Paradoxes Of Identity Research Articles

Imaginary of Post-National European Constitutionalism: Lessons from Central European Philosophy, Sociology and Jurisprudence

Abstract The article focuses on the paradoxes of constitutional identity and the impact of constitutional sovereignty on post-sovereign European society and politics. It uses post-1989 constitutional and social transformations in Central European countries, the rise of constitutional populism and identitarian politics to argue that the nation state continues to operate through the principle of constitutional sovereignty even in the EU’s post-sovereign constitutional constellation. It thus proves that democratic politics is identity politics even in post-sovereign and post-national politics and the EU’s supranational organisation has to respond to the constitutional and political identity question through its own structures and semantics. The central argument, therefore, revisits classic notions of social and constitutional theory such as the distinctions between community and society, ethnos and demos or authenticity and alienation to outline the persistence of nationalism and its varieties in contemporary constitutional populism in Central Europe. While recognising that the nation state continues to be the only organisation to successfully combine rational efficiency and communal bonds constituted by the national identity, the EU’s response to the challenges of constitutional populism and nationalism needs to enhance its democratic legitimation and constitutionally integrate the imaginaries of European public spheres and demoicracy to promote an anti-explosive alternative to the explosive nationalist imaginaries.

The Puzzle of Dion and Theon Solved

Dion is a human person, Lefty is his left foot, and Theon is Lefty-Complement, a proper part of Dion. Lefty is annihilated and Dion survives left-footless. After Lefty’s annihilation Theon, if he survives, occupies the same region as Dion. I suggest that this scenario be understood as a fusion case in which Dion and Theon, initially overlapping but distinct, are identical after Lefty’s annihilation and propose an account of proper names that allows us to say that Dion and Theon have ‘become identical’ without commitment to occasional identity or other controversial metaphysical doctrines. The proposed solution employs the semantics developed by Wolfgang Schwarz to address the ‘paradox of occasional identity’, posed by puzzle cases of fission, to deal with the problem of Dion and Theon, a body-minus puzzle.

Navigating paradoxes of identity and leadership in the age of digital transformation of construction industry: architects’ experiences and perceptions

The ability of architects to adapt to diverse identities and effectively manage the paradoxical challenges posed by digital transformation is critical to their role as innovative leaders in the dynamic digital construction landscape. However, existing research has yet to fully explore the complex experiences of paradoxical leadership and identity adaptation among architects in this context. Addressing this gap, the study aims to explore the types of conflicting identities and paradoxical leadership behaviour experienced by architects in response to the paradoxical challenges inherent to this phenomenon. Employing an interpretive phenomenological approach, the study engaged ten individuals practicing in architectural consultancy practices (ACPs) settings in Malaysia for in-depth, semi-structured interviews and a written account exercise to uncover their experiences. Thematic structural analysis yielded five key themes: “designer and technologist,” “technical-oriented and social-oriented individuals,” “collaborator and independent thinker,” “expert and lifelong learner,” and “reductionist and holistic thinking.” This comprehensive research strategy offers a more in-depth understanding of architects’ experiences and provides novel insights for enhancing leadership and identity development. Additionally, the newly developed paradoxical leadership and identity-based framework can serve as a platform for practitioners to nurture future-ready architects, upskill and reskill the existing workforce, and potentially reduce the industry’s reliance on foreign talent.

Paradoxes of Multi-Level Leadership: Insights from an Integrated Care System

ABSTRACTIn this paper, we draw on systems leadership, complexity and paradox theory to elucidate the tensions that organizational actors experience when practising multi-level leadership. We explore these issues through a study of the perceptions and experiences of stakeholders within an Integrated Care System (ICS) in England. Employing a collaborative inquiry approach, data were collected via 19 narrative interviews with participants in key leadership roles across ICS partners and nine co-creation workshops with a total of 86 participants from different parts of the ICS. Findings highlight that in developing multi-level leadership practice, leaders experience contradictory expectations and outcomes, including paradoxes of identity, place, purpose and change. We conclude by suggesting that leadership in multi-level contexts requires oscillating between competing polarities in a dynamic equilibrium with attention to localized interactions.MAD statementIntegrated Care Systems were enacted across England in July 2022 to enhance the capacity for statutory, voluntary and community organizations to work in partnership to improve health outcomes across diverse populations. Multi-level systems leadership, however, poses significant challenges around navigating the inevitable tensions that arise when working with complexity. Through qualitative research in a vanguard ICS, this paper highlights a range of paradoxes faced by leaders and organizations and proposes implications for policy and practice in enabling dynamic equilibrium and working in contexts of uncertainty and change.

