Production Of Identity Research Articles

Performing the “Tribe”? Ethnic Heritage Associations and the UNESCO 2003 Convention in Malawi

This article explores two interlinked forms of identity expression and heritage production in postcolonial Malawi. The first is the way ethnic communities reconstruct their cultural heritage and identities through the establishment of ethnic-based heritage associations which exhibit heritage at cultural festivals. This points to the shift in cultural production from one that was dictated by the discourse of national culture and single identity to one that is defined by the discourse of heritage which appeals to democratic sensibilities. The second is the inventorying and listing of cultural elements as dictated by the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. It is noted that the proliferation of ethnic-based heritage associations found resonance and synergy with UNESCO’s appeals for safeguarding intangible cultural heritage as propagated by its 2003 Convention. However, as the article demonstrates, the imperatives of democracy and the UNESCO 2003 Convention promote ethnic consciousness at the expense of national consciousness. This creates a dilemma in imagining the nation. Drawing on archival and oral evidence, the article argues that the ethnic-based heritage associations, while promoting cultural preservation in line with the UNESCO Convention of 2003, have become sites of political mobilisation where notions of tribe and tribalism are reproduced and reaffirmed. Ultimately, the UNESCO 2003 Convention, while promoting the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, reinforces the idea of tribe in Malawi. The article contributes to our understanding of the politics of identity and heritage production in postcolonial Malawi.

Breaking the Mirror: Anne Sexton’s Poetic Self-Construction: Selected Poems

This study analyses Anne Sexton’s poetry using Linda Hutcheon’s theory of narcissism, as presented in “Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox”. Hutcheon's concept of narrative narcissism, highlighting self-referentiality, self-awareness, and the indistinction between the text and the author, provides an insightful framework for examining Sexton's confessional style. However, this paper examines how Sexton’s poems interact with the self as subject and object, revealing the contradictions of narcissism inherent in her work. Sexton’s poetry often intertwines personal tragedy with extensive creative contemplation, using self-exposure to examine her identity and poetic production mechanics. The conflict between autobiography and metafiction in Sexton’s poetry reflects Hutcheon’s claim that narcissistic writings emphasise their own creation while highlighting identity's precariousness. Hence, this study illustrates how Sexton’s interplay of vulnerability, exhibitionism, and self-aware literary approaches reflects Hutcheon’s notion of narrative narcissism, situating the poet’s confessional voice as both profoundly personal and meta-literary in nature. Moreover, this paper seeks to provide a literary viewpoint on Sexton’s examination of the self while expanding Hutcheon’s theoretical framework to include a poetry medium. Keywords: Anne Sexton, Narcissism, The Double Image, For John, Who Begs Me Not to Enquire Further

Activating Ecocentrism: How Young Women Environmental Activists Produce Identity on Instagram

ABSTRACT The fresh face of much of today’s environmental activism is young and female, particularly visible through movements such as School Strike for Climate (SS4C). Given the pressing need for embracing and broadcasting ecocentric ways of communicating, identifying, and behaving in these times – when impacts of anthropogenic climate and environmental crises are increasingly apparent – the ecocultural discourses such activists produce for public audiences are of utmost importance. The present study illuminates ways leading young women activists produce ecocentric identities within their principal online channel of public communication, the social media platform Instagram. We identify six predominant values central to these activists’ ecocentric identities: collective over individual action, intersectionality, climate optimism, corporate and political responsibility, ethics of care, and more-than-human connection. We also illustrate ways activists operationalize these values via three main material-symbolic identity activations: holding governments and industries accountable and responsible for their role in the climate crisis; creating inclusive, diverse communities; and fostering emotional responses to the more-than-human world. While activists under study also produce their ecocentric identities in the physical world – for instance, through on-the-ground protest leadership – their online identity production communicates shared values and actions in intimate, powerful, and potentially transformative ways to mass global audiences.

