Identity Dilemmas Research Articles

EFL preservice teachers' professional identity dilemmas during the last-stage practicum: The case of Chile

This article investigates two language teacher identity dilemmas encountered by EFL preservice teachers (PSTs) during their last practicum and how they navigated them to reconcile their identities. Dilemmas, characterised as inner conflicts and challenges PSTs face in resolving contradictory demands and different roles in their profession (Cabaroğlu & Tillema, 2011), can illuminate how PSTs understand their teaching roles and language teacher identity (LTI) amidst the complexities of the teaching practice. The article begins by contextualising the study, presenting an overview of the ELT national curriculum and how this is reflected in the practicum. Next, an exploration of LTI and how dilemmas can serve as tools for reconciling this identity will be drawn. Lastly, findings and conclusions will be presented. This study suggests that a locally responsive ELT pedagogy could empower PSTs to better navigate and transform challenges into valuable learning-to-teach opportunities. Accordingly, caring emerged as a tool for PSTs to better navigate political dilemmas in underprivileged contexts. By integrating contextual knowledge into curricula, PSTs could align their language teaching identities with specific needs, enhancing student engagement, motivation, and success in diverse educational settings.

The “I” as Implicated Subject: Performative Confession in Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart

Confessional forms of autobiographical writing have predominated in post-apartheid South African literary studies. This paper discusses Rian Malan’s My Traitor’s Heart, published in 1990 during drastic social and political changes in South Africa’s transition to democracy. It was one of the first and most prominent examples of this genre. Focusing on Malan’s perspective as a white Afrikaner and an “implicated subject”, this study explored how his confessional account grappled with the existential dilemma of post-apartheid Afrikaner identity. Malan simultaneously affirmed his Afrikaner identity to confront his implication in apartheid and sought to establish a legitimate place for this identity within the new multicultural society. Through a close reading of Malan’s strategic performance, this paper argues that his work offers a means of reimagining the collective self in a new community and understanding historical injustices from a multidimensional perspective. Ultimately, My Traitor’s Heart contributes to the post-apartheid project of envisioning a more inclusive psychological and topographical construction of individual and collective identity, with the implicated subject as its centre.

Heroes, Victims, and Resisters: Agentic Vulnerability and Techniques of Identity Talk in Digitalized Job Centers

This article explores vulnerable clients' techniques of identity talk, drawing on interviews with clients in Danish job centers. We combine the theoretical perspective of symbolic interactionism with the sociology of nothing to explore techniques of disidentification from the nonworker identity. The study demonstrates how the actors perform agentic vulnerability to resolve their identity dilemmas. We identify three techniques of identity talk: (1) hero‐talk to reassert their hard worker identity, (2) victim‐talk to excuse their current positions, and (3) resister‐talk through commissive and omissive responses to digital demands and requirements. The latter involves different forms of negational action: doing something, nondoing, and doing nothing.

Artificial Minds and the Dilemma of Personal Identity

Artificial Minds and the Dilemma of Personal Identity

«Nasledstvo razorennyh» kak syuzhet postkolonial'noj literatury: bor'ba za identichnost'

This study utilizes the postcolonial bildungsroman in addition to H. Bhabha’s postcolonial approach to explore the identity development of Indian characters in K. Desai's novel “The Inheritance of Loss” (2006). This novel is well recognized in the postcolonial literature in modern times and shares the dilemma of identity experienced by the Indian characters.

Generic or subject-specific? A survey comparing Dutch secondary school visual art teachers’ early-career experiences to teacher experiences in non-arts subjects

ABSTRACT This study compared visual art teachers’ experiences of generic early-career professional identity dilemmas with experiences of dilemmas arising from subject-specific concerns. In turn, their experience of generic dilemmas was compared with experiences of non-arts teachers, as found in literature. Results show, on average, art teachers experienced considerably more dilemmas than non-arts teachers. No conclusive evidence was found for more frequent, or stronger experience of arts-specific dilemmas. Our data does, however, concur with descriptions of art teacher identity dilemmas found in qualitative arts education research, suggesting that some generic early-career dilemmas may become conflated with subject-specific concerns. For example, art teachers may focus more on students expressing their emotions than other teachers. In uncovering how these teachers might use subject-specific framing when interpreting generic dilemmas, this research invites teacher educators to consider how the subject one teaches may have deeper, and more complex connections to early-career dilemma experiences than previously recognised.

Living at the Fence – Navigating Complexities While Settling in New Country: Lived Experiences of South Sudanese Refugees in Australia

ABSTRACT Australia welcomes significant numbers of humanitarian arrivals every year. Over 24,000 South Sudanese have come to Australia in the last two decades, and most faced difficulties during the settlement process. The aim of this study was to understand the barriers and challenges that have impacts on settlement and integration experiences among South Sudanese refugees in Australia. Further, this explored the factors influencing the social and cultural integration of South Sudanese refugees living in Australia for more than five years. This study used a phenomenological approach with purposive and snowball sampling to recruit 26 participants who self-identified as South Sudanese refugees. Participants were recruited via community networks and were invited to participate in a semi-structured interview. The interviews were conducted by a bilingual interviewer and were analysed thematically. Participants’ experiences portrayed the complexities of integrating into a new society and experienced multiple challenges and barriers. Despite this identity dilemma, they showed a consensus about the experiences of coming to and living in Australia with close association with a group identity. While there are positive elements of the integration experience, inter-generational conflicts require further investigation. Government and settlement organisations need to make an effort to understand the context while developing appropriate processes.

