QUEER TREASONS: HOMOSEXUALITY AND IRISH NATIONAL IDENTITY

Queer Treasons suggests how and why homosexuality has been placed outside the limited discourse of what constitutes ‘Irishness.’ I argue that, since the early part of the twentieth century, homosexuality has been represented as ‘foreign’ to nationalisms in Ireland, particularly when the borders of the nation are perceived to be under threat. I further suggest that the threat of homosexuals, as represented in Irish political discourse, points more generally toward an instability in the discourses of nation itself.     

ALIEN-NATION: IMMIGRATION,NATIONAL IDENTITY AND TRANSNATIONALISM

This article examines recent anti-immigration initiatives, like California's Proposition 187, in light of the contemporary processes of economic and political reorganization that seem to have undermined the viability of the nation state (i.e. the globalization of the market economy and the end of the cold war). It argues that anti-immigration discourse works on a symbolic level to recuperate a coherent sense of national identity in response to the social and psychic ‘alien-nation’ caused by the global penetration of capitalism. The study compares two similar yet distinctly different moments of mass immigration- Chinese immigration in the late nineteenth century and ‘illegal’ immigration in the late twentieth- to determine (1) why these mass migrations have elicited legal regulation when others have not, and (2) what might be done to disrupt the re-emergence of a paradigm of legislated exclusion in the current case. It concludes by examining the conditions of possibility for collective political action within a mass-mediated public sphere. Specifically, I ask how resistance to the historical paradigm of legislated exclusion might best be mobilized from within a public sphere dominated by visual media that not only personalize the political, but also exacerbate the inequalities of access to public life endemic to liberal democratic political theory.     

PERFORMANCE,DIVERSITY AND NATIONAL IDENTITY EVIDENCE FROM ASSOCIATION FOOTBALL

The increasing national diversity of coworkers has no consensus on its impact on performance. Using a team's predominant nationality as a proxy for national diversity and national identity, there is robust evidence that it affects team and individual performance. Detailed worker-level data from a highly globalized industry, association football, show a nonlinear relationship between performance and the predominant nationality of a team's roster. As the number of members from the predominant nationality increases, performance declines. However, beyond a threshold level, performance rises. It follows that performance benefits from national diversity when the predominant nationality is small and from national identity when it is large. (JEL M14, Z21, Z22, J15)     

RIVERINE CROSSINGS: GENDER,IDENTITY AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF NATIONAL MYTHIC NARRATIVE IN THE CRYING GAME

The Crying Game's central, tragic theme of warrior/lovers caught between their love for one another and loyalty to their respective factions has significant roots in early Celtic mythology. The elegaic theme of potential lovers forced into ill-fated combat that frames the film's events also, significantly, bears the weight of the film's most unambiguous political commentary, when Fergus speaks directly to the picture of Jody in Dil's apartment, telling him: ‘You should have stayed at home.’ This sad remonstration, which clearly lays responsibility for the chain of causality that has led to so much suffering not with Jody, but with the British state, is similar in quality to Cu Chulainn's lament as he contemplates his meeting with Ferdia. When we listen carefully for ways in which Celtic mythical themes underlie and nuance the film's events, different rhythms emerge, accenting different beats.     

IDENTITY DILEMMAS OF CHRONICALLY ILL MEN

Chronic illness frequently comes to men suddenly with immediate intensity, severity, and uncertainty. Because men contract more serious and life-threatening chronic illnesses than women, experiencing illness causes men different identity dilemmas. This paper explores men's identity dilemmas by studying how men experience chronic illnesses and by looking at how assumptions about masculinity affected their identity. The paper explores four major processes: (1) awakening to death after a lifethreatening crisis, (2) accommodating to uncertainty as men realize that the crisis has lasting consequences for their lives, (3) defining illness and disability and (4) preserving self to maintain a sense of coherence while experiencing loss and change. The data are derived from forty in-depth formal interviews of twenty men, informal interviews with these men, and an extensive collection of published and unpublished personal accounts. The data were analyzed through the strategies of grounded theory.     