Mingled Identities and Lives in Translation: China as a Calling

Abstract The engagement of scholars and social scientists with cultures not their own is often said today to be a colonial or appropriative action. Such charges are countered here not defensively but by description of the hybridity of intercultural dialogues, of which translation is one case. Jesuit translation in Ming-dynasty China gives the example. Translation is often thought of as a channel – a way of moving content from one language to another. It is more productive, in my view, to treat it as a receptacle, a vessel in which unexpected combinations occur and give rise to new substances. Thus the missionary goal becomes a mere precursor to an actual production of new texts and new identities.

The rights of undergraduate queer and trans* students of color as STEM majors

ABSTRACT STEM is an exclusionary space for queer and trans* students of color (QTSOCs). A critical site of justice-oriented transformation to enhance support for QTSOCs is mathematics education, which has significant impacts on access to STEM majors and positive identities in the sciences. This article proposes a set of rights for QTSOCs as STEM learners to guide pedagogy that affirms intersectionality of their experiences in and beyond mathematics classrooms. QTSOCs in STEM have the rights to: (i) feel confused and receive support; (ii) take risks in participation and identity expression; and (iii) have affirming representation of identity in knowledge production. To illustrate how these rights are denied and embraced through STEM pedagogy, I present 2 narrative cases from my research study about QTSOCs’ intersectionality of STEM experiences where mathematics played a central role. I conclude with implications for practice to cultivate rehumanizing STEM educational opportunities that QTSOCs deserve.

Blurring belongings: navigating Indian and Adivasi identities in an area of protracted violence in India

ABSTRACT This paper is based on empirical research on the discursive production and marginalisation of Adivasi identities in an area of protracted violence and civil unrest in India. We examine the historical naming of the Adivasis in national and local discourses and the ways it is circumscribed contemporarily by the regulative Indian state and its efforts to document all citizens. We highlight systematic exclusions related to the location, livelihood and cultural practices of the Adivasi Gond community and the associated difficulties this presents for them to identify and be identified with the dominant symbols of ‘Indianness’. We then attend to the framing of the civil unrest in India, as one between the state and Maoists, with the Adivasis as ‘victims’ of Maoist violence. We highlight the implications of such a polarised construction of conflict for the Gond community and for the navigation of their multiple belongings locally. We argue that in categorising the Maoists as anti-India/national and thereby deploying more force, surveillance and strong coercive language, the state is normalising violence and actually fighting the community it is purportedly trying to save and protect. We shift away from the macro accounts of conflict, which situate the Adivasis in deficit, by addressing the particularities of contemporary local social relations and the complexities this presents for the everyday lives of the Gond Adivasis. We illustrate how the discourse of polarised conflict does not respond to the Adivasi position and the daily struggles of the Gond community for the assertion of their Indian identities.

What does leisure have to do with mental health – arts, creative and leisure practices and living with mental distress

ABSTRACT There is a growing interest in the role of leisure, arts and creative activities in cultivating health and wellbeing across different contexts. Leisure sports have historically been considered beneficial for achieving health, and similar focus has recently been placed on arts and creativity. Recent research into the role of arts and creative engagement for wellbeing highlights the benefits of these modes of engagement on emotional wellbeing and social connectedness. In this article, we examine the ways arts, creative and leisure practices and mental health converge, co-exist and collide. We draw on feminist leisure studies scholarship and Sarah Ahmed’s work on emotion to discuss insights from our research into the everyday experiences of people living with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We utilise qualitative methods to investigate people’s experiences of meaningful leisure practices and the dynamics between leisure practices and living well with the distress. We explore how leisure activities initiate complex processes of discovery and production of meanings, identity and wellbeing. Our discussion emphasises that leisure practices contribute to producing everyday forms of self-care and provide transformative space for self-discovery yet are simultaneously inseparable from the politics of living with mental distress while navigating accumulated effects of distress.

