Situated Identity Research Articles

Competent performances of situated identities: Adult learners of English accessing engaged participation

The Communities of Practice (CofP) framework and theories of engaged participation have profoundly shaped how we theorize, investigate, and represent a variety of learning and teaching processes, both in and out of classroom contexts. Within this framework, useful distinctions have been made between a teaching curriculum and a learning curriculum, with the former being interrogated for ascribing limited identities to its learners and the latter valued for the ways it prioritizes learning (and its resources) from a learner's perspective. Analysis of data collected utilizing ethnographic methods (e.g. document collection, participant observation, interviews) demonstrates that, even though the teaching curriculum of one adult ESL program itself provided limited “structuring resources” (and learning opportunities) to its learners, the learners' participation in the program helped them to recognize and value the kinds of engaged participation necessary to access membership in local workplace communities of practice. However, findings also show that while these adult learners of English managed to learn and adopt the practices of one community of practice, they remained excluded from legitimate membership in other communities of practice. The analysis raises questions about the limits and possibilities of a teaching curriculum that values “real world” experiences (and situated learning) in theory but does not prioritize them in practice.

“Where's the Line?”—Negotiating Simulated Experiences to Define Teacher Identity

Teacher professional identity is a concept defined and researched in a multitude of ways (Beijaard, Meijer, & Verloop, 2004). This manuscript approaches teacher identity formation from the foundations of situated cognition, social learning, and identity in community practice. Focusing on a unique teacher development intervention designed to simulate parent-teacher interactions, we examine emerging data on teacher professional boundaries and identity formation. Findings suggest that complex simulations and technology-enhanced video reflections provide novice teachers with opportunities to bridge traditional gaps between educational theory and classroom practice.

I processi decisionali come rituali di interazione: giochi di faccia e interazione sociale in un gruppo politico di maggioranza

- This paper proposes a view of decision making as a social interaction process. Drawing on Goffman's face theory, it documents and interprets the micro interaction dynamics within the ruling political coalition of an Italian town council. Two main arguments are put forward. First, decision making unfolds through face games and impression management tactics where individuals are primarily concerned with attributing plausible sense to situations while maintaining a coherent image of self. Second, face-to-face behavior has structuring properties. It generates an interaction order amongst the participants that becomes progressively consolidated as the actors in- volved strive to affirm their respective situated identities through repeated face-to-face exchanges. A number of organizational implications are drawn from the study.Keywords: Decisional process, face game, interaction's ritual.

Language policy in the making: an analysis of bilingual gaming activities

Building on an understanding of language policy as continually evolving, emergent and influenced by norms of specific communities and cultures, this paper investigates the practices through which young people negotiate informal language policies when interacting with new media in the context of electronic gaming. We examine how young new media users participating in gaming activities construct norms of bilingual language use. Gaming is a new media setting where the resources of more than one language are deployed to create local meanings and negotiate situated identities. Gamers and fans as social agents appropriate contextually available linguistic resources and thus actively and sensitively negotiate the norms and policies relevant to them. We argue that future discussion of the impact of new media on language use should be informed by detailed analysis of the micro-management and policing of norms, practices and repertoires in specific contexts of media use.

