Public Identity Research Articles

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

The Prospect of Pragmatic Confucian Democracy: Reply to Dryzek, Macedo, Ackerly, and Li

Morphological and Molecular Characterization of Trichuris sp. (Nematoda: Trichuridae) in Crested Porcupines (Hystrix cristata; Rodentia: Hystricidae) from Italy

Adult specimens of Trichuris sp. collected from crested porcupines (Hystrix cristata) from Italy were characterized using an integrative taxonomic approach involving morphological and molecular tools. The morphological features of this Trichuris sp. were compared to data already available for Trichuris spp. from Hystrix sp., revealing diagnostic traits, such as spicule length in males or vulva shape in females, which distinguish this Trichuris sp. from the other species. Evidence from sequences analysis of the partial mitochondrial COX1 region indicated that the taxon under study is a distinct lineage. Biometrical and genetic data suggested this Trichuris sp. to be a valid and separated taxon. However, since molecular data from other Trichuris spp. infecting Hystrix, such as T. infundibulus, T. hystricis, T. javanica, T.landak and T. lenkorani, are missing in public repositories, the number and identity of distinct lineages able to infect porcupines remain only partially defined.

The Other Otto Dresel: Public and Private Musical Identities in a German-American ‘Forty-Eighter’ and his Family, c. 1860–1880

This essay explores the musical life of a German-American ‘Forty-Eighter’ and his family, with particular attention to their domestic musical preferences as reflected in five surviving sheet-music albums. Otto Dresel, easily confused with the far more prominent German musician of the same name who settled in Boston, was a gifted amateur whose public musical activities, both choral and instrumental, typified those of many German arrivals of that generation. This was a largely male realm of affirmative, expansive ideals; here the stress was on civic virtues, happy fraternal bonds, and the celebration of German musical culture as an elevating force in America. The family albums suggests that the music he shared with his wife and children at home in Columbus, Ohio, served quite different purposes. It was performed intimately, in an often melancholy and even mournful mode that reflected the need for personal consolation and was thus more in keeping with typical Victorian attitudes toward the domestic, womanly sphere. Evidence about the troubled course of Dresel's life helps us understand his growing need to take refuge in his home and family as well as in music that helped him and his loved ones deal – for a time, at least – with deepening feelings of regret, failure and loss. This marked contrast between the public and private sides of the Dresels’ musical lives points to a need for greater attention to the distinctive character and functions of intimate family music-making in nineteenth-century America, especially during the years of widespread disillusionment and cultural reorientation that followed the Civil War.

Templates for Authorship: American Women’s Literary Autobiography of the 1930s

Templates for Authorship: American Women’s Literary Autobiography of the 1930s

Enacting the entrepreneurial self: Public-private innovation as an actualization of a neoliberal market dispositive

Drawing on Foucault’s writings on power, neoliberalism, and the dispositive, this article analyses the identity politics that is immanent in a new collaborative practice between the public and private sector called public-private innovation (PPI). We argue that PPI is an element in actualizing a neoliberal market dispositive through inclining subjects to work on themselves in order to actualize their entrepreneurial self, thereby disconnecting them from their public service identity. The construction of two narratives supports the constitution of the political space of PPI: the fiery soul narrative and the need narrative. An important part of this identity politics is the construction of the narrative of the individual entrepreneur. Rather than expressing new public governance in the public sector, PPI actualizes a dispositive that marketizes public services as part of a neoliberal agenda. The narrative of PPI distracts from the marketization of public sector and leaves no other space for public-sector employees than to constitute themselves within contradictory feelings of enthusiasm and anxiety, determination and self-blame, responsibility and inadequacy, and bustle and confusion.

Managing sullied pleasure: dining out while black and middle class in South Africa

ABSTRACT Dining out is generally associated with, and taken as part of everyday consumption choices of the middle classes. However, eating at top-end restaurants is a problematic experience for some members of South Africa’s black middle class, proving that it is a loaded consumption practice. This appears anomalous given the much-touted “rise” of the African middle class in the country. This article uses essays by Ndumiso Ngcobo and Fred Khumalo, as well as interviews with both authors to explore why a potentially pleasurable experience such as eating out results in sullied gratification. Using the concept of public identities in which the restaurant is a theatre, the article argues that blackness complicates middle-classness, suggesting that affording pleasure is not the only condition to enjoy it; there might be need to manage leisure. The questioning of blacks’ legitimacy as diners in these spaces raises questions about race, class, citizenship and one’s humanity.

