaviors? We highlight findings from several literatures in political science, ranging from voting and redistribution to violence and conflict, focusing on nonmaterial, identity-based motivations for behavior in these domains. Doing so allows us to draw out commonalities across research areas that are often held in isolation from one another and that frequently employ overlapping terminology. We summarize important findings and identify open questions; these questions include what the role played by elites is in shaping mass mobilization around identities and what the relationship is between social identities and social norms.

Expanding conceptions of liberation: Holding Marxisms with liberation psychology

By considering how psychologists are able to hold (that is, support distinctive ontologies) Liberation Psychology (LP) with Marxisms, this article interrogates psychological approaches to liberation in two ways. First, against the foundations of LP and Marxisms, as well as attempts to formulate psychological Marxisms and Marxist psychologies, the paper examines how holding LP with Marxisms facilitates a necessarily expansive, innovative, and democratic conception of liberation. Second, by exploring matters related to history, epistemology, reflexivity, and the State, a theoretical holding of this kind is shown to permit psychologists nuanced ways of engaging complex psychosocial phenomena in their work. It is concluded that by holding LP with Marxisms, psychologists employ a sensitivity towards a local–global nexus of interlocking liberation struggles, while taking seriously matters of power, space, time, identity, violence, and freedom.

Identity work within attempts to transform healthcare: Invisible team processes

Studies have shown that workers’ identities matter for a host of individual and organizational outcomes. However, the question of how identities work becomes more complex when considering settings where workers must negotiate multiple – and sometimes conflicting – identities. Interprofessional healthcare teams are one such setting. Within interprofessional teams, workers are expected to adopt both professional and team-based identities, sometimes leading to confusion and conflicts. Using longitudinal qualitative analyses of healthcare team members’ reflective audio diaries, we document identity work of one team as they attempted to create and adopt a new approach to care. We analyze 176 recordings over 30 weeks and find that: team members experience multiple identification targets more or less conflicting, depending on the organizational context; team members from different professional backgrounds experience identity processes differently; and conflicts with others affect how team members see themselves and one another. These findings enrich our understanding of how multiple identities are reconciled in the workplace, and illustrate hidden aspects of forming and sustaining team-based work.

Studying identity in Ukraine

While it is common wisdom that “identity matters” in Ukrainian politics, we still lack a robust understanding of precisely when and how it matters. Reflecting challenges facing the broader interdis...

Candidate Sexual Orientation Didn't Matter (in the Way You Might Think) in the 2015 UK General Election

Does sexual orientation and gender identity matter at election time? While previous literature has explored the effect of candidate gender and ethnicity on electoral results, this is the first study to quantitatively investigate the impact of sexual orientation. We build an original dataset combining individual-level data on more than 3,000 candidates in the 2015 UK election with sociodemographic indicators at the constituency level. In addition to sexual orientation and other demographic characteristics, we include candidate education, political experience, and campaign spending. We find that LGBT candidates generally do not have a negative impact on party vote share. Even in more conservative environments, LGBT candidates perform at least as well as their straight counterparts. This work is important to understand the consequences of descriptive representation and, relatedly, how rapid social change happens.

Sex and orientation identity matter in the substance use behaviors of sexual minority adolescents in the United States

BackgroundHealth sciences researchers are beginning to understand the differing experiences and health risks among sexual minority subgroups (i.e., those who describe themselves as homosexual/gay/lesbian, bisexual, or unsure/questioning). Such research can promote the allocation of resources to high-risk groups and the development of interventions tailored to their needs. The present study extends this line of research to substance use among adolescents. MethodsThe lifetime and/or past 30-day alcohol, tobacco, cigarette, e-cigarette, marijuana, prescription drug, and illicit drug use of sexual minority and heterosexual adolescents was analyzed using data from the 2015 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Controlling for confounders, separate logistic regression models were fit for each substance use outcome. A simulation-based strategy was employed to report adjusted risk ratios for each substance use outcome for each sexual minority subgroup. ResultsSexual minority females, particularly bisexual females, were at an elevated risk for substance use. For example, compared to heterosexual females, sexual minority females were 1.35 (95%CI 1.16–1.56) times more likely to have used a substance in the past 30 days, and bisexual females had an even further elevated risk ratio (RR: 1.48, 95%CI 1.28–1.69). ConclusionsStudying the variance among sexual minority subgroups will help practitioners, advocates, and policymakers identify high risk subgroups. In the case of substance use, this study suggests sexual minority females, particularly bisexual females, should become a target population for prevention and other interventions. The study conducts post-hoc analyses on secondary data, and so these results should be verified in more targeted studies.

