Sense Of Identity Research Articles

Ah, Wilderness!

Ah, Wilderness!

“The cuts, they trimmed the people” – School children, precarity and European citizenship

Recently, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (2012) have funded programmes designed to advance European citizenship and citizen competences through education. This paper reports on the findings from one project, Creative Connections, designed to encourage the “voices” of young people in exploring European identities.Children (aged 9–16) in 25 schools in six European Union (EU) countries (UK, Finland, Spain, Czech Republic, Portugal and Ireland) developed artworks that explored perceptions of European citizenship. Their art was posted on a secure website and they discussed images with peers using automatic online translated blogs. The project facilitated representations of identity/belonging using a range of media. However, some artworks suggested that children were alienated from “Europe”, particularly EU responses to global austerity. This paper uses the theory of precarity to examine the ways in which the children expressed their concerns.Some artworks suggest that recent economic and political decisions have had the effect of challenging a sense of shared European citizenship; they resist a positive sense of identification with Europe and demonstrate fear for their future based on their current lives. This indicates that the EU’s educational goals to promote citizenship competences may require revision to account for the challenges of contemporary societies.

Responding to Robert Wolff’s In Defense of Anarchism

While I partly agree with earlier responses to Wolff’s anarchist proposal, I find them inadequate or counter-productive in one way or another. Partly in contrast and partly to supplement, I object to Wolff’s argument that individual autonomy is incompatible with state authority by arguing that this incompatibility is negated if individual autonomy is represented by internal moral and practical convictions for obeying state command. I fault Wolff’s avoidance of contractualism and his presentation of state as alien, and show that his definition of authority is actually a definition of power. I object to Wolff’s assumption that men are purely rational animals, and that rationality is the only component of human decisions, which is foundational to his proposal that men can exist without state or social organization. I argue that Wolff’s de jure attack on state ricochets into individual autonomy: if there is no state in the ideal sense, it is because there is no individual autonomy in the ideal sense.Keywords: anarchism, state authority, individual autonomy, freedom, responsibility

A critical analysis of the use of fair value by Islamic Financial Institutions

PurposeThis paper aims to address a specific question over the compatibility of International Financial Reporting Standards with Islamic finance regarding the use of interest rate as discounting rate in impairment testing and valuation techniques.Design/methodology/approachInductive methodology and qualitative-narrative methods are used to explore the available texts and literature.FindingsThere are two main findings: first, the use of reference rate obtained in non-Islamic financial system is inappropriate from the Islamic perspective. Interest-based valuation techniques have not been adopted by the Accounting and Auditing Organization for Islamic Financial Institutions in its adaptation of conventional accounting practices, and the majority of Islamic scholars argue against Interest rate benchmarking. Second, the authors suggest nominal gross domestic product (NGDP) growth rate as an alternative benchmark because Islamic finance, in its ideal sense, is based on and closely linked to the real sector. Moreover, recent studies show that there are no statistical differences between NGDP growth rate and nominal interest rate for most of the countries studied.Originality/valueThis paper highlights the accounting implications of the prohibition of interest for valuation techniques and raises the need of acceptable alternative pricing benchmark.

Identity, football and Croatian national team members from the diaspora

In this paper the author briefly presents his fieldwork results, with an emphasis on studying the relationship between football and the construction of children’s, grandson’s and great-grandson’s national identities in first-generation Croatian migrants. Specifically, the research focuses on Croatian national football team members from the diaspora who rather choose to play for their “imagined homeland” than the national team of their country of birth. If we agree that one of sport’s functions is, among other things, to act as a mechanism of national solidarity - promoting the sense of identity and unity - football proves to be an ideal field for studying the symbolic dimensions of ethnicity, discursive shaping of identity and practices trough which athletic (and) national loyalty is manifested. Through the coding of interview transcripts, organizing data into categories and analyzing conducted interviews, the author examines the dynamic relationship between expressing national identity and personal choices of the individual as to which national team he should join.