When Posting Is Believing

Abstract. Social network sites (SNS) facilitate the expression of users’ opinions to a large audience. This research aimed to investigate whether the characteristics of this new media context strengthen the adaptation of opinions to the majority and lead to an internalization of the expressed views. Based on literature on public self-presentation and identity shifts, it was assumed that the publicness of and the identifiability within SNS elicit stronger expression effects than online forums or non-public settings. A between-subjects experiment ( N = 302) varied the visible majority opinion on a news issue as well as the media context in which participants were asked to write down their opinion. Results showed significant adaptation effects to the majority (positive vs. negative comments) across media contexts. The internalization of attitudes was stronger in SNS groups with a more relevant audience but also occurred in other settings. Consequences for the formation of public opinion are discussed.

Transformational-transactional leadership and unethical pro-organizational behavior in the public sector: does public service motivation make a difference?

ABSTRACT This study focuses on a unique phenomenon known as ‘unethical pro-organizational behaviour (UPB)’ that an explicit discussion on it is rarely present within public administration. We investigate the role of transactional and transformational leadership on UPB in the public sector using survey data on 4,166 bureaucrats in South Korea. Also, we explore how public service motivation (PSM) moderates the relationship between leadership and UPB. The results reveal that transactional leadership is positively related to followers’ UPB. On the other hand, transformational leadership has a curvilinear relationship (inverted U-shaped) with employees’ UPB. These findings show that followers’ unethical behaviour for the sake of organization is vulnerable to the leaders’ influence, but the direction of impact may vary depending on their leadership style. Moreover, we find that PSM moderates the relationship between two different leadership styles and follower’s UPB. These results imply that individual civil servants, even if their behaviours are under the great influence of leaders, can control UPB through public service identity.

Who Are the Homeless? Centering Anti-Black Racism and the Consequences of Colorblind Homeless Policies

Since first becoming a major social issue in the 1980s, homelessness has been a racialized problem in the United States. Its disproportionate impact on Black Americans is primarily driven by structural racism and the limited housing and employment opportunities for Black Americans. The first major federal legislation to address the needs of the United States’ homeless population—the Stewart B. McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act of 1987 omitted the root causes of Black housing instability, thereby proving ineffective at mitigating Black homelessness. As a result, Black Americans remain disproportionately impacted today. In addition to being neglected by the McKinney–Vento Homeless Assistance Act, Black men and women experiencing homelessness are more likely to be discriminated against than any other racial group. For example, Black men are more likely to be arrested than anyone else, and Black women are the most likely to experience hyper-surveillance. This paper uses the Public Identity Framework to argue that in the 1980s, advocates and opponents of homeless legislation created two contradictory public personas to shape public discourse and policies for the homeless. A colorblind public persona was used to pass the McKinney–Vento Homeless Act; meanwhile, the public persona of the “underclass” was used to criminalize and shame the homeless. Both personas operated concurrently to create a dual public identity for the homeless that influenced policy and ultimately harmed Black people.

‘Some Very Queer Couples’: Gender Migrants and Intimacy in Nineteenth‐Century America

AbstractThis article contends that the term gender migrant – which describes a person who changed gender on a long‐term basis in their everyday life – offers a useful tool for grappling with the ambiguities of nineteenth‐century transgender history. Examining four cases of gender change that circulated in the popular press between the antebellum era and the turn of the twentieth century, the article brings to light intimate relationships that do not fit within the categories of female husbands or sexual inverts that have become familiar to historians of sexuality. Some female‐assigned gender migrants lived as men and sought same‐gender intimacy in the company of other men. Reading ambiguous cases of love and marriage from multiple angles provides insight into the strategies that resourceful gender migrants used to legitimise their public gender identities.

“We are different, that’s a fact, but they treat us like we’re different-er”: understandings of autism and adolescent identity development

PurposeA key development in early adolescence is the active construction of individual identity; for autistic young people, integrating the idea of “being autistic” forms part of this process. The purpose of this paper is to explore identity development from a contextualist perspective, foregrounding young people’s experiences within mainstream educational settings.Design/methodology/approachA longitudinal, qualitative methodology was used: semi-structured interviews were conducted annually with 14 autistic young people, their parents and teachers between school years 6 and 9.FindingsYoung people felt different from their neurotypical peers and their acceptance of their diagnosis changed over time as they managed their developing personal and public identities. In pursuit of being treated “normally,” many camouflaged their differences at school, which sometimes involved opting out of school-based support. Adults described their own understandings of autism and discussed the responses of others in the school environment to autistic differences.Originality/valueThe influence of sociocultural discourses of autism on young people’s identity development is discussed and implications for both school based and post-diagnostic support for young people and their families explored.

How relevant for you is to be a moral person? Polish validation of the Self-Importance of Moral Identity Scale.