Имидж специалиста: парадоксы профессиональной идентичности

The article clarifies the concepts of “mage of a specialist” and “professional identity”. It is emphasized that these concepts are far from generally recognized comprehension. This gives rise to errors not only in external assessments of the image by colleagues and management of organizations, but also distortions in the development of the professional identity of employees. A generalized model of identity statuses is proposed, reflecting the fairness of external image assessments, which also affect the identity of the employee. At the heart of this model is the principle of justice, when business merits (essential components of labor) become the basis for the development of the image; аnd vice versa, non-essential elements, i.e. not directly related to specific work (family ties of the ordinary with influential people, the ability to manipulate public consciousness in teams, etc.), which often lead to distortions of the professional and personal identity of the employee. The following main paradoxes of professional identity are associated with the problems of the image: 1) the discrepancy between the employee's own ideas about his image and the vision of his image by the people around him; 2) a possible contradiction between the image based on business (essential for this work) achievements and the image based on accompanying (external, “decorative” in relation to this work) achievements; 3) ambiguous (non-linear) dynamics of the image of a specialist. The paradox of the image is also manifested in the very fact of recognition / or non-recognition of the image, when, on the one hand, someone does not have an image, but on the other hand, we can talk about the presence of an image that is at a certain stage of development (or expressed in a certain type of image). Also, paradoxes manifest themselves differently in professions with clear criteria for labor efficiency, and in professions where these criteria are delayed in time or cannot be quantified. Special paradoxes arise when a high image may not coincide with the developed identity of the employee.

Fethiye: Turkey’s ‘Little Britain' – residential tourists’ identity and relationships

ABSTRACT This paper examines the Turkish resort town of Fethiye’s large British population of permanent residents, who have added to the physical and cultural character of the town. To understand why these individuals decided to relocate to Fethiye, and what their lives are like in the town, 17 semi-structured interviews with British residential tourists were conducted. The paper reveals a complex identity paradox, where many feel that the stigma surrounding the term ‘expat’, and what it means to be a ‘Brit abroad’, has impacted their identity, relationships and judgement of fellow residential tourists. The study also uncovers the motivational characteristics for their relocation, from which a strong financial element towards the choice of Turkey was revealed. Host–guest relationships are also explored, revealing largely positive attitudes towards the Turkish community.

THE PARADOX OF KUBROSISWO'S ART IDENTITY: BETWEEN ISLAM AND JAVANESENESS

This study was motivated by intellectual anxiety about the study of the art of Kubrosiswo. So far, most of the existing studies have focused on the discourse of Islamic identity attached to this art. This study intends to look at the arts in terms of two sides of identity, namely Islamic and Javanese. The method used in this study is a qualitative research method with steps that include: data collection, data validation, analysis, and synthesis. The results of this study show that the art of Kubrosiswo since its birth has brought religious sentiments, in the form of anti-communism. This articulation is manifested in his extra-aesthetic identity which contains elements of Islamic culture, especially from the songs used. Even so, there is another side to this art, especially those that show Javanese characteristics, such as the use of offerings and the presence of a trance session from each performance. This to some extent becomes a kind of paradox of identity for this art.

An autoethnography of an international English language teaching assistant’s identity paradoxes in an EFL context

International teaching assistants (ITAs) often encounter challenges, and with the popularization of English medium instruction (EMI) in international higher education contexts, these problems are no longer restricted to English-speaking countries. Against this backdrop and drawing on the concept of identity paradox, the author presents an autoethnography of the identity construction of an ITA in Macau. Influenced by factors at four levels (individual, interpersonal, organizational, and societal), this autoethnographic narrative suggests that ITA identity construction can be a journey of continual reconciliation of various paradoxical identity categories as captured by three pairs of identity paradoxes: “mute English user” vs. “advanced English learner,” “mechanical teacher” vs. “divergent thinker,” and “struggling fighter” vs. “ambitious planner.” Based on the findings, a theory-informed discussion and implications for ITA training are included.

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

The sociology of white America: A teaching and learning guide

Revitalising the enterprise university post-COVID 19: a focus on business schools