Scale Development of Taiwan Teacher's Sense of Organization Identification --From the Viewpoint of Workplace Spirituality

This study adopts workplace spirituality viewpoint to develop Teacher' Sense of Organizational Identification Scale. There are four procedures in process of developing the scale: 1. Literature analysis: In the past, people mainly developed Sense of Organizational Identification Scales by social identification theory or workplace spirituality. Sense of organization identification from scales of workplace spirituality is classified as the organization level, which content can be further divided as sense of goal connection, sense of identification with organization's values, and sense of organization care. Following literature analysis, draft of 18 items was proposed. 2. Reviewed by experts: After the initial draft of the 18 items were reviewed by four experts, one was deleted, one added, fourteen remaining the same, and three modified. 3. Exploratory Factor Analysis(EFA): The 18 items after reviewed by the experts were conducted EFA(N=235), and further divided into item analysis, factor analysis, and reliability analysis. In the first analysis, due to low loading of two items, we deleted them. After analyzed again, the reliability became acceptable. 4. Confirmatory Factor Analysis(CFA): We further investigated 332 teachers to confirm whether the Three Factor model's 16 items are stable. The result showed the initial model fits well. In addition, the initial model's basic fit does not offends estimation, and the fit of the internal structure is acceptable(including the individual reliability, the composite reliability, the average variation extraction, and the construct discrimination analysis). Up to now, the Three Factor 16 items in the Teacher's Sense of Organizational Identification Scale was established, including sense of connection to organization's goal's(5 items), sense of connected to organization's goals(5 items), and sense of identification with organization's values(6 items). To conclude, the Sense of Organizational Identification Scale with three factor's 16 items has acceptable reliability for relative research.

O interculturalismo político e a integração dos imigrantes: o caso português

The immigrant integration policy aims to promote social cohesion and to forge a sense ofidentification with the national community, by establishing bonds of solidarity and the sharing ofvalues and practices among all residents in the territory. In Portugal, in recent years, interculturalismhas been presented as one of the structuring principles of such a policy. In this article, we intend toshow how this policy is reflected in the two first Plans for the Integration of Immigrants, selectingand assessing the measures more directly related to promoting interculturality. We found thatthe vast majority of measures announced as being intercultural in both documents aims to showthe existing cultural diversity and enable the public administration to deal with diversity. Whilethese measures are important to promote and facilitate the integration of immigrants, they arenevertheless not enough to show the intercultural approach of the Portuguese integration policy.

Transforming values into action: Advocacy as a professional imperative.

The goal of enabling meaningful occupation for all requires occupational therapy to become a more socially and politically responsible discipline. This paper argues that occupational therapy's dominant individualist perspective is too narrow to meet this goal. It presents an argument for integrating advocacy into occupational therapy identity and discusses why we should advocate at political and public levels. Although the dominant paradigm and political climate pose challenges, there must be a realignment of the balance between helping individuals who are facing disruptions in their occupational lives and addressing systems and structures that prevent them from moving forward. Adopting a broader sociopolitical approach involves engaging in advocacy as a key strategy. Indeed, advocacy is a professional imperative for occupational therapy. Advocacy must become part of the process of professional socialization. A new set of competencies is needed in our educational programs and in our professional development, accompanied by a sense of self-confident idealism.

Fear, Regulations, and the Fragile Exoskeleton of Medical Professionalism.

We live in a world riddled with rules. Standards of group behavior innervate virtually every aspect of our social and work lives. Some are formal (laws); others are informal and tacit. Some appear well intentioned; others, draconian. Most arise from—and reflect— power dynamics. This can be the power of groups (how ‘‘people like us’’ see and do things), or the power of those among us able to impose their will on others. As a form of social structure, rules can precipitate unanticipated consequences 1 and subcultures of purposeful circumvention. Some circumvention is public and transparent: ‘‘the rules say do it this way, but everybody knows it is best to do it the other way.’’ Others are sub rosa—even subversive. At the group level, acts of opposition rarely are clandestine, sometimes rising to the level of insurrection. Medicine’s current insurrection against the principles of maintenance of certification is a case in point. 2,3 Whatever the unintended or oppositional particulars, reactions to rules often spawn still more rules as those in power attempt to mute the havoc wrought by countervailing action. Examples abound. Americans face a regulatory environment strewn with more than 4000 types of federal crimes (a 50% increase since 1980) and a Code of Federal Regulations that exceeds 175 000 pages. The National Collegiate Athletic Association rulebook, covering college sports, is infamous for having morphed into a mountainous tangle of qualifications and addenda. This April, Churchill Downs issued a bevy of new rules that outlaw the use of drones and selfie sticks during the Kentucky Derby. And so it goes. In an ideal sense, professionals (unlike denizens of ‘‘normal’’ occupations) are expected to stand somewhat outside this tangle of ferment and fugue. Professions, by definition, are allowed to regulate themselves, and do so on behalf of the others—the patients and society—they serve. In turn, this

