Subcultural Identity Work in Social Movements: Barriers to Collective Identity Changes and Overcoming Them

Over time, social movements must contend with a vast array of forces that can lead to changes in the movement's collective identity. As such changes may impact the alignment of movements and their membership, this study explores how changes are perceived by members and how they are interactively addressed. Drawing on ethnographic data gathered from two Native American social movement organizations, this study specifically asks why some changes suggested by movement members might be pursued and others are not. While movement members felt that there were a number of barriers to changes in their movements, the study revealed that it was the resonance of collective memories – presented during interactions as narrative commemorations – that encouraged the pursuit of suggested changes or the maintenance of a status quo.     

Identity Work,Techniques of Neutralization,and Deviance: Exploring the Relationship Among Older Adult Gamblers

This study investigates the value of techniques of neutralization in understanding how people involved in marginal to widely deviant behaviors perform identity work. Based on 33 in‐depth interviews with older adult gamblers, we show how techniques of neutralization are used to align personal and social identities. We describe the techniques of neutralizations our participants use along a continuum of gambling involvement, showing how techniques differ in variety and content and are contingent on larger narratives about appropriate behaviors, identities, and selves operating in contemporary society. Our research helps to refine sociologists' understandings of relationships between levels of involvement in deviant behaviors and identity work.     

网络文化提升城市认同的路径探析

城市认同感体现着城市对于主体的凝聚力、感召力和吸引力,是城市文化和城市软实力建设的重要维度。网络媒介作为一种强势崛起的新的文化范式和传播范式,在城市认同感的构建中具有不可忽视的重要地位。要加强对于网络文化提升城市认同的路径和机制的研究,充分发挥网络文化在时间、空间、符号、仪式、共同体等维度对于城市认同的构建作用,促进网络所形构的城市记忆、城市地方感、城市符号、城市媒介仪式、城市共同体想象,增强网络主体与城市之间的情感、记忆和审美等纽带联结,使网络媒介成为构建城市认同、增进城市文化魅力和文化软实力影响效果的有效途径和方式。     

The Formation and Manipulation of Collective Identity: A Framework for Analysis

This paper is concerned with how people involved in ‘local’ protest might come to see themselves as part of wider social groupings and even global forces of resistance. An ethnographic study of the No M11 Link Road Campaign in London examines participants' definitions of their collective identity boundaries at different stages of involvement. Cross-sectional material from the beginning and later in the campaign shows that there was a transformation in collective identity boundaries towards a more inclusive definition of ‘community’. Analysis of participants' accounts before and after involvement in the eviction of a tree suggests the role of conflict with the police in producing an oppositional definition of the collective identity, facilitating links to other groups in resistance to illegitimate authority. Finally, biographical material indicates the implications of transformed identity boundaries for co-action with wider social groups. It is argued that the same intra- and inter-group processes that determine how identity boundaries extend to include a broader community might account for how people come to see themselves as part of a global social movement.     

Identity and everyday experiences of homelessness: Some implications for social work

It is important for the complexities of homelessness to be considered when constructing policy or practice relating to people who are without safe and stable accommodation. These complexities can be loosely categorised around the definitions, causes and experiences of homelessness. While definitions and causes are topics of current debates, study of the lived-experiences of homelessness remains an area that is largely under-researched. This paper explores some of the implications for social work and social workers when the individual's understanding and experience of her/his identity as a ‘homeless person’ and consequent relationships with service providers are not factored into policy and practice. This article draws on the findings of a study of homeless adults in inner city Adelaide to illustrate the author's arguments. It outlines the importance of listening to service users' perspectives in order to assess whether dominant constructions of social work, homelessness and ‘homeless people’ are meeting the needs of and improving outcomes for individual clients. More broadly, it is hoped that making these perspectives visible will assist in the development of ‘client-focused’ practice and policy.     

Ritualizing the Routine: Collective Identity Affirmation

Groups use rituals to create and preserve collective identities. Separation of sacred practices from customary activities has long been considered a key property of ritual. However, customary activities form the basis of some ritual celebrations. We explain how a different process of identity creation results: identity affirmation. We find that groups affirm their customary practices on ritual occasions when they intend to celebrate practices already associated with the sacred, and we explain the structure of such rituals using a case study of a university centennial celebration. We argue that attention to variation in ritual casts light on the values and collective identity of groups.     

Is there a European social work identity?

