“Mostly we are White and Alone”: Identity,Anxiety and the Past in Some White Zimbabwean Memoirs

Using the space created by the land invasions, over the last ten years or so there has been a proliferation of exile memoirs written by white Zimbabweans living in the diaspora, which foreground colonial nostalgia and postcolonial anxiety. This article profiles elements of this latest wave of “white (female) writing”, arguing that writers such as Alexandra Fuller construct their own personal narratives based on an extremely teleological and narrow interpretation of the history of Zimbabwe. It is argued that memoirs are used as a mechanism to uphold an idealised (i.e. powerful) white identity, because whites' current “destabilised” identity has resulted in them clinging to a seemingly utopian version of both what it meant to be white and the past. The article also examines some aspects of whiteness studies, utilising Peter McLaren's framework to argue that these memoirs are beset by a whiteness of social amnesia.     

Self and other: The importance of social interaction and social relationships in shaping the experience of early-stage Alzheimer's disease

Various factors influence how individuals experience illness. Especially important, however, is the reaction of others whose response shapes the meaning of the illness for the person who is ill, and the impact it will have on her or his sense of self. Adopting a symbolic interactionist perspective, and drawing on data obtained from in-depth interviews conducted with nine individuals living with early-stage Alzheimer's disease, this paper examines how others’ reactions to and treatment of persons living with the condition can influence how they experience dementia. The findings reveal that the majority of the participants did not believe others’ treatment of them had substantially changed, nor did most express the level of concern about the possible negative response of others reported in other studies. Within their relationships and social interactions participants received the essential support, cooperation, and encouragement that enabled them to create meaning in life and sustain identity.     

Citizenship in action: the lived experiences of citizens with dementia who campaign for social change

This article examines the experiences of citizens with dementia who campaign for social change, with a particular focus on the effects of campaigning on citizenry identity and psycho-emotional well-being. In diary-interviews, 16 people with dementia recorded and described their experiences of campaigning. Findings revealed that although campaigning can be energising and reaffirming of citizen identity, because it (re)located a person within the realm of work, individuals may experience dementia-related fatigue and oppression linked to normative expectations about what someone with dementia ‘should’ be like. The discussion is linked to critical debates within disability studies about the psycho-emotional aspects of impairment and disability, and concludes that the struggle for citizenship has only just begun for people with dementia.     

Managing disability and enjoying life: How we reframe dementia through personal narratives

Rhetoric referring to Alzheimer's disease as ‘the never ending funeral’ or ‘a slow unraveling of the self’ implies that diagnosed individuals and their families alike are victims of a dreaded disease. Data gathered from web-based surveys with twenty-seven individuals with dementia demonstrate how some persons living with the condition actively negotiate their everyday lives to counter such pejorative assumptions. Grounded theory methods were used to consolidate textual data into overarching themes. Findings depict persons with dementia who do not experience an inherent ‘loss of self’ but rather consciously strive to incorporate a ‘manageable disability’ into their existing identities. Respondents give numerous examples of how they can and do live with dementia. These data portray an empowered identity that suggests the need for a reframing of dementia to challenge the normative victim-orientation and the social disadvantages of such biomedical reductionism.     

Identity Management among Indonesian and Filipina Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore

This study examines how the identities of migrant domestic workers are likely to be endangered and how these individuals struggle to reconstitute them. It is largely based on an interview and observational study with Indonesian and Filipina domestic workers in Singapore. Inspired by the sociological discussion of Goffman and Ishikawa, the study reveals how each migrant domestic worker manages her identity in her specific social context. This study shows that domestic workers contrive tactics to negotiate their situations, given that domestic work is considered a low prestige occupation and workers tend to be divested of the usual “identity kit” to make up their identity front. Specifically, to compensate for their discredited status, domestic workers attempt to reconstitute their damaged identity, obtain a new identity kit, recall previous social and family roles, or anticipate a future identity. They also attempt to acquire new skills and increase their value, so they can identify themselves as more than “just a maid.” They obtain additional roles in an attempt to change how they feel about themselves, to alter the meaning of being a domestic worker, and to redefine their relationships with others either by individual struggles or through collective activities. This study also points out a possible pitfall of identity management among the actors. The mechanism of identity politics might lead to an erosion of value, alienation from other domestic workers, and a strengthening of conventional stereotypes and generalizations regarding ethnicity, nationality, and gender. In this context, how non‐governmental organizations play a role in mitigating the pitfalls of identity management among domestic workers is also examined.     