Les effets d’annonce dans l’infection à VIH et leur destin

ObjectivesThis article describes psychological reactions observed when a patient is informed he or she is infected with HIV. In order to cope with an HIV diagnosis some people may adopt unhealthy coping strategies. In spite of all the help they are surrounded with and all the medical advances which have taken place in the past 20 years discovering your HIV diagnosis is always experienced as a death sentence with far reaching consequences. Materials and methodsEven if each experience may be unique common aspects can be highlighted. As soon as the announcement is given a death sentence is pronounced. The patients are caught up between two requests that work together; an HIV announcement trauma linked to the irruption of the reality of death on their psychic scene; all the medical structures which double the traumatic consequences of the diagnosis by instrumentalizing instead of promoting “fantasmatisation”. Almost all the patients describe a state of “sideration”. They mention the medical care and support they are provided with but never or hardly all the verbal exchanges that come with them. They report a derealisation and depersonalisation experience. At this very moment nothing seems real to them including their own body. This life threatening diagnosis questions the very limits and bases of their body. Variations around identity matters can be spotted. What could be observed as strange becomes threatening. Patients have the feeling of being inhabited by some hostile guest; of surrendering to an alien, an intruder who can lead them to a catastrophic change (Bion) because of the destroying effects on their organism. The intruder who represents the disease transforms the identity of the patient who becomes an alien to himself or herself. The French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy's narration entitled “The intruder” and Siri Hustevedt's novel “The shaking woman” will help us better understand how the confrontation with death reality breaks into every patient's psyche and appears there as a metaphoric intruder. This intruder reminds the patients of what they no longer are and what they have lost. DiscussionTheir distress mobilizes a substantial defensive scheme whose many expressions remind us of observations carried out by Anglo Saxon psycho analysts on children “cut-off” from a mother figure. These children fell victim to a feeling of abandonment and therefore were seeking vital security. According to the way this trauma is coped with it can lead or not to a work of elaboration. It should be noted that this study reminds us of the mourning pattern conceptualized by Freud in Mourning and Melancholia (1917). ConclusionsThis extreme situation imposes considerable and intense psychic work. If this work is helped by some sort of facilitating environment (Winnicott) [23], it may allow elaboration and subjectivation of loss.

Improving alcohol and mental health treatment for lesbian, bisexual and queer women: Identity matters

Objective:Lesbian, bisexual and queer (LBQ) women experience substantial unmet alcohol and mental health treatment needs. This paper explores the way in which sexual identity shapes experience, and needs, in relation to alcohol and mental health treatment, and presents key messages for improving treatment. Methods:Twenty‐five in‐depth interviews were undertaken with same‐sex attracted Australian women, aged 19–71. Interview transcripts were analysed thematically. Results:Key messages offered by participants focused on language, disclosure and practitioner training. Variation in sexual identity did not alter treatment expectations or needs; however, we noted an important difference with respect to identity salience, with high LBQ identity salience linked with preference for disclosure and acknowledgement of sexual identity in treatment interactions, and low identity salience linked with a preference not to disclose and for sexual identity not to require acknowledgement in treatment. Conclusions:Treatment providers may find it useful to gather information about the centrality of sexual identity to LBQ women as a means of overcoming treatment barriers related to heteronormative conventions and discrimination, language and disclosure. Implications for public health:Treatment providers should adopt more inclusive language, seek information about identity salience and the importance of sexual identity to the current treatment, and regularly pursue LBQ‐related professional development upskilling.

A matter of identity: Anil Ramdas and his autobiographical novel Badal (2011)

On 16 February, 2017, Anil Ramdas (1958–2012) was commemorated in Amsterdam, five years after his suicide. This Surinam born author and media personality of Hindustan ancestry, had developed in the course of time into a thought provoking progressive intellectual. The themes he cherished in his essays and in his work for Dutch television were migration and identity, the values of western civilisation and the need for civility. On his return to the Netherlands, in 2003, after a three year stay as a correspondent in India, he became aware that, due to a change in the general cultural atmosphere, tolerance for immigrants had diminished. It made him question his own role as a ‘non-western intellectual’. In February 2011, Ramdas published Badal, a novel of ideas on an autobiographical basis. Most reviews emphasised the autobiographical aspect, including Badal’s alcoholism: Badal had to be identical to Anil Ramdas. In this article, Badal is interpreted as a complex, multi-layered, a-chronological novel, which explores the same themes as Ramdas’ essays, using intertextual references to other novels and especially to songs and films. In the final analysis, it is a novel about the human condition, about loss and the demise of illusions.