‘He’s still the winner in my mind’: Maintaining the collective identity in sport through social creativity and group affirmation

Social Creativity and Group Affirmation are two strategies by which individuals who identify with a sporting activity, team, group or individual may protect that sense of identification in light of negative events. This article explores the use of such strategies through examining reactions to doping allegations surrounding Lance Armstrong to explain how members of two brand communities (one based on the brand of Armstrong as a cyclist and the other on the brand of Armstrong as a cancer survivor) maintain a sense of allegiance. Through undertaking a netnographic approach, six strategies were identified by members of these communities, three of which could be identified as Social Creativity Strategies (Lance Armstrong as ‘superhuman’, the notion of cycling as a ‘level playing field’, Armstrong as scapegoat) and three as Group Affirmation (Armstrong as a continuing inspiration, the Armstrong legacy and denial). The two brand communities demonstrated differing patterns of maintenance, with those within the cycling community focusing more upon Social Creativity strategies, whereas those members of the Armstrong as cancer survivor brand tended to focus upon Group Affirmation strategies.

The effect of supranational identity on cultural values in Europe

Does supranational identity have an independent effect on individuals’ beliefs about culturally contested issues in their national systems? This article demonstrates that self-categorization in the supranational realm – a seemingly unrelated category to domestic value cleavages – has implications for individuals’ views on cultural issues. Traditional theories of international norm diffusion focus almost exclusively on state-level interactions, but our findings provide further evidence to the existence of a more direct mechanism through which norms reach some citizens. A sense of identification with a supranational entity such as Europe makes citizens more likely to espouse the views and opinions promoted by supranational organizations. We use the European Values Study to examine whether supranational identity is associated with socially liberal preferences. Results from the multi-level models indicate that supranational identity exerts a systematic effect on attitudes toward lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights and gender equality. Additionally, while these effects are more consistent in EU member states, supranational identity exhibits a similar impact on social attitudes in non-EU countries such as those in the former Soviet Union.

Culture, individual differences, and support for human rights: A general review.

Cultural and individual differences in support for universal human rights are reviewed. Cross-cultural studies suggest a common international understanding of human rights, and international surveys indicate strong global endorsement of human rights. However, country-specific events can affect support within a country, and a country’s historical culture affects whether civil and political rights, or economic, social, and cultural rights receive stronger support. Individual differences in support for human rights are strongly predicted positively by a sense of identification with all humanity and by concern for other global issues, and negatively by generalized prejudice, authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and right-wing political ideology. Many other individual differences more weakly predict human rights support. Little is known about how concern for human rights develops, and this issue merits sustained research.

The contextualized self: how team-member exchange leads to coworker identification and helping OCB.

This article develops the argument that team-member exchange (TMX) relationships operate at both between- and within-group levels of analysis to influence an employee's sense of identification with coworkers in the group and their helping organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) directed at coworkers. Specifically, we propose that relatively higher quality TMX relationships of an employee as compared with other members of the group influence an employee's sense of positive uniqueness, whereas higher average level of TMX quality in the group creates a greater sense of belonging. Multilevel modeling analysis of field data from 236 bank managers and their subordinates supports the hypotheses and demonstrates 3 key findings. First, team members identify more with their coworkers when they have high relative TMX quality compared with other group members and are also embedded in groups with higher average TMX. Second, identification with coworkers is positively related to helping OCB directed toward team members. Finally, identification with coworkers mediates the interactive effect of relative TMX quality and group average TMX quality on helping. When TMX group relations allow individuals to feel a valued part of the group, but still unique, they engage in higher levels of helping. Overall moderated mediation analysis demonstrates that the mediated relationship linking relative TMX quality with helping OCB via identification with coworkers is stronger when group average TMX is high, but not present when group average TMX is low. We discuss theoretical and practical implications and recommend future research on multilevel conceptualizations of TMX.