Becoming Irish: Personal Identity Construction among First-generation Irish Immigrants

This article elaborates the attempts by Irish immigrants to meet the contradiction between social and self-definitions initiated by their confrontation with a problematic social identity. Selectively interpreting their situation, the immigrants create and present personal identities reflecting self-definitions by engaging the identity construction strategies of exclusivity, pragmatic identification, or autonomy. Challenging their social placement generates swings toward affiliations with others who similarly interpret and act on the environment. The construction of personal identities thus provides insight into people's struggles to maintain a positive sense of self in problematic situations and the social worlds and others with whom they identify. Shared outlooks, moreover, relate to the importance attributed to ethnicity as a relevant factor in interactions. In contrast to analyses that treat ethnic identity as an ascribed constant, the view developed here argues that ethnic identity is emergent and involves within-group variations.     

Illness and Autobiographical Work: Dialogue as Narrative Destabilization

Illness is an occasion for autobiography, and memoirs of illness present openings to ethical ways of living. This work describes illness memoirs as performative, creating the self they claim as their origin. The self that is claimed is dialogical, and the tension of this dialogue is to include the voices of others without assimilating these voices to one's own. Physician memoirs, a spiritual autobiography, and a web site are presented as examples of dialogical autobiographical work occasioned by illness.     

Identity Transformation and Family Caregiving: Narratives of African American Teen Mothers

This article explores connections between informal caregiving and identity transformation as experienced by pregnant teens. Based on in‐depth interviews with 51 African American teen mothers, the article examines teens’ pregnancy narratives as an example of narrative repair, illuminating how attending to processes that connect one’s identity to the care of others can work to empower individuals to resist threats to a positive sense of self or a damaged identity. The authors suggest that family caregiving can provide an important context that supports identity transformation not only among pregnant teens as they strive to become good mothers but among those experiencing other types of disruptions to their lives.     

Dementia at the Intersections: A unique case study exploring social location

Research exploring the experiences of persons living with dementia has been criticized for failing to situate individual experience in a broader socio-cultural context. In particular, little attention has been devoted to examining how social location shapes the subjective experiences and responses of persons with dementia. This paper examines how one woman's position as a younger, aboriginal woman of lower socio-economic status living with a same-sex partner, helped construct her experiences with dementia. Data for this unique case study are based on in-depth personal and family interviews and video-taped participant observation. Three themes dominated her story. First, receiving a diagnosis of dementia triggered this woman's desire to connect with her cultural heritage. Through this claiming of her cultural identity as an aboriginal woman, the dementia was reinterpreted as facilitating a closer connection with her ancestors and this released for her a sense of creativity, productivity and peacefulness. Second, the refusal of this woman to adopt a more conventional interpretation of dementia, compounded by her younger age and atypical presentation, resulted in a tendency by others to discount the impact of the dementia in her life. Finally, the lack of recognition afforded to her female partner increased her partner's isolation and created challenges for their relationship. This paper will focus on embedding this woman's lived experience within a broader socio-cultural context in order to demonstrate how aspects of one's identity and social location interact to construct one's subjective experience.     

Power play: the use of space to control and signify power in the workplace

ABSTRACT

The findings of this article emerge from an eight-month study examining career identity practices amongst a select group of fitness professionals in the U.K. We examine how the inter-relationship between physical and social space can denote how power is acquired, displayed, and used by individuals interacting in a shared space. The findings show that power is signified through spatial practices as individuals negotiate through triadic space, creating an identity of space and place for both trainer and client that identifies power, and signifies who has power. Fitness professionals with high levels of symbolic power are able to subvert organizational spatial norms to better serve themselves and their clients, while those with lower levels of symbolic power are forced to, or choose to, negotiate or abdicate space to others. These findings are relevant to a wide range of occupations where self-employment and contract workers interact in shared space.     

