Social Identity

Waking up Muslim on 9/11 by Jameelah Medina

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

I have often stated that I went to sleep as an African American woman on September 10, 2011 and woke up Muslim on... more I have often stated that I went to sleep as an African American woman on September 10, 2011 and woke up Muslim on 9/11. It may seem odd to say this since I am a third-generation Muslim; however, my reason for doing so is that my life as an American Muslim now has two main eras: 1) pre-9/11 and 2) post-9/11.

In the pre-9/11 era of my life, I felt more black than Muslim because my color was a point of conflict and controversy throughout my life. I grew up in two areas as a child—an urban area with majority Latinos/as and then in a very rural area with majority whites. In both areas, being black was not so popular. I was called “mayate,”which is a bug but also the Mexican term for “nigger.” I was also called, “tar baby,” “nigger,” “African booty scratcher,” and a host of other hurtful names as a young black child.

Spindeln i nätet: Sigfrid Hansson och LOs fackliga bildningsprojekt under 1920- och 1930-talen

by Jenny Jansson

Under 1910-talet utmanades den reformistiska grenen av den svenska arbetarrörelsen av syndikalistiska och... more Under 1910-talet utmanades den reformistiska grenen av den svenska arbetarrörelsen av syndikalistiska och kommunistiska organisationer i Sverige. Utvecklingen är inte unik för Sverige, tvärtom. Uppkomsten av flera olika arbetarorganisationer fick effekten att det plötsligt inte längre fanns bara en enda politisk innebörd i begreppet arbetare  i Sverige utan flera, vilket utmanade de reformistiska organisationerna. Uppkomsten av flera definitioner av arbetaren resulterade i en identitetskris inom framförallt LO, vilket föranledde ledarna för LO att vidta åtgärder. I denna process blev folkbildningsinstitutionerna ett viktigt instrument för att konstruera en enhetlig identitet inom arbetarrörelsen. I centrum för denna process stod en handfull personer som genom sitt engagemang för arbetarrörelsens idéer och för folkbildning kom att spela en viktig roll för bildningsarbetets ställning inom fackföreningsrörelsen. Denna artikel syftar till att framförallt belysa en persons betydelse för folkbildningen som identitetsskapande instrument inom LO, Sigfrid Hansson, och hur hans medverkan fick betydelse för etablerandet av folkbildning som en viktig del av det fackliga arbetet under 1920- och 1930-talen.

A Besieged Tribe"?: Nostalgia, White Cultural Identity and the Role of Rugby in a changing South Africa

by John Nauright

Published in International Review for the Sociology of Sport (1996).

South African society has been in a state of tremendous changes in recent years. These changes have been seen by many... more South African society has been in a state of tremendous changes in recent years. These changes have been seen by many whites as a threat to their society and "way of life". South African rugby success through its national team, the Springboks, has been one of the most potent sites for the demonstration of white power and cultural identity. This paper explores actions of white rugby fans on South Africa's return to international rugby against their arch-rivals the New Zealand All Blacks in 1992 in the context of white cultural retreat into nostalgic representations of the past in resisting cultural assimilation within a black dominated new South Africa.

When does goal discrepancy induce compensational effort? An application of self-completion theory to social issues

by Kai Sassenberg

Matschke, C., Fehr, J., & Sassenberg, K. (in press). When does goal discrepancy induce compensational effort? An application of self-completion theory to social issues. Social and Personality Psychology Compass.

The authors review research that applies self-completion theory to goals targeting other people (as in the case of... more The authors review research that applies self-completion theory to goals targeting other people (as in the case of stereotyping and prejudice), goals that aim at the achievement of a certain social identity and goals based on the social identity. It is demonstrated that goal discrepancies lead to compensation for social as well as for non-social goals. Based on self-completion theory it is proposed that the identity-relevance of the respective goal as well as the goal relevance of the subsequent task are of major importance considering the individuals’ compensation. The authors argue that the consideration of these factors advance our understanding of social phenomena.

