Process Of Identity Building Research Articles

Heritage Making in Former Socialist Towns in Hungary

AbstractCentral and Eastern European countries generally view their socialist heritage as an unwanted, unpleasant burden. The new identity-building processes after the regime change were initially dominated by efforts to rewrite, suppress, or erase the socialist past, while for Western tourists the consumption of key attractions and sites of the built heritage represents a particular form of heritage tourism through which they can experience a slice of an “exotic” past beyond the Iron Curtain. At the national and local levels, there is a vast dissonance between the material heritage of socialism and the identity and aspirations of post-socialist communities, which is even more evident in the case of newly-built, former socialist towns. Through the example of Tiszaújváros and Dunaújváros, my study primarily examines the institutional strategies chosen by these towns to address their socialist heritage. What principles prevailed in the compilation of the local collection of values? What kind of representation of the past do local museums offer, what role does the ethnographic heritage of the annexed villages play in museum presentation and collection, and how are local/regional traditions integrated into the town's image? Finally, through a specific community of memory, a Facebook page, I examine how the recent past appears in individual and collective – often nostalgic – memory, what values the community associates with the town, and how all these relate to the heritagization practices of the local elite.

“Groups Are Still a Problem … but a Different One!”: Reflecting on the Role Played by Non-Violent Extremist Groups in the Radicalisation Pathways of Individuals in the UK

Non-violent (vocal) extremists are at the centre of inflamed debates in the UK as they use their freedom of speech to legally oppose key democratic values and national authorities while targeting specific groups in the society as alleged enemies. This paper aims to explore the radicalisation pathways of individuals in the UK who hold radical and extreme ideas but who have not (yet) committed any offence. More precisely, this paper aims to uncover the role (if any) played by non-violent extremist groups in pathways to radicalisation. To do so, this paper focuses on people supported by the Channel programme, the main early de-radicalisation programme within the Prevent Scheme. This paper innovatively uses first-hand data reflecting the views of Channel practitioners on radicalisation pathways. This study concludes that non-violent extremist groups (as structures) still play a role in familiarising/acculturating individuals with specific ideological concepts. However, the processes of identity building and resource mobilisation seem to be strongly agent-led when observing Channel population in the UK.

The Fantastic East: Carnivalesque Public Space and Civil Sphere in Brazilian National Identity Building

Abstract In this article, I bring together the theory of the civil sphere and the concept of carnivalesque public space to analyze the function of symbols and discourses about the non-Western world in the construction of national identity in Brazil. I argue that the carnivalesque public space contributes to broadening and reinforcing solidarity in the civil sphere by de-nationalizing national identity. The orientalist representations that took place in Salvador’s carnival consolidated the “oriental” imaginary as an important dimension of the incipient national identity building process, as well as highlighted the ambivalences and discontinuities of the mosaic of symbolic references associated to it. This fantastic representation of the East corresponded to a particular expectation of meaning: the aesthetic contours of the national-popular boundaries in Brazil and its sense of belonging. The article analyses how national identities are created through symbolic references that are both within and beyond its own borders.

Translanguaging art – Questioning boundaries in Monika Szydłowska’s Do you miss your country?

Abstract Using the concept of translanguaging art that combines language(s) with other means of artistic expression, I discuss an artist’s book published in 2015 by Monika Szydłowska, who is a Polish-born visual artist living in the UK. Szydłowska’s book Do you miss your country? is a visual diary in which, using media traditionally associated with a travel journal (pencil and watercolours), the artist captures her experience of migration. The book depicts the everyday life of a young migrant woman from Poland, in the first years of her life in Scotland. The visual and textual narrative pinpoints the intricacies of the process of othering and identity building. I consider what the translanguaging art reveals about the process of identity creation in linguistically and culturally diverse communities and show how, through her choice of multi(trans)lingualism as a mode of writing and the form of a pocket-size sketchbook filled with watercolour drawings and speech bubbles, Szydłowska problematises the popular image of the migrant. I also discuss her engagement with the tradition of migrant writing and travel writing and her subtle subverting of these genres. I demonstrate how, by combining languages with visual means of expression choosing the form of a comic and the watercolour – a gendered and nationally loaded medium – she negotiates her identity and destabilises power relations historically operating within the migratory discourse. My conclusion suggests that her use of translanguaging enabled the artist to indicate the transformative and emancipatory potential of migration seen as the empowering rather than disempowering process for migrants and locals alike.

