Production Of Identity Research Articles

Making (a) place: wine, society and environment in California's Sierra Nevada foothills

ABSTRACTThis paper explores the role of the wine industry, writ large, in place-making via a case study of the wine industry, from ‘grape to glass’, in the Sierra Nevada foothills of California, which examines how wine production and consumption has influenced the sociocultural and physical–environmental landscape of the region. Using qualitative field methods and secondary data analysis, the paper investigates the impacts of the ‘emerging’ wine industry of the Sierra Nevada foothills by engaging with industry actors at all levels. We find that, while not new, wine grape production and winemaking have become increasingly prominent economically and culturally as evidenced by (in)visible infrastructure and growing direct and indirect contributions to foothill counties’ economies. Moreover, we argue that, in the Sierra Nevada and beyond, wine growing and winemaking provide a powerful mechanism for identity and material landscape production in the area. The pursuit and construction of the Sierra Nevada foothills as ‘wine country’ becomes a means through which the place ‘makes’ itself and, in turn, makes a place for itself across a variety of economic and cultural contexts.

Trashing Solidarity: The Production of Power and the Challenges to Organizing Informal Reclaimers

AbstractThis article presents a nuanced social history of how reclaimers at the Marie Louise landfill in Soweto, South Africa, organized against each other on the basis of nationality instead of uniting to combat the effects of the 2008 global economic crisis. Through this narrative of struggles at one particular dump, the article contributes to debates on informal worker organizing by theorizing the importance of the production of identities, power relations, space, and institutions in understanding how and why informal workers create and maintain power-laden divisions between themselves. The article argues that organizing efforts that seek to overcome divisions between informal workers cannot simply exhort them to unite based on abstract principles, but must actively transform the places and institutions forged by these workers through which they create and crystallize divisive identities and power relations.

World Heritage Craze in China: Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory by Haiming Yan

Reviewed by: World Heritage Craze in China: Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory by Haiming Yan Magnus Fiskesjö World Heritage Craze in China: Universal Discourse, National Culture, and Local Memory. Haiming Yan. New York: Berghahn Books, 2018. 242 pp., 20 illustrations, bibliography, index. Hardback US $120.00, ISBN 978-1-78533-804-5; eBook US $35, eISBN 978-1-78533-805-2. This aptly titled book takes on the Chinese obsession with World Heritage (capitals required!). It is an obsession rooted in a worldview that is not pluralistic, but rather like the spirit of a competitive Olympic game in which there can be only one gold medal winner. The Chinese pursuit of this gold medal is a riveting and sometimes disturbing story, well presented by the author, Haiming Yan, in a book nicely produced by the publisher. This book brings a wealth of information and spirited discussion to a wide readership and could readily be considered for courses on heritage issues in Asia and globally. Yan traces Chinese struggles to get potential sites onto the official UNESCO World Heritage list in three dimensions, which he calls the universal agenda, national practices, and local responses. This is not a dry book dealing only with government-devised policies and international convention text-making. From time to time, Yan pays attention to the real people involved and notes both the joy, tears, sadness, and frustrations that mark the people actually engaged in these struggles. In discussing the universal agenda, Yan notes that the pursuit of universality is already thwarted by a tension at the heart of the United Nations' system. The UN sets up the hope of representing the interests and benefits of all humankind, but the UN and UNESCO (in charge of preserving world heritage) are by practical necessity organized through nation-states and thus inevitably get bogged down in nation-state affairs and the scourge of national interests which trump the original idea about the world and humanity as a whole. Chinese national officialdom persistently promotes an almost revanchist "Olympic" conception of China's place in the world. To be an equal neighbor is not enough, China ought to be first among equals. In Yan's formulation, this "nationalistic sensation" drives officials and other would-be patriots to fight in the World Heritage arena, secure win after win, listing after listing. Yan explains that at the same time, a modernizing China shares the Western anxiety about lost authenticity; under the spell of national authenticity, this further adds to the urge to identify heritage in China. The theoretical and historical framing is well done in many ways, not least in chapter 1, which paints a good picture of how Chinese Communists came to recast themselves as custodians of a national Chinese essence. However, Yan lost one kind of theoretical opportunity. It would have been productive to integrate the perspective of world systems theory, which can help us grasp how various types of identities, drives, and crises come and go in cycles. It can help us answer questions like, "Why this, now?" In particular, anthropologists such as Jonathan Friedman (1994, 2006) have shown us how the conditions of the production of identities (including the current obsessive moment in China, which forces everyone to integrate into the same national box) are intimately tied in with these cycles. It seems we are helpless prisoners, ever unable to [End Page 401] realize a world community to which a world or universal heritage might instead belong. If there is one complaint about the historical review, it is that it makes no effort to reach back into Republican China's heritage-making efforts. After the Republicans overthrew the empire, they right away (from 1912 on) got to work on heritage protection and the creation of modern-style heritage in the modern sense, through museumification and legislation and so on. This could be called the "first Chinese modern" and it is an important precursor to the more recent developments, but is absent here (readers could turn to Zhang Liang [2003] for this information, however). At the same time, the book does an excellent job indeed in covering recent decades of heritage policy reformulations in Communist China, traveling "From...

