Identity Projects Research Articles

Public Applied Linguistics in Action: A Conversation Between Emile YX? Jansen and Quentin Williams on Hip Hop Culture & Activism, Afrikaaps, Indigeneity, and Decolonial Futures

Emile YX? & Quentin Williams: We are two activists working towards the same goal, with slightly different tools of description and analysis. Emile YX?: I bring Hip Hop culture, Knowledge of Self and Education are my tools. For me biography, a definition of activism and an understanding of the importance of language, indigeneity. and what our futures will look like as marginalized speakers are important. [Co-author]: Aweh (that’s real). I like that. I guess I trained first as an applied linguist and then as a sociolinguist in post-apartheid, decolonial South Africa, I always push an egalitarian view on language and multilingualism in education and other institutional contexts and all that informs my activism. In this conversation, we expound on what [Co-author] has come to define as public applied linguistics (see Wiliams 2021). Our work has always been public. It has to be because the speakers we talk to, not about, want us to explain how the analytical and descriptive tools we use could benefit their identity projects to emancipate them as individuals and communities. Hip Hop cultural practices and an egalitarian linguistics, in the way that the two coalesce, provide us with the rhetorics and practice strategies to advance public applied linguistics. Os wieties hie oorie belangrikheid van Hip Hop culture en activism. Oo Afrikaaps innie skool, virrie mense (osse mense), wat academia moet vestaan en doen as julle saam met communities soes Hip Hop culture academia moet an wêk, en hoe osse decolonial toekoms—of soes Emile YX? dit sit, rehumanization—moet lyk. Alles dai is hie onne. (Below we chop it up on the importance of Hip Hop and activism, about Afrikaaps in the school, for the people (our people), what academia has to do to understand together communities like practice Hip Hop culture, the relationship that needs to be built between academia and Hip Hop, and what our decolonial futures, or rehumanization as Emile YX? puts it, should look like. All of that below).

Critical Interculturality and Sociomuseology – decolonial practices and their intersections in Freire's praxis

Critical interculturality and sociomuseology break with power hierarchies and the dominant hegemonic status quo that operates in formal and non-formal educational institutions, based on the recognition of the epistemologies of popular cultures that are made invisible and denied, as a consequence of the coloniality of power, structure of domination that triggers domination. In view of this, this article proposes to discuss critical interculturality and sociomuseology and their intersections with Freire's praxis. This is a literature review, anchored in research and discussions by Walsh (2009, 2019), Tubino (2016), Moutinho (1993, 2007, 2014), Primo (1999), Freire (1987, 1999, 2005), among others. Both reverberate as decolonizing practices of the hegemonic Eurocentric model, which recognizes a universal epistemology to the detriment of the epistemes of Other cultures, constitute new identity projects of differentiation and have as their horizon the production of other ways of life and knowledge. Keywords: cultures; differentiation; praxis; decoloniality.

Between Cultural Appreciation and Cultural Appropriation: Self-Authorizing the Consumption of Cultural Difference

Abstract Countervailing discourses of cultural appreciation versus cultural appropriation are fueling a tension between the ethnic consumer subject, who views the consumption of cultural difference as a valorized identity project, and the responsibilized consumer subject, who is tasked with considering the societal impacts of such consumption. Drawing on an extended qualitative investigation of international K-pop consumers, this study illustrates that this tension spurs consumers to pursue self-authorization—the reflexive reconfiguration of the self in relation to the social world—through which consumers grant themselves permission to continue consuming cultural difference. Four consumer self-authorization strategies are identified: reforming, restraining, recontextualizing, and rationalizing. Each strategy relies upon an amalgam of countervailing moral interpretations about acts of consuming difference, informing ideologies about the power relationships between cultures, and emergent subject positions that situate the consuming self in relation to others whose differences are packaged for consumption. Findings show notable conditions under which each self-authorization strategy is deployed, alongside consumers’ capacity to adjust and recombine different strategies as they navigate changing sociocultural and idiographic conditions. Overall, this study advances understanding of how consumers navigate the resurgent politics of marketized cultural diversity in an era of woke capitalism.