Epistemological reassessment on the concept of resilience. Societal intangibles in the identity dilemma

Resilience is a concept borrowed from different fields of research like psychology, ecology and engineering and established in security studies. But the stability and relevance of the concept is not yet established as we have till the end of 2024, according to NATO agenda, to settle its substance and content. On the epistemological area, we need to establish the usefulness of such a concept as well as its identity and concrete added value to security studies since it overlaps with number of other concepts like security, vulnerability, good governance, sustainability and so on.

The Conflict and Counterbalance of Different Cultural Contexts Take Ang Lee's Father Trilogy as an Example

Ang Lee's Father Trilogy shows the conflicts and counterbalances generated in different cultural contexts, presents the problems based on family, expounds the identity dilemma of individuals in cross-cultural communication, and leaves a space for better solutions in cultural communication. By discussing different dimensions of eastern and Western culture, tradition, and modern culture, this paper analyzes the causes and manifestations of conflicts in different cultural contexts, the distinct mechanisms of mutual conflict, and the final result of conflict. Through the study of typical individuals, it explains the characteristics and difficulties of cultural exchange at the present stage, and further concludes that the inducement of cultural context conflict is that different ideologies represented by various cultures stimulate different behavior patterns, thus causing conflicts. The rivalry between the two sides leads to different outcomes, such as isolation, compromise, and absorption.

Nigerian identity crisis: what’s behind the growing insecurity and separatism?

ABSTRACT There is a debate on whether ethnicity is a tool or the driver of intergroup conflict. Arguably, African ethnic conflicts emerge from colonization, struggle for political power and resources, lack of shared national values and identity. Conceptually, this article analyzes how colonization is linked to African ethnic crisis, how ‘ethno-social identity’ is conceptualized as well as the relationship between ethnic polarization, ‘ethnocorruption’, insecurity, and separatism, with a focus on Nigeria. The article evaluates the causes of state dysfunctionality and identity dilemma of the ethnocentric federalism reflected in the ‘Who I am of the population’. There is a crisis related to the state of origin (indigenes and non-indigenes), as well as the ethnicity identity dilemma of ‘I am Hausa’, ‘I am Fulani’, ‘I am Yoruba’, ‘I am Igbo’, etc. A minority which can be classified as ‘tribeless elites’ dominate the political space. In recent times, the country has become embroiled in kidnapped democracy, insecurity, and corruption. There are more worrying conflicts – Fulani herders and non-Fulani farmers’ clashes over arable land, banditry, kidnapping for ransom, and Unknown Gunmen occurrences – which threaten the unity of the country. The socio-economic underdevelopment and breakdown of moral values have forced thousands of young people to join the Obidient movement or ‘Japa’ overseas.

Countee Cullen Revisited: Investigating the Impact of the Veil and Double Consciousness on Cullen’s Identity Dilemma and Its Posthumous Repercussions

Countee Cullen Revisited: Investigating the Impact of the Veil and Double Consciousness on Cullen’s Identity Dilemma and Its Posthumous Repercussions

The Lost Other in Community: James’s Dilemma of Cultural Identity in Everything I Never Told You

The Lost Other in Community: James’s Dilemma of Cultural Identity in Everything I Never Told You

Wschodni gracz w europejskich rozgrywkach. Tożsamość turecka w kontekście piłki nożnej

An Eastern player in European competition. Turkish identity in the context of football Football is an important tool of reproduction of Turkish national identity. The possibility of using sports in the nation‑building process was recognized by the Kemalists. In their view, the role of sport was to modernise Turkish society along the lines of European countries. Nowadays Turkish football is an integral part of the European competition system. On the one hand, the Turkish national team has become a showcase for the country – an element of creating a positive image. On the other hand, it is an institution around which the creation and recreation of national identity takes place. The identity‑forming impact of Turkish football extends beyond Turkey’s borders. Turkish football is of interest to the diaspora, who use it to manifest ethnicity. Football is part of the fundamental dilemma of Turkish identity. In the context of the games, the „Europeanness” or „Easternness” of the Turks is considered.