What Future Can the Middle Ages Have? Choices and Connections

What Future Can the Middle Ages Have?Choices and Connections Helen Young (bio) The futures of medieval studies and ideas about the 'medieval' are connected to each other, to academia more broadly, and and all of these are shaped by political and social forces. Political medievalisms, particularly but not exclusively those of the right wing, have been the subject of significant research,1 and the nationalisms that shaped mainstream and academic medievalisms from the late eighteenth century on have been well-attested since the early years of medievalism studies.2 We are already making (or choosing not to make) connections outside the fields and disciplines of traditional medieval studies, collectively and as individual scholars, and at times have those connections made for us when others engage with our teaching and research. Wherever it sits in the swirl of academic, popular, and marginal, all medievalism is, like all knowledge and culture, political. The possible futures medieval are, inevitably, shaped by the social, cultural, and political present and recent past; those contexts suggest that all futures medieval will be connected—the question is to what. Medieval studies, however, have had, for at least the two decades I have been working in them, a reputation for being unconnected with rest of the academy, and society. Professor Richard Utz, US-based medievalist, echoed this in his claim (which was widely critiqued on social media) in May this year, that 'people don't become medievalists because they want to be political. […] Most are monkish creatures who just want to live in their cells and write their manuscripts'.3 The comment was reported in a New York Times article on far-right entanglements with contemporary medieval studies and divisions about race and racism in the field. The philological and historiographical traditions of scholarship that are foundational to claims that medieval studies are somehow unconnected have [End Page 173] deeply political histories; the claim to being an ivory tower within an ivory tower is likewise deeply political in that it asserts a particular kind of identity that is so normalized as to be invisible. This kind of approach, moreover, is a privilege not afforded scholars whose professional work or personal identities make them targets of the far right; this includes but is not limited to medievalists of colour, queer medievalists, women, and those of us whose identities intersect within these categories. The field is already political and connected to the world outside, and always has been, even if the broad sweep of its politics has at times been aligned closely enough with ethno-national projects of identity production as to seem apolitical. ANZAMEMS membership ratified a Diversity and Equity statement in 2016 that committed the organization to supporting 'all individuals—especially those from communities traditionally marginalised by the academy, including but not limited to people of colour, women, disabled people, LGBQTIA people, and members of all faiths—to share their research and develop professional networks within an environment that prizes inclusivity, generosity and courtesy'.4 I would suggest that putting this into practice necessarily involves abandoning any claims to political neutrality within our disciplines, because the status quo globally does not yet match the aspirations of that statement, or active resistance to far-right cooption of the medieval and medieval studies. As I write this, a court challenge to the University of Wollongong's Ramsay Centre-backed Bachelor of Arts in Western Civilisation looms and the University of Queensland Academic Board has just approved Ramsay-backed majors in existing degrees. With other institutions in talks with the Ramsay Centre, it is overwhelmingly likely that one future of medieval studies is within the paradigm of Western civilisation. That paradigm is deployed significantly in contemporary discourse by the far right, typically as a racist and anti-Islamic dogwhistle, for example in the manifesto of the alleged white terrorist who murdered fifty-one Muslim people in Christchurch in 2019. It is also used, although less commonly, in progressive arguments.5 The Ramsay Centre has signalled its attitude to the medieval and medieval studies through a 2019 invitation as a guest speaker to Associate Professor Rachel Fulton Brown, a University of Chicago academic 'who runs a fan blog dedicated to right...

