Recollection and Relocation in Immigration: Russian‐Jewish Immigrants “Normalize” Their Anti‐Semitic Experiences

This study conceptualizes the relationship between recollection of the past and relocation in the context of immigration. Combining symbolic interactionist and narrative paradigms, it explores how immigrants'representations of past experiences inform their identity construction and the process of entering the host society. Our interpretive analysis of personal narratives related spontaneously by eighty‐nine Russian‐Jewish immigrants in Israel and Germany reveals that they choose to “normalize” their anti‐Semitic experiences by representing them as secondary, expected, and “normal.” They do so via four narrating tactics of normalization: obscuring, self‐exclusion, vindication, and essentializing stigma. Each tactic devalues the cultural depiction (grand narrative) of anti‐Semitic experiences as transformative and traumatic. By normalizing their past, the immigrants deconstruct and resist the authority and moral commands of the national narrative they encounter in both societies. Putting forward normalization as an alternative interpretation, the immigrants claim ownership of their biography and cultural identity.     

“The Way That I Look at Things [Is] Different Because It's Me”: Constructing and Deconstructing Narratives About Racialized Sexual Selves

Many gender scholars have abandoned the notion that we can explore women's experiences without attention to other identities such as race, class, and/or sexual orientation. Until now, the ways race influences the development of sexual selves has been underexplored. In this paper, I focus on heterosexual women's accounts of the interplay of race, gender, and sexualities. Based on in‐depth interviews with sixty‐two white and African American heterosexual women between the ages of twenty and sixty‐eight, I examine the ways in which narrative work tells a story about the presentation of public sexual selves. I also explore how women's personal narratives are impacted by larger cultural narratives about race. Specifically, through a study of sexuality, I focus on the social construction of “postracialism.”     

“Now I am also Israeli”: From Illegality to Legality ‐ Life experiences and identities of migrant workers’ children after receiving civil status in Israel

In 2006 and 2010, following demands from local and international civil society organizations, Israel granted civil status to approximately 1500 undocumented migrant workers’ children. This was considered a “one time humanitarian gesture,” not to be repeated. Thousands of other children, who did not fulfill the required criteria, were left without civil status. Within the context of Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people, this mixed‐methods study explored how the children's life experiences have been constructed and reconstructed since the inception of their new civil status. According to the findings, 80 per cent of migrant workers’ children reveal a high degree of belonging to Israeli society, defining themselves as Israelis. For them, receiving civil status has four practical implications: being able to serve in the Israeli army; the ability to travel abroad; better access to the job market; and freedom from fear of deportation. Our study also revealed difficulties due to their religious and ethnic identities, reflected in the children's understandings of what it means to be Israeli. The complex manifestations of their newly acquired civil status is embedded in the concept of “freedom,” i.e. to do and to be what they really want to be.     

Not the Israel of My Elementary School: An Exploration of Jewish-Canadian Secondary Students' Attempts to Process Morally Complex Israeli Narratives

The following article presents data from a mixed-methods practitioner research study that focuses on understanding how Jewish secondary students learned about controversial topics in Israel's history and how these topics impacted their connection to the country. The responses that were provided by the students showed that the material forced students to conceptualize Israel in new ways and that the material— learning from Palestinian and Israeli texts about events that happened in 1947 and 1948—was disruptive to their preconceived notions of Israel. With the passing of time, the students were able to reflect on the real difficulty they had with learning about the topics but were able to synthesize the disruption into their Israel narrative to arrive at a new understanding. The integration of this new material into existing schema is understood within the context of dangerous memories, and how learning about controversial moments in nationalist narratives can impact the way students learn and relate to a topic. A further finding was that some students expressed resentment at previous educational experiences for not being fully transparent about historical events.     

From “Swinging Hard” to “Rocking Out”: Classification of Style and the Creation of Identity in the World of Drumming

This article takes a social constructionist approach to the study of a seldom considered subculture—the “world” of drumming. I describe this subculture from both the “etic” and “emic” perspectives, showing how drummers and drumming are perceived and experienced by the musicians themselves (insiders) as well as the “outside” public. The main focus is on the drummers' intersubjective “mental maps” of their world, specifically exploring how they create musical and personal identities by adhering to a rigid classification scheme surrounding “styles” of drumming. I demonstrate how drummers use drumming equipment, personal appearance, education, and “purist” attitudes to separate styles of drumming and to construct distinct social selves. Of special interest is how drummers are cognitively socialized into “thought communities” which teach and reinforce attitudinal and behavioral norms. I conclude with a discussion of the possibilities of applying my analytical framework to other worlds of music and art, as well as some forms of occupational and avocational specialization.     

“Tel Aviv Is Not Foreign to You”: Urban Incorporation Policy on Labor Migrants in Israel1

This article addresses the growing disjuncture between urban and national policies regarding the incorporation of labor migrants in Israel. Drawing on fieldwork, in‐depth interviews with Tel Aviv municipal officials, and archive analysis of Tel Aviv municipality minutes, we argue that urban migrant‐directed policy elicits new understandings of membership and participation, other than those envisaged by national parameters, which bear important, even if unintended, consequences for the de facto incorporation of non‐Jewish labor migrants. The crux of the Tel Aviv case is that its migrant‐directed policy bears especially on undocumented labor migrants, who make up approximately 16 percent of the city's population and who are the most problematic category of resident from the state's point of view. In demanding recognition for the rights of migrant workers in the name of a territorial category of “residence,” and by activating channels of participation for migrant communities, local authorities in Tel Aviv are introducing definitions of “urban membership” for noncitizens which conflict sharply with the hegemonic ethnonational policy. We suggest that the disjuncture between urban and national incorporation policies on labor migrants in Israel is part of a general process of political realignment between the urban and the national taking place within a globalized context of labor migration.     