Expression of Identity in Tattoos of Symbols of Different Cultures

The construction and expression of identity in the context of globalization and digitalisation is a problematic task in the modern world, where the processes of identity self-creation allow oneself to choose from many different options. The problem of this work is the communication of identity of tattooed people through tattoos of symbols of different cultures. The aim of the work is to examine the aspects of the identity communication of tattooed persons. Semi-structured interview and qualitative analysis methods are used to implement the aim and objectives of the work.
 The obtained results reveal that the processes of identity construction and expression use the methods of creation and interpretation of semantic connections, reflexive individualization, multi-layered coding of symbols, incorporating elements of different cultures into the identity project, which include symbolic, philosophical, spiritual, aesthetic and mythological assimilation prisms. The intervention of the Other in projecting personal identity becomes the identity insertion, and tactile senses, sight and hearing help to assimilate different cultures through different existing life articulations. In the context of social interaction, virtual identity is transferred into material forms of expression of identity and, with the help of the body as a media, extends identity beyond technology and deletes boundaries between it.

A Social Semiotic Analysis of Gender Representations in Biology Textbooks for Upper Secondary Schools in China

The gender gap remains an issue in the biological education community. This study explores the extent to which an egalitarian gender ideology, encapsulated in five biological science textbooks for upper secondary schools in China, manifests through representational, interactive and compositional meanings of social semiotic theory. The findings reveal that females in the textbooks tend to be depicted as passive and inferior to males. More males are represented as playing pioneering and leading roles, as opposed to females, who are cast in assistant and subordinate roles in professional activities. The gendered messages delivered have the potential to disempower female students’ career aspirations and adversely regulate their perceptions and projections of gender identities in biological science.

The role of trust in the adoption of cooperative arrangement types in e-credentials markets

The interest in digital identities has increased considerably in academia and practice in recent years. This can be seen by the many electronic identity projects worldwide and the numerous published studies that provide insightful narratives and descriptive case findings about success factors and barriers to the adoption of national authentication infrastructures. In this paper, we take a closer look to the role of trust on the design and implementation of a nation-wide e-credential market. We argue that trust in political and economic institutions can be an important factor to explain differences in the chosen cooperative arrangement which can range from monopolistic, purely state-controlled e-credential markets, to polypolistic, decentralized e-credential markets where also private vendors offer state recognized e-ID on their own or in partnership with the government. Following an inductive reasoning process, we develop three testable propositions which may inspire further empirical research and offer practitioners a new angle to rethink e-credential markets in the light of citizen trust in political and economic institutions.

Analysis of Social Acceptance for the Use of Digital Identities

According to a study by the German Federal Printing Office (2022), every European lives with 90 digital identities on average, and the trend is rising. The German government has launched the innovation competition “Digital Identities Showcase” to select and promote identity projects for data security and sovereignty. The funding amount is 50 million EUR to develop software, research practical use cases and implement them by 2024. Of course, this large sum presupposes acceptance for the use of such digital identities, especially against the backdrop of critical opinions from the media and society, as already outlined in a Canadian study. However, there is little academic research on blockchain technology, but almost no article on the use of digital identities based on blockchain technology. This paper conducts a quantitative study on the social acceptance of digital identities using a questionnaire-based survey with 324 German participants on the social acceptance of the use of digital identities. The result of the study is that social acceptance of the use of digital identities is significantly influenced by demographics, citizens’ experience with blockchain products, affinity with financial products and privacy concerns.