De la identidad a la pluridentidad. Reelaboraciones identitarias entre pentecostales migrantes peruanos y bolivianos indígenas en Arica e Iquique

El objetivo de este artículo es mostrar que los sujetos migrantes indígenas (quechuas y aymaras) son portadores de una pluridentidad forjada entre lo nacional, lo religioso, lo indígena, el género, la clase, y la condición migrante. Se sostiene que no hay una identidad omnímoda, sino una pluridentidad desde la cual los individuos resaltan u ocultan alguna identidad según las circunstancias. En ese contexto, no es la identidad de una persona lo que está en crisis, sino la estrechez del concepto. Nuestro análisis se sustenta teóricamente en una postura constructivista estratégico-normativa y en un extenso material de campo que incluye 46 entrevistas en profundidad, así como observaciones en cultos internacionales (Lima y Tacna [Perú] y Santa Cruz y La Paz [Bolivia]) y nacionales, además de grupos de discusión en las ciudades de Iquique y Arica. En consecuencia, la pluridentidad viene a responder a un abanico de posibilidades, emergencias y complejidades, adquiriendo relevancia los sentimientos, la desinstitucionalización y la instrumentalidad en la producción de las identidades.

The Fabrication of Local Identity: Marginalization of the Indigenous Dayak Beverage in Central Kalimantan

Abstract 
 Since the decentralization era that started in 1999, the need to search for local identity in various regions in Indonesia gradually emerged. Local elites have been pursuing some specific characteristics to legitimize their indigeneity and authenticity which are useful to strengthen their local power grip. The production of local identity (e.g., adat; tradition) was transformed into a key factor for the success of a local government in the transition of political and economic power in Indonesia (Bourchier, 2007; Erb, 2007). In that cultural production, a particular ethnic tradition was often fabricated into a binary dichotomy; “good” and “bad” to come up with a “true local identity.” Within this scheme, a tradition considered “bad” is rejected. Baram, a traditional Dayak beverage containing alcohol, faces this kind of rejection. Even though it is inherently a part of the Dayak culture, evidence of its existence is systematically deleted in the public domain such as museums, books, and public documents and other local publications. Baram is perceived as a form of bad habit and also is thought to be irrelevant to the contemporary Dayak identity that is struggling to eliminate the stereotype of being uncivilized. This paper argues that the marginalization of baram not only is a matter of politics but also is related to current social and cultural contestation in Central Kalimantan, Palangkaraya in particular. The analysis in this paper focuses on the relation of the Dayak as indigenous people of Central Kalimantan and migrants from other Kalimantan regions and outside of Kalimantan. The data were collected during my short ethnographic research in Palangkaraya and Katingan Regency, Central Kalimantan in 2015. Baram is suspected of being a source of overconsumption of alcohol that triggers violence and criminal actions in both urban and rural communities. Such a formulation is common in the mass media to describe the negative effects of baram. The
 
 marginalization of baram continues and has escalated into a more serious matter as the local regime now labels it as illegal good. It is, thus, alienated in its own home.

Subversive identity and cultural production by the Russian-Israeli Generation 1.5

This article belongs to the series presenting our ongoing ethnographic project on the Russian-Israeli Generation 1.5. It discusses the nexus between immigrant identity, civic activism and cultural production among young adults born in the (former) Soviet Union, who migrated to Israel as older children or adolescents. We examine the new, protest-driven activism among young Russian Israelis while drawing on the concepts of reactive ethnicity and cultural public sphere. This identity quest occurs at the intersection of their Russian, Jewish and Israeli identities that often clash with each other. Moreover, the ethnic awakening among these young immigrant adults has been clearly gendered, with mostly female leadership emerging out of its cultural avant-garde. We present and discuss examples of the media discourse, artistic and creative events organized by Generation 1.5 leaders, focusing on the recent Russian–Hebrew poetry festival in Jerusalem.