The fiction of identity: veridiction and the contract of attention in the Netflix show Clickbait

The article utilises the analysis of the Netflix show Clickbait to explore cultural shifts in the standard logic of veridiction, which seem to break with the Greimasian model of veridictory modalities to welcome diverse procedures –such as faire semblant and authentication– governing the communication and perception of truth. Rather than a problem affecting only discourses, I aim to argue that the production of subjective identities, both in the physical world and mediated contexts, is also impacted by this change in our relationship with signs. By presenting a dialogue between theories concerned with traditional and emerging mechanisms related to veridiction, the article offers a reflection on the production and deployment of identity, and the blurring of lines between reality, unreality, and fiction, which produces simulacral dynamics shifting the goal of interactions from a sanction- to an attention-oriented model.

Exploring design and technological aspects of digital fashion: a systematic review of recent innovations

ABSTRACT This study examines the state of research in the field of digital fashion, specifically focusing on design and production. The authors propose a definition for digital fashion as the ‘virtual creation, production, and depiction of an individual's identity, in particular in the field of clothing and footwear, through computer-aided design’. Using PRISMA 2020 guidelines, 386 publications from the Web of Science database have been selected for the systematic review. A keyword map was created based on bibliographic data, and a cluster analysis of the publications revealed five main clusters. The analysis of articles shows that the most frequently mentioned topics are design, fashion, social media, and technology. Sustainability, digital fashion, and performance are also frequently discussed.

The critical terrorism researcher: identity, positionality, and (de)coloniality

ABSTRACT Over the last two decades, Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) has been crucial in contributing to critical research on terrorism that challenges the troublesome assumptions about “terrorism” developed in the field of Terrorism Studies, and which investigates the complexities that shape (counter-)terrorism in various socio-political contexts, especially so in the “post-9/11 era”. This has, however, also enabled the production of the identity of a uniquely critical terrorism researcher which, I argue in this article, is acutely underwritten by colonial epistemologies and assumptions that underpin “terrorism”. By drawing upon relevant insights from decolonial scholarship on the link between identity and knowledge production, especially through my engagement with Sylvia Wynter’s discourse on “Man and the coloniality of being”, this article aims to problematise the CTS researcher as a specific idea of Man (usually Western/white/bourgeoise/heterosexual) shaped by various descriptive statements including those about emancipation and inclusion that seeks to legitimise researchers in this sub-field as progenitors of genuine discourses about “terrorism”. By de-centring the CTS researcher through reflecting on my own research practices, choices and priorities, the article contributes to CTS debates on methodology as well as to the debate on “terrorism expertise”. It concludes by offering some reflections on the future of CTS.

The Moral Economies of Reflexive Migration Studies

Abstract Reflexive Migration Studies has emerged as a subfield of Migration Studies. Drawing on moral economy perspectives, we explore how the entanglement of, and tensions between, moral and economic rationalities shape the development of a field of knowledge production in which we ourselves partake. Clearly, Reflexive Migration Studies has not emerged in a vacuum but through socio-material practices and in a specific scientific context and community. Using the case of the Migration Studies landscape in Germany, we suggest that a moral economies perspective allows us to examine the production of knowledge infrastructures, scholarly identities, and research outputs that are key in creating a new academic field. By scrutinizing these infrastructures, identities, and outputs, we point to tensions between some of the morally charged claims and the material conditions and labour contexts of doing Reflexive Migration Studies. With our contribution, we want to raise questions regarding the direction that we, as scholars participating in the field, are taking. We see the risk that the critique brought forward in Reflexive Migration Studies falters in light of prevailing economies of scientific knowledge production and academic labour.