Tourism and sociocultural identity discourses in ethnic minority communities: a study of she ethnic townships in Zhejiang Province, China

This research delves into the evolving sociocultural identity discourses within ethnic communities, particularly in the context of tourism revitalization. We used a qualitative case study approach to conduct 25 interviews in the Fengyang and Dailing She ethnic townships in Cangnan County, Wenzhou City, Zhejiang Province, China. An in-depth iterative analysis of these interviews revealed three key findings: The symbolic significance of She ethnic townships, accentuated by tourism, necessitates the identity-building processes of She community members; the paradox of cultural essentialism and the ethnic-cultural commodification propels the evolution of She sociocultural identity; and empowering She people in community engagement can help sustain She sociocultural identity. These insights enrich the understanding of sociocultural dynamics in ethnic communities, highlighting the challenges and opportunities presented by commercializing cultural attractions through tourism and emphasizing the need for a balanced approach in preserving and leveraging ethnic minority cultural resources in tourism-based cultural industries.

How boundaries work in higher education: an ethnographic account of Ph.D. students’ identity formation

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that Ph.D. students’ construction of academic identity depends on the boundary-making process in academia. The presented ethnographic account of Ph.D. students at one of the research-intensive universities in Turkey is based on 15 months of fieldwork, including observations and 21 in-depth interviews with PhD students. This ethnographic study employs a two-headed approach: institution-based boundary-formation and Ph.D. students’ socialisation into academic habitus. The findings reveal that, first, the identity building process in doctoral education is constituted by the practices of institution-based boundaries, which enable Ph.D. students to accumulate symbolic and social capital; second, the practices of distinction through socialisation into academic life are developed, embodied, habituated, and integrated to academic identity and academic life as part of a habitus of doctoral education; third, identity formation is a social space of relational positions characterised by the supervisor-enforced social order, rooted in both authority and domination.

An Adventure for All Ages: History, Post-Memory, and Romance in Tomasz Różycki's Twelve Stations

AbstractThe article examines Tomasz Różycki’s 2004 mock epic Twelve Stations. The poem recounts an oneiric tale about a community of expatriates from Poland’s Eastern Borderlands who send their grandson on a mission to assemble a scattered family and guide it to their lost homeland in today’s Ukraine. Revolving around the issues of memory, post-memory, and nostalgia, Twelve Stations draws heavily from the adventure tradition to present a fresh perspective on modern Poland’s founding myths: the loss of Borderlands and settling the post-German territories in the West. Reading the poem in the context of cultural memory studies and focusing on the author’s deployment of adventure tropes and patterns, the article argues that Różycki’s poetic tale de-politicizes the existing narratives affixed to forced resettlements by weaving them with various strands of popular romance. In doing so, the poem imagines a collective act of “working through” the trans-generational trauma resulting from physical and cultural uprooting. Różycki’s inventive use of the form demonstrates that adventure narratives can be effective vessels of cultural memory, capable of repurposing elements of official narratives and nostalgic imagination to initiate more constructive and future-oriented identity-building processes.

Processi di self-digital identity building dei protagonisti della politica locale: narrazioni social nel caso dei candidati sindaco a Napoli

Starting from the assumption related to the personalization of politics (XXX) that open to those disintermediated ways in which build relations with the electors, this paper is focused on those identity building processes digitally held. The digital-self that politicians self-build on digital media and on the social media-sphere thanks to specific narrative frames. The case study adopted delas with the local election in Naples in October 2021. It retraces the narrations self-built by the candidates on Facebook and Twitter. The empirical work is projected to a digital-mixed content analysis (Punziano, 2022) oriented to define profiles and trajectories of the self-identity building process of candidates, the features of those identities, the configuration of the relations with the connected electors and the impacts of their communication strategies on the electoral results. In line with these objectives, we intend to comprehend if the digital self-constructions of candidates have been pushed by the same electoral event, how they were different before the candidates’ nominations and if they shut down later the electoral campaign.