Romancing leadership: temporality and the myths of Vlad Dracula

ABSTRACT Leadership studies focus on processes of leader romanticization to explain the attribution of charisma and account for leaders’ personal power. Such research focuses on antecedents to leadership, stressing factors such as personal projections of dispositions, the specificity of context and situation or the leaders’ capacity for image management. These processes, important as they are, do not fully identify and articulate the inner workings of the processes whereby leaders and leadership are romanticized. We offer a view of leader romanticization as a complex and dynamic historical process in which active followers, according to their current identity projects, agendas and goals, continuously use embedded contextual cues to make sense of leaders while giving sense to leaders and other followers in historical cycles of sensemaking and sensegiving that unfold through temporal processes. Historically, this is how ‘great leaders’ are produced as lionized national exemplars able to be romanticized, demonized and fictionalized, sometimes simultaneously. We answer the question of ‘how leaders become romanticized as historical points of reference’? We do so through a historical analysis of how Vlad Dracula, the historical voivode, metamorphosed into the famous fictional vampire and a bulwark of a communist regime.

Identity, language socialization, and family language policies in dialect contact: the case of Argentinean immigrants in Malaga, Spain

AbstractThis paper explores from a qualitative and quantitative approach, the complex interactions between second dialect accommodation or acquisition, language socialization, ideologies, family language policies, and identity, among Argentinean immigrants living in Malaga, Spain (n = 72). We found that family language policies – and more specifically mothers’ language policies and their stances towards both varieties in contact – shape their children’s development, connect with their formal school success, determine D1 maintenance, and even affect identity projection. We also found discrepancies between conservative family language policies and linguistic production: what families try to do with language does not always match their own linguistic performance. Through the analysis of different language components – phonological, morpho-syntactic, and lexical – we conclude that linguistic accommodation or second dialect acquisition does not always follow a linear path to assimilation, but it is related to early stages of exposure and formal education in the D2 community (optimal age acquisition period), takes place to improve mutual intelligibility, derives from both unconscious and conscious decisions to change D1, and allows speakers to showcase different identities through accommodation or divergence.

Alternative Histories—Alternative Identities? Jewishness and the (Al)lure of “What if . . . ?”

In this article, I explore negotiations of alternative Jewish identities as a response to the Holocaust in two alternative histories by the Jewish American writers Michael Chabon and Simone Zelitch. Both engage in very different ways with the destruction of a physical Yiddishland in central and eastern Europe and explore notions of Jewish guilt and the projection of Jewish identities into the future. In The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (2007), Chabon explores the imaginary persistence of Yiddish language and culture in a Yiddishland that, after a mitigated Holocaust, has been transferred to Alaska. The Yiddishland in Zelitch’s Judenstaat (2016) is divested of its Yiddishness. Jewish statehood after the Holocaust is conceived in her novel in retributive guilt and relies upon a potent imaginary of Jewish Germanness which, extends to culture, language, and territory in an illusory continuation of a mythical Ashkenaz and eventually ends in the dissolution of Jewish sovereignty.

La memoria de los espacios públicos en la movilización política

In cities, public spaces are shaped by the encounters they make possible the historical memory and the uses and customs that propitiate their "symbolic appropriation" and the constitution of the genius loci. Political mobilizations appropriate public spaces, which are momentarily transformed into "political spaces" whose strength, character and symbolic weight are assimilated to projects of identity, capacity for mobilization and political action. In Mexico City, two cases of politization of the public space are the Ángel de la Independencia and the Estadio Azteca.

Circle of culture in supporting the identity process of adolescents: an action research.

To report and discuss the experience of the Circle of Culture in a school space, with attention to the social identity of adolescents. Action research, conducted under the assumptions of the Circle of Culture, from August to December 2019. Participants were 16 adolescents, enrolled in Elementary School, in a state public school, in the rural district of a city of São Paulo. Data collection took place through photographic records, participant observation and field diary. The relations of friendship were the central agenda of the Circles of Culture when dialogues about their structuring and influence on the identity construction were developed. Circles of Culture mediated by health professionals in the school setting have the power to problematize the reality of each adolescent's life and, simultaneously, dialogue about the common, an aspect that empowers identity projects.