‘Identity as work’: Water‐army and disability employment in digital China

AbstractThe proliferation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) over the past few decades has changed the world of work. Although extensive studies have discussed the impact of ICTs on work forms and labour relations, scarce attention has been paid to work–identity dynamics in digitally enabled contexts, let alone the issues faced by marginalised people such as disabled people. This article attempts to fill the gaps by examining the relationship between cyber work, identity, and disability in digital China. By analysing ‘water army’ (shuijun), a unique type of cyber work, the article proposes an ‘identity as work’ scenario that includes the production and commodification of identity as the work content, the development of a workable, in‐control identity as the most important return, and the organisation of work around the disability identity. The findings suggest a new and more complex interaction between (marginal) people's identity strategies and work‐related social norms.

Exploring National Identity (Re)production: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Iran's Representation on its Official Tourism Website

Given the significance of tourism in national identity construction and promotion in current era along with Iran’s need for such an international image promotion, the present study investigated the linguistic texts on the discourse of the Iranian official tourism website to achieve two objectives. Firstly, considering the convoluted interplay among discourse, tourism, and national identity, it investigates how Iranians, in terms of their identity, are represented in the linguistic texts of the discourse used on the Iranian official tourism website. Secondly, it identifies how the discourse either maintains, challenges, or transforms the existing stereotyped perceptions of its identity, embracing its Western represented portrayal in Western media. The current study adopted critical discourse analysis as its framework and used Fairclough’s three-dimensional model as its approach to CDA. The findings of the study demonstrated that Iranians’ authentic and genuine identity, by which they wish to be seen, contests the Western mainstream perceptions of Iranian national identity. Therefore, there is a tendency to transform the prevailing Western stereotypical perceptions of their identity from the producers of the analyzed discourse.

Yogalebrities: The postfeminist, fashionable construction of ‘psychic life’ on social media

The appeal and impact of social media influencers within contemporary consumer culture has been a much-explored topic in fashion and media research. However, there are limited studies of yogalebrities – celebrity yoga practitioners who gain global visibility and following through branded product endorsements and modelling contracts – despite their leading role within the culturally and economically significant wellness industry. Furthermore, while the existing scholarship considers the intersections between consumer culture and spirituality, it is yet to grant due recognition to the active production and consumption of fashionable spiritual feminine identities produced on and through prevalent social media. Drawing on the combined insights from media, fashion and feminist studies, we discuss how yogalebrities represent and perpetuate normative ideals about femininity and its spiritual dimensions. We ground the discussion in the analysis of two different cases of yogalebrities: celebrity influencer Sjana Elise and micro-influencer Jessamyn Stanley. We demonstrate how they fold entrepreneurial opportunities into self-actualizing, self-branded intimate narratives to seek legitimacy and commercial success, and how their audience engagement capitalizes on, commodifies and stylizes spiritual values that underpin western yoga philosophy. By documenting these complex tactics, we contribute to fashion studies’ and feminist media studies’ understanding of the mediatized and increasingly fashionable psychic life of women.

‘Obliged in self-defence to retaliate’. Violent sailors in nineteenth-century Bristol

This article is a study of merchant sailors in Bristol between 1850–1914. There is a stereotypical perception of the sailor as being a drunken, promiscuous, violent nuisance on the streets of a port town. This perception has been fashioned through popular imagery and imagination but also through an historiography that has largely investigated sailors in maritime and nautical contexts. Here I take a different approach and investigate one aspect of working-class culture, namely a man’s propensity for violence, in the context of Bristol’s urban, working-class culture. It will be argued that in their use of violence sailors were not the perceived breed apart but were an integrated presence in Bristol’s wider working-class culture. The reasons for violence, the methods used and the chosen victims of it were not the product of any maritime identity but were constructed from an urban one. Naturally, many sailors continued to display the stereotypical behavioural traits of sailors but there were also those who were aligned to a more respectable way of living. Cultural forces towards masculine respectability tempered some of sailors’ violent behaviours, as did the space available for violence, and consequently places sailors firmly within working-class culture.

