Individual Self-identification Research Articles

Physicality's phenomenon in the aspect of cyber-culture

In the article physicality's phenomenon is revealed as a contradictory and topical issue of socio-philosophical discourse. The consideration of the theoretical-philosophical and psychological definitions of physicality made it possible to disclose it as an attribute of human-morphemes and the integrity of anthropo-being. Attention is focused on body-transformations in conditions of cyberculture and the main boundary forms of human body-modifications are determined. Physicality is defined through the prism of socio-cultural practices as a way of preserving social man and the main means of individual self-identification. The representation of spiritual filling of physicality is carried out helping of its symbolic-attributive codes of interaction with culture. Physicality is considered as a visualization, a realization of the spiritual existence of man and the substratum of man's creative potential.. After all, man's life values, empathic abilities, motivational attitudes, ideas and vital signs are formed through his physical deformations and psychosomatic states into a person. Person's estrangement from natural development, turning into an immortal and not needing a reproductive update leads to a crisis of humanity and an anomie of universal values. After all, such phenomena of human relations as love for children, the unfolding of oneself through the understanding of others and the definition of fragility and not the infinity of human existence, and generate humanity. And these humanistic attitudes shape the meaning of human life in its content. If this sense-determining physicality's layer of is eliminated, man's existence is jeopardized. The solution of this issue is demanded by modern society without delay and only practical philosophy can offer solutions to it. Physiosophy or samosofia is a new direction of modern scientific knowledge about the spiritual and cultural senses of body and its physiological influences on this process. Excluding physicality – we eliminate materialization's substrate of conscious and cultural sphere of man, deprive the person of his spiritual expression of filling, his symbolic-attributive algorithm of interaction with culture

The Everyday Paths to Equalize Oneself: Emphasizing Vs. Rejecting Group Membership among Working Class Ethiopian-Israelis

Following recent studies on everyday de-stigmatization processes (1), I examine in this paper the culture resources working class Ethiopian-Israelis mobilize to contest stigmatized notions of Ethiopianness. Based on 30 in-depth interviews, and an ethnographically informed analysis of those interviews, I present two types of culture resources. The first is the use of Ethnic Culture, in which Ethiopianness is presented as unproblematic ethnic distinctiveness, and non-Ethiopian Israelis are grouped along ethnic lines of different, but equally valued groupings. This is a strategy that emphasizes group membership and handles ethnic distinctions as commonsensical. The second is the use of Universalism, in which all potential group memberships are rejected as meaningless for individual self-identification and evaluation. This strategy emphasizes equality on universal ground and uses various all-inclusive criteria. Guided by two distinct logics, emphasizing vs. rejecting group membership, both strategies are oriented towards creating horizontal relations with others. While previous studies emphasized the role of racial and national boundaries in the de-stigmatization processes among Ethiopian Israelis, the variations in this paper shed light on the working of ethnicity as a commonsensical source of value; thus, enabling us to further specify the different logics behind the absence of racial language among ordinary Ethiopians, and the varied degrees to which national boundaries matter in everyday contestation over stigmatized notions of group m embership.

Societal implications of antidiscrimination policy in Europe

The enactment and implementation of European Union Directives on antidiscrimination have received substantial scholarly attention. However, there is little knowledge about whether and how antidiscrimination measures influence citizens’ experiences and perceptions of discrimination. This study investigates the relationship between antidiscrimination policies, citizens’ knowledge in this policy area, and their handling of discrimination. Using data from a standardized policy indicator and repeated cross-sectional survey waves of EU countries, I first examine the relationship between antidiscrimination policy and societal levels of knowledge about victims’ rights. Subsequently, multilevel models test how differences in policy and knowledge levels predict individuals’ reported levels of experienced and perceived discrimination. The results show that people who live in countries with effective antidiscrimination laws know more about their rights to equal treatment than those from countries with less effective policies. For the most part, policy differences across countries are unsystematically related to discrimination-related outcomes. However, an increase in knowledge levels over time is associated with higher reports about witnessed discrimination, lower sociotropic perceptions of discrimination, and less individual self-identification with a discriminated group. The findings suggest that, to the extent that antidiscrimination policies foster knowledge of the law, they contribute to citizens’ awareness and empowerment against discrimination.

Individual Identity Attachments and International Conflict

This article provides some of the first individual-level evidence for the domestic salience of territorial issues. Using survey data from more than 80,000 individual respondents in 43 separate countries, we examine how conflict affects the content of individual self-identification. We find that international conflict exerts a strong influence on the likelihood and content of individual self-identification, but this effect varies with the type of conflict. Confirming nationalist theories of territorial salience, territorial conflict leads the majority of individuals in targeted countries to identify themselves as citizens of their country. However, individuals in countries that are initiating territorial disputes are more likely to self-identify as members of a particular ethnicity, which provides support for theories connecting domestic salience to ethnic politics. That conflict has variegated effects on identity formation suggests the relationship is not endogenous. Our within-case analysis of changes in Nigerian self-identifications further demonstrates that individuals are quite susceptible to the types and locations of international conflict.

