‘Keeping it real’: tryhards,clones and youth discourses of authentic identity from Hollywood to high school

Authenticity is a key cultural rubric for youth in the contemporary West. Texts aimed at young people frequently direct viewers to ‘keep it real’, to ‘be themselves’ and to avoid ‘putting up a front’. ‘Being yourself’ is portrayed as a moral achievement, yet also as something subjects should ‘naturally’ be. This article examines how students at an urban high school in Aotearoa/New Zealand conceive of being ‘real’, exploring what they deem to be authentic identity and its expressions. This article considers the students' use of both constructionist ‘surface’ and essentialist ‘depth’ discourses of identity. It examines how the students conceive of authentic identity as both stable and fluid, anchored in bodily experience and produced at the moment of recognition by others. It argues that through the production of the figures of the ‘clone’ and the ‘tryhard’, the students resolve the tension created by their positioning of identity as inseparable from the gaze of others and their view that to live for others is inauthentic. The students distance themselves from the behaviour of these Others, who they conceive as presenting themselves inauthentically. The students' conceptualisation of authenticity and use of the figures of the clone and the tryhard provides impetus for the positioning of authentic identity as performative, produced through its enactment.     

From ‘Employab-ility’ to ‘Entrepreneurial-ity’ in Spain: youth in the spotlight in times of crisis

This paper discusses the processes of individualisation of work and redefinition of the referential category of worker fostered by youth employability schemes in Spain. Employability measures proposed by the recent Spanish Youth Guarantee Implementation Plan and its antithetical youth representations (as a group ‘without qualities’ – the ‘NEETS’– while at the same time as a referential value and cultural model – ‘the young entrepreneur’-) will be analysed. These paradoxes strengthened by employability policies, and further aggravated in the wake of the current economic crisis, do not give rise to political contradictions due to the depolitisation promoted by employability policies: social problems are converted into individual deficits. These processes of psychologisation of work are further discussed on the basis of a recent study on employment counselling and career guidance to help to enhance the employability of jobless people in three Spanish cities, Seville, Madrid and Valencia. These tools are aimed at fostering employability of unemployed people with a high risk of social exclusion and are emblematic concerning the principle of employability (new governance tools, different intervention logics/principles). Some paradoxes concerning employability policies (entrepreneuriality) in the current labour market crisis will be outlined.     

Doing sociological research: the genre of ‘owning up’

This paper presents an account of an access encounter, and uses this case to reinforce the potential for access meetings to provide a rich source of ethnographic data. The paper originates from one of the authors' experience of negotiating research access in a UK local authority social services department. In response to a summary research proposal sent in advance that expressed interest in social work with men, a gatekeeper expressed his concern during an initial meeting that the author might be a ‘paedophile’ wanting to make contact with others of a similar persuasion. This encounter, and the issue of sexual abuse that it introduced, highlights a number of ethical, epistemological and gendered tensions for ethnographic work, which this paper attempts to negotiate. Some of the potential implications of this specific access meeting are discussed, and set within broader methodological and empirical contexts.     

Exploring the ‘craftedness’ of multimedia narratives: from creation to interpretation

This paper emerges from a comparative study of two community-based multimedia storytelling projects in Toronto and Montreal, and the multimedia narratives participants produced in those projects. Following current scholarship in visual methods that acknowledges the significance for research of the medium’s formal qualities, the authors offer the concept of ‘craftedness’ as one which might help researchers grapple with the significance of the processes of both creating and interpreting visual data. Through a study of the visual data produced in these two projects, they examine three qualities of this aesthetic experience captured in the notion of craftedness, which seem to both complicate and enable processes of self-representation and interpretation: aesthetic distance, visual excess and the visualisation of the unrepresentable. Taking seriously the craftedness of multimedia works highlights the complexities of interpreting visual data and the dilemmas of representing ourselves and others.     

‘Heteroglossic’ Discourses on Globalization: A View from the ‘East’

Abstract

In view of the broad scope of literature on globalization, this paper provides a synoptic reading of some of the globalization literatures, organized as ‘discourses’. The analysis of the discourses on globalization is confined to three overlapping discourses, namely, regional, ideological and economic discourses. Specific references and examples of local uptake of globalization will be drawn from Singapore and the wider Asia pacific region, as Beck (2002) has reminded us that we cannot even think about globalization or discuss it effectively without the reference to specific locations and places. Hence the subtitle of this paper, ‘A View from the East’, is deliberate to signal the often forgotten fact that Singapore, as well as the wider Asia Pacific region, is ‘part of the “global” sphere that the West has dispersed itself into’.     