STIGMATIZED INDIVIDUALS AND THE PROCESS OF IDENTITY

We conducted intensive interviews with ten gays and ten lesbians drawing on research and theorizing on gay and lesbian identity, symbolic interactionism, and stigma. Key concepts from symbolic interactionism, reflected appraisals and situational identity negotiation, provide a more coherent theoretical way to examine identity development and the situated complexity of identity negotiation and disclosure among gays and lesbians. Romantic relationships are significant because they aid in identity development but also complicate social interactions by confronting many heterosexuals' "phantom acceptance" of gays and lesbians. These findings inform the literature on gay and lesbian identity by critiquing the stage models of identity and connecting this literature back to the symbolic interactionist literature on self and identity.     

AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF IDENTITY AND CAREER CHOICE*

Standard economic models tend to be more specific about pecuniary payoffs than nonpecuniary payoffs to education. Based on the ideas of Akerlof and Kranton, we consider a model of career choice and identity where individuals derive nonpecuniary identity payoffs. Using factor analysis on a range of attitude questions, we find two factors related to identity (career orientation and social orientation), which are important for planned educational choices and for observed gender differences. The implication is that policy makers and institutions of higher education need to focus on identity‐related issues rather than just improved financial incentives if they aim at attracting high‐ability youths to certain careers. (JEL I21, J24)     

THE SOCIAL PRODUCTION OF IDENTITY: METATHEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS*

Identity has emerged as a powerful contemporary concept for social and psychological approaches to the perennial question of defining the human individual. This article attempts to ground the understanding of identity by a discussion of its modes, sources, and metadynamics from a pragmatic social constructionist orientation.     

ASKING COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS: THE IMPACT OF THE DIRECTION OF COMPARISON

Questions assessing comparative judgments are often phrasedas directed comparisons, that is, a stimulus A (subject) isto be compared to a stimulus B (referent); for example, "Istennis more exciting than soccer or less exciting?" Tversky'swork on judgment of similarity indicated that comparing A toB may result in different similarity judgments than comparingB to A. The four studies reported in this article extend thiswork from judgments of similarity to evaluative judgments ingeneral. The results demonstrate that the direction of comparisonelicited by the wording of the question can have a strong impacton the obtained results. In some instances, a reversal in thedirection of comparison (i.e., comparing A to B vs. B to A)resulted in a reversal of the ordinal ranking. Implicationsfor question wording are discussed.     

THE ARCHITECTURE OF IDENTITY: Embedding privacy in market institutions

As the Internet becomes integrated into the institutional world around it, attention has increasingly been drawn to the diverse ways in which information technologies mediate human relationships. As an increasingly commercial Internet has been employed to capture personally identifiable information, privacy concerns have intensified. To analyse these matters more systematically, this article considers the ideas about human identity that have been implicit in the development of economics and computer science. The two fields have evolved along parallel tracks, starting with an assumption of perfect transparency and moving toward a more sophisticated appreciation of individuals' private informational states. Progress in the analysis and resolution of privacy problems will require that this evolution be taken seriously and continued.     

IMPROVEMENT OF THE QUALITY OF RESPONSES TO FACTUAL SURVEY QUESTIONS BY INTERVIEWER TRAINING

In this study we analyze the effects of interviewer trainingon the quality of responses. Data from a field experiment reveala number of significant differences between trained and untrainedinterviewers in terms of nonresponse and the amount of informationobtained. For some questions, an interaction effect occurredbetween interviewer training, the use of tape recorders, andthe kind of responses. The effects of training appear to bedependent on the structure of the questions. Since such effectsoccur primarily with questions that assume a great deal of intervieweractivity, it is suggested that they are indeed due to the applicationof the techniques acquired by training, namely giving instructions,probing, and feedback. A brief analysis of the interviewer-respondentinteraction supports this interpretation.     