Cocoon Minorities: Understanding Rush Limbaugh's Co-option of the Rhetorical Strategies of the Disenfranchised Position Through Homological Analysis

Conceptualizing minority social and political groups calls for careful consideration of power, prestige, and numerical systems. However, when members of empowered groups self-identify as disenfranchised, they create unique rhetorical situations. Through homological analysis of the rhetorical tactics of Rush Limbaugh matched with an analysis of Sandra Fluke's rhetorical strategies, we assert that subtle co-option of communication tactics poses larger questions about self-identification of individuals as minority members within social and political systems.

O metodzie i teorii badań nad przekazem kulturowym

Issues concerning history and the construction of images of the past have always been of importance for the self-identification of individuals, social groups, governing institutions, states, and especially nations. Currently, two trends can be noticed, which may seem antagonistic, but actually condition and shape each other: renegotiating and redefining national historical narratives as well as the opening of national historiography to transnational or globalized perspective. National images and historical myths tend to increase integrity among the members of European communities only to a limited degree, and their importance to the highly normatively-oriented structures of the so called European identity — based on still less credible European memory, perceived by means of also normatively-oriented publicity — is rather doubtful. As a result, a scientific discipline has evolved, which studies subjective means of internalizing and utilizing the past rather than public aspects of culture and memory. The discipline involves the studies of tradition and passing thereof, which are rooted in the institution of qualitative sociological research. This article is about the scope and methods of such studies which are focused on how to tell about the past.

Randomly distributed arrays of optically coded functional microbeads for toxicity screening and monitoring

We have successfully developed optically coded functional microbeads by co-encapsulating both bioluminescent reporter bacterial cells and fluorescent microspheres within a common alginate microbead. These microbeads harboring an individual self-identification code using fluorescent microspheres could be randomly scattered on any multi-well chip plate as long as the size of the microbeads are made to fit on it with the result that, since cell types are identified on the basis of fluorescent color, microbead arrays were fabricated without pre-designation of an individual well. As an example of this method, five different stress specific bioluminescent bacterial strains, each with a different optical code, were successfully implemented to make five different types of optically coded functional microbeads, with a speed of about 30 microbeads/min. Each functional microbead has a specific stress-specific bacterial strain and, as an identification optical code, one of five optical codes generated from fluorescence microspheres such as yellow, green, red, yellow + green, or no fluorescence. This final randomly scattered functional microbeads array biochip, with a fast fabrication of each chip at every 2 min, successfully demonstrated its ability in toxicity screening and monitoring for samples with a few examples for five different stress chemicals. This simple and fast, but not tedious and complicated procedure should be widely and practically used in making cell array chips for the monitoring of environmental toxicity, new-borne chemicals, pharmaceutical drugs and cosmic rays in the space station or spaceships in future.

State-mediated “hierarchy of diversities” and the freedom of individual self-identification: Towards a dynamic liberal model of muticulturalism

Abstract The contemporary choice is between society structured as a set of ethnically determined communities and the liberal society, which acknowledges the uniqueness of each individual as well as his/her personal way of self-identification. There are two points which are extremely important in the discussion: first, no culture is ever homogeneous, and co-existence of different streams is an inevitable feature of social reality; second, culture contributes to action not by supplying the ultimate values toward which the action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire of habits, skills and styles, from which people construct ‘strategies of action’. According to the liberal view, individuals, even if they belong to one ethnic group, seek to make their own choices, to form their own beliefs and judgments, while individual self-identification can be predetermined not only by one's belonging to the ethnic group, but also by one's gender, political views, etc. The idea of multiracial democracy contradicts the f...

Tribal membership requirements and the demography of ‘old’ and ‘new’ Native Americans

This paper examines the twentieth-century population recovery of Native Americans with reference to urbanization, intermarriage, and differing definitions of the Native American population from census and tribal enrollment data. The recent increase in the Native American population reflected in regular US decennial censuses since 1960 is discussed in terms of changing self-identification of individuals as ‘Native American’. Also discussed are criteria for enrollment in Native American tribes, particularly blood quantum requirements. Census enumerations are compared with tribal enrollment data, and it is illustrated that a large proportion of those identifying as ‘Native American’ in the census are not enrolled in Native American tribes. Special attention is given to how Native American tribal enrollment criteria might impact future population size.