“There Is Another Kingdom”: On The Politics of Virtue

“There Is Another Kingdom”:On The Politics of Virtue Tracey Rowland John Milbank’s and Adrian Pabst’s The Politics of Virtue could be described as the theo-political analogue to Rupert Brooke’s The Soldier, Blake’s Jerusalem, and Sir Cecil Spring Rice’s I Vow to Thee my Country all rolled into one. It pulls no punches and is unashamedly in favor of aristocratic and monarchical forms of government, as well as the establishment of the Church of England. God, Queen, and Country Anglicans who read it are likely to recall the words of Simeon’s prayer upon the presentation of the Christ-child: Nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine, secundum verbum tuum in pace: Quia viderunt oculi mei salutare tuum; Quod parasti ante faciem omnium populorum: Lumen ad revelationem gentium, et gloriam plebis tuae Israel. Another way to describe it would be a twenty-first-century Tory manifesto or “Blue Labor” handbook. (The difference between the British political classifications “Red Tory” and “Blue Labor” seems to be more a matter of class identity than substantive policy preference). Whether one is an aristocrat with a strong sense of noblesse oblige—that is, a Red or Turquoise Tory (turquoise is red combined with green ecological interests)—or a person from a lowlier social position who appreciates the value of an aristocratic element within the social order—a Blue Labor type—the same substantive political positions can be arrived at assuming a common Christian intellectual foundation. The Politics of Virtue is therefore in the genre of works that offer a critique of liberal political theory from a Christian perspective. It [End Page 1337] shares something of the flavor of Alasdair MacIntyre’s many publications on the subject, especially the need to reclaim virtue and unmask the confidence tricks and coercive character of liberal ideology. However, where MacIntyre and others have been criticized for offering no alternative to the present liberal political order other than building more monasteries, home schooling children, out-breeding liberals, and praying for another St. Benedict or Joseph Ratzinger (all reasonable strategies in my judgment), Milbank and Pabst have dared to offer some concrete proposals about the structure of political institutions, as well as offering a robust defense of a Christian commonwealth where both politics and economics are rooted in virtuous practices. While a wave of communitarian and specifically Catholic criticisms of liberalism began to be published in the 1980s, often in response to John Rawls’s liberal classic A Theory of Justice (1971), at a time when it seemed as though the end-of-history theorists and a chorus of neoconservative Catholics might be right about the triumph of liberalism, and hence the enthusiasm (especially among American Catholics) to quickly baptise it, Milbank’s and Pabst’s book comes after the outbreak of Islamic terrorism in 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008. They note that both of these events “exposed the limitations of the two liberalisms that have dominated Western politics for the last half-century: the social-cultural liberalism of the left since the 1960s and the economic-political liberalism of the right since the 1980s.”1 The social-cultural liberalism of the left and the economic-political liberalism of the right share the same starting position of a merely negative conception of liberty. A negative conception of liberty is about “freedom from” something, rather than “freedom for” something. This negative liberty rests on two pillars: “a procedural, formalistic conception of justice and an instrumental notion of reason.”2 The combined result is that “individuals are proclaimed ‘autonomous’ when all the while they are subjected to the instrumental logic of bureaucratic control and commercial exchange.”3 Worse yet, “the scale of self-worth that the individual is encouraged to adopt is the [End Page 1338] very same scale by which she is subjected to mass manipulation.”4 The “double paradox at the heart of liberalism” is therefore the “relentless privatisation of the public sphere and yet the ever-greater invasion of the private sphere, coupled with an oppressive moralism masquerading as liberal impartiality and procedural fairness.”5 Milbank and Pabst strongly affirm the judgment of the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek...

Does social identity matter in individual alienation? Household-level evidence in post-reform India

Does consumption distance as a measure of individual alienation reveal the effect of social identity? Using the central idea of Akerlof’s ‘social distance’ theory, individual distance is calculated from their own group mean consumption and then we examine whether individuals from different social groups – caste and religion – are alienated across the distance distribution. Using India’s household-level microdata on consumption expenditure covering three major survey rounds since the inception of the reform period, we find a non-unique pattern where the marginalised and minority group households tend to be alienated across the distance distribution. However, among them, the households with higher educational attainment become more integrated as reflected in the interaction effect of education. These results are robust even after controlling for the endogeneity of education. Given this significant group difference in consumption, we undertake a group-level comparison by creating a counterfactual group through exchanging the characteristics of the privileged group to the marginalised group (or Hindus to non-Hindus), and find that the privileged group still consumes more than the counterfactual marginalised group, explaining around 77% of the estimated average consumption gap at the median quantile in 2011–12 (or 59% for Hindus versus Non-Hindus). This suggests other inherent identity-specific social factors as possible contributors to within-group alienation (relative to a better-off category) that can only be minimised through promoting education for the marginalised (or minority religion) group.