‘This is where my inner history teacher appears’: a methodological approach to analysing student teachers’ professional identity in interaction

ABSTRACTBy testing a model for analysing identity in interaction, the present article explores how a history student teacher produces social identity in relation to his future profession as a teacher, with an important point of departure being the relationship between the academic and professional aspects of teacher education. This is addressed through an empirical analysis of a student teacher’s identity production in a specific academic setting: a bachelor thesis course. The main body of data consists of audio recordings and video recordings from a group of three student teachers giving feedback on each other’s theses. With respect to methodology, the article employs a model from multimodal (inter)action analysis that focuses on the concept of vertical identity – the notion that identity in interaction is produced in three layers of discourse simultaneously. The results show that the main participant produces the identity of history teacher in an academic setting where such identity production is not encouraged, e.g. by resemiotisising curricula: thus, policy documents can work as a tool when producing teacher identity. This production of identity is done by employing strong agency, which consequently points to the need of a more elaborated discussion on agency in the tested model.

Political Psychology of European Integration: The (Re)production of Identity and Difference in the Brexit Debate

This article uses political psychology to understand emotions such as anger, hate, and passion in the Brexit debate in order to demonstrate the wider value of the political psychology of European integration. It uses five strands of political psychology to understand European integration, drawing on evidence from the Brexit debate. These strands are individual cognitive psychology, social psychology, social construction, psychoanalysis, and critical political psychology. The article argues that the political psychology of European integration demands an understanding of the interwoven nature of feelings and illusions, the bidirectional interaction of political and psychological processes, and the multiplicity of strands of political psychology in the mutual accommodation and inclusion by European states and peoples. Only in this way is it possible to even begin to comprehend the many ways in which identity and difference are (re)produced by all partners in the Brexit debate and what these processes mean for the wider study of the political psychology of European integration.

Oral History and the Discursive Construction of Identity in Flint, Michigan

This article explores the ways that Flint residents report on their encounters with various kinds of “outsiders” who are influenced by mass‐mediated images that position Flint and its residents in a certain way. Through the voicing of outsiders who engage in the circulation of negative discourses about Flint, residents then insert their own voices as they contest negative discourses about the city. Here, the images that they project about life in Flint provide a powerful counternarrative about what it means to have lived in the city during its deindustrializing period. This suggests that oral history interviews are an important site for the discursive production (and contestation) of individual and collective identities for Flint residents.

Young people’s investments in sexual relationships: A different prioritization of self in the negotiation of safe sex practices in South Africa

In the South African context of high HIV prevalence, sexual relationships are entwined with risk. This qualitative study in a rural context examined how young people negotiate sexual practices and engage with this risk. Data was gathered from men and women (aged 15 to 33) in eight focus groups and 11 individual interviews. Abdication of self-care and deprioritization of self in the negotiation of safe sexual practices are reformulated into an understanding of the varied investments that young people make in particular kinds of sexual relationships. Sexual activity was found to underpin social reputation and identity production. In the trade-off between health protection and group membership, identity was related to investments in relationships that secured status for both genders. Future health-related interventions would need to work with other constructions of self in sexual relationships.

Making sense of energy management practice: reflections on providing low carbon support to three SMEs in the UK

Energy consumption by small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) is collectively significant, and whilst opportunities for substantial, cost-effective efficiency savings exist, take up is low. Whereas research tackling this challenge typically focuses on barriers and drivers to action, this paper offers an alternative perspective, investigating energy management as a practice. Drawing on practice theory and the concept of organisational sensemaking, narrative accounts provide in-depth insights into energy management practice within three SMEs. Auto-ethnographic reflections from 5 years of providing energy and environmental advice are supplemented by findings from carbon footprint assessments and interviews. Findings show that despite energy management being perceived as a peripheral business activity, it is intertwined with organisational identity and knowledge production in each of the three SMEs. Business advisors are instrumental in steering SME energy management practices and have a responsibility to reflect on how they influence processes of knowledge production and meaning-making in organisations. Implications for policy-makers, advisors and the research community are discussed.