Invoking Samuel Hirszenberg’s Artistic Legacy—Encountering Exile

Samuel Hirszenberg (1865–1908), the Łódź-born artist, created several signature works of art that would emerge as emblematic of the Jewish historical experience of the twentieth century. Exile (1904) is one of these works that came to evoke the trials and tribulations of Jewish fate in the decades following its creation. After placing Exile in the context of Hirszenberg’s oeuvre, this essay charts its cultural and artistic reception over close to a century in diverse media. Exile evoked instinctive, negative responses alongside a deep sense of identification and appropriation. The essay illuminates the ways in which a seminal work of art can engender intense interaction over decades, allowing a wide range of interpretations, references, and quotations.

Doing Duo - a case study of entrainment in William Forsythe's choreography "Duo".

Entrainment theory focuses on processes in which interacting (i.e., coupled) rhythmic systems stabilize, producing synchronization in the ideal sense, and forms of phase related rhythmic coordination in complex cases. In human action, entrainment involves spatiotemporal and social aspects, characterizing the meaningful activities of music, dance, and communication. How can the phenomenon of human entrainment be meaningfully studied in complex situations such as dance? We present an in-progress case study of entrainment in William Forsythe’s choreography Duo, a duet in which coordinated rhythmic activity is achieved without an external musical beat and without touch-based interaction. Using concepts of entrainment from different disciplines as well as insight from Duo performer Riley Watts, we question definitions of entrainment in the context of dance. The functions of chorusing, turn-taking, complementary action, cues, and alignments are discussed and linked to supporting annotated video material. While Duo challenges the definition of entrainment in dance as coordinated response to an external musical or rhythmic signal, it supports the definition of entrainment as coordinated interplay of motion and sound production by active agents (i.e., dancers) in the field. Agreeing that human entrainment should be studied on multiple levels, we suggest that entrainment between the dancers in Duo is elastic in time and propose how to test this hypothesis empirically. We do not claim that our proposed model of elasticity is applicable to all forms of human entrainment nor to all examples of entrainment in dance. Rather, we suggest studying higher order phase correction (the stabilizing tendency of entrainment) as a potential aspect to be incorporated into other models.

Investigating climbing as a spiritual experience

Although defining the concept of spirituality has remained elusive, discussion on the topic is pervasive within academic literature (Frederickson & Anderson, 1999; Heintzman, 2010). Spirituality can embody different meanings for different people. For some, spirituality may reflect that which is religious. For others, spirituality may embody a state of being that is transcendent, allowing a person to search beyond that which they can readily explain from their immediate senses. Experiences of this form may often occur in virtue, moving a person closer to the their ideal sense of self. Outcomes such as these are frequently part of discussions that speak to the benefits derived from different leisure activities (Schmidt & Little, 2007).

