Coherent Identity Research Articles

Purchasing and supply management's identity: Crisis? What crisis?

Purchasing and Supply Management (PSM) has been subjected to a number of examinations, all concluding that PSM is not an academic discipline as it lacks its own theories and common themes of research. It is perceived by many as an applied social science and field of research applying theories from other disciplines. But, to date, these examinations have not revealed more definitively what PSM is, i.e., its identity. This Notes and Debates paper was stimulated by two focused meetings, a question panel at IPSERA 2019 and solicited views from IPSERA participants. These were synthesized and developed through grounding them in identity and social identity theories. They are provided to stimulate the debate on PSM's internal and external identity coherence and legitimacy.

Security and Identity in Jewish Utopias of the Late Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries

ABSTRACT This article seeks to examine three works of fiction: Nava Semel's Isra Isle (2005), Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union (2007), and Philip Jose Farmer's Jesus on Mars (1979). All three of these works imagine a Jewish state other than Israel. These works speak specifically to two fundamental questions that informed Zionist thought—that of safety and that of identity. While each novel implies skepticism toward contemporary Israel, the utopias presented, too, fail to guarantee security for the Jewish people or a solution to the “Jewish question” of cohesive identity. Each novel acknowledges the centrality of a return to Zion in Jewish culture and beliefs, suggesting that, even if Israel itself falls short of its mythic potential, the promise of a return ensures that no alternative Jewish homeland will ever provide an adequate final home.

'As though Miles of Ocean did not Separate us': Print and the Construction of a Transatlantic Free Love Community at the Fin de Siècle.

This article argues that British and American free lovers – radical sexual reformers committed to the cause of ‘sexual freedom’ – came together through print to build a transatlantic community at the fin de siècle. Challenging existing narratives that characterize free love as isolated or incoherent, it argues that through print free lovers from Britain and America were able to forge links with each other, and to construct an important, coherent collective identity that transcended national boundaries. In doing so it makes two major interventions. First, it provides unique new insights into the history of free love in both the British and American contexts, placing a new focus on often overlooked transnational connections and exchanges that helped to shape late nineteenth-century free love campaigns. Second, it encourages historians to rethink the ways we look for and make sense of cohesive international reform communities more broadly in this period. By exploring how a small, radical group like the free lovers were able to cohere through processes of contestation and negotiation played out entirely in print, this article will show that, where necessary, print was enough for transatlantic reformers to construct common identities and negotiate coherent reform ideas. As such, it argues that historians of fin-de-siècle social reform should look again at the print culture of other contemporary reformers otherwise labelled divided, isolated, or marginalized to look for threads of cohesion, cooperation, and compromise.

Merging actors with events: introducing the social conflict analysis dataset – organizational properties (SCAD-OPs)

ABSTRACTEvents data have been instrumental in the study of contentious politics. Yet such data often focus on the attributes of the events themselves – such as the number of participants, fatalities, and location – while providing scant information on those involved. To address this shortcoming, we introduce the Social Conflict Analysis Database – Organizational Properties (SCAD-OPs). This dataset categorizes the organizations and identity groups involved in the original SCAD, which allows analysts to answer important questions about who is involved in social conflict. Named entities are assigned to seventeen domains, or primary functional areas, including government, labor, criminal, activist, and so on. Individuals and groups that have a coherent identity – enabling researchers to track their activities over time – are assigned unique organizational codes, and factions within organizations are also identified. Presenting data from seven countries, we provide descriptive statistics on the types of entities most likely to be principal SCAD actors and targets across countries, as well as a preliminary analysis, linking participants with event types. We assess which domains are most likely to engage in peaceful protests, violent riots, strikes, and armed attacks. Finally, we discuss potential questions that can be addressed using this data.

