Role Of Collective Identity Research Articles

Working towards a green job?: Autoworkers, climate change and the role of collective identity in union renewal

This article examines the important, yet under-examined, issue of green workforce development and industrial relations and the role of unions and workers in shaping a transition to a green economy. Based on interviews with labour leaders and rank-and-file workers in the auto manufacturing sector in Ontario, Canada, this article interrogates how environmentalism and climate change potentially construct a sense of purpose among heterogenous union members, particularly in the context of decreasing union power, de-industrialization and neoliberalism. In order to understand how climate change can shape union purpose, we investigate how a diverse range of union members – beyond leaders – understand climate change and the appropriate strategies to address it and how this sustains or hinders collective identity within the union. We argue that understanding internal differences in collective identities is key for unions to start to rebuild power resources. Our research demonstrates that future union success and solidarity among workers might be dependent on the ability of unions to recognize and negotiate multiple collective identities. By incorporating innovations into the union, a more flexible and multi-dimensional collective identity regarding labour environmentalism could be built and sustained.

#PapuanLivesMatter in the Wake of #BlackLivesMatter: Relations of Collective Identity in Twitter Activism

Collective identity, or a sense of ‘we-ness’ in relation or contrast with one another, is a crucial feature of social activism. Especially considering the rise of intersectional movements in today’s era, it is important to look into the role of collective identity in shaping online movements. This article intends to unravel the relations of collective identity in the Twitter activism #PapuanLivesMatter that emerged in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter. Thirteen tweets that carry the hashtags #PapuanLivesMatter and #BlackLivesMatter, either separately or together, were analyzed. The theory of appraisal from Martin and White was applied to identify how the tweets enact relations of collective identity by looking into the implicit and explicit evaluation of the text that relies on positive and negative classifications. The results show that the relations of collective identity in #PapuanLivesMatter during the rise of #BlackLivesMatter are congruent at the broad level and divergent at the group level. At the broad level, #PapuanLivesMatter and #BlackLivesMatter address the same issues and collectively work toward raising awareness for discrimination against black lives. Although #PapuanLivesMatter still maintains its representation of discrimination at the group level, it propagates ideologies and objectives that are exclusively directed for West Papuan causes, namely ethnic discrimination and political self-determination.

Collective Identity for Societal Building in the Light of the Teachings of Iqbal

This paper attempts to emphasize the role of collective identity in a group or community in the societal building in the light of the teachings of the poet Iqbal. People need to change their focus from personal-selves to a collective-self. It is described as to how healthier people are the need of the moneyed class. They are part of the stakeholders in any societal movement. The paper describes how to involve their interest. Outreach is easier these days because of digital instruments. A toolkit has been developed following which the individual selves can be mobilized together into a collective self, for the societal building. A few case studies are referred where collective identity among stakeholders is studied: in a renovation project environment in Finland, in management environment in Norway, and spiritual workforce environment in the US.

Identifying Social Commerce Visitor's Response Towards Click Through Social Display Ads: The Role of Collective Identity

Identifying Social Commerce Visitor's Response Towards Click Through Social Display Ads: The Role of Collective Identity

Innovation in established industries undergoing digital transformation: the role of collective identity and public values

ABSTRACT This paper discusses how established industries adapt to digital transformation. While digitalisation is perceived as an impetus for change, either due to the opportunities or threats it brings about, not all industries are able to change unlimitedly. We seek to understand digital transformation concerning products and services perceived to have a wider public value. Our empirical case is the newspaper industry in Norway, which has a strong collective identity tied to the societal function of independent journalism. We find that an industry with a resilient identity leaning towards preservation can learn how to use the digital space to adapt and innovate effectively. The adaptation and innovation processes are shaped by the interplay between the collective identity and the nature of digital work and innovation. The outcome is a continued emphasis on retaining the core mission but with an increasingly pragmatic approach to how and in what form it is safeguarded. Continuous collaborative experimentation and deliberation on the fit between innovations and the collective identity is a key change mechanism. Our study contributes to a better understanding of collective identities and their interplay with innovation.

Attitudes of Indigenous Minority Leaders toward Political Events in Their Trans-State National Group: Between Identity, Conflict and Values

How do leaders of indigenous minorities perceive political events among their trans-state national group? What motivates their attitudes toward these events? This article, drawing on a survey and elite interviews, examines the attitudes of Palestinian leaders in Israel, as a case study of an indigenous minority, toward the events (the Arab Spring) in their trans-state national group. The findings suggest that attitudes of Palestinian leaders in Israel toward the Arab Spring are determined by three main factors: their national or religious collective identity rather than their civic identity (national level), their values (international level), and the backdrop of the Arab-Israeli conflict (local level). The implications are as follows: an absence of change in Palestinians’ traditional alienation toward Israel; membership in the Arab world has somewhat replaced the framework of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a basis for positions toward regional issues; Palestinian leaders in Israel are divided regarding their values, fears and hopes for change; and that the interaction between the Israeli and international sphere determines their attitudes as an indigenous people. The intermixing of these elements shows the flexible (sometimes secondary) role of collective identity and the rise in democratic values rather than traditional issues.

Who Gets ‘to Guru’? Scientist TED Speakers and the Role of Collective Identity in Peer Evaluation of Audience Diversification

Who Gets ‘to Guru’? Scientist TED Speakers and the Role of Collective Identity in Peer Evaluation of Audience Diversification

Symbolic Legitimacy of Social Ordering and Conflict Settlement Practices: The Role of Collective Identities in Local Politics of Tajikistan

ABSTRACT Collective identities like Islamic, kinship and geographical affiliations commit people to norms and practices of social ordering and influence their everyday practices. This article discusses how collective identities commit people in southern Tajikistan to patriarchal and authoritarian ordering and conflict settlement in view of unequal and contested distribution of power. A commitment to such illiberal norms and practices legitimises an exploitation of marginalised people. It discredits and prevents their discontent, court deals or open resistance. Furthermore, patriarchal and authoritarian conflict management ostracises rivals and/or suppresses those who criticise a hierarchical distribution of resources, co-optation deals, and patron-client exchanges.