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to provide a polemic on the evolution of universities and business schools over the past two decades. During this period, universities have increasingly adopted a self-interested stance using business-like practices and behaviours to justify their transformation. The authors provide recommendations aimed at enhancing universities’ contributions and relevance to society, increasing their sustainability broadly defined and better positioning them to help solve wicked problems in a post-COVID-19 world.Design/methodology/approachThis polemic analyses prior literature relating to the evolution of universities and uses this to generate a framework for ways forward for their improvement.FindingsThe authors argue that the evolution of universities into entities with missions and operations designed to mimic business and commercial imperatives has yielded undesirable outcomes including the muddling of the core mission of universities, alienation of key stakeholders and an excessive focus on income growth. Business schools face a tension between forging their own, unique identities and simultaneously striving to meet university university objectives. We term this “the Business School identity paradox”. The authors contend that the way forward requires senior management to re-discover the essence of what it means to be a university, re-establish collegial decision-making within universities that includes built-in feedback loops and a fundamental emphasis on developing graduates with an enlightened perspective that goes beyond technical skills.Originality/valueThis paper is novel in that it analyses the evolution of the “Enterprise University” some 20 years after this term was first coined and in a radically changed environment following the COVID-19 pandemic. This analysis is also forward-looking as the authors re-imagine universities and business schools by identifying opportunities for renewal and improvement in their focus and societal impact. The authors also develop a schema that identifies major influences on universities and business schools, the impact of COVID-19 and strategies for them post-COVID-19.

Legal, Marketing, and Advertising Issues with Big Data

The purpose of this essay is to discuss the advantages and disadvantages and the benefits and costs of Big Data. The paper outlines the relevant federal and state privacy laws, including the California Consumer Privacy Act as amended, the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, and the Colorado Privacy Act. While highlighting several Federal Trade Commission privacy violation cases, the effects of Big Data collection and government surveillance are described in some detail. Advertising and marketing are defined, where it is argued that while the scanning of emails by email providers may be legal, it should be accomplished with consent, or not at all. The essentials of contract law and specific contract negotiation techniques are outlined for the benefit of attorneys. Finally, it is argued that although Big Data is the wave of the future, like all human institutions, it has in its definition the inherent paradoxes of transparency, identity, power, and exclusion that may potentially spell its undoing.

"Wie es damals Mode war": Inscribing History and Cultural Identity into the Oderbruch in Theodor Fontane's Vor dem Sturm

In Theodor Fontane's historical novel Vor dem Sturm (1878), archaeological debates enforce a sharp distinction between the German and the Slavic in the March of Brandenburg, whereas the novel seems at ease with the borderland liminality of its regional geography. This article demonstrates that Fontane stages various spheres of German identity formation, including the archaeological and the geographic that exhibit different levels of comfort with the coexistence of Germanness and Slavicness. Ultimately, in having these spheres coexist, Fontane demonstrates the contingency of the present by depicting the past as a product of change and of human decisions, illustrating the inherent paradox of identity.

A Voice Sweeter than Salt: Toyin Falola and the Construction of Subaltern Narrative Space

Gayatrl Spivak is arguably most recognized for her 1988 intervention in the dialogue of Subaltern Studies. It is within the intellectual rift of Spiva k's "Can the Subaltern Speak?" that I explore the narrative of Toyin Falola's memoir, A Mouth Sweeter than Salt. While Spivak concludes that the subaltern cannot speak be­cause of the subaltern's placement within existing knowledge production, Fa­lola's "Mouth" articulates a formation that says otherwise. Indeed, in A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, Falola's status In the subalternlty of a decolonlzlng Nigeria depicts a powerful subaltern voice with deep implications for knowledge, rep­resentation, authorial location, multifaceted identity paradox, and most of all, the tendrils of modernity.
 Fundamentally, this piece argues against Spivak by constructing a case for the relative authenticity of Falola's voice, despite its incorporation into Western intellectualism. Spivak claims that the subaltern cannot speak so long as the Western academy can only relate to the other within its own investigative par­adigm of the non-Western object. Here, I frame A Mouth Sweeter than Salt, not as a Western co-opting of an indigenous voice, but rather, as an invitation to explore Falola's memoir from the position of the non-Western subject. The work also allows us to move beyond the categories of the Western and non-Western subject to seriously engage the paradox of postcolonial existence.
 In granting credence to the idea of identity paradox, a close analysis of A Mouth Sweeter than Salt reveals the complexities of African subaltern voice and its dialectic with the forces of modernity. While Spivak might argue that this formulation is tainted by the motives of the West, such an interpretation of Fa­lola's memoir also builds ground to discuss alternatives to the Western archive in the development of African intellectualism. Falola's memoir stands as a tes­tament to the legitimization of oral history, micro-historical storytelling, and the disintegration of Western disciplinary divisions between history, literature, sociology, philosophy, and a host of other imported intellectual categories. By outlining the critical duality of Falola's act of subaltern speech, I hope to build a realm in which the African intellectual voice is not artificially segmented from the historical influence of modernity, but can also open discursive space to stand on its own ground.