The Two-level Construction of Asian Identity in American Born Chinese from a Third-space Perspective

This paper examines the film “American Born Chinese” through the lens of the “Third Space” theory, which focuses on the boundary areas between cultures. It explores how Asian characters in the film reconstruct their unique identity within the “Third Space” and why this film elicited different responses from Chinese and American audiences. The analysis shows that Chinese American characters face a dual otherness: being seen as “the other” by both American and Chinese cultures. The film adeptly combines traditional Chinese mythology to narrate the identity-building process of Chinese Americans, telling the story of their dual identity construction. However, it also conveys certain political unfriendliness towards China. The paper argues that Chinese-American film and television works can be seen as a form of “reflective literature,” highlighting the similarities, differences, and conflicts between two different cultures and value systems. By understanding the dual otherness of Chinese Americans, this study aims to promote cross-cultural understanding and mutual reflection between the East and West.

Constructing an Ulster-Scots Burns

Through an examination of the local unionist newspapers from the middle of the nineteenth century to just before the First World War, the article shows how an ‘Ulster-Scots Burns’ was gradually pieced together and projected into the popular imagination. Burns’s work and heritage are curated in such a way as to make him compatible with the unionist and Ulster-Scots narratives which, increasingly, develop in parallel across this period. The construction of this ‘unionist-friendly’ Burns was not an end in itself. Rather, it was part and parcel of a much broader process of identity building that was on-going within the Ulster-Scots community over the course of the nineteenth century. In both cases, we find a central interaction between élite and popular culture. Given the preferences that emerge within the pro-Union community in Ulster under the pressure of Home Rule, the resulting version of Burns is one that is compatible with an increasingly conservative mind-set, one that, above all, confirms support for the constitutional status quo.

Dimitris Stamatopoulos, ed. Imagined Empires: Tracing Imperial Nationalism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe

Dimitris Stamatopoulos, ed. <i>Imagined Empires: Tracing Imperial Nationalism in Eastern and Southeastern Europe</i>

‘Sympathy for the Devil?’ McDonald’s between imperialism and the building of post-Yugoslav Serbian identity

Abstract Since the opening of its first restaurant in a communist country, which was Yugoslavia, not only is the huge success of the U.S. franchise something that was merely not supposed to happen, but ‘consuming McDonald’s’ has left its mark on the post ‑Yugoslav identity building process. Our central argument is that the singularity of the ‘McDonaldization of Serbia’ encompasses the interactions between expansion/ localness, dominance/adaptation and those who take part in this historical process which spans more than three decades, their responses that apprise, shape and constrain their everyday life conditions. This paper starts from the observation that most of the existing scholarly literature on identity building addresses the end of the Yugoslav experience whether through state narratives or identities introverted. We chose a different and understudied angle, which is a people ‑centred perspective. Accordingly, this paper uses different research methods under the umbrella of a biographical perspective from 1988 to 2021. Ethnographic fieldwork, comprising 45 semi ‑structured interviews with Belgradians, aims to expand scholarly knowledge on consumption and identity building in post ‑Yugoslav Serbia. In addition, conversations with influential individuals contributed to identify periods in the intermingled life of McDonald’s and people in contemporary Serbia. In the early 1990s, the McDonaldisation to some extent escalated cultural disputes between the republics against a backdrop of identity tensions. During the period spanning from the late years of Milosevic’s rule to the advent of Alexandar Vučić in 2012, political conflicts over sovereignty sparked ambiguous civic responses. Finally, McDonald’s has brought Serbs into the Western sphere which is probably best encapsulated in a local popular saying ‘McDonald’s is McDonald’s’ (‘Mek je Mek’), despite being considered ‘tasty’/unhealthy, expensive/rewarding or socially stimulating.

The Well That Wept Blood

Abstract This article uses the oral myth of a blood-weeping water well from a small city in the Amazon River to discuss the origins and the significance of haunted waterscapes for Black Amazonians. According to this myth, a well that still exists on the lands of an ancient sugar plantation weeps blood to mourn the slaves whose bodies were carelessly thrown there after a life of exploitation and abuse. The article tracks the history of the myth by interrogating its Indigenous substrate, its arrival to Amazonia in the nineteenth century thanks to Bantu-speaking enslaved Africans, and its additional twenty-first-century changes in a context of post–military dictatorship Black rural mobilization. It points to the centrality of haunted waterscapes and slave ghostlore in present-day processes of identity building and Black mobilization in Amazonia (Brazil), and highlights the necessity to study analog processes across the African diaspora in the Americas.