The Fluidity of Iranian-Armenian Identity in Zoya Pirzad’s Things Left Unsaid

Abstract In Things Left Unsaid, Zoya Pirzad creates characters that invalidate the concept of a unified and coherent identity. Pirzad arms these characters with the ability to reshape their selves and emerge as new subjects—all as a result of integration in an Iranian cultural system. Clarice Ayvazian, Pirzad’s Iranian-Armenian female protagonist, demonstrates a full range of diverse characters. Clarice represents an incoherent subject with clashing identities that pull her in different directions. Some of Clarice’s concerns are gender-specific, while others are culture-specific. Since Clarice is both the narrator and the protagonist, and the story is narrated in the first person, there can arguably be an association between the narrator, Clarice, and the author. After all, Pirzad determines Clarice’s behavior, language, and characteristics. It is Pirzad who created a distinct linguistic and syntactic structure for the novel to represent Clarice’s inner predicament with maintaining her Armenian identity and her hesitations about assimilating within the Iranian Muslim community through Parvin Nurollahi’s invitation. Clarice’s struggles are suggestive of Pirzad’s endeavors in reconciling the two sides of her identity and negotiating her Armenian self through writing in Persian.

The Fluidity of Iranian-Armenian Identity in Zoya Pirzad’s Things Left Unsaid

Abstract In Things Left Unsaid, Zoya Pirzad creates characters that invalidate the concept of a unified and coherent identity. Pirzad arms these characters with the ability to reshape their selves and emerge as new subjects—all as a result of integration in an Iranian cultural system. Clarice Ayvazian, Pirzad’s Iranian-Armenian female protagonist, demonstrates a full range of diverse characters. Clarice represents an incoherent subject with clashing identities that pull her in different directions. Some of Clarice’s concerns are gender-specific, while others are culture-specific. Since Clarice is both the narrator and the protagonist, and the story is narrated in the first person, there can arguably be an association between the narrator, Clarice, and the author. After all, Pirzad determines Clarice’s behavior, language, and characteristics. It is Pirzad who created a distinct linguistic and syntactic structure for the novel to represent Clarice’s inner predicament with maintaining her Armenian identity and her hesitations about assimilating within the Iranian Muslim community through Parvin Nurollahi’s invitation. Clarice’s struggles are suggestive of Pirzad’s endeavors in reconciling the two sides of her identity and negotiating her Armenian self through writing in Persian.

Coherent identities and roles? Hybrid professional managers’ prioritizing of coexisting institutional logics in differing contexts

This article explores how hybrid professional managers relate to coexisting institutional logics in their everyday work. It examines coherence between the logic that informs managers’ identity and that prioritized in their role. By comparing interview data from managers in two settings, a faith-based hospital and a religious organization, this article analyses primary and secondary identities and roles. Findings show that experiences of coexisting logics differ according to the organizational context. Hospital managers identify with a managerial logic in both their identity and role. A professional logic informs church managers’ identity, yet they prioritize a managerial logic in their role. The article proposes a model that links hybrid professional managers’ identities and roles with a framework of coexisting logics proposed earlier.

Examining the Directionality Between Identity Development and Depressive Symptoms Among Recently Immigrated Hispanic Adolescents.

Although personal identity development has been conceptualized as a source of psychological stability and protective against depressive symptoms among Hispanic immigrants, there remains ambiguity regarding the directional relationship between identity development and depression. To address this limitation, the current study sought to establish directionality between identity development and depressive symptoms. The sample consisted of 302 recent (<5 years) immigrant Hispanic adolescents (53.3% boys; Mage = 14.51 years at baseline; SD = 0.88 years) from Miami and Los Angeles who participated in a longitudinal study. The findings suggested a bidirectional relationship between identity and depressive symptoms such that identity coherence negatively predicted depressive symptoms, yet depressive symptoms also negatively predicted coherence and positively predicted subsequent identity confusion. Findings not only provide further evidence for the protective role of identity development during times of acute cultural transitions, but also emphasize the need for research to examine how depressive symptoms, and psychopathology more broadly, may interfere with establishing a sense of self.