Kultura dziedziczona, nabywana i indywidualnie kształtowana w wybranych twórczych biografiach

The problem of identity forming is presented in the article on selected examples of creative biographies. The author points out how important in this process is the inherited culture, shaped in the family home and in the local environment. He also indicates how difficult the process of integration with the culture is when this culture is acquired in state educational institutions, conducting an internal dialogue to create an individual culture of being, achieving goals and values in positive freedom and civil disobedience. In the presented creative biographies, the author draws attention to the awareness of experiences and experiences in each of the cultures, to the ability and skill to resolve conflicts, negotiate, reconcile values, patterns, norms in the constant process of identity forming. The author draws attention to the development of a reflective identity project, conscious and responsible choices of content from each culture, the existential theme of the joy of living, being in harmony with oneself, which is particularly important in intercultural education.

현대패션에 표현된 익명성

This study aims to analyze how anonymity, one of the important social characteristics since the advent of the digital age, is expressed in contemporary fashion and what its implications are. For this, a literature study on anonymity and a case study on the expression of anonymity in contemporary fashion collections were conducted. The result is as follows. In the contemporary fashion collections, anonymity was expressed in creating the anonymous persona of designers who emphasized design collective, casting of amateur models, and the anonymous personas of models by wearing face covering items and daily uniforms. By these means, contemporary fashion designers seek the essence and authenticity of fashion design, dream of escaping into a fantasy world, highlight social problems, and reflect the thinking about the fluid identity of modern society, which defines their own identity. Through this study, it is meaningful to think about the meaning of clothing as a tool for projection of identity in modern society and to prepare basic data on anonymity from the point of view of contemporary fashion.

Foto Esai Sepak Bola di Museum Olahraga Nasional: Nostalgia dan Komunitas Terbayang

People engage in nostalgia through museums and their experiences, but little study has been done to link the three. The article places photo essays at the National Sports Museum as a trigger for visitors' memories of events in photos related to self-identity and the nation. It explains the projection of collective identity when the visitors revisit their old memories while consuming the event documentation in the photo essays, and places the photo essays as a medium for imagined community nostalgia. The article argues that the photo essays not only help restore visitors' memories and knowledge but also build personal and collective identities that foster a sense of belonging and inclusion.

Ethnic-racial identity in Europe: Adapting the identity project intervention in five countries

ABSTRACT A global challenge for developmental psychology is to better understand how young people around the world make sense of their identities growing up in pluralistic societies. The study of ethnic-racial identity provides an important lens for this process. This paper describes how five European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, and Sweden) adapted the Identity Project, an 8-week school-based intervention originally developed in the United States to promote adolescents’ ethnic-racial identity exploration and resolution. Across the five countries, deep structure adaptations included revised or added content regarding key terminology used, a focus on migration and foreignness rather than ‘race,’ and discussions regarding national and regional identities, in addition to ethnic-racial identities, and how they may relate to one another. The process and content of adaptation we describe addresses two fundamental issues relevant to a globalized developmental psychology: 1) contributing to theoretical advances on key aspects of development by taking sociohistorical context seriously, and 2) moving between etic and emic perspectives to arrive at psychological constructs that can be appropriately studied across diverse cultural contexts.

Constructing Consumer-Masstige brand relationships in a volatile social reality

This article conceptualises how consumers construct their relationships with masstige brands. Drawing on a two-stage methodology of consumer interviews and online content analysis of brands’ social media pages, we offer innovative insight into how consumers navigate consumer-masstige brand relationships (CMBRs). We present CMBRs as multiple, dynamic and capricious relationships, departing from the view of enduring brand relationships as monogamous marriages. The unique symbolic nature and more central role of masstige brands in consumers’ identity projects, make CMBRs more intense and transient. The findings illustrate that ‘masstige’ brand status is continually negotiated within a complex web of on– and off-line dialogues between multiple actors (the consumer, masstige brand, other consumers and other brands (masstige, low/middle market and luxury)). Consumers expect masstige brands to be more responsive to their needs. The role of marketers as collaborators and enablers in consumers’ identity projects is therefore more intense in CMBRs.