ObjectiveThe Self-Importance of Moral Identity Scale (SMIS) was developed by Aquino and Reeds with the purpose of measuring how people evaluate their private (Internalization subscale) and public (Symbolization subscale) moral identity. SMIS has become commonly and broadly used in many studies. The aim of this paper is to validate the Polish version of SMIS by analyzing its structure and relation to similar measures (such as The Moral Self-Concept Scale developed by Stake and The Moral Self-Image Scale created by Jordan, Leliveld and Tenbrunsel), declared past prosocial behaviors and readiness to donate money.MethodsThe translation-back-translation procedure was used to maintain semantic, idiomatic, and conceptual equivalence of the original scale. Throughout four separate studies the psychometric properties of the Polish version of the scale were assessed: Study 1 (N = 529) was carried out to derive the factor structure using the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and cross-validate it; Study 2 (N = 602) and Study 3 (N = 899) were performed to confirm and replicate the structure with the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA); gender-balanced Study 4 (N = 862) was conducted to assess measurement invariance over gender using multigroup CFA, and to normalize the scale. Validity of the scale was assessed based on each study.ResultsA stable two-factor structure using 10 items was replicated in four different samples. The results showed that reliability (α) was between 0.71 and 0.81 for Internalization, and 0.76 and 0.81 for Symbolization. Validity was confirmed in terms of the expected pattern of correlations with morality measures and factorial structure. Metric invariance across gender was confirmed with possible exception of factor loadings on two items regarding communication of values. Polish normalization for men and women was constructed.ConclusionsPolish validation of SMIS proved to be a structurally consistent and valid measure.

Alone With Goffman: Impression Management and the TV Series

Alone is an American reality television series on the History Channel. The show features 10 contestants who are vying to outlast each other while living off the land. Notably, there is no camera crew, and the contestants must film themselves everyday; the production team creates a weekly program that marks the journey of each individual. This study sought to understand the degree to which participants are able to shape their public identities through the video footage they shot and that was subsequently edited in Alone’s cutting room. The research team employed an explorative case study methodology, which allowed them to watch hours of publicly available official video clips from the History Channel’s Alone YouTube channel. The analysis was driven by theory (Goffman’s The Presentation of Self conceptual framework) and an inductive thematic analysis, which took place in a cyclical fashion through interpretation meetings at the end of each of the six series that were watched. The findings first showed that the contestants were performing to multiple audiences, such as their families, the public, the producers, and even God. Second, the boundary between the frontstage and the backstage was highly blurred. Third, the contestants were able to continue shaping and “repairing” their identities through their own social media outlets after the program. Finally, the theme of gendered approaches to living outdoors shone through in ways that were very complex, overlapping, and non-binary. There is an undeniably strong “impression management tension” between the selves that participants wanted to project and the narratives that were constructed by the Alone program’s producers.

Morphology of Intersectionality

Forensic anthropologists operate within a medico-legal context, performing analyses to estimate a biological profile (ancestry, age, sex, stature) and make observations on trauma, pathological conditions, taphonomy, and other anomalies evident in skeletal remains. These findings are reported to the appropriate requesting agency to narrow down the possible identity of the unknown individual and to understand the death event. Boundaries of identity and the terminology used to describe and explain identity are dynamic and intersectional. Ancestry estimation is important because there is a bridge between ancestral categories and sociocultural labels. Yet, a lack of agreement between ancestry estimates and social identifiers exists for certain groups. To better understand why this disagreement exists, a three-component concept (bio-origin identity, public ancestral-racial identity, and self ancestral-racial identity) modeled after sociological frameworks is employed. This article explores the identity of a single individual within the study sample using the three-component concept. Results highlight that discordance exists between the identity approximated by ancestry estimation and the application of this identity to the sociocultural context. Understanding the importance of the intersectional nature of the terminology used in instances of forensic identification is imperative so as to not hinder identifications and marginalize groups.

Spacemakers: Speculative design, public space and monuments

Controversies in current events highlight the important role that public space and monuments may play in demonstrating community values or conversely projecting status quo articulations of inequity. With this in mind, we felt compelled to develop curricula to unpack the complex relationships between public space and place identity through the shared ownership and development of public monuments. We started a curricular project called Spacemakers to engage learners in arts-based reflections on public space, identity and social justice through the generation of proposed monuments as matters of concern. Through frameworks of history and memory, design practice and cultural geography, we articulate the unfolding of the curriculum as we consider the monument as a curricular object. This article reviews the curricular activities we developed for the Spacemakers project, their theoretical and pedagogical foundations, and the potential for making use of speculative design and critical making as powerful vehicles for reflection on public space and embodied learning.

Dwelling in the World with People of Peace

Dwelling in the World is a practice designed to help churches to form a public shared identity in the mission of God with people in their wider communities who want to work with them—their “people of peace”. Grounded in the missio Dei, this practice offers a concrete example of missional discipleship. How does this work in practice? And what happens between church members and their people of peace? Based on research conducted in 2020, this article presents that research and its findings, paying close attention to the lived experience of those involved. It argues that an exchange takes place which is relational rather than transactional where the partners are drawn together into the life of God as they join together in God’s mission. This is a disturbing and transforming public journey, which decentres discipleship from the private, individualised world of church and, by means of attention to the “other,” re-centres it in God and God’s agency in mission. Therefore the outcome may be appropriately named as missional discipleship.