Aspirations for Ethnonationalist Identities among Religious Minorities in Iraq: The Case of Yazidi Identity in the Period of Kurdish and Arab Nationalism, 1963–2003

AbstractThe aspirations of religious minorities in Iraq for becoming recognized ethnonationalist entities have rarely been investigated from a historical perspective, particularly in the case of the Yazidis. This article addresses changing attitudes about the Yazidi religious minority identity across different historical periods. Yazidi identity is examined as an ancillary undercurrent to the ethnonationalist identity conflict between the central government of Iraq and the Kurdish movement. This contrasts with identity as a religious minority in prior eras, when religious minorities preserved their distinct core identities based on their own social and religious customs and idiosyncrasies, making them self-defining communities bound together by coherent religious identities. In the case of the Yazidi minority, despite the multiplicity of theories and hypotheses about the origins of the Yazidi people and their national and ethnic affiliations and increasing rumors about Yazidis related to their existence as a potential sub-ethnicity or ethno-religion, the important truth is that Yazidis consider themselves religiously, culturally, and historically distinct from other ethnonationalist groups and communities in Iraq.

Taxi Drivers as Reporters: Studying the Distinctive Journalism of the UTCC Voice Newsletter

ABSTRACTTaxi driving is an arduous form of labor, occupied by a largely immigrant workforce in major US cities such as Chicago and New York. Taxi drivers barely scrape by and in recent years community organizations and unions have advocated for this marginalized social group through civic action and media production. This study examined eight years of the UTCC Voice, a bi-monthly newsletter published by the United Taxiworkers Community Council of Chicago. The original reporting and commentary in the newsletter closely aligned with the UTCC’s organizing efforts to receive a seat the table with city government and its subsequent struggle to advocate for a level playing field with ride-hailing companies. The grounded analysis of over 250 articles in twenty-six issues of the UTCC Voice reveals the newsletter as a space for taxi drivers to report on human rights abuses against them, develop a cohesive voice and identity, and present themselves as multidimensional citizens in ways that counter existing stereotypes based on race and class. Examination of the UTCC Voice presents renewed context for scholarship about voice, cultural production from the margins and citizenship.

The Study of Family Context: Examining Its Role for Identity Coherence and Adolescent Adjustment for Swedish Adolescents

The present cross-sectional study aimed to examine whether characteristics of the parent-child relationship in adolescence are important for adjustment and identity development. Participants were recruited from schools in central Sweden for a larger longitudinal study when the cohort was 13- to 14-year-olds ( N = 3,667). Characteristics of the parent-child relationship, like parental warmth, democratic parenting, and child communication, and adolescent adjustment problems and identity coherence were studied. It was found that democratic parenting was positively linked to child communication but negatively associated with problematic peer relationships and behavioral problems. Parental warmth was linked to other parenting characteristics as well as identity cohesion. Democratic parenting was linked to greater school engagement and identity coherence for boys and girls. Gender differences were found. The findings support the notion that democratic and warm parenting may provide support for adolescent identity development and adjustment.

Women of the Crusades: The Constructedness of the Female Other, 1100–1200

ABSTRACT Histories of the Crusades have moved away from characterising the conflict as a civilisational clash between Christianity and Islam, highlighting instead the porousness of religious and geopolitical boundaries in Iberia and the Levant. Yet twelfth-century sources in Old French and Arabic rarely present such a nuanced view outright. Reflecting on the constructedness of the motif of the female Other, I argue that these texts enacted and reinforced a Christian–Muslim dualism in the face of contrary realities of coexistence, fascination and even temptation. Religious difference was constructed and reconstructed through the prism of racial forms, thus facilitating the perpetuation of military conflict. In particular, the motif of the white, sensual Christian woman was used to exclude the enemy in repeated attempts to construct a coherent in-group identity that was, for all that, under constant threat of destabilisation.

Fatalism and Dissidence in Dukuduku, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: Ongoing Contestations Over Land, Resources and Identities

This article explores the use of identity politics in conflicts that pertain to land, land restitution and traditional authority in northern KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, and more specifically the Dukuduku area. Under the influence of past geographic displacements, ongoing neoliberal transformations and the transition to democracy under the post-apartheid government, not least including contested traditional authority, the land and the people in Dukuduku have undergone significant changes. What is apparent today is that the people of Dukuduku – some of whom can claim to have ancestral connection to the land – do not have a coherent identity in relation to each other or to the land itself. We argue, drawing on Douglas’ cultural theory, that this situation largely pertains to the persistence of dissenting and fatalistic voices within the community and the ongoing (re)production of local identities. Since narratives of identity are being reproduced through local cultural ecotourism ventures while relying on fatalistic and dissenting tendencies, these tendencies should not be seen to cohere in a realm outside processes of dominant entrepreneurial development in contemporary South Africa. We conclude that, given the durability of fatalism and dissidence, there is a need for anybody with an interest in the area to take them continually into consideration.