‘Blowing up the pylon’: the limitations to Lacanism in organization studies,seen from the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari

We critically engage with the Lacanian notions of fantasy and lack through an understanding of desire as ontologically productive. The introduction of the Lacanian psychoanalytic notions of fantasy and lack into organizational studies has helped to widen the understanding of the mechanism that makes employees desire the idealized images of identity provided by the organizations for which they work. Our claim is that Deleuze’s and Guattari’s conception of desire as productive contributes to the understanding of the role that desire plays in producing and organizing the social setting in which such fantasies and a sense of lack emerge in the first place. Furthermore, we argue that Deleuze and Guattari can help point to the inherent danger of Lacanism’s blunting its own analytical and critical potential when trying to understand such social settings.     

‘I know that aside from my arms I’m normal’: negotiating the incoherencies of a ‘VACTERL identity’

VACTERL Association is a medical diagnosis that represents a broad range of characteristics affecting the following body systems: vertebrae; anal; cardiovascular; trachea; esophageal; renal and radial; and limb. Auditory, growth, sex, and reproductive characteristics are often present as well. Thus far, VACTERL has only been examined within the medical system, and, within that framework, it has become identified as an anomaly and ‘disability,’ leaving the embodied experiential realities of individuals who live with it unexplored. This paper reports on a qualitative study with eight self-identified women with VACTERL Association. This paper provides an introduction to the experiences of these women and provides an exploration of the elements and processes of identity negotiation, with particular focus on the intersection between gender and ability. As well, the impact of a medical label as it affects identity formation is examined.     

‘My anorexia story’: girls constructing narratives of identity on YouTube

The phenomenon of pro-anorexia (‘pro-ana’) communities has attracted extensive academic attention over the last 15 years, with feminist scholars fascinated by the political complexities of such cultures. But the internet has also enabled a range of eating disorder recovery cultures to emerge – whether organized around blogs, Facebook, Instagram or YouTube – and such spaces have been largely ignored by feminist scholarship which has fetishized the apparently more resistant and controversial discourses of pro-ana. As such, this article explores a set of videos posted on YouTube under the title of ‘My anorexia story’ which present narratives of recovery, or efforts to recover, from anorexia. Primarily produced by white, Western, teenage girls, these videos are effectively slide shows made up of written text and photographs, with selfies of the body sitting at their core. The conceptual and political significance of self-representation has been seen as central to the construction of subjectivity within the digital media landscape, with particular attention paid to the ways in which such practices compare, speak back to, or challenge the existing representational discourses of ‘dominant’ media and wider relations of social power. In this regard, this article explores questions of agency in gendered self-representation, examining what kinds of self-narratives the girls are producing about anorexia. In doing so, it examines how the stories seek to ‘author’ and regulate the meanings of the anorexic body; how these constructions intersect with dominant constructions of anorexia (such as those offered by medical discourse and the media); as well as the implications of the aesthetic strategies they employ. In considering how the narratives visualize, display and ‘expose’ the anorexic body, I draw upon a growing area of work which examines the selfie in relation discourses of surveillance, visibility and selfhood.     

Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’: intersections of ethnicity and violence in the lives of youth of ‘mixed’ heritage

This article looks at young Rwandans of ‘mixed’ Hutu–Tutsi heritage, exploring how their mixed identity shaped their experiences during the 1994 genocide and how it influences their everyday experiences of categorization and belonging in contemporary Rwanda. It reveals the complex position of these young ‘Hutsi’ and the significant constraints they face in exercising identity choices in a context with a history of ethnic violence and where state policies have outlawed ethnicity. This article argues that the experiences, narratives and performances of these young Rwandans simultaneously challenge and reinforce the binary ‘ethnic logic’ that persists in contemporary Rwanda. Yet it suggests that providing space for Rwanda's ‘Hutsi’ and their diverse experiences could help to de-essentialize the categories ‘Hutu’ and ‘Tutsi’ and reduce the risks of future violence.     

Freedom within bars: maximum security prisoners’ negotiations of identity through rap

This paper examines the construction of prisoners’ identity through rap in England’s high security prisons. While hip hop studies has often addressed rap’s connection to the social practices of criminalized youths, prison rap cultures have received scant attention. This paper draws on a series of rap workshops and interviews with prisoners to investigate the experiences of black prisoners in high security prisons and how identities are produced and negotiated through rap. Rap is associated with the production of a range of identities and identifications, enabling prisoners to accommodate themselves to the conditions of their incarceration and to challenge aspects of the criminal justice system that they experience as unfair or illegitimate.     