Understanding Gut Feelings: Transformations in Coping With Inflammatory Bowel Disease Among Young Adults.

Past studies have revealed a dizzying array of coping techniques employed by persons living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Unfortunately, research has provided little insight into when and why individuals adopt or abandon particular coping strategies. Using a retrospective narrative approach, we explored how participants made sense of changes in their approach to coping over time. Shifts in coping strategies were associated with particular illness experiences that wrought new understandings of IBD and novel identity challenges. They followed a common processual form and were marked by a movement away from techniques of purification, normalization, and banalization toward the development of a more communicative body. This was accompanied by notable shifts in identity work. Notably, participants moved from a preoccupation with maintaining continuity and sameness to permitting their extraordinary bodies to occupy a place in their public and personal identities. Implications of this process for theory and practice are discussed.

“I’m a hurler … basically just a hurler”: a mixed methods study of the athletic identity of elite Irish Gaelic Athletic Association dual career athletes

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine the manifestation of the unique cultural backdrop of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) (the historical and political underpinnings of the GAA; the promotion of elite GAA athletes as amateurs despite the increased professionalism in the sports; the significance of the club culture in the GAA) in the athletic identity of elite GAA dual career athletes (DCAs). A mixed methods research (MMR) design was adopted using quantitative and qualitative elements. Elite GAA DCAs (n = 9) representing the sports of hurling and Gaelic football simultaneously completed the Athletic Identity Measurement Scale (AIMS) and engaged in semi-structured interviews. Athletic identity data were analysed from the completed AIMS and semi-structured interview data were analysed using a 6-step thematic analysis as per Braun et al. (2016). Eight of the DCAs measured “high” on the AIMS and athletic identities were largely reflective of the elite athlete performance narrative in line with the increased professionalism in the sports. The impact of the club culture in the GAA was evident particularly in the public athletic identity, exclusivity, and negative affectivity dimensions of athletic identity. The niche cultural backdrop of the GAA was manifest in all four dimensions of athletic identity in elite GAA DCAs, with the impact variable on an individual basis. This, along with the prevalence of an elite athlete performance narrative in the expression of their athletic identity needs to be considered regarding DC engagement and support.

Holidaying with Late-Victorian Theatrical Celebrities: Rest, Wellbeing and Public Identity

‘In the Theatrical World our talk is all of holidays.’ So opened one of Hearth and Home magazine’s gossip columns in July 1897. The holidays taken by London’s late-Victorian West End theatre stars attracted regular press coverage and formed a regular subject of letters between actresses, actors and their friends. The narratives of hard work and public service that had played a significant role in improvements in the theatre industry’s reputational and cultural status prompted a secondary narrative around rest: a widely shared understanding that rest was necessary to counter the impacts of the ongoing on- and off-stage labour undertaken by stage stars. Together newspaper accounts and correspondence capture both industry-focused concerns about the maintenance of the strong physical and mental health required to sustain a theatrical career and social disquiet around the changing world of work more widely and patterns of overwork and exhaustion. In this essay I consider a range of press accounts and correspondence to consider how evidence of stage stars’ holidays can extend our understandings of the professional culture of the late-Victorian theatre industry and theatre’s contribution to wider social and political ideas surrounding work and rest, and physical and mental health.

Blockchain based Privacy Preserving User Authentication Protocol for Distributed Mobile Cloud Environment

The development in cloud computing platforms has resulted, hosting many day-to-day service applications in the cloud. To avail the services provided by different cloud service providers (CSPs), the mobile user has to register his/her identity with the CSPs. The mobile user (MU) has to remember multiple identities and credentials to access various CSPs. Many single sign-on schemes have been proposed in the literature to eliminate multiple registrations by mobile users to access CSPs. Most of these schemes rely on a trusted third party known as Registration Authority Center (RAC), which is a centralized entity to manage the identity information of all the mobile users registered with it. The centralized RAC has two operational problems, i.e., RAC has full control over the data it possesses, resulting in the possibility of the data breach and increased risk of single-point-of-failure. In this paper, we propose a blockchain based privacy preserving user authentication protocol for distributed mobile cloud environment, which solves these two traditional problems with centralized registration centers. In proposed protocol, the registration of MU and CSP are performed through public blockchain network for MU to access CSPs and the authentication was performed between MU and CSP through public blockchain. The public blockchain network stores MU and CSPs identity information. Public blockchain network provides integrity to the data stored in it and secures the system from single-point-of-failure. In addition, security analysis and performance analysis were also performed for proposed protocol and it showed that the proposed protocol is secure from all-known attacks with better performance efficiency.