Effect of drying methods on aroma, taste and antioxidant activity of Dendrobium officinale flower tea: A sensomic and metabolomic study

Dendrobium officinale flower tea (DFT) is a traditional health product of geographical identity known for its unique aroma and taste. The effects of different drying methods on sensory properties, metabolic profiles and antioxidant activity of DFT were compared using sensomics and metabolomics approaches. Twenty-seven aroma-active compounds were identified and more than half of the volatiles responsible for the “green” and “floral” scent lost after drying. Sensory evaluations revealed that vacuum freeze-dried DFT showed a significant preference in taste and fifty-eight metabolites with higher levels of glutamine were observed, possibly contributing to a “fresh” taste and increased preference. Among the three drying methods, natural air drying retained the fresh flower scent better, while freeze drying preserved the color and shape of the flowers better and enhanced the taste and antioxidant activity of DFT. The research results may provide a foundation for the selection of DFT processing method and quality detection.

Community Identity and Peoples Perception and Production of Internet Slang Written in Acronyms

Community Identity and Peoples Perception and Production of Internet Slang Written in Acronyms

Investigating the role of identity versatility in the discursive production of working-class boyhood, learner identities and educational engagement

Internationally, boys from working-class backgrounds are often the most likely to disengage from their formal education. Research on the educational experience of working-class boys has focused heavily on their identity barriers, often positioning these young men as either vulnerable or volatile in their formal education. Social theorists have sought to address the historical and cultural embedded (gendered) practices which influence the identity work of working-class boys. This conceptual article contributes to the study of working-class boyhood and education through first synthesizing key themes present in the historic and contemporary literature before adopting a feminist post-structural stance to consider how these themes are informed by our understandings of the discursive production of masculinities. Then, in the second half of the paper, we make visible what has been at the margins in the scholarship – identity versatility – which we define as contextual and agentic adaptation. Attention to versatility, we feel, offers the potential for a nuanced analysis regarding working-class boyhood, learner identities and educational engagement.

Gastronomic Identity and the Role of the Confraternities in the Valorisation of Local Products. The Confraternity of Bucho Raiano in the Promotion of Culture and Inland Tourism

Abstract Considering gastronomy as a source of expression of local culture, its use in tourism can contribute to enhancing and adding value to the destination, as well as encourage the pride of the local community, stimulating its production and consumption, and its dissemination outside the region. Bucho Raiano is a gastronomic product of identity and representativeness for the inland border region of Portugal (Riba Côa), for which its confraternity seeks the dissemination, the promotion of its consumption, and enhancement as a cultural resource. In this context, we seek to frame the Bucho Raiano gastronomic product, its identity, and the role of the confreres in its promotion and dissemination. Thus, this research aims to contextualize the Confraria do Bucho Raiano as a case study, evaluate the confreres’ perception of the confraternity’s mission, its strategies and contributions to the promotion and enhancement of this gastronomic product. The aim is to find out whether Bucho can be an important tourist product for this region and, consequently, strengthen the link between traditional local gastronomy and the tourist destination, according to the confreres’ perception.

Producing the post‐postmodern flâneur: An assemblage analysis of Macau's Cotai Strip

Macau, an internationally renowned gambling city, has experienced rapid growth in casino space expansion and tourism since 2002 when the new Macau SAR government liberalised gambling. Despite the impact of COVID‐19 on the city's economy over the past three years, infrastructure construction and remodelling of casino resorts continue. This study focuses on the spatial production of casino resorts and tourist identity in Macau's Cotai Strip. Methodologically, the study conducts an assemblage analysis to interpret the data collected mainly through participant observation and in‐depth interviews. The research findings show that the Cotai Strip homogenises the human and non‐human elements through the repetitive rhythms of buildings and multi‐tiered enclosed territorialisation. The identity of Macau casino tourists emerges from their interactions with other components within the Strip assemblage. The emerging identity is defined as a post‐postmodern flâneur, characterised by their programmed and controlled tourist activities and their intensified visual sensations and photographic gazes.