The aim of this paper is to examine whether at this point in time the notion of a ‘European social work identity’ can be sustained. The paper commences with some brief consideration of theories of identity, and particularly draws attention to social constructionist identity theory, highlighting its focus on identity as a process. Ideas about what constitutes ‘collective identity’ are then examined. From this, two particular models of collective identity are presented which are helpful for understanding cultural identities. These are the more ‘traditional’ notion of collective culture being evidenced by the presence of shared histories and traditions, and the more social constructionist view of collective processes and action to form identities – whether imposed by the state or generated by the people – as constitutive of identities in themselves. ‘European identity’, and then ‘European social work identity’, will then be examined using these models of collective identity. The paper concludes that using social constructionist versions of identity (identity as a process of collectivisation), European social work identity can certainly be established.     

School Bullying as a Collective Action: Stigma Processes and Identity Struggling

The aim of this study was to investigate the collective action of bullying and its stigma processes and influences on identities. In accordance with interactionism, identity is a social process, constructed and reconstructed in everyday social interactions. Ethnographic fieldwork was conducted in four school classes, investigating six bullying cases. Grounded theory methods were used to explore and analyse data. Co‐constructing differentness was found to be a core process in bullying. Bullying often appeared to function like a self‐serving and socially inclusive ritual in which the bullies co‐constructed the ‘normal us’. Loss of belonging, self‐deprecation and identity struggling followed closely upon the sense of becoming socially discredited. Victims were trapped in the collective action. The findings highlight the significance of addressing peer cultures and the social psychology of everyday school life in anti‐bullying policies and practices.     

Friendship Talk as Identity Work: Defining the Self Through Friend Relationships

This paper places friendships at the center of individuals' identity work, examining how individuals construct self‐identities through their talk about friend relationships and networks. We conceptualize this “friendship talk” as a subcategory of identity talk. From interviews with emerging adults, we find three strategies of friendship talk: envisioning self through others, betterment distancing, and situating with networks. These strategies demonstrate unique ways identity construction occurs through talk about friends. Individuals verbally connect with and separate from friends while constructing desired selves and moral identities. We suggest that friendship talk strategies may be generic social processes that apply beyond emerging adulthood.     

Managing occupational identity threats and job turnover: How former and current fundraisers manage moments of stigmatized identities

Maintaining a strong group of fundraisers amidst high turnover rates is essential to the financial health of nonprofit organizations. One issue potentially harming fundraisers' success and continued presence in the field is the negative reputation sometimes associated with fundraising work. This exploratory study uses Stigma Management Communication Theory and content analysis of in‐depth interviews with current and former university fundraisers to investigate how fundraisers communicatively manage stigmatizing messages associated with their occupation. The findings suggest that current fundraisers use a greater number and variety of stigma management strategies than former fundraisers described using. The findings also highlight the potential consequences and distinctions among ways of using humor to manage stigma messages. These findings can be translated into orientation and training programs for fundraisers, teaching them successful ways of framing their occupations and work.     

Youth cultures and the rest of life: subcultures,post-subcultures and beyond

Recent debate on the conceptualisation of youth cultures has been characterised as an irreconcilable stalemate between materialist defenders of a version of subcultural theory derived from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) and post-subcultural theorists who favour more individualised understandings. This article suggests that, beneath this facade lies a more complex and reconcilable debate and that it may be time to move beyond the polarising presence of the CCCS as primary reference point for the discussion. Turning to substance, I go on to examine how enduring areas of disagreement within the debate can be resolved, establishing ways forward with respect to the interplay between spectacular groupings and individual pathways and the contextualisation of youth cultures, including with respect to material and structural factors. I advocate greater emphasis on the study of collective youth cultures as part of broader biographies as a way forward that can draw together these substantive strands and bring together insight from across the subcultures/post-subcultures debate.     

Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Hypermasculine Coping Among Urban Black Adolescent Males

Abstract

The literature regarding African American males has generally focused on the cultural or academic deficits of Black boys. This short-sighted approach fails to take into account the role of contextin shaping opportunities to complete normative developmental tasks. Further, such deficit perspectives leave few to no options for intervention. Consequently, a process-oriented and developmentally informed theoretical model (PVEST) was used to examine the relationships between risks, stress, and coping for a sample of urban Black adolescent males (n = 125). More specifically, the role of fear in promoting hypermasculine coping is explored. The results suggest that hypermasculine attitudes are a function of hypervulnerabilty. Coping-based intervention strategies are discussed.     