Intergroup Behaviour and Ethnicity: A Social Psychological Perspective

Humans exist not only as unique individuals, but also as members of social groups that are formed on the basis of ethnicity, gender, age and so forth. Reflecting this duality are interpersonal and intergroup modes of behaviour, respectively. Thus, humans can act in terms of their personal self and treat others as individuals (interpersonal behaviour); they can also act in terms of group membership and relate to others as members of this or that group (intergroup behaviour). In a mixed marriage, for example, the couple's behaviour toward each other is ‘normally’ interpersonal, but can become intergroup when war breaks out between their respective ethnic groups. Contrary to common sense, factors more minimal than a war are often sufficient to trigger intergroup behaviour. Indeed, seemingly interpersonal encounters are in fact intergroup. How does behaviour shift from interpersonal to intergroup, and with what consequences? To address these questions, I outline a social psychological perspective based on social identity theory and conclude with a discussion on the enigmas of ethnicity.     

A SENSE OF PLACE:

One of the classic questions in urban sociology is how social relations and solidarity are maintained in an urbanized, industrialized, bureaucratic society. The two pivotal research focuses have been the issues of (1) the persistence of territorially based affective ties and primary relations in an urban world and (2) the micro/macro links connecting community residents and the larger society. This article argues that social bonds and solidarity are now transformed from affective ties into more diffuse relationships as individuals purposively use the externally shared meanings of housing and community in American society to situate themselves, simultaneously locating themselves with others who share their values and preferences and asserting their social status and social identity to others.     

Memoirs of Gay Militancy: A Methodological Challenge

Biographical and autobiographical material has long been used by sociologists. What are the specific epistemological and methodological challenges of using memoirs of militancy for social movement sociology? This article analyses four memoirs by militants of the gay movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. To understand the validity of memoirs of militancy as sociological sources, it highlights their constructedness as narrative artefacts: as retrospective discourses on an individual's past, memoirs allow for the self-reflexive deployment of their authors' subjectivity. Their narrativeness is a key to understanding how their narrative voice reflects the very agency that animates mobilizations. Memoirs of militancy are thus an invitation for sociologists to turn to literary and rhetorical scholarship for adequate methodological tools.     

Role-Identity Correspondence in the College Student Role*

Role-identity correspondence refers to the similarity between an identity, self-meanings in a particular social situation, and role, shared meanings associated with the occupancy of a social position. While a role may serve as a reference point for an identity, self-behaviors and responses may lead individuals to create identities which are more similar to the meanings of other roles. This research uses self, significant other, and social background variables to explore factors which may influence the development of an identity in the college student role. Findings include (1) that perceived support and agreement from significant others, self-esteem, salience, and psychological commitment encourage individuals to select identities similar to future stages in the educational-occupational career; and (2) that father's occupation and social commitment encourage identities similar to the college student role. The findings suggest that role-identity correspondence is not automatic and should not be taken for granted.     

The interaction of depersonalization and deindividuation

Abnormal experiences of the self defined here in terms ofdepersonalization may predispose individuals to aggressive behavior in situations that further alter their self-awareness. Conditions that raise self-awareness may inhibit the aggressive behavior of individuals prone to these abnormal experiences of self. In the current research, individuals prone to a distorted body image were least likely to express attitudes reflecting verbal hostility when their self-awareness was raised. Individuals prone to a sense of unreality about others were most likely to express attitudes that reflect physical aggression when their sense of social identity was raised. However, these attitudes were less likely in individuals prone to self-criticism whose social identity was enhanced. The results suggest that a multidimensional construct of depersonalization may aid in the prediction of aggressive behavior that is facilitated by situations that alter the individual’s sense of self.     