Becoming Hispanic: The negotiation of ethnoracial identity in US census interviews

Researchers across disciplines have analyzed the ethnoracial classification of Latinxs in the US census, as well as the ideological, political, and material underpinnings and effects of such classification. In this article, I advance our understanding of the census’ reproduction of racial identities and racial discourse in two ways. First, I demonstrate that sociolinguistic theory and methods can shed new light on census classification in three distinct areas: (1) the categories and classifications themselves, (2) the negotiation of ethnoracial classification during census interviews, and (3) the language in which censuses are conducted. Second, I demonstrate that census-taking does not consist simply of recording preexisting ethnoracial identities, or of disseminating official discourses from interviewers to respondents. Instead, census interviews involve the intersubjective construction and production of ethnoracial identities, as interviewers and respondents negotiate the meaning of the categories provided and their places within them.

Labour migration brokerage and Dalit politics in Andhra Pradesh: a Dalit fabric of labour circulation

ABSTRACTWhy and how do labour migrant brokers engage with henchmen of bosses, small-time criminals and violent politicians? What significance do labour brokers’ political relations have in the fabric of labour circulation? This article argues for migration brokerage to be examined along a broad continuum of brokerage to explore the local fabric of labour circulation in the Indian construction sector. Considering migration brokerage as part of a broader landscape of brokerage firstly allows look at how migration brokers concretely navigate the worlds of labour and politics to pursue their activities and to further their own agendas. It secondly offers insight into how the everyday relations between migrant brokers and henchmen of bosses shape the lives of migrant labourers in the urban construction sector. Based on a detailed ethnography of the relation between a Dalit labour maistri and a Dalit henchman of a boss in a context of violent criminal political economy, this article explores the roles of Dalit politics in shaping the Dalit fabric of labour circulation and labour broker’s trajectories in South India. It further looks at the ambivalent production and mobilisation of Dalit identities in the making of an ideal Dalit migrant labourer.

VÍNCULOS CLUBÍSTICOS DE FUNCIONÁRIOS INFAMES NO FUTEBOL PROFISSIONAL DA REGIÃO SUL DO RS: NARRATIVAS, PERTENCIMENTOS E IDENTIDADES

Este artigo analisa a constituição dos pertencimentos clubísticos e a produção de identidades de funcionários infames que atuam ou atuaram em diferentes clubes do futebol profissional da Região Sul do RS. Tendo como metodologia a História Oral, foram entrevistados quatro funcionários de clubes distintos, possibilitando concluir que o seu pertencimento clubístico se constituiu de diferentes formas. Tais como: idas aos estádios durante a infância, noções de sociabilidade construídas no clube, necessidade de uma atividade remunerada e a influência, mesmo que indireta, da família. Além disso, percebeu-se a importância dos clubes na constituição das identidades dos sujeitos, visto que os narradores, ao construírem uma hierarquia, colocam os clubes atrás apenas de suas famílias. Também foi possível analisar que os funcionários infames empregam diferentes maneiras de torcer durante os jogos, em que o local escolhido e determinadas atitudes são marcadores interessantes de análise.

Evaluating evaluation

AbstractThis study examines a participant’s narrative in a focus group interview dealing with the evaluation of criminal justice policy – the impact of community policing training. However, rather than look at the narrative solely in the speech of the interviewee, I analyze the integration of speech and embodied conduct like gesture, gaze, and posture in the production and negotiation of professional identities. I demonstrate the applied merits of a multimodal approach to criminal justice evaluation in the mapping between denotational text and interactional positioning, a mapping that inheres in embodied stance and broader sociocultural context.