Rethinking Postcolonial Studies in the Age of Transnationalism

The need for (re)evaluation of postcolonial studies is currently on the intellectual scene at the cultural / postcolonial studies departments in Western universities. The eruption of cultural studies and postcolonial theories in the decade of the 1990s have not only brought a Tsunami in the humanities and social sciences programs across Western and non-Western universities, but have also changed our respective views on the orient and the occident. Certainly the West is forced to see what is wrong in its colonialism and imperialism, its slavery and genocide, its anti-Semitism and oppression of women, its suppression of minorities, homosexuals and the working classes, its destruction and insensitivity to indigenous cultural forms of life all over the world, and its cruel abuse of other cultural traditions and values. The surge goes on with a more vibrant ring in non-Western locations. People in the non-Western countries began to dig out their cultural pasts and to attempt to see the germs of colonialism and recent day's imperialism polluting their history, cultural and essential identity. From Conrad's Heart of Darkness to Foucault's History of Sexuality, from Darwin's The Origin of Species to Nietzsche's The Will to Power, they tried to trace the stereotypes and exclusive ideology embedded in the textual practices of the writers of colonial countries. All this development can certainly be understood as a positive phenomenon, which has not only challenged Western values as universal but has also set our identity in the decolonialized process in order to regain our essential identities and cultural values. Despite all these positive developments, the further initiative, as it appears to me, postcolonial studies ought to make (which it has not sufficiently done so far) is to encourage the people of non-Western countries in taking initiative for the nation-building and making them properly reread their cultural past more in self-referential terms--in terms of their own cultural achievements--striving towards their [true] identities. What we need more today is to rebuild our nations politically, economically, socially and culturally, rather than just decolonization. I mean, at least we cannot overshadow our former necessity with the latter. They can go together, but it is sad to say that we have not paid sufficient attention to nation-building. We preach for decolonization, but do not think about national (re)building. Our unstable political systems, superstitious belief systems, and cultural values are more responsible for our condition in some ways than the West's colonial exploitation. Therefore the causes of our backwardness are not wholly outside of us; they are more within us. Postcolonial studies now has to turn inward. So far it has more or less turned outward looking for causes of the impoverished situation and eclipsed identity of non-Western peoples. Also, our identities can be properly defined in self-referential values than by projecting them toward 'other.' We are not thereby good because others are evil. We are good (or evil) because historical testimonies establish and support our goodness--or do not. In this regard, I see an ingrained herd morality behind the postcolonial theoretical orientation, which is required to rethink after/beyond postcolonialism. As Nietzsche says, herds define themselves in terms of what others are: "You are evil, therefore I am good." To read it in terms of colonizer and colonialized for the present purpose we can say that it is our herd mentality that inclines us to say you are a colonialist, therefore I am a colonized (You are the cause, therefore I am the effect). I am what you made me. To elaborate with a popular illustration, I drink your Coca Cola and eat McDonalds, and the denounce it as an imperialist cococolization and mcdonaldization of me. But I cannot produce the drinks tastier than those you produce. I love to consume your drinks, emptying my pockets, and since your drinks empty my pocket you are an imperialist. …

The development of early sociodramatic play

In this article we study the beginnings of sociodramatic play. We examine the pretend play interactions of a Dutch girl, Peggy, and focus on her transition into sociodramatic play. Initially, Peggy interprets only some elements of her play interactions at the pretend level. At age 2;9, Peggy shows symbolic substitution for objects and actions. In the course of seven months, the features participants, roles and place gradually become substituted and specified at the pretend level in Peggy's play. In the earlier play interactions, Peggy and her interaction partner keep a discourse identity and only assign new meaning to objects and to their local acts. In a later play interaction, Peggy and her playmate take roles and interpret their situated identities in the pretend layer. The use of situated identities allows for a range of possible acts and a sociodramatic story line, which increases the complexity of the pretend play.

Atlantic Transfers: Recent Work on the German-American Exchange

Recent work on the German-American exchange has demonstrated that relationships between Germans and Americans have most often been characterized by extended interactions between groups that were themselves in flux, by the insecurity of situational identity, and by cultural interconnections that were almost always as strong, if not stronger, than the oppositions. This essay explores some of that work, paying particular attention to the exceptional transitional moments in German-American relationships and the collection of reoccurring configurations, enduring distinctions, and consistencies that defined them. It also draws out the importance of hybridity in the character of the German-speaking world that extended across the Atlantic into the United States.

Understanding the Epistemology of Ethnic Identity Development in Multiethnic College Students

We examined the nuances of multiethnic identity in 22 self-identifying mixed ethnic college students ranging from 17 years of age to 27 years of age via semistructured interviews. Majority of the sample was predominantly female. The participants were recruited from two institutions in a metropolitan area of the Eastern United States. Results suggest an expansion of the definition of situational identity (Renn, 2000) and a triplaned understanding of ethnic identity development and assessment in relation to epistemology for this population.