Biracial-Bisexual Individuals: Identity Coming of Age

There is considerable controversy regarding the means by which bisexual and biracial individuals achieve a sense of identity. In this paper, the concepts of bisexual and biracial identity are reviewed, and the literature on identity developmental models are critiqued. Further, a qualitative study is presented that explored the complexity of biracial identity development in Japanese-Americans. It is based on the constant comparative method of analysis, or grounded theory. The study focused on how Japanese-Americans perceived themselves in relation to other individuals, groups, and/or their environment. Findings related to initiating explorations of identity and perseverance in pursuing a biracial identity, which depended on the degree of support or negative experience within their social networks. Participants explored identity options attempting to develop their own meaning of identity, to develop a confident sense of themselves and secure a positive ethnic identity. Based on research and dialogue, there appears to be parallels between bisexual and biracial identity development. A model is proposed that suggests that individuals who are bisexual or biracial go through four phases in their development of their positive identity. These phases are: Phase I—Questioning/Confusion; Phase II—Refusal/Suppression; Phase III—Infusion/Exploration; and Phase IV—Resolution/Acceptance. These phases describe people who have two distinct identities that place them in a position of self-devaluation. From there they move to a position where there is a positive perception of identity based on the coexistence of their identities.     

LEARNING TO NOT LABOR:

This article examines the micro-analytical strategies of identity formation among individuals attempting to transform their ascribed social-class position into an achieved social-class position. The interpersonal strategies discussed include associational embracement, associational distancing, and presentations of self. Data come from forty in-depth, semi-structured interviews with college seniors (twenty men and twenty women) from a large northeastern public university. The students were sampled systematically using a randomized list provided by the Office of Institutional Research. Results suggest that social transformation is difficult, in part, because of the interpersonal strategies in which individuals must engage. Self-avowals are not enough to achieve a desired social identity; rather, individuals must engage in the requisite identity-work activities in order to be successful in social transformation. These results suggest a convergence between social identity theory and identity theory to the extent that individuals must be successful in their role enactments if they hope to gain membership in a particular social group.     

Clothing and dementia: A neglected dimension?

The article explores the neglected subject of clothing and dementia. Addressing questions of the body, identity and selfhood, it argues – against the dominant understanding – that clothes continue to be significant in the lives and wellbeing of people with dementia. Drawing on new theorising that emphasises the embodied nature of selfhood, the article explores the role of clothing in the maintenance of identity; its nature as the ‘environment closest in’; its significance in social interaction; and its potential character as an agent of control and normativity. The article concludes that clothing and dress offer a potentially interesting field in which we can explore the nature of personhood in dementia, and in ways that offer insights into forms of response through which individuality and selfhood can be recognised, maintained and enhanced.     

Who discriminates? Evidence from a trust game experiment across three societies

What personal characteristics are associated with the extent to which individuals discriminate against particular groups? We use an incentive-compatible measure of an individual’s tendency to discriminate on others’ different social identities that takes into account the costs of discrimination. In particular, we elicit participants’ willingness to discriminate (WTD) in their investments to make their decisions dependent on others’ social identities using a laboratory trust game experiment with 545 participants in three countries: Malaysia, China and the UK. Analysis of our WTD measure shows that discrimination differs depending on discriminators’ cultural group identity and political values. Demographic variables including age and gender are not significant. Overall our results support the psychological distinctiveness of WEIRD participants found in other studies.     

Identity in transition: how formerly homeless individuals negotiate identity as they move into housing

It is unclear what happens when stigmatized individuals undergo status transitions into non-stigmatized groups. This paper explores changes in housing status, identity, and social relationships over time and their impact on formerly homeless individuals. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative interview data collected over six months from seven individuals transitioning out of homelessness and into government supported housing, this paper examines identity changes during such a status shift. Analysis shows that individuals distanced themselves from both homeless and formerly homeless people, and connected with others through groups not affiliated with homelessness or shelter life. When exiting a stigmatized status, like homelessness, social distancing may be particularly important as it helps redefine the self as apart from that previously held stigmatized status. Implications for research and policy are discussed.