Discursive strategies employed by homosexual Malaysian Muslim men in talking about homosexuality in Islam

This research looks into how homosexual Muslim men in Malaysia convey their experiences regarding their sexual and romantic lifestyle in relation to their Islamic faith. For this research, four respondents who identify themselves as homosexual and Muslim were subjected to in-depth, semi-structured interview to gauge their experiences, thoughts and beliefs in regard to their sexual and religious experiences. Discursive Psychology (DP), more specifically, the Discursive Action Model (DAM) as proposed by Edwards and Potter is used as analytical tool to explicate the data of this research. The analysis reveals several recurring themes which appear throughout the participants’ discourses, which are (1) Disrupted Construction of Cohesive Identity, (2) Indomitable Nature of Same-sex Desire and (3) Downplaying the Severity of Same-sex Relation in Islam. The findings of this research provide novel insights into the way the homosexual Muslim’s phenomenon is perceived and thus, complicates the notion of homosexuality in Islam.

Decolonising Indian classical dance? Projects of reform, classical to contemporary

ABSTRACTNow contained under the rubric ‘classical’, several dance practices in India underwent significant ‘reconstruction’ in the heyday of twentieth-century anti-colonial politics reliant upon the nationalist claim of a cohesive cultural identity. Such restoration of prestige to a supposedly denigrated cultural practice offered a positive ‘artistic’ counterpoint to alleviate nationalist anxieties regarding the purity of the nation and the uniqueness of its identity. Within a few decades of this nationalist reconstruction, Indian classical dance forms were regarded as emblematic of Indian culture and tradition. This article builds on important critiques of the nationalist reconstruction of Indian classical dance in India to examine how this project is enacted in the transnational present. It argues that both diasporic and non-diasporic (British) dancers uphold the foundational assumptions of the reconstructive Indian nationalist movement even as they are located within, and identify with, a very different national and political context, namely multicultural Britain.

Narrow bridges: Jewish lesbian feminism, identity politics, and the “hard ground” of alliance

The emergence of Jewish feminism in the late twentieth century produced a contradictory site for engagement with the Israeli state and its claims to both Jewish identity and the territory of historic Palestine. While some mobilizations of Jewish feminist identity politics promoted nationalism, others engaged the self-reflexive mode to question the coherence of group identity, to work against its codification in the state-national form, and to engender empathy and solidarity with targets of both U.S. and Israeli racial states. This essay maps two forms of Jewish feminist praxis: one liberal, normatively white, invested in both heteronormativity and Zionism; the other radical, emerging in close collaboration with women of color feminism, attuned to comparative racial relations, lesbian-led, and saturated with discourse and debate on U.S. and Israeli racism, and Zionism’s connection to Jewish identity.

The Coherence of Cognition and Identity of Villagers to Village Cadres: Case on the 334 Households in 15 Guangdong Villages

About the case on the 334 households of 15 villages in Guangdong Province, the study aimed to discuss the coherence of villagers’ cognition and identity of the characteristics of village cadres. The study found that the core village cadres in the survey villages had the characteristics of male dominance, big surname dominant, relatively high educational level, and more than two consecutive terms. The villagers realized the village cadres were the person with great ability, and identity the person with great ability should be their cadres. There was a high coherence between villagers’ cognition and identity of village cadre types. The social fact of “governing villages by able people” will be strengthening and universalization by a series of systems.