Defensive reactions and strategies for managing paradoxes of identity: three contrasting case studies

PurposeIn fact, this research seeks to understand, on the one hand, the nature of defensive reactions and, on the other hand, the strategies mobilised by actors to deal with paradoxes of identity.Design/methodology/approachThe authors mobilise a qualitative methodology based on three contrasting longitudinal case studies, several sequences of non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews and secondary data.FindingsThe results show, on the one hand, close professional identities despite different organisations and, on the other hand, different reactions and strategies for managing paradoxes of identity despite the proximity of professional identities.Originality/valueBeyond the singularity of the paradoxes of identity studied, the research invites the authors to develop spaces for discussion.

Managing the identity paradox in inter‐organisational collaborations

AbstractA persistent contradiction in inter‐organisational collaborations (IOCs) is between individual actors' IOC identity and their other multiple identities, and the subsequent need to maintain a delicate balance between these opposing but mutually dependent identities. Using a paradox lens and individual actors as the unit of analysis, this ethnographic study defines the “identity paradox” often present in IOCs as the interaction between actors' professional, personal, team and organisational identities with an overall IOC identity. The case demonstrates that the identity paradox allows actors to maintain a balance between adhering to IOC, which offers stability, and adjusting to emergent needs, which enables innovative behaviour. The theorisation of the identity paradox reveals that the conditions that trigger each identity tension relate to the IOC tensions of cooperation and competition, rigidity and flexibility, trust and mistrust, and confrontation and dialogue. The findings offer contribution to IOC research and to management practice.

Teacher identity and Religion Education in Life Orientation

Integral to the Life Orientation curriculum is democracy and human right. This article contends that considering human rights cannot simply be a theoretical exercise as the implementation thereof affects lived human experience. Currently held narratives of lived experience need to be dialogically explored. Integrally linked to any such exploration is the identity of the explorer. It can be said that individuals are made to varying degrees by systems and networks of power in society, including dominant discourses. However, they also have the capacity, by exercising individual agency, to make themselves according to the way in which they respond to the intersections that shape identity, including ethnicity, culture, class, religion, gender, sexual orientation and so forth. This article seeks to explore teacher identity and, in particular, teacher religious identity, with a view to transformed Religion Education. The argument is made for Life Orientation teachers to negotiate their religious identity from a position of ‘religious identity paralysis’ or ‘religious identity paradox’ or even ‘religious identity flexibility’ to one of ‘religious identity transformation’. Both in-service and pre-service teachers participated in the studies informing this article.

Liquid identities: Han sojourners in Tibet

This article presents an ethnographic account of the liquid identities of Zangpiaos (Han drifters or sojourners in Tibet). The study reveals that in the liminal time and space of their sojourning, Zangpiaos have developed explicit identities and implicit identification associated with multi-level structures and complex social processes. The liminality of Zangpiaos offers fresh insights into the ambiguous identity paradox that this alternative subgroup of Han majority have encountered in the modern mobile society characterized by plural and liquid identities. The study sheds light on mobile people's identities and social relationships through an ethnographic inquiry into long-term tourist experiences in a mobile age.

Идентичность в процессе реконструкции субъективности в дискурсе Жака Лакана

The research objective is as follows: to reveal specificity of the identity concept functioning in Jacques Lacan’s discourse relying on an analysis of the “subject” category and the key notions of his psychoanalytic theory. The article traces origins of Lacan’s psychoanalytic conception, identifies content of the concept “subject”, shows that the mirror stage determines subjectivity formation, examines the identity concept. Scientific originality of the study involves justifying the thesis that Lacan’s conception of identity correlates with the subjectivity formation process, and the subject position is interpreted in terms of “me” and “the other”. The conducted research allows concluding that Lacan introduces paradox of identity: “me” conception forms only through aspiration to become “the other” so as to compensate the lack.

Young Cancer on <em>Instagram</em>

Young Cancer on <em>Instagram</em>

Entrepreneuring after 50: the liminal identity transitions of older emergent entrepreneurs

ABSTRACT Entrepreneurship has been proposed as a solution to extending working lives. However, little is known about how older (50+) entrepreneurs manage their personal transitions into entrepreneurship. In this paper, we propose to use a liminal identity work perspective to explore the identity paradoxes that older entrepreneurs experience during their transition into entrepreneurship and how they manage it. We use a qualitative study conducted over 14 months in the United Kingdom. Our analysis shows how older entrepreneurs confront identity paradoxes, interruptions and identity polarization in their attempts to shift from older identities and activity patterns into new ones. The entrepreneurs who manage to overcome the identity interruptions and polarization that the transition brings move away from an initial sense of isolation and bring creative understandings to older entrepreneuring processes. Our results expand current understanding of entrepreneurial identity work in liminal conditions, especially among older entrepreneurs, by looking at the tensions emerging between potentially new and customary identities and behaviours as an important aspect of entrepreneuring transitions rather than as negative frictions to be avoided.