The Development of Postmodern Identity in the Characterisation of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep

This paper shows that postmodern identity is closely related to the image of cyborg in science fiction. Analyzing the environment and characters in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, written by Philip K.Dick, offers a deep understanding of characteristics of postmodern identity, which is unstable, fragmented and changeable. The bleak urban landscape where only few people live presents a post war and high tech world that shares features of postmodernism. Besides, the character John Isidore, who is a special, and many escaped androids are all considered as others that should be excluded from the normal society. Hence the dilemma of postmodern identity can be uncovered. To be specific, the android character Rachael Rosen illustrates the fragmentation and reconstruction of postmodern female identity because she is a humanoid robot designed as a woman. Also the combination between a cyborg and a woman gives an insight into the similarities between its identity and her identity. Based on the cyborg theory by Donna Haraway, the criticism by Anne Balsamo in Reading Cyborgs Writing Feminism and the postmodern identity theory by Elena Abrudan, the extent to which Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? explored the identity can be disclosed.

The Identity Dilemma among Inter-Generational Immigrants -- Take the United States in the 21st Century as an Example

For the United States, immigration has rapidly diversified its ethnic composition. With the arrival of people from different regions with different cultural origins and religious beliefs, some social problems have arisen while constantly exploring new living Spaces. Therefore, in order to solve the problem of the social identity of American immigrants and the identity dilemma between generations of immigrants, this paper adopts the literature research method and finds that from the initial entry verification to voucher entry, either way, will bring the experience of belonging to American immigrants. Differences and even contradictions between groups caused by racial differences and cultural barriers are everywhere in society, and even new immigrants will produce huge contradictions due to differences in identity and cultural identity. Only by grasping their own identity and sticking to their own Tao in mother culture and immigrant culture can they avoid the end of duckweed in chaotic times.

Exploring the Dilemma of Hybrid Identity: A Case Study of “Gogol” in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel “The Namesake”

Exploring the Dilemma of Hybrid Identity: A Case Study of “Gogol” in Jhumpa Lahiri’s Novel “The Namesake”

Identity dilemmas in the context of media globalization

The phenomenon of globalization is characterized by a multitude of components: economic, financial, political, military, cultural and communicational. In the media sphere, for example, the new information technologies generated the metaphor of “global village” (Marshall McLuhan), which substantially reconfigured the universe of communication through the free circulation of information and audiovisual entertainment formats. A veritable industry of international formats has sprung up, which has caused the homogenization of the global media market. Nonetheless, the harmful dimension of this agglutinating process has also become visible by the fact that media globalization threatens the national identity, the traditional cultural customs and values, etc. The start of the digital era is marked by the expansion of the Internet, the proliferation of mobile phones and the strong impact of social networks in the public space. In the given context, our analysis will also focus on a relatively new phenomenon: virtual identity.

Personal Identity Dilemma Revisited: A Philosophic and Psychiatristic Approach

In a dynamic environment characterised by constant change, how do the mutable aspects of peoples identity contribute to its preservation? Can an individuals personal identity be comprehensively explicated just via the examination of either their unchanging or evolving elements? The aforementioned concerns exhibit interconnections with the perplexing task of ascertaining the identity equivalence between oneself and another individual. Despite experiencing various physical and psychological transformations, people maintain a consistent self-perception and are seen by others in a similar manner. This article aims to examine the topic of personal identity, proposing an analytical approach that focuses on two distinct dimensions: an individuals enduring attributes and their evolving traits. The genetic constitution and specific physical attributes of an individual are illustrative of the static elements that are seen to be inherent components of a person.

The Identity Dilemma of Qiu Hu in 'The Wilderness': Unveiling the Hidden Oppression behind the 'See'

Seeing and being seen is a classic motif in contemporary Chinese literature. The action of see represents not only the instinctive behavior of people but also a relationship between people, which has a complex socio-cultural meaning behind it, causing the subject of seeing and the object of being seen to suffer mental scrutiny and even oppression. In The Wilderness by Cao Yu, the relationship between Qiu Hu and the characters in The Wilderness is one of seeing and being seen, and they are always under the pressure of seeing. Therefore, this paper will adopt the method of textual reading to classify and analyze Qiu Hus multiple identities from the relationship of seeing and being seen among the dramatic characters and classify Qiu Hus identities into three aspects: social ethics, social laws, and social, interpersonal relationships Qiu Hus identity is divided into victim and victimizer, judged and judge, and the outlier who cannot fit in, and the character of Qiu Hu is reinterpreted and reconstructed. Under the perspective of see, Qiu Hus multiple identities arise from the conflict between humans and society, and his identity dilemma symbolizes the dilemma of the relationship between the individual and the collective and even the individual and the society.

Research on Villager Autonomy and the Entrance of New Villager Sages from the Perspective of “Principal-agent” Theory

From the perspective of “principal-agent” theory, this paper discusses the interaction between Chinese villager autonomy and the entrance of new villager sages, analyzes the goal state and deviation of villager autonomy system, and the dilemma of identity, information and interest asymmetry faced by new villager sages in the process of entry. In order to provide new ideas for the study of rural governance, this paper puts forward optimization paths such as promoting the integration of local identity of new villagers, perfecting the mechanism of new villagers’ participation in rural governance, creating a benign social atmosphere, and improving the ability of village cadres to play a key role.