Uloga države u izgradnji održivog nacionalnog identiteta - studija slučaja Meksiko

This research investigates the national identity building process and corresponding role of the state in it. In many societies, states monopolised entire process, yet success they have been achieving is ambiguous. Using the Mexico case study, the research explores prospects of the state to lead the process of building a stable and sustainable national identity. To respond to the research question, authors analyse role of the Mexican state and ruling regimes in the process of different narratives production and parallelly investigates structural, historically conditioned factors. The conclusion is that the state cannot compensate authenticity and stability of the national identities which arise independently through the longue durée processes by producing and imposing artificial discourses and ideas.

HISTORY AND MEMORY, HISTORY AS MEMORY

Starting with the late 1980ʹs and early 1990ʹs, the field of Western historiography was pervaded by studies on the history of memory against the background of mentalities, the birth of the history of present time and the struggle of oral history to promote itself (time of roots, genealogies, commemorations); it was also the time for a growing interest in an alternative history of Africa built upon memories. Museums felt empowered to interrogate current histories, while the older ones revisited the very concepts upon which they had been previously built. Memories felt compelled to question history – and to rectify it. Certain researchers felt obliged to bring forth the memorial constructions. While in Europe memories were invited to permanently defy history, in Africa their task was, from the beginning, that of investing history with truth. Very scarce were here the invitations to relativism. Memories in Africa brought with them a familiar past that was allegedly colonized and suppressed Furthermore, waking up dormant memories from before the recent, Western colonial past was part of the identity building process in Africa: such narratives justified the individual via his/her ancestors, ethnic group peers and generations. On top of that, local intellectuals built on the national and continental identity. Based on the common roots, the emerging African discourse blamed recent history for the rupture with the long durée. Celebration and commemoration are still the barometers of existing, different types of memories (individual, communities, official). The controversial heritage of juxtaposed memories requires a separate interpretation. The Kermel Square in downtown Dakar, Senegal, is such an example. The walls of the main building and the surrounding building of colonial French architecture are overlapped with imprints of the more recent national memory, and the latter is the sworn enemy of the former. Each nation-state has its own heroes and places of memory, while few remember when the stories associated with them were born. We are now left with just their compulsory, ceremonial re-visitations.

Pulling back the curtain of environmental accountability: How boundaries shape environmental identities in the SKI industry

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the important role boundaries play in back-office framing of environmental engagement. This is of particular interest because it is not clear how organizations in an industry without standardized environmental reporting navigate their boundaries behind the scenes and why they engage with the environment the way they do. This element of their environmental identity offers important insights into the emergence of sustainability reporting.Design/methodology/approachGuided by Miles and Ringham (2019) the authors conduct an ethnography of the Montana ski industry. The ethnography includes extensive on-site observations at nine Montana ski areas and interviews with 16 ski area executives, two regulators and a land development executive.FindingsThe authors find three key boundaries – accountability structure, degree of regulatory burden and impact measurement approach – that shape the back-office economic and environmental framing of ski executives (Goffman, 1959, 1974). From these back-office frames the authors identify four front-office cultural performances – community ecosystem, quantitative ownership, approval seeking and advocacy platform – that represent the environmental engagement strategies at these resorts.Practical implicationsUnderstanding the relationships between boundaries and environmental engagement is an important step in developing appropriate industry-wide environmental accountability and sustainability expectations. The study’s findings extend to other industries that are both highly dependent on the environment and are in the early stages of developing environmental reporting standards.Originality/valueSki resorts operate in an industry that is impacted by changes in the natural environment. The authors chronicle the process by which boundaries lead to framing which leads to environmental engagement in this weather-dependent industry. The authors explain the process of environmental identity building, the result of which both precedes environmental reporting and puts such reporting into context. In this sense, the authors show how boundaries are set and maintained in the ski resort industry, and how fundamental these boundaries are to the development of individual companies' environmental engagement strategies.