Marriage Registration among Palestinians and Syrians in Jordan

Based on long-term fieldwork in Jordan, this paper discusses two marriage registration practices that have become topics of public debate and locus for intervention projects of development organizations: the early registration of marriages among Palestinian camp residents, and the non-registration of marriages among Syrian refugees. This paper shows how the narratives around marriage registration play a role in the production of identity and senses of belonging and provides insight into the overlaps and gaps between the discourses of development organizations and the concerns of those involved in these practices. In the Palestinian case, the early registration of marriage provides the couple with a limited but important space to get acquainted before the wedding. Women’s organizations and NGOs, however, often blame this practice for the increase in divorce rates before consummation. In the Syrian case, organizations focus on the negative legal and social consequences of not registering a marriage with the state, while conversations with Syrians reveal the obstacles they face while navigating the Jordanian legal system and their need to legitimize their non-registration of marriages.

What lies beneath? Experiencing emotions and caring in oncology.

Medical encounters - while often viewed as centred on conveying clinical knowledge - are also sites of emotion and for exerting emotional labour by healthcare professionals. The temptation to view these encounters as largely 'technical' - an exchange of knowledge or information - can marginalise the complex emotions often experienced by healthcare professionals, and negates the critical work done in these encounters. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 22 Australian medical oncologists, this article explores the experience and meaning of (their) emotions in medical encounters, and the manner in which emotional labour is performed by medical oncologists. Emotions, as it emerges, are central to the 'management' of encounters, ensuring professional sustainability and in 'achieving' clinical outcomes. Here, we broaden understandings of emotionality in oncological work, focusing on emotions as central to the production and enactment of professionalism, relationships and identities across professional careers. We illustrate how the performance of emotional labour reflects a dialectic between notions of 'professionalism' and 'feelings' - which in practice are co-existing and intermingling dimensions of oncology relations - manifested in the practice of 'bounded caring'.

Not Just Merely Different: Travelling Theories, Post-Feminism and the Racialized Politics of Women of Color

When even the so-called “critical” scholarship about women of color and sport, mostly speaks to cultural tropes of difference, the possibility of recovering alternative knowledges becomes limited. For me, uncovering persistent problems from within this field of study, is an essential step to better recovering diverse representations of difference, that are sometimes consciously, and at other times inadvertently, erased. Adding my voice to a number of sport scholars who advocate a decolonising approach, I urge contemporary researchers to theoretically reconsider, and to re-frame, their analysis of difference. In this paper, I do so by utilizing a transnational feminist lens; addressing the transient boundaries of space, identity, belonging, and knowledge production. I specifically elucidate how difference is made, and not just experienced. Through this theoretical intervention, I make an original case for how the “critical” can be put back into critical studies of race, sport and gender.

A clown, a political messiah or a punching bag? Rethinking the performative identity construction of celebrity through social media

In meeting the changing demands of authenticity and visibility in social media, performances of identity and connections are discussed to entail new sociotechnical labours and digital literacies. Research has looked into the construction and presentation of celebrity identities, in light of these developments, but has paid little attention on the celebrities’ experiences and perspectives, which is also due to the lack of willingness of industry insiders in this culturally sensitive business to be interviewed and genuinely talk about its problems. Twelve in-depth interviews with celebrities and entertainment industry practitioners were conducted between 2014 and 2015. Particularly, this article draws on the cases of two established celebrities in Hong Kong and China, and assesses how and why they were unable to actively construct and perform their preferred media identities, highlighting the blurring boundaries among traditional celebrities, micro-celebrities and ordinary people for their construction of online identities through social media, and also elucidating the opportunities and challenges posed by today’s evolving media environment. We argue that social media only superficially open up a site of counter-narratives for celebrities to resist the identities imposed on them by the mainstream media and online audiences. The interviewed celebrities’ contradictory experiences in their self-presentations in social media offer alternative angles to understanding the incoherent and unstable celebrity identity production processes, the blurring boundaries between celebrities and ordinary people through such processes as well as the celebrities’ capacity to reclaim control in asserting their ‘true’ selves.