The impact of identification on adherence to group norms in team sports: Who Is going the extra mile?

by Kai Sassenberg

Täuber, S., & Sassenberg, K. (in press). The impact of identification on adherence to group norms in team sports: Who Is going the extra mile?. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice. doi: 10.1037/a0028377

The present research investigates the applicability of the Normative Conflict Model of Dissent (NCMD; Packer, 2008) in... more The present research investigates the applicability of the Normative Conflict Model of Dissent (NCMD; Packer, 2008) in the context of team sports. The core assumption of the NCDM is that strongly identified group members adhere to group norms less (i.e., deviate more) when these norms are potentially harmful for the team. We accompanied a football team over the course of a season (22 time points) and assessed players’ (n =11) identification with their team, adherence as the overlap between individual and team goals, and disengagement as willingness to leave the team. Results showed that weakly identified players adhered to, but strongly identified players deviated from, unambitious—thus potentially harmful—team goals. Moreover, deviance elicited disengagement among weakly but not among strongly identified players. Our findings demonstrate the relevance of the NCMD in sports teams. Implications are discussed with respect to the beneficial aspects of deviance for teams.

Misyurov D.A. Dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas // Credo New. 2012. №2

by Dmitry Misyurov

The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with... more The article suggests dialectical formulas based on the binary notation as the development formulas: formula with dominant and the non-dominant elements; universal formula; formula with symbolic weight of elements; tautological formula. For example, it suggests an opportunity to use the dialectical formulas for modeling and artificial intelligence creation, etc.

'THIS TRIP REALLY CHANGED ME': Backpackers' Narratives of Self-Change

by Chaim Noy

Annals of Tourism Research, 31(1): 78-102. (2004)

This paper explores Israeli backpackers’ travel narratives, in which a profound self-change is recounted. These... more This paper explores Israeli backpackers’ travel narratives, in which a profound self-change is recounted. These tourists are construed as narrators, whose identity stories, in which the powerful experience of self-change is constructed and communicated, are founded on, and rhetorically validated by the unique experiences of authenticity and adventure. The relation between the travel narrative, attesting to an external voyage toward an “authentic” destination, and the self-change narrative, attesting to an internal one, is examined in light of two major discourses in tourism: the semi-religious and the Romanticist. The paper addresses the sociocultural context, that of contemporary Israeli culture, against which the self-change narratives construct a collective notion of identity, and wherein they can be viewed as effective performances.

Aproximación cuantitativa a la organización social de los ticuna del trapecio amazónico colombiano

by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo

(with Juan José Vieco)
La organización social de los Ticuna del trapecio amazónico colombiano: una aproximación cuantitativa. Revista Colombiana de Antropología 35:146-179. 1999 1999

This paper argues that Ticuna identity is based on terms of belonging to a clan (which they call nacao= nation). These... more This paper argues that Ticuna identity is based on terms of belonging to a clan (which they call nacao= nation). These clans are clustered in the moieties of "Earth" and "Air". The Ticuna have a hierarchical society than can be interpreted under the model of the house society. The clans have a prescriptive marriage that favors the endogamic control of territories and settlements. Although the marriage system is denominated "hypertotemic exogamous moieties" by Levi-Strauss, there is no significant exchange of females between villages.

Aproximación cuantitativa a la organización social de los ticuna del trapecio amazónico colombiano

by Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo

(with Juan José Vieco)
La organización social de los Ticuna del trapecio amazónico colombiano: una aproximación cuantitativa. Revista Colombiana de Antropología 35:146-179. 1999 1999

This paper argues that Ticuna identity is based on terms of belonging to a clan (which they call nacao= nation). These... more This paper argues that Ticuna identity is based on terms of belonging to a clan (which they call nacao= nation). These clans are clustered in the moieties of "Earth" and "Air". The Ticuna have a hierarchical society than can be interpreted under the model of the house society. The clans have a prescriptive marriage that favors the endogamic control of territories and settlements. Although the marriage system is denominated "hypertotemic exogamous moieties" by Levi-Strauss, there is no significant exchange of females between villages.

I am Beginning to Understand by Carol P. Christ

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Elizabeth Kelly Inglis died in 1927 at age 62 from complications of a stroke. Secondary causes were malnutrition and... more Elizabeth Kelly Inglis died in 1927 at age 62 from complications of a stroke. Secondary causes were malnutrition and exhaustion.

When I was a child, my father, though he was very close to his own parents and sister, spoke very little about his ancestors. I knew that both of his parents lost their fathers when they were small children. I was told that the Christs were German and the Inglises were Scottish and Irish. My grandmother Mary Inglis Christ was as Irish as the day is long. She prayed to the blessed Virgin and took me to church with her in the early mornings where she lit candles and whispered the rosary while fingering faceted lavender beads. She voted for Kennedy because he was Irish and Catholic—to the horror of my father and his father who had no use for the Democrats. My grandmother sometimes cried when she showed us photographs of her family, especially when she pointed to her sister Veronica, called Very. I sensed that my grandmother felt sad to have left her family in New York when she moved with her husband and children to California during the depression, but I was too young to understand fully. As far as I know, I never met any of the relatives from her side of the family, even when I moved to “back east.”