A TALE OF TWO QUESTIONS: BENEFITS OF ASKING MORE THAN ONE QUESTION

In the last two months have you had a physical examination?The ability of 660 people to accurately report on their ownrecent health procedures was assessed by comparing the recollectionsof patients to information extracted from their medical records.A major finding was that when people were asked whether theyhad a specific procedure in a given reference period (e.g.,physical exam within the last two months), overreporting occurred.A simple technique reduced overreporting: The technique entailedasking people about the procedure twice, first in connectionwith a different reference period (e.g., physical exam withinthe last six months) and then in connection with the referenceperiod of interest (e.g., physical exam within the last twomonths). Our data support a "Precision" hypothesis: The advantageof the two–time frame questioning procedure is that itconveys to the respondent that the interviewer wants greaterprecision in dating than the single–time frame questionimplies.     

SUBSEQUENT QUESTIONS MAY INFLUENCE ANSWERS TO PRECEDING QUESTIONS IN MAIL SURVEYS

Data of a mode experiment demonstrate that the emergence ofcontext effects may be independent of question order under mailsurvey conditions. Under telephone interview conditions, substantivelyrelated questions affected responses to the target questiononly when asked first. However, the same questions affectedresponses under mail survey conditions independent of whetherthey preceded or followed the target question.     

THEORIZING NARRATIVE IDENTITY:

This article argues for a synthesis of George Herbert Mead's conception of the temporal and intersubjective nature of the self with Paul Ricoeur's hermeneutic theory of narrative identity. Combining the insights of Ricoeur's philosophical analysis with Mead's social-psychological orientation provides a subtle, sophisticated, and potent explanation of self-identity. A narrative conception of identity implies that subjectivity is neither a philosophical illusion nor an impermeable substance. Rather, a narrative identity provides a subjective sense of self-continuity as it symbolically integrates the events of lived experience in the plot of the story a person tells about his or her life. The utility of this conception of identity is illustrated through a rereading of Erving Goffman's study of the experience of mental patients. This example underlines the social sources of the self-concept and the role of power and politics in the construction of narrative identities.     

NARRATION AND RITUAL FORMATION OF DIASPORIC IDENTITY: THE CASE OF SECOND GENERATION KARELIAN EVACUEES

The article is based on a case study of second generation Karelian migrants, whose parents had to move to other parts of Finland from the region of Karelia that was ceded to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II. The article poses the question, how long-lived diasporic identities are, and what are the conditions that affect assimilation or maintenance of a diasporic identity. In the Karelian migrants' case, already the first generation was quite successful in integrating with the rest of the Finnish society, and with the second generation, the integration has been practically complete, largely because of a short cultural distance between the evacuees and other Finns. A recent resurgence of interest in their roots by Karelian evacuees or their family members is primarily due to end of the Cold War and the possibility to freely and openly visit Karelia. Visiting Karelia has a ritual-like function for them. To that concrete, bodily experience of going there they can attach the abstract idea that in some ways they are Karelians and thus strengthen the emotional attachment to their roots. In that sense, visiting Karelia can also be described as a pilgrimage.     

SURVEY QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FREQUENCY OF VAGUELY DEFINED EVENTS: THE EFFECTS OF RESPONSE ALTERNATIVES

Experimental research has shown that the choice of responsealternatives can influence responses to questions about thefrequency of vaguely defined target events (e.g., feeling annoyed);the set of response alternatives is treated as information thatcontributes to the interpretation of the question. In a seriesof split ballot experiments we investigate whether such effectsoccur in a large-scale survey context for sets of response alternativesthat might be used interchangeably by survey researchers. Thepredicted response shifts were found in our field experiments.Those presented with response alternatives discriminating atlow frequencies reported fewer of the target episodes than thosepresented with higher-frequency response alternatives. However,the size of the observed shifts varied from zero to 13 percentand depended on a number of characteristics of the survey, forexample, the presence of "priming" questions and the orientationof the response scales. Response alternatives are not neutraland therefore must be carefully considered when constructinga survey question.