Interruption and patient satisfaction in resident‐patient consultations

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine interruption patterns between residents and patients as well as the correlations between three categories of interruptions and patient satisfaction.Design/methodology/approachA total of 40 resident/patient consultations in a Canadian clinic were audiotaped, transcribed and analyzed for intrusive, cooperative and unsuccessful interruptions.FindingsResidents made significantly more interruptions than patients, especially in the categories of intrusive interruptions. These findings provide support for situated identity theory. High correlations were found between residents and patients on all three categories of interruptions, providing unequivocal support for communication accommodation theory. Patient satisfaction was negatively correlated with residents' intrusive interruptions and positively correlated with residents' cooperative interruptions. Patient satisfaction was higher among patients those who inserted more cooperative interruptions; to increase patient satisfaction, it is necessary to raise patient participation in the medical consultation. In comparison with healthier patients, sicker patients were interrupted more frequently and were less satisfied with the way they were treated.Originality/valueThe negative correlations between residents' intrusive interruption and patient satisfaction, as well as the positive correlation between patient satisfaction and residents' cooperative interruption provides evidence that patients' perception of the medical consultation is shaped by the nature of interruptions.

To “Brown It Up” or to “Bring Down the Brown”: Identity and Strategy in Second-Generation, South Asian-Canadian Youth

ABSTRACT There is a growing body of research examining how ethnicity and race are implicated in identity development among ethno-racially diverse youth. The current study explored the complex and dynamic ways that racialized youth describe and use their identities in the various social environments that they participate in. Techniques informed by a grounded theory approach were used to understand the personal, social, and situated identities of 26 young South Asian-Canadian women and men (aged 18–25). Findings suggest that these youth were influenced both by a distinct ethnic/racial history and a personal history grounded in “Canadian” experiences. These identities are multi-dimensional, flexible constructs that are created and re-created as youth interact with others around them. Youth actively negotiate various aspects of their environments and draw on their “identity capital” to make deliberate, strategic choices about whether to “brown it up” or “bring down the brown” within different human interactions. This reflects youths' resiliency in dealing with the potentially oppressive situations that arise when living in ethnically/racially heterogeneous environments. The implications of these findings for social work theory, research, and practice are discussed.

Patient Privacy Protection Using Anonymous Access Control Techniques

The objective of this study is to develop a solution to preserve security and privacy in a healthcare environment where health-sensitive information will be accessed by many parties and stored in various distributed databases. The solution should maintain anonymous medical records and it should be able to link anonymous medical information in distributed databases into a single patient medical record with the patient identity. In this paper we present a protocol that can be used to authenticate and authorize patients to healthcare services without providing the patient identification. Healthcare service can identify the patient using separate temporary identities in each identification session and medical records are linked to these temporary identities. Temporary identities can be used to enable record linkage and reverse track real patient identity in critical medical situations. The proposed protocol provides main security and privacy services such as user anonymity, message privacy, message confidentiality, user authentication, user authorization and message replay attacks. The medical environment validates the patient at the healthcare service as a real and registered patient for the medical services. Using the proposed protocol, the patient anonymous medical records at different healthcare services can be linked into one single report and it is possible to securely reverse track anonymous patient into the real identity. The protocol protects the patient privacy with a secure anonymous authentication to healthcare services and medical record registries according to the European and the UK legislations, where the patient real identity is not disclosed with the distributed patient medical records.

Examining Interaction and Identity in Prehistory: Mortuary Vessels from the Schild Cemetery

This study examines a subsample of the ceramic jar collection from the prehistoric Schild Cemetery of west-central Illinois to explore the possibility of identifying changing cultural identity in situations of culture contact and interaction. The relationship between ceramic vessels (and other types of material culture) with cultural identity is often studied, but in cases of cultural interaction or marriage between members of distinct groups, archaeological assemblages may prove incompatible to categorizations utilizing traditional typologies. This work presents a quantitative analysis of ceramic style to characterize prehistoric cultural interaction, a methodology which complements traditional typological analysis. The time period in question (ca. A.D. 1100) was one of broad social and political change in the region in which interaction, and likely intermarriage, took place between individuals from Late Woodland and Mississippian societies.