A picture of the pathology of the mass: Exploring the politics and ideology of ‘classic’ crowd psychology.

by John Drury

Stott, C., & Drury, J. (in press). A picture of the pathology of the mass: Exploring the politics and ideology of ‘classic’ crowd psychology. In A. A. Romero (Ed.), Archaeology for the masses: Theoretical and methodological approaches to a neglected identity category. Oxford: BAR.

This chapter explores the origins and ideology of crowd science. It will be argued that this body of theory... more This chapter explores the origins and ideology of crowd science. It will be argued that this body of theory influenced, indeed determined, contemporary understandings of the mass. The chapter begins by outlining the patterns of crowd action during 19th century France to demonstrate that the actions of
these crowds can only be adequately understood in terms of meaningful identity-based social actions. We will illustrate how the crowd came to symbolise a fear of mass society among the new ruling elites of Europe and how classical crowd psychology was a product of these fears. We will show how classical crowd psychology pathologised, reified and de-contextualised the
crowd, offering the ruling elites a perceived opportunity to fashion and control the crowd, and therefore the mass. The chapter will conclude by exploring how these processes fundamentally misrepresented collective psychology. In its place we now see the classic models supplanted by a new form of identity-based
crowd psychology that re-introduces the meaning to crowd action, (re)places it in its proper social context, and in so doing is transforming theoretical understanding of the self.

Los anclajes de la identidad personal The anchoring of personal identity

by Juan Carlos Revilla

Many postmodern authors have claimed the dissolution of identity due to the multiplicity of personal relationships, to... more Many postmodern authors have claimed the dissolution of identity due to the multiplicity of personal relationships, to the variety of experiences or to the huge social changes in process.
Nonetheless, I argue that, in spite of not being possible to sustain an essentialist conception of the subject, there are many elements that preclude an absolute dissolution of identity, anchoring the subject to a certain personal identity, but in a problematic, conflictive, and changing way.
Furthermore, the dissolution of identity would not necessarily be beneficial for subjects nor groups, as long as the demand of interaction rights comes close to the maintaining of acknowledgeable identities. The problem would rather be the difficulty to accede to valuable identities in the prevailing life conditions, making difficult to produce positive self-discourses, and thus generalizing processes of identity “fragilization”.

Dreaming Moosbrugger: The Other versus Modernity in Musil's The Man Without Qualities

by Celine Piser

Imagining the mathematician: young people talking about popular representations of maths

by Heather Mendick

This paper was co-authored with Debbie Epstein and Marie-Pierre Moreau. This paper was published in Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education in 2010, volume 31, issue 1, pages 45-60. If your library subscribes then the hyperlink will take you to where you can access the paper. If not, then email me and I'll send you a copy.

This paper makes both a critical analysis of some popular cultural texts about mathematics and mathematicians, and... more This paper makes both a critical analysis of some popular cultural texts about mathematics and mathematicians, and explores the ways in which young people deploy the discourses produced in these texts. We argue that there are particular (and sometimes contradictory) meanings and discourses about mathematics that circulate in popular culture, that young people use these as resources in identity making as (non-)mathematicians, negotiating their meaning in ways that are not always predictable, and that their influence on young people is diffuse and nevertheless important. The paper discusses the discourses that prevail in some of the popular cultural images of mathematics and mathematicians that came up in our research. We show how mathematics is represented as a secret language, while mathematicians are often mad, mostly male and almost invariably white. We then explore how young people negotiate these discourses, positioning themselves in relation to mathematics. Here we draw attention to the fact that both those who continue with mathematics after it ceases to be compulsory and those who do not, deploy similar images of mathematics and mathematicians. What is different is how they respond to and negotiate these images.

Claiming and displaying (national) identity

by Susan Condor

Analytic techniques currently employed in empirical work on national identity often fail to correspond to the way in... more Analytic techniques currently employed in empirical work on national identity often fail to correspond to the way in which the construct is conceptualised in theory. In particular, approaches that emphasise the strategic and dialogic quality of national identity claims in everyday life do not easily combine with analytic practices that treat interview respondents’ self-descriptions as acts of literal self-disclosure. Applying Goffman’s constructs of frame and footing to a corpus of data collected in England, we consider how national identities may be performatively displayed in interview encounters. We argue that analytic approaches that overlook subordinate channels of communication, which take utterances out of narrative context, and which focus on what respondents report explicitly at the expense of what is elided or assumed in conversation, may contribute to overly literal, and conceptually unsophisticated, interpretations of the process of self-representation.