‘Between underground and over ground: narratives on the identity of women insurgents in Assam’

ABSTRACT

The Assam Movement (1979–1985) has been a turning point in the politics of Assam in India that has raised the question of identity and at the same time triggered the struggle to self-determination by the insurgent organization United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA). This paper aims to take identity as the point of departure to mark the transition of women’s role from the Assam Movement into their underground roles in ULFA. In such narratives of hero-making and patriotism, under-representation of women’s strategic involvement and self-sacrifices in the insurgent outfit often leaves the lives of the women members misrepresented and fails to highlight the in-betweens of life and death. This paper pushes the idea of identity assertion in Northeast India beyond citizenship and questions the way women’s presence in the insurgent organization gets narrated, documented, and established. Oral histories are crucial sources of data for this study.     

Producing youth ‘Out of sync:’ the intersectional social relations of educational inequality

This article investigates intersecting institutional and policy relations that influence divergent developmental trajectories among young people. Beginning with young people’s experiential knowledge of key institutional contexts shaping their lives, the article illuminates socially organized disjunctures whereby young people come to see themselves as developmentally out of sync with institutional expectations for youth development, which organize everyday life in public schools. This institutional ethnography explicates the intersecting social relations that shape how young people grow up, the choices that are available to them, their participation in public sector institutions and ultimately, the race and class-based patterns of inequality perpetuated by public schools and other public sector institutions.     

Reflections on conducting research on the ‘war on terror’: religious identity,subjectivity and emotions

In recent years there has been an increase in literature which has explored the insider/outsider position through ethnic identities. However, there remains a neglect of religious identities, even though it could be argued that religious identities have become increasingly important through being prominent in international issues such as the ‘war on terror’ and the Middle East conflict. Through drawing on the concept of subjectivity, I reflect on research I conducted on the impact of the ‘war on terror’ on British Muslims. I explore the space between the insider/outsider position demonstrating how my various subjectivities – the ‘non-Islamic appearance I’, the ‘Muslim I’, the ‘personal I’, the ‘exploring I’, the ‘Kashmiri I’ or the ‘Pakistani I’, the ‘status I’ and the ‘outsider I’ – assisted in establishing trust, openness and commonality. I conclude by demonstrating how the ‘emotional I’ allowed me to manage my own emotions and participants emotions.     

‘It's afforded us a huge flexibility’: the impact of ‘Disabled Children's Access to Childcare Pilots’ on families with a disabled child in England

For many parents of disabled children, finding affordable and suitable childcare that meets their needs is very challenging. Research in the UK has shown that parents with disabled children experience barriers not just with cost, but also accessibility, the attitudes of childcare providers and in getting good information about sources of childcare. The Disabled Children's Access to Childcare (DCATCH) pilots was an initiative designed to improve access to childcare for disabled children in England. As part of an evaluation of DCATCH, qualitative interviews were carried out with 38 members of 22 families who had received support from the initiative. All of the families reported positive outcomes and highlighted: a beneficial impact on the parents' capacity to work; enjoyable experiences for the disabled child; increased confidence and independence for both parents and children; and the creation of time for parents to pursue other activities. The results of the DCATCH initiative support other research which argues that whilst cost is a significant factor around childcare choices for families with a disabled child, having confidence in the childcare provider's ability to meet specific needs (including complex health care needs) and providing positive experiences for the disabled child are also key, determining factors.     

Home visits,holy visits: Diasporic pilgrimage to the ‘Holy Land’ amongst Palestinian–Jordanian Christians from Amman

This paper contributes to ‘visiting friends and relatives’ (VFR) discussions within migration and diaspora literatures by proposing a closer theorization of religious mobilities through the conceptual framework of ‘diasporic pilgrimage’. It advances VFR thinking by considering religion as a productive analytical category to interrogate relationships between people and place which sustain and constitute diasporic connection and attachment. This will be explored through the experiences and encounters of Palestinian–Jordanian Christians undertaking visits to places of religious and relational significance across Israel and/or Palestine from Jordan. Through an exploration of ethnographic data collected amongst diasporic Palestinian Christians living in Jordan, diasporic pilgrimage will be theorized as a localized process critically engaging with everyday facets of familiarity and regularity. This will revolve around three main elements of diasporic pilgrimage: translocal connections, temporalities and power geometries which constitute visits from Jordan and the so-called ‘Holy Land’ a diasporic form of religious mobility.     