The Strength of Weak Identities: Social Structural Sources of Self, Situation and Emotional Experience

Modern societies are highly differentiated, with relatively uncorrelated socially salient dimensions and a preponderance of weak, unidimensional (as opposed to strong, multiplex) ties. What are the implications of a society with fewer strong ties and more weak ties for the self? What do these changes mean for our emotional experience in everyday life? I outline a structural view of self, situated identity, and emotion. It is an ecological theory in which interpersonal encounters are the link between the macro-level community structure and the micro-level experience of self-conception, identity performance, and emotion. In this ecology of encounters, multiple-identity enactments (especially of salient self-identities) are quite rare. But where they occur, they are important indicators of potential social change.

Interculturality serving multiple interactional goals in African American and Korean service encounters

This paper analyzes service encounters between African American customers and Korean immigrant shopkeepers. It is based on ethnographic data of tape-recorded interactions, interviews, and observations made at a Korean immigrant-owned store. The study focuses on analyzing the ways in which the participants constructed various social as well as cultural identities within the situational frames evoked. A close analysis of the talk reveals that the participants’ differing cultural backgrounds was not the most dominant interactional factor governing participants’ talk in their routinized service encounters. Instead, the majority of service encounters revolved around the various types of situated identities of participants (e.g. shopkeepers and customers) rather than their cultural/ethnic identities as African American or Korean. Based on the view of interculturality as a locally managed and situationally bound entity, this study describes the intricate ways in which the participants’ cultural (ethnic) identities were made relevant or irrelevant in the course of their interactions. Furthermore, this paper demonstrates the ways that the participants came to achieve practical ends in their interactions. It specifically shows how interculturality was not a debilitating factor that hindered the communication between the participants, but rather, that it played a positive role in helping participants to achieve multiple interactional goals.

Racial and religious contexts: Situational identities among Lebanese and Somali Muslim immigrants

This study addresses the racial and religious contexts of identity formation among Lebanese immigrants to the United States of America and Somali immigrants to Canada. Each enters with a different racial status: Lebanese as white; Somalis as black/visible minority. Ethnographic interviews explore the strategies of adaptation and identity development within these groups. Specifically, we compare and contrast the Lebanese and Somali experience through an analysis of ethnic relations in the country of origin, the conditions of immigration, and through accounts of their encounters and identity negotiation with the host society. We demonstrate the strategies each group implements to negotiate both race and religion in identity development. Our findings reveal that each group attempts to make their religious identity evident, however, Somali immigrants must negotiate the effects of ‘othering’ processes with both race and religion, while Lebanese immigrants build a religious identity from privileges afforded to them by virtue of their white racial status.

Music to the Contemporary African

Music is a phenomenon which accomplishes purposes in the lives of individuals or group of individuals. Africa has had remarkable pressures from foreign administrative invasions, social interactions, mass media, new curricular in formal education, alien religions, new job opportunities, and emerging technologies leading to some changes in the lives of individuals and indeed the entire society. The rate of change in music is directly proportional to the amount of pressure, level of resistance and the similarity of ideas being proposed. Since musical taste is individualistic, it is difficult to have everybody in the society to accept new ideas at the same rate. Besides this, sometimes, new music types in the society are additions to existing repertories and not replacements; leading to pluralist existence of concepts, utility and types/typologies of music in contemporary Africa. Music as a living corporate part of the society, cannot, but adapt to some of these changes so as to retain its usefulness in the scheme of human priorities. While conservatism does not encourage speedy propagation of African musical heritage to the wider world, issues of adaptation should be carefully visited in order to retain African identities in contemporary situations.