The Israeli Arameans: a people-in-progress

This article analyzes the collective narrative of the Christian-Arameans in Israel and the on-going process of identity building. Pursuing a collective definition alternative to the Christian-Palestinian identity, the Arameans claim indigeneity and peoplehood. With national recognition in Israel and international recognition among the trans-national Aramean community, Israeli Arameans are developing a collective identity and memory that differentiates them from the predominant Arab-Muslim surroundings. After investigating the underlying historical causes comprised of Islamization and a growing Christian-Muslim divide following the Arab Spring, this article explores the Aramean collective narrative and identity, including language, religion, symbols, and folklore. Moreover, it explores the relations to the Zionist dominant narrative in light of the Aramean collective claim to territory, aspiring to re-establish the Maronite village of Bar‘am after its evacuation in 1948 as an Aramean community. This article is based on a variety of sources, including archival, textual, audiovisual material and interviews.

Bone in the Throat: Video archiving and identity building within the Montreal hardcore scene

During the 1990s and early 2000s, the Montreal hardcore scene was a vibrant, thriving and dynamic subculture with a strong sense of community. The generational and cyclical nature of such scenes has led, over the past two decades, to a significant crowd turnover with older people leaving and newcomers taking over. However, through the emergence of an Instagram account created by a man named Andy Chico Mak, its past memories are resurfacing. The recent dissemination of the Bone in the Throat series on social media, along with other archives including flyers, interviews and never-seen-before footage from the era, sparks a series of questions regarding the role and impact of archiving subcultures. Since the archival turn in social sciences, archives are considered as a reflexive and constitutive process of identity building and collective memory creating. In the case of subcultures, often overlooked by official heritage institutions, the importance of understanding archives as a site of cultural production is paramount. The collection and preservation of self-produced documents is key to scholars in order to understand the social and political dynamics at the heart of those communities. This article analyses the impact of years of video archives, gathered and organized through the work of Andy Chico Mak, in the process allowing the creation of collective memory and the development of ‘scene identity’. By relating to contemporary conversations about archiving subcultures, it also provides insight into the impact of new technologies and the creation of ‘subcultural collective memory’.

Zrnosko. Cultural Landscapes and Social Economy of a Village in Mala Prespa

This paper shows the first results of a preparatory fieldwork carried out in Zrnosko, a Macedonian-speaking village in the border region of Mala Prespa, Albania. Through observations and interviews collected around the concept of cultural landscape, it offers some insights into the history of the local social economy. Among these, the longue durée role of the forest and Prespa lake in the more general social geography of the region, the heritage of the collectivistic organization under the socialist regime of Enver Hoxha, and the contemporary marginalization of the village.&#x0D; The transformations in productive activities (such as small-scale agriculture and husbandry), as well as in the social organization of the local community, seem to reproduce and reshape local cultural landscapes. The widespread narratives about the lack of jobs offer a broader understanding of the village's social geography, its historical transformations and current condition. In a similar way local toponymy, as a result of an identity-building process, seems to reflect the cultural history of the environment, its productive activities and socio-cultural configurations. The participative mapping method, carried out in dialogue with locals, offers further explorations of the influence on toponyms in villagers' spatial practices, and in local identity narratives concerning ethnic and linguistic borders.&#x0D; Both productive activities and local geography seem to influence perceptions on the organization of space and time among inhabitants, revealing their cultural forms of appropriation and socialization of the land, as well as the current perception of its increasing abandonment. A synchronic-diachronic research on productive activities and the changings in space orienting elements mutually suggest a problematic, and ongoing, process of transition to an alternative productive model, which alternates subsistence economy with peripheral and ephemeral market-oriented efforts.

Rebellion as a learning experience in the light of narrations of adults participating in protests. Selected issues

The aim of this article is to show the learning potential of participation in protests in the narratives of several adults. Participation in rebellions is seen as a specific learning experience here. What is the relationship between experience and learning on the example of participation in rebellions? The author analyses this relationship, inter alia, on the example of critical practices described by Usher. This article is a part of a broader research project on learning mechanisms of adults participating in various forms of rebellion. The study is concerned with answering the questions: what and how do protesters learn? what are the social and cultural mechanisms of their learning? In this research project a biographical perspective was used. Within it, the biography is understood in a processual way. The biographical method focuses on the subjective level of experience in the socio-cultural and institutional context. The empirical material was analysed by searching for similarities and differences in rebels’ narratives. The results of the study are above all the identification of learning outcomes and identity-building processes.