Introduction to ‘Reclaiming democracy from below: from the contemporary state capitalist system to peoples’ sovereignty’

ABSTRACT

This Special Forum is based on a collective dialogue between place-based struggles to defend rights and territories and the dynamics of global trends. Behind apparently fragmented battles we see an emerging common vision, like a mosaic composed of separate tiles, building towards emancipation and justice. Based on discussions in a workshop in Siena in November 2018, the Forum assembles some pieces of the mosaic through five thematic articles crafted in exchanges between social movement, academic and civil society activists. In this Introduction we review other current convergence efforts looking at two related dimensions: sharing ideas and analysis in order to develop a common understanding of global evolutions, and bringing people together to take transformative action by building shared spaces, alliances, campaigns and solidarity. We then situate the Siena workshop and the People's Sovereignty process that has grown from it in this broader context. Finally, we introduce the five articles.     

“VY Mudimbe: from the ‘Nation’ to the ‘Global’ – ‘Who is the Master?' ”

This article examines Valentin Yves Mudimbe's work form the early 1970s, in the neo-colonial era, to the present day, a period marked by the advent of “Empire”, as conceived by Michael Hardt and Toni Negri. The investigation appraises the way in which Mudimbe's epistemological excavation of African discourses and discourses about Africa serves wider ethical and political objectives resonating with critiques of anthropology as formulated by Benoît Verhaegen and Johannes Fabian in the 1960s and 1970s. Part I focuses on Zairian nationalism (“Zairianization”) and the ambition, on the part of the Mobutu regime, to develop an authentic national culture. This examination of the birth of a Zairian “community” is developed through a comparison between Mudimbe's little-studied Autour de la “nation” (1972) and Kangafu Kutumbagana's Discours sur l'authenticité (1973) and is argued on the basis of a number of propositions formulated by Jean-Luc Nancy in The Inoperative Community (1991). The second part of the article focuses on Mudimbe's On African Fault Lines (2013); it examines Mudimbe's attempts, in his analyses of contemporary works by Deepa Rajkumar and Geert Hofstede, to reflect on globalization and to assess the political and ethical relevance of critical tools developed in the neo-colonial period to denounce the unequal basis of anthropology.     

Lights of disenchantment: a study of Max Weber’s thesis on the ‘disenchantment of the world’ from the perspective of visual studies

At the end of 1917, during a conference at Munich University, the German sociologist Max Weber (1864–1920) made a bold announcement: ‘The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the “disenchantment of the world”.’ In this article, I provide an interpretation of the notion of ‘disenchantment of the world.’ Subsequently, I present visual material that might further illuminate Weber’s idea. In the third part, I strictly concentrate my attention on one argument suggested by Weber: in ‘disenchanted’ societies ‘mysterious incalculable forces do not come into play anymore.’ Through two exemplary sculptures by the Danish artist Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770–1884), I continue my visual excursus on the ‘disenchantment’ thesis by connecting Weber’s account on the intellectualisation of religious world-views with the autonomisation of the aesthetic sphere. The overall ambition of this article lies in providing an introductory account to an important intellectual problem and historical process through visual and textual analysis.     

‘I don't have anything to hide,but … ': the challenges and negotiations of social and mobile media privacy for non-dominant youth

Drawing from interviews and focus groups with teens in a low-income and ethnically diverse high school in central Texas, this paper explores the unique social privacy challenges and strategies of low-income and non-dominant youth. Situating the research in a broader context in which non-dominant teens are increasingly surveilled, I demonstrate how teens manage social privacy in at least three ways. First, they negotiate liminal boundaries of what constitutes a communal or shareable mobile device, which are structured around financial constraints. Second, through nonuse, they actively resist the ways mobile and social media reconfigure social and physical spaces. Third, they deliberately use multiple platforms as a way to cope with evolving privacy settings, social norms, and technological affordances; this is a deliberate strategy intended to resist social convergence. Because low-income and non-dominant youth are increasingly surveilled by adults, peers, and institutions, it is imperative that they find spaces that afford greater freedom of expression, interest-based communities, and privacy.     

The minority identity and the idea of the ‘unity’ of the nation: the case of Hungarian minorities from Romania,Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine

A comparison analysis of the ethno-national identity of Hungarian minorities living in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine is performed in the paper, including the identifications to majority community and the relationship with Hungary, respectively.

According to the empirical results in every country, the community with the pan-Hungarian ethnocultural nation, and the identification with actual Hungary, is less important than regional Hungarianness in the minority identity of Hungarian minority members from outside the borders of Hungary. The primary in-group is the self-minority community in every country. This may be empirically grasped both on the level of the perceptions of social distances and on stereotypes toward Hungarians from Hungary and toward majority populations (Romanians, Slovaks, etc.).