Cultures of learning

This special issue revisits and extends prior research work on the culture–learning interface. At the center of attention are the learning cultures of specific classrooms and workplaces as well as the situated identities of the teachers, students and professionals whose varied learning journeys are illuminated and carefully analyzed. The specific conceptual lenses guiding the inquiries are based on the sociocultural and ethnographic approaches to learning. The articles are thematically grouped into four categories, namely (a) inclusive learning communities—diverse modes of participation, (b) identity construction in multicultural classrooms, (c) hybrid learning across professional cultures, and (d) micro-analytic perspectives towards the study of meaning making in collaborative and communal learning activities. In sum, this international collection of empirical studies illuminates the reciprocal process of learning and cultural production in classroom settings and occupational networks. Moreover, it highlights multiple ways of investigating these processes at the local site and demonstrates how the local practices articulate with other communities of practice. The special issue ends by a critical and reflective commentary on the culture–learning interface from the perspective of teachers, students and learning contexts.

Identity Dynamics as a Barrier to Organizational Change

This article seeks to explore the construction of group and professional identities in situations of organizational change. It considers empirical material drawn from a health demonstration project funded by the Scottish Executive Health Department, and uses insights from this project to discuss issues that arise from identity construction(s) and organizational change. In the course of the project studied here, a new organizational form was developed which involved a network arrangement with a voluntary sector organization and the employment of “lay-workers” in what had traditionally been a professional setting. Our analysis of the way actors made sense of their identities reveals that characterizations of both self and other became barriers to the change process. These identity dynamics were significant in determining the way people interpreted and responded to change within this project and which may relate to other change-oriented situations.

Toward an Identity Theory of the Development of Chinese as a Heritage Language

This paper proposes an identity theory of Chinese as a Heritage Language (hereafter CHL) development, based on the characteristics of the Chinese as a Heritage Language learner and drawing insights from Language Socialization, Second Language Acquisition, and Conversation Analysis. It posits that CHL development takes place in a three-dimensional framework with intersecting planes of time, space, and identity. Temporally, CHL development recontextualizes the past, transforms the present and precontextualizes the future. As such, it fosters rooted world citizenry with appreciation of and competence in Chinese language and culture. Spatially, it transforms local, independent communities into global, interdependent communities. A learner’s CHL development depends on the degree to which s/he is able to find continuity and coherence in multiple communicative and social worlds in time and space and to develop hybrid, situated identities and stances.

Lost Voices

Yvonne Corcoran-Nantes’ Lost Voices: Central Asian Women ConfrontingTransition examines how the Soviets empowered and disempowered CentralAsian women before, during, and after the communist regime. To date, thisbook is the most in-depth study of the revolutionary transformations experiencedby these women during the twentieth century. Combining her westernacademic background and sensitivity for the local context, she reachesbeyond the mainstream conceptualization of gender issues vis-à-vis theSoviet regime to examine Central Asian and western literature on gender thematicsacross disciplines, from anthropology to political science.The book opens with a sophisticated analysis of the relation betweenwestern feminist paradigms and the Soviet policy of gender equality. Bothexisted in parallel, yet were interactive. Although western feminist ideasimpacted women from the Soviet space, they represented rather marginalviews among Soviet feminists. Corcoran-Nantes explains that while theSoviet regime was empowering Central Asian women by liberating themfrom traditional religious values and setting quotas in public structures, theseradical shifts in daily life inevitably complicated their identities in varioussocial situations. The Soviet model provided some institutional frameworkfor the independence period, yet was largely inadequate in the new free marketsystem. As a result, Central Asian women faced greater problems inshaping their feminist agendas when compared to Russian women.Chapter 2 discusses why this forceful emancipation, which involvedkhujun (unveiling), replacing Islamic law with Soviet legislation, and establishingzhensovets (women councils) in the 1920-30s, was controversial. Sheargues that women were expected to follow the changes, yet still had to playimportant social roles in their families. In addition, this empowerment provokeddomestic and social violence against women. Such phenomena askhujun also engendered intra-personal conflict and hesitation among the firstgeneration of Soviet-ruled Central Asian women. Corcoran-Nantes statesthat the “emancipation of Central Asian women had far more to do with theimplementation of the Soviet political and economic project than constitutingan act of altruism” (p. 38) ...