Sacred Seeds: The French Jesuit Martyrs in American Catholic Historiography

Sacred SeedsThe French Jesuit Martyrs in American Catholic Historiography Paul G. Monson (bio) Few pedagogical tools annoy a student more than the trick question, and just such a question perplexes any student of American Catholicism, namely, who is the first canonized saint of the United States? The astute undergraduate might name Mother Francesca Cabrini (1850–1917), who in 1946 became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized. The saintly convert Elizabeth Ann Seton (1774–1821), the first native-born American canonized in 1975, might also come to mind. Alas, neither answer is correct. In 1930, on the feast of Sts. Peter and Paul, Pope Pius XI canonized six French Jesuit missionaries and their two lay companions. Three of these men, the famous Isaac Jogues (1607–1646) and his two donnés, or lay assistants, René Goupil (1608–1642) and Jean de la Lande (d. 1646), endured a violent death near Albany, New York, between 1642 and 1646. The other five Jesuits included Jean de Brébeuf (1593–1649) and his confreres Gabriel Lalemant (1610–1649), Antoine Daniel (1610–1648), Charles Garnier (1605–1649), and Noël Chabanel (1613–1649). These priests eventually met their death as the Iroquois advanced into present-day Ontario in late 1648 and early 1649. These men, America’s first saints, are better known collectively as the North American Martyrs. [End Page 87] This question of the origins of American Catholic sainthood is more than a matter of pedantic trivia. Whereas a secular historian might find this fact worthy of a footnote, a Catholic theologian should recognize a clear allusion to the history of Christianity’s development. Behind countless petitions from U.S. Catholics to canonize the Jesuit martyrs was the unmistakable intention to heed Tertullian’s “semen est sanguis Christianorum”—the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church.1 For generations of Catholics in the United States, these saints stood as the sacred origins of the American Catholic story and the mystery of an ostensible failure transformed into a vibrant modern church. In their eyes, what the violence of Christ’s cross had done for human history, the violence of the Jesuits’ martyrdom did for American Catholic history. The emergence of this view of the martyrs’ story in American Catholic historiography represents the meeting of history, hagiography, and theology, a convergence overlooked by most scholars. Most literature on the martyrs is devoted either to the seventeenth-century records of their deaths or to devotional reflections on their spiritual significance.2 The present study rises above this literature to demonstrate how American Catholic historians, in recovering the story of the North American Martyrs, created a distinctly Catholic narrative of U.S. history through a theology of martyrdom. Nineteenth-century American Catholic scholarship, especially through the work of John Gilmary Shea, renewed interest in the Jesuit martyrs, inspiring a host of popular and devotional histories to champion the martyrs’ canonization in the twentieth century. In light of the recent canonization of Kateri Tekakwitha (1656–1680), the historical and theological significance of the martyrs in American Catholic scholarship is worth rediscovering. The Story In 1625 the Jesuits arrived in New France, joining the Franciscan Recollects. The missionaries focused on the native tribes in present-day Ontario, an area commonly known as Huronia. Overshadowing [End Page 88] these missions was the ongoing hostility between, on the one hand, French and Huron interests around the Great Lakes and, on the other hand, Iroquois and Dutch prospects in present-day New York State. Despite initial setbacks, the Jesuit “blackrobes” eventually won the hearts of the Huron, so much so that several Jesuits were given Huron names.3 Although the French Jesuits created reductions (mission complexes) similar to those in South America, the French were more successful in learning Huron culture, compiling a dictionary of its language, and providing intimate details to their superiors and compatriots. The missionaries respected native customs to the degree that they conformed to the gospel, recognizing some inherent good in the native culture.4 Of course, the Jesuits were not without a sense of romance and biblical idealism, seeing themselves as following in the footsteps of the apostles as they baptized...

Responsibility to report: The politics of British press reporting of the Darfur humanitarian crisis

This article aims to establish whether the news media adopt a responsibility to report when covering humanitarian crises. It explores British press coverage of the genocide in Darfur and finds that the British press maintains traditional and ethnocentric frameworks that undermine the need for responsible reporting. Ultimately, the news values of negativity, elite people and elite nations have determined coverage of the Darfur crisis, and official and Western sources have been used to maintain credibility and a sense of identification with the domestic setting. Geopolitical biases continue to determine what stories are newsworthy, and political context remains scant. Sparse use of foreign correspondents and meagre inclusion of personal experiences suggest that journalists remain detached from the crisis, urging political rather than humanitarian intervention. This article concludes that the British press maintains institutionalised approaches to reporting humanitarian crises by avoiding attachment.

Vos que me empezaste y quiero que me acabes en la mitad de vos. La mística de la poesía de Juan Gelman

The mystical experience is a phenomenon that just a few people experience,and even for those people, it’s complicated to explain what it meant and what it still means in their lives. Stories of ancient and contemporary mystics are scattered around the world and do not belong to a single religion. Thus, it is possible to find mystical experiences stories of practitioners of several religions such as Islam, Judaism or Catholicism.Juan Gelman, poet, essayist and journalist, is one of the most important figures of contemporary literature in Latin America. With his journalistic textsand poems, he could denounce the injustices of his country’s politics; and wasalso a personality that starkly gave an account of one of the bloodiest processes occurring in Argentine: the military dictatorship.Gelman also approached the phenomenon of mystical experience. Whetherit was a sense of identification (feeling as a foreigner) or through the searchof ‘the mystical’ (which transcends him as a human being), Gelman is a LatinAmerican author whose phase of mystical poetry is central to understand thisphenomenon through literature.This essay aims to explore Juan Gelman’s vein as a seeker and narrator ofmystical experience. This will be traced from the material of this nature thatthe author left in his works, Citas y Comentarios, Com/posiciones and Dibaxu,as well as from his revision of the jewish tradition mystics.