The Significance of Local Community in Dementia Care Practices: Focusing on Preserving and Deconstructing the Coherent Identity of People with Dementia

The Significance of Local Community in Dementia Care Practices: Focusing on Preserving and Deconstructing the Coherent Identity of People with Dementia

Modernity and Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America: Literary Representations of Communication and Transportation Technologies by James E. Dobson

Reviewed by: Modernity and Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America: Literary Representations of Communication and Transportation Technologies by James E. Dobson Susan Shelangoskie (bio) Modernity and Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America: Literary Representations of Communication and Transportation Technologies James E. Dobson Palgrave Macmillan, 2017, vii + 117 pp. ISBN 978-3319673219, $69.99 hardcover. James E. Dobson's Modernity and Autobiography in Nineteenth-Century America: Literary Representations of Communication and Transportation Technologies takes on an ambitious project, attempting to connect the rise of rapid travel and communication technologies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with changes in both the form and purpose of the American autobiography. Further, Dobson interrogates the role of detachment, an Enlightenment era ideal and emblem of the realist narrative perspective, as it is used in the self-reflections of autobiographical works by Henry James, Theodore Dreiser, and Henry Adams. Individual chapters on each of these writers make up the core of the text, following two chapters that establish a theoretical framework. The first chapter surveys the turn from the traditional linear progressive view of American history, reinforced by notions such as Leo Marx's "complex pastoralism," to the recognition of multiple perspectives that accompanied the rise of the modernist movement in the early twentieth century (5–6), setting the stage for Dobson's argument that American autobiographies registered ambivalence about the dominant narrative of progress. The second chapter takes up the question of detachment as a philosophical concept with both positive and negative valences that evolves to become a tool for narrative perspective in the realism movement. Philosophical detachment is then juxtaposed with the disruptions in nineteenth-century American life—the Civil War, economic upheaval, forced migration—that created literal detachment from past homes for many Americans. This discussion becomes the vehicle for introducing the examination of the homecoming travel narrative as a specific type of autobiography. Dobson's focus on personal, return-home narratives is a strength of his work. Dobson notes that homecoming narratives were popular in fin-de-siècle America, and he further contextualizes these plots with the economic realities of the time. Forced mobility due to economic need or other types of displacement, rapid urbanization, and the boom and bust of the Gilded Age meant that many lost their homes. His engagement with these narratives of a lost past, particularly in an American culture that did not seem to value the past, is a powerful contribution to life writing. Dobson's work highlights the varied responses to this loss by James and Dreiser. Both writers utilize a detached third person perspective in their autobiographical works, and both are frustrated in their quest to recover a sense of the past because of the loss of physical homes that they seek to revisit. In these failures, Dobson locates modern disruption, and he analyzes the use of detachment by each author as a way of coping with this failure. For James, detachment signifies "a removal from the relentless growth and systemization of modernization run amok" (52), while Dreiser's detachment allows him to identify moments of repetition [End Page 886] between past and present that Dobson aligns with "one's true home … a cosmic temporality of eternal repetition" (76). In these two chapters, Dobson presents the most forceful version of his argument about the use of autobiography as a means of grappling with modernization in an attempt to create a coherent identity between the present and past self. Another strength of Dobson's analysis is his discussion of the rise of modernity as a disruptive force, and, through this examination of disruption, Dobson most clearly explores travel and communication technologies. For example, as travel technologies enabled swift movement across the country, more people were able to make that return journey home. However, when travelers who journeyed towards an idealized past arrived and confronted the reality of the lost home, they felt a sense of disruption and even disorientation, and the personal temporality connecting the present to the past may have remained uncomfortably incomplete. Travel technologies as instruments of this increased mobility are therefore important to the analysis. However, Dobson does not address in much detail the specific representations of these technologies. For example, James...

Precarious humanity: the double in dystopian science fiction

The double is a common feature in fantastic fiction, and it plays a prominent part in the Gothic revival of the late nineteenth century. It questions the notion of a coherent identity by proposing the idea of a fragmented self that is at the same time familiar and frighteningly other. On the other hand, the double is also a way of representing the tensions of life in large urban centers. Although it is more usually associated with the fantastic, the motif of the double has spread to other fictional genres, including science fiction, a genre also concerned with the investigation of identity and the nature of the human. The aim of this article is to discuss the representation of the double in contemporary science fiction, more particularly in its dystopian mode, where the issue of identity acquires a special relevance, since dystopias focus on the troubled relation between individual and society. Works such as Greg Egan’s short story “Learning to Be Me”; White Christmas, an episode from the television series Black Mirror; Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go; and the film Moon, directed by Duncan Jones, will be briefly examined in order to trace the ways the figure of the double has been rearticulated in dystopian science fiction as a means to address new concerns about personal identity and the position of the individual in society.---Original in English.