State Ownership and “State-Sharing”: The Role of Collective Identities and the Sociopolitical Cleavage between Ethnic Macedonians and Ethnic Albanians in the Republic of North Macedonia

AbstractThe article analyzes, from a historical and institutional perspective, the sociopolitical cleavages existing between ethnic Macedonians and ethnic Albanians in the Republic of North Macedonia. Although primarily ethnic, the division between the two groups is deeply connected to state ownership and the official status each group occupies and wishes to occupy in it. By scrutinizing both groups’ claims, standpoints, and dissatisfactions, the article asserts that the implementation of consociationalism in 2001, through the de facto institutionalization of ethnicity, has partly soothed both groups’ frustrations, using the pragmatic exploitation of the existing ethnic divide as a proxy for “state sharing” in addition to power sharing.

From social movements to cloud protesting: the evolution of collective identity

This article develops a conceptual framework for understanding collective action in the age of social media, focusing on the role of collective identity and the process of its making. It is grounded on an interactionist approach that considers organized collective action as a social construct with communicative action at its core [Melucci, A. 1996. Challenging codes: Collective action in the information age. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press]. It explains how micromobilization is mediated by social media, and argues that social media play a novel broker role in the activists' meaning construction processes. Social media impose precise material constraints on their social affordances, which have profound implications in both the symbolic production and organizational dynamics of social action. The materiality of social media deeply affects identity building, in two ways: firstly, it amplifies the ‘interactive and shared’ elements of collective identity (Melucci, 1996), and secondly, it sets in motion a politics of visibility characterized by individuality, performance, visibility, and juxtaposition. The politics of visibility, at the heart of what I call ‘cloud protesting’, exacerbates the centrality of the subjective and private experience of the individual in contemporary mobilizations, and has partially replaced the politics of identity typical of social movements. The politics of visibility creates individuals-in-the-group, whereby the ‘collective’ is experienced through the ‘individual’ and the group is the means of collective action, rather than its end.

The Role of Collective Identities in Democratization Processes. The Case of the European Union and Southeast Asia

In this essay, I examine the role of collective identities in democratization processes in Europe and East and Southeast Asia. This study contributes to the latest academic “neorealist-liberal debate” and constructivist theories, by emphasizing a crucial acknowledgement. With the exception of the case of the European Union, which boasts the only peaceful democratization process in the post-war era, in East and Southeast Asia there is strong evidence that the orthodoxy of democratization processes is going to take place. This means that in this vast area, democratization processes will be long-lasting social constructions mixed with strong ethnic consciousness, and therefore, not so peaceful but rather violent processes.

Post-national citizenship without post-national identity? A case study of UK immigration policy and intra-EU migration

A key dividing line in the literature on post-national citizenship concerns the role of collective identity. While some hold that a post-national form of identity is desirable in developing citizenship in contexts such as the European Union (EU), others question the defensibility of a collective identity at this supra-national level. The aim of this article is to intervene in this debate, drawing on qualitative research to consider the extent to which post-national citizenship should be accompanied by a form of post-national identity. The article takes the UK as a case study, and explores tensions between the immigration policies and rhetoric of the Coalition Government since 2010 and the post-national citizenship rights of EU citizens migrating into British local communities. It draws on independently collected qualitative data from the county of Herefordshire, UK, to argue that the persistent reinforcement of national identity reproduces national lines of difference which further problematise the full realisation of European citizenship. At a theoretical level, this highlights the need for the development of post-national citizenship rights to be accompanied by a paradigmatic shift in the way that collective identity is constituted in post-national contexts.

Voices from the Kibbutz: Four Mothers, New Profile, and Women in Black

If there is any social organization that has provided a powerful illustration of the permeable boundaries between social politics—defined by Stephen M. Buechler as “forms of collective action that challenge power relations without an explicit focus on the state”—and social movements, and the role of collective identity in transforming either, as defined for women by Betty Friedan—it would be the Israeli kibbutz movement. The research presented here on grassroots Israeli women activists, a significant proportion of whom had grown up or had lived in a kibbutz, suggests that the social politics of everyday life on a kibbutz facilitated women's participation in larger social movements for peace, but also placed constraints on their activism. Many of these women had left or were in the process of leaving the kibbutz between 1989 and 1999, when this research was conducted. Those who had already left, and anchor women who organized urban demonstrations, saw the kibbutz as a conservative anti-woman force. Nonetheless, evidence gathered from qualitative interviewing with them suggests that the kibbutzim supported women who were politically active on national issues. Several women-led social protest movements illustrate how the kibbutz geared its members to think about the interplay of the moral and social orders in the small spaces of everyday life.

THE ROLE OF COLLECTIVE IDENTITY IN INHIBITING MOBILIZATION: SOLIDARITY AND SUPPRESSION IN OAK RIDGE

On the basis of documents and in-depth interviews with 80 residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, we analyzed the lack of collective mobilization against documented environmental problems. Collective identity is a central concept in new social movement theory and is seen as a major determinant of collective action. We borrowed the concept but examined the converse. Individual activism has consistently emerged in Oak Ridge without the development of the collective processes that mark mobilization. We examined the establishment of a special collective identity for the community in Oak Ridge, then analyzed the role of collective identity in the suppression of health grievances through heightened saliency, consciousness, and opposition to activism.