SAFFRON DREAMS-A JOURNEY OF EVOLVING IDENTITY

Saffron Dreams is a tale of a woman set in the immigrant milieu. It narrates how resolve and resistance can cope with hatred and weakness could harness indigenous strength against othering. The novel vividly portrays how distinct identities vanish, rebirth and evolve amidst the challenges; challenges that threaten lives and existence. It describes the epic struggle of a Pakistani woman, coming from a conservative society, whose dreams die. The research explores the evolving identity of the protagonist; the subject matter of identity is discussed with theoretical background. The Analysis revolves round Arissa who after sudden collapse of marital bliss is pushed to edges by society. The powerful longing for a renewed identity helps Arrisa prepare to live at the cost of sacrificing her ‘hijab’ whom she thinks as a symbol of bondage with her deceased husband. The beholder lives on with new version of her dreams marked by the desires to come out of the clutches of ‘time’ on canvass of her life colored with uncertainties and fatigued compromises. The study is exploratory in purpose, following the content-based mode of analysis.

Testing the hypothesis of hierarchical predictability in ecological restoration and succession.

To advance predictive ecology, the hypothesis of hierarchical predictability proposes that community measures for which species are interchangeable (e.g., structure and species richness) are more predictable than measures for which species identity matters (e.g., community composition). Predictability is hypothesized to decrease for response measures in order of the following categories: structure, species richness, function, and species composition. We tested this hypothesis using a 14-year, oak savanna-prairie restoration experiment that removed non-native pine plantations at 24 sites in northwestern Ohio, USA. Based on 24 response measures, the data showed minimal support for the hypothesis, because response measures varied in predictability within categories. Half of response measures had over half their variability modeled using fixed (restoration treatment and year) and random plot effects, and these "predictable" measures occurred in all four categories. Pine basal area, environment (e.g., soil texture), and antecedent vegetation accounted for over half the variation in change within the first three post-restoration years for 77% of response measures. Change between the 3rd and 14th years was less predictable, but most restoration measures increased favorably via sites achieving them in unique ways. We propose that variation will not conform with the hypothesis of hierarchical predictability in ecosystems with vegetation dynamics driven by stochastic processes such as seed dispersal, or where vegetation structure and species richness are influenced by species composition. The ability to predict a community measure may be more driven by the number of combinations of casual factors affecting a measure than by the number of values it can have.

Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire. Marjorie Perloff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. xi+204.

<i>Edge of Irony: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire</i>. Marjorie Perloff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Pp. xi+204.

The effect of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction among immigrants: Does host national identity matter?

Overqualification is a form of person-job misfit that is common among those who reside in a foreign country. It is associated with poor work-related well-being and can inhibit full adjustment to the host society. The goal of our study is to examine the impact of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction among immigrants. Furthermore, we investigated immigrants’ host national identity as a moderator of the impact of perceived overqualification on job satisfaction and career satisfaction. We analysed longitudinal online survey data from 124 Italian and Spanish immigrants who migrated to Germany between 2000 and 2014. Regression analyses show that perceived overqualification is negatively associated with job satisfaction six months later. Furthermore, host national identity moderates the association between perceived overqualification and job satisfaction: low overqualification is beneficial for job satisfaction whereas high overqualification is a threat for job satisfaction, especially for immigrants who identify strongly with the host society. We do not find corresponding direct and moderating effects on career satisfaction. We conclude that indicators of acculturation, such as host national identity, are worth considering in order to understand the impact of person-job misfit on work-related well-being among immigrants.

National Identity Formation in Pakistan: Analysis of the Anti-Secular Narrative

AbstractSoon after its declaration as an Islamic Republic in 1956, Islamists have experienced numerous ups and downs in Pakistan. Islamists not only try to maintain the status quo of the Islamic state but also endeavour to expand the scope ofsharia. Despite insignificant achievements in elections, Islamists have mostly been able to dictate civilian and military governments in matters of national identity. One of the greatest challenges for the promotion of pluralism is the Islamists’ anti-secular narrative, which holds significant backing from both the civil and the military elites. The goal of this paper is to analyse such narrative with reference to Pakistan’s continuous struggle for national identity. ‘The analyses propose that anti-secular voices are occupying centre stage in Pakistan, leaving little room for diverse opinions. Anti-secular groups use violence as a tool to silence any opposition against their ideology for Pakistan, which is evident by regular attacks on not only the religious minorities but also the moderate or liberal Muslim thinkers. The conflict over national identity between extremists and moderates is also one of the main causes of rising violent extremism in Pakistan.