Editor’s Introduction: Jorge Luis Borges and the Jewish Question

Editor’s Introduction:Jorge Luis Borges and the Jewish Question David N. Myers Keywords Jorge Luis Borges, Judaism, Holocaust One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century—and indeed one of the greatest never to receive a Nobel Prize in Literature—was the Argentine Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). Borges was a master innovator in style, a compelling and ceaselessly inventive storyteller, and an unusually probing philosophical writer. He was also a deeply committed citizen of his country and the world, whose fiction engaged with major political and ethical concerns of the day. Despite a brief and atypical period in the 1970s in which he expressed sympathy for the dictatorial regimes of Jorge Rafael Videla in Argentina and Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Borges tended to find himself on the right side of history, using his extraordinary writerly talent to strip away the façade of toxic political ideologies. Among his chief targets were the intersecting currents of fascism and anti-Semitism, which he observed with growing trepidation in the 1920s and 1930s. Part of what animated Borges’s critique of anti-Semitism was a deep and almost obsessive sense of connection to Jews and Judaism. This connection was first nurtured in Geneva, where he moved with his family in 1914 and where he gained his first formative insights into Jewish literature and culture, in part through a close friendship with two Jewish boys. From that point forward, Borges felt a powerful bond to the Jewish tradition—to the point that fascist sympathizers back in his native Argentine accused him of being Jewish. Rather than curb or conceal his feelings, he responded to his fascist critics in Argentina in 1934 with courageous directness in an essay, “Yo, Judio” (I, a Jew). He was not in fact Jewish, but he declared that he wished he were, given his heartfelt admiration for Jews and Judaism. Borges’s sense of identification was based on not only his adolescent friendships but also an engagement with Jewish history and thought that was neither superficial nor fleeting. Concomitant with his sharp condemnation [End Page 335] of anti-Semitism, Borges developed a deep interest in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah. His 1932 essay “A Defense of the Kabbalah” launched a lifetime of investigation into the subject, nurtured by his voracious reading of modern scholars, including and especially his friend in Jerusalem, Gershom Scholem. In “A Defense of Kabbalah,” Borges admitted to his “almost complete ignorance of the Hebrew language” but further elaborated that he was motivated to delve into the esoteric Jewish tradition by “my desire to defend not the doctrine but rather the hermeneutical or cryptographic procedures that lead to it.” Perhaps his most renowned fictional engagement with those procedures came in his story “El Aleph” (The Aleph), from 1945. Attuned to the great symbolic importance that kabbalists place on the Hebrew letters in their cosmological universe, especially the first (aleph), Borges depicts a mysterious phenomenon, an “aleph” described as a lens that opens up perspectives on the entire universe, from all possible angles at once. Through it one peers into infinity—a recurrent motif in Borges’s writing, as well as a central concept in the Kabbalah, denoting the boundless power of God. Gazing into infinity, or grasping the ultimate meaning of letters of the Hebrew alphabet, were not simple matters. They were tasks burdened by the inherent limitations of the human mind. But those limitations inspired, in turn, manifold waves of interpretive ingenuity in hopes of gaining a proximate understanding of the infinite. Borges seized on that relentless quest to grasp that which could not be fully grasped to reflect not only on the Kabbalah but on the nature of the world more broadly. His fiction was animated by the desire for the ever elusive goal of epistemological certainty, resulting in the creation of a dream-like fantastical world in which one’s sense of reality was altogether shaken. Both the Kabbalah and, to a great extent, the Jewish condition at large gave Borges a language to represent this world. It is in this regard that Borges has become a figure of interest in and to the field of Jewish studies...