Quantification of Commissural Alignment of Balloon-Expandable THV on Fluoroscopy: A Comparison Study With Post-TAVR CT

BackgroundCoronary access may be challenging following transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) in the setting of transcatheter heart valve (THV) commissural misalignment. ObjectivesThe authors aimed to quantify the degree of commissural alignment following balloon-expandable THV implantation using a fluoroscopy-based trigonometric approach and assess its correlation with post-TAVR computed tomography (CT). MethodsTwenty patients who had undergone both TAVR with the balloon-expandable SAPIEN 3 THV and post-TAVR CT were included in the analysis. Optimized, predeployment 3-cusp angiographic view and postdeployment angiographic view using identical fluoroscopic projections were required. The distance between the most central posterior commissural strut and the THV centerline was assessed. Commissural alignment was calculated by means of a trigonometrical approach using an arcsine function, assuming circular deployment of the THV. Commissural alignment was stratified using a 4-tier scale: aligned (0° to 15°); mildly misaligned (15° to 30°); moderately misaligned (30° to 45°), and severely misaligned (45° to 60°). ResultsSeven patients (35.0%) were misclassified by 1 tier, and no patient was misclassified by 2 or more tiers, with strong agreement between CT and fluoroscopy (weighted Cohen’s kappa coefficient = 0.724). Correlation of the commissural offset angle determined from fluoroscopy and CT was excellent (r = 0.986; 95% CI: 0.965 to 0.995). Bland-Altman analysis demonstrated a strong agreement between both modalities with a mean difference of 0.5° (95% limits of agreement: −12.7° to 13.7°). ConclusionsThe degree of commissural alignment of the balloon-expandable THV can be reliably assessed and quantified on postdeployment fluoroscopy using a standardized 3-cusp view and trigonometry-based analysis.

La transición psicosocial del ingreso a la universidad en mujeres de la Licenciatura en Psicología

Social representations constitute a valuable access route for understanding how young women face the psychosocial transition when they graduate from university and their personological integration. The presentation is derived from the macro-investigation, called: Social representations of study, work, self-perception and future anticipations in some students of the Faculty of Psychology of the National University of San Luis (Argentina). In-depth interviews are analyzed in a sub-sample of ten women entering the Bachelor of Psychology, aged 18 years. Its essential objective materializes in the understanding of the state of the most relevant social representations linked to study, work, anticipations of the future and perception of themselves considering the social and subjective dimension. The research has a descriptive-interpretative scope with a qualitative route. The collected material converges with the relevant concepts of the field of Guidance Psychology, axes that are articulated with the analysis from a gender perspective. The socio-cultural, economic and social context assumes a central hierarchy in the construction of social representations, as well as in the configuration of identity and life project; aspects recreated from its singularity in this study.

The catharsis of male consumption: Reimagining masculinity in India

AbstractResearch on alternate masculinity from India that emphasize consumption and consequent subjective well‐being (SWB) is primarily about gay men. However, our research points to different marginal masculinity, alternate consumption, and consecutive SWB. The present study uses in‐depth interview methods to uncover the “marginal” masculinity of a group of urban, upper‐middle‐class, heterosexual Indian men. We probe their consumption as a part of their identity project referred to as cathartic. Such consumption leads to a sense of high subjective consumer well‐being amidst an otherwise patriarchally defined Indian consumptionscape. This almost fledgling group of men relates itself to the shifting world order of normative masculinity, denounces the patriarchal norms, betrays the cause of male privilege, empathetically responds to the paradigms of femininity, accepts the fall of hegemonic forms of masculinity, and is sensitive toward “others” and ecological/sustainability issues. We further argue that this “cathartic masculinity,” as evident through their consumption, may impact the fledging gender‐fluid marketplace of tomorrow.