The “chilling effect” of metastereotyping on employability beliefs and job-seeking resilience among members of disadvantaged groups

by Chuma Owuamalam

Co-authored with Hanna Zagefka. I am first author.

This work was recently honored with an International Travel Award by the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI) to present its findings at the Society's 9th Biennial Convention in Charlotte NC (June, 2012). The selection committee for this award described the work as an "exceptional" contribution to the understanding of the psychology of disadvantaged group membership.

This research examined the hypothesis that negative metastereotypes would undermine employability beliefs and... more This research examined the hypothesis that negative metastereotypes would undermine employability beliefs and job-seeking resilience of members of disadvantaged groups and that this effect would be mediated by subsequent self-views following the activation of such stereotypes. Taken jointly, results from one correlational study and two experiments supported this hypothesis. This mediated effect was visible amongst those whose prior self-esteem was high but not those whose prior self-esteem was low (Studies 1 and 2). Study 3 further showed that the differential effects of metastereotyping on employability beliefs among those with prior high and low self-esteem was structured further by members’ level of identification: Employability beliefs of those whose prior self-esteem was high was undermined by metastereotyping only if they were strongly (but not weakly) identified with the ingroup. For members who are low in self-esteem the undermining effect of metastereotypes was only evident amongs weak (but not strong) identifiers. In addition, there was a serial indirect negative effect of metastereotyping on members’ resilience at job-seeking (imagined job application scenario) via state self-esteem and employability beliefs. The discussion focuses on the implications of the findings for socio-economic mobility of members of disadvantaged groups.

My Irish Accent

by Ellina Nolan-Shmarkovskaya

A reflective essay for the Module "Social, Cultural and Political Issues in Counselling." A reflective essay for the Module "Social, Cultural and Political Issues in Counselling."

Group Identity Salience in Sacred Value Based Cultural Conflict: An Examination of Hindu-Muslim Identities in the Kashmir and Babri Mosque Issues

by Sonya Sachdeva

With Doug Medin

The sacred values of a community are critical in understanding cultural conflict. When an attempt is made to trade a... more The sacred values of a community are critical in understanding cultural conflict. When an attempt is made to trade a sacred value with a secular good, it evokes feelings of anger (taboo-tradeoff) but less so when that sacred value is traded off with another sacred value (tragic).  Previous work has shown that participants who expressed sacred values for an issue were more resistant to taboo than tragic peace deals. Our objective in the present study was to extend these findings to conflicts between Hindus and Muslims over Kashmir and the Babri Mosque, the former more salient to Muslim identity and the latter more salient to Hindu identity. While replicating the previous interaction between sacred values and tradeoff type, we also found a moderating role of how salient an issue was for group identity. Only the participants for whom the issue was salient showed the previous correlates of sacred values. 

Outgroup judgments when reciprocity and social image improvement motives collide

by Chuma Owuamalam

Co-authored with Mark Tarrant, Claire Farrow and Hanna Zagefka (invited revision Canadian Journal of Behavioural Sciences). I am first author.

Two experiments examined the effect of metastereotype valence on high and low identifiers’ judgments of an outgroup.... more Two experiments examined the effect of metastereotype valence on high and low identifiers’ judgments of an outgroup. Because high identifiers are strongly emotionally invested in the ingroup, we expected that such group members would feel angry when they activate negative metastereotypes which would correspondingly lead to less favorable evaluation of the outgroup. We further expected this pattern to be particularly visible when high identifiers could communicate their dissatisfaction to an outgroup (but not an ingroup) audience presumably to persuade the outgroup to re-evaluate their attitudes towards the ingroup. We did not expect low identifiers to reflect the valence of metastereotypes in their outgroup attitudes and judgments given their weak emotional ties with the ingroup and because such members are likely to feel that metastereotype do not apply to them personally. Results from two studies (Study 1, N = 78; Study 2, N = 80) supported these predictions and are discussed in light of the implications of metastereotyping for intergroup relations.

Sani, F., Bowe, M., Herrera, M., Manna, C., Cossa, T., Miao, X., et al. (2007). Perceived collective continuity: Seeing groups as entities that move through time. European Journal of Social Psychology, 37(6), 1118-1134.

by Mhairi Bowe