Rejection,Humiliation, and Parole: A Study of Parolees' Perspectives

Research on status rejection has developed considerably over the past two decades and is applied in a number of different settings to better understand criminal and deviant behavior. Our research contributes to that body of work by examining the ways in which status rejection may create a potentially humiliating dynamic for individuals on parole. Specifically, we use in‐depth interviews with parolees to illustrate how the parolee identity can promote the experience of status rejection and simultaneously foster conditions for humiliation—an emotional state that may impede one's ability to both (re) construct a conventional identity and reintegrate back into one's community.     

Sustaining and Strengthening a Macro Identity: The Association of Macro Practice Social Work

Macro practice focuses on community-level interventions, such as management, organizing, research, and policy advocacy. Despite social work's deep roots in this type of work, macro practice and macro practitioners often practice without support or connections with other macro practitioners, and are underrepresented in the profession. In 2006, a group of social workers, including academics and practitioners, formed the Association of Macro Practice Social Work (AMPSW). AMPSW works to strengthen the professional identity of macro practitioners, elevate the status of macro social workers, and address common concerns within the social work profession.     

Advocating the Clinical Social Work Professional Identity: A Biographical Study

Aiming to portray the clinical social work (CSW) professional identity, the present biographical study examines the CSW knowledge and practice domain boundaries as they appear from the perspectives of three Greek mental health social workers who have advocated for the professionalization of CSW. The practitioners' perspectives are studied in relation to their demographic characteristics, education and training, and multidisciplinary relationships. A thematic analysis of the in-depth interviews revealed that these practitioners retained their nuclear social work identity and felt their skills and interests to be different from those endorsed by the present generic social work education and practice system. The study also revealed differences in the educational qualifications and routes that each of the three practitioners followed in order to be able to identify themselves as ‘clinical social workers’. Although the common denominator in the practitioners' perspectives was their training in psychotherapy, the type of psychotherapy training pursued and the experience of personal psychotherapy differentiated each practitioner's ability to theorize on the CSW practice identity. The research data were filtered through a psychodynamic lens to reveal the dynamics of the unconscious processes within the relationships formed between individuals and organizations.     

Helpers “Here on the Front Lines”: Welfare‐to‐Work Managers' Moral Identity Work

Using data drawn from telephone interviews with Ohio Works First program managers (N = 69), we examine managers' moral identity work. This work included using militarized rhetoric to evoke moral identities as honorable workers. It also involved signifying helper/helpful moral identities by defining what it means to be helpful, legitimating their helper identity through connections to caseworkers, and affirming their identity through telling success stories. Additionally, managers implicitly othered clients they viewed as needy and politicians they considered to be out‐of‐touch. Our research contributes to the literature on welfare‐to‐work, but also more broadly to our understanding of moral identity work and implicit othering.     

The Search for an Authentic Entrepreneurial Identity: Difference and Professionalism among Women Business Owners

This article contributes to the recent stream of research on enterprise and identity by exploring the authenticity‐driven identity work of a group of women business owners. While previous research has highlighted the effort some female business owners put into fitting in with the masculine identity of the entrepreneur, this article focuses on those women who self‐consciously adopt a feminized entrepreneurial identity as a means of being ‘who I really am’ in a business context. Nevertheless, despite their expressed commitment to a feminized identity, the article highlights their incorporation of a contrasting position or antagonism in this authenticity‐driven endeavour. Drawing on Charme's notion of existential authenticity, which places an emphasis on the cultural, historical, political, economic and physical limits to being ‘true to oneself’, the article shows how the situated nature of women's search for an authentically driven entrepreneurial identity means that they draw on a feminized discourse of difference and a contrasting masculine discourse of professionalism in their identity construction labours.     

Symbolic Violence and Collective Identity: Pierre Bourdieu and the Ethics of Resistance

Social movement researchers have only recently begun to make use of the rich explanatory leverage offered by Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. The normative implications of his framework remain almost entirely undeveloped. This paper seeks to redress these shortcomings by applying central concepts from Bourdieu's work—symbolic violence and his realist philosophy of science—to social movement analysis. Using North American lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer collective identities to illustrate this application, the paper advocates shifting analysis of collective identities from models based on negotiation to one based on domination and advocates treatment of social movement organizations as sites of justice amenable to normative evaluation and critique.