Meaning and Identity in “Cyberspace”: The Performance of Gender,Class, and Race Online

This article explores issues of gendered, classed and raced identities using examples drawn from my research on a type of online forum known as a mud. I critique previous accounts of research regarding identity online which have suggested that online interactions encourage greater identity fluidity and multiplicity. Drawing on examples from face-to-face interviews and online interaction, I discuss several aspects of identity. I first examine participants' efforts to meet face-to-face and discuss their privileging of offline information regarding identity. Using two examples of “gender-switchers,” I then show how some participants distance themselves from experiences of gendered identities which might otherwise disrupt previously held beliefs about gender. Next I discuss classed and raced identities, which participants express in conversations about income and ethnicity. These discussions point to the interconnections between online and offline interpretations of class and race. Thus, in discussing these examples, I emphasize the need to examine not just online performances, but also the participants' interpretations of such performances. Despite the potentially disruptive effects of online ambiguity, many participants continue to believe in essence and continuity of identity.     

Christian Zionists in the Holy Land: Evangelical Churches,Labor Migrants,and the Jewish State

In this article we trace the creation of Evangelical churches created by and for Latin American undocumented migrants in Israel. First, we relate to the social significance of religious practices and beliefs for migrants' individual and collective identity in the host society and the ways through which non-Jewish labor migrants in Israel are creating alternative spaces that operate simultaneously as a new community of belonging. We consider the possibilities latent in the churches as “free spaces” for foreigners in the Jewish State, along with the limitations that participation in such a church entails for the migrant community. The second theme involves the universe of meanings through which believing migrants interpret their existence and place in the Jewish State. Here we probe how religion becomes a way of legitimizing the migrants' presence in a Jewish state and a means of channeling their claims for inclusion in the host country. We delve into the modes whereby the theological position of Christian Zionism is translated into a sociological position of Christian migrants in a Jewish state.     

Committed,Grateful, and Worthy of Acceptance: <Emphasis Type="Italic">Master Chef Israel</Emphasis> and the Social Construction of Immigration Narratives

The rhetoric of nations, such as Israel, often assigns immigrants social positions in nationalist reconstructions. Given the active role the media has taken in reconstructing the nation, this paper suggests looking at Master Chef Israel (MCI) as an arena in which immigrant contestants are staged as recruited to engage in the reconstruction and branding of Israel. A narrative analysis of five seasons of MCI and interviews with 15 contestants tracked three narratives, each of which reveals a different mode of branding Israel. The show branded Jewish immigrants as equipped with the necessary capital to become Israelis, while those who converted to Judaism and immigrated to Israel were expected to show commitment both to their new religion and to their new country. In the third narrative, MCI staged the patriotism of individuals who immigrated after marrying an Israeli citizen as a gradually emerging sentiment based on the extent to which their difference enabled the incorporation of an Israeli component into their overall identity.     

Narratives of Crime and Criminals: How Places Socially Construct the Crime Problem1

A common narrative about crime in the contemporary United States is that offenders are primarily young black men living in poor urban neighborhoods committing violent and drug‐related crimes. There is also a local context to community, crime, and fear that influences this narrative. In this article, I address how narratives of crime and criminals play out differently within particular places. The article is based on participant observation and interviews conducted in two high‐crime Boston‐area communities. Although both communities are concerned with stereotypical offenders, there are differential community constructions of crime, formed through interactions between crime narratives and place identities. In one, crime is a community problem, in which both offenders and victims are community members. In the other, outsiders commit crime against community members. Media portrayals of crime and community, community race and class identities, and concerns over neighborhood change all contribute to place‐specific framing of “the crime problem.” These frames, in turn, shape both intergroup dynamics and support for criminal justice policy.     

"NEIGHBORS WHO MIGHT BECOME FRIENDS":

HIV is a condition that seems powerfully to define identities and communities. In some cases it appears to have generated new, culturally and politically radical forms of both. Drawing on a series of interviews over two to three years with people infected or affected by HIV, this article examines how interviewees describe their communities and identities as determined by HIV, though in partial, limited ways. The article explores how the "self" operates in the interviews, not as a consistent, reflexive project but as an occasional, situated resistance. I argue that the narrative form of the interviews was what enabled provisional, variable identities and communities to be articulated. The "coming out" genre was widely deployed to describe negotiating HIV stigma and fatality, as well as accepting and to some extent disengaging from serostatus. This genre's allowance of incompleteness also gave a place to HIV's abjection, to horrors that cannot be storied into subjective meaningfulness. Finally, the article looks at how, rather than focusing on identities or communities, interviewees told stories of citizenship, of subject positions shaped by neighborhood, national and transnational, as much as individual or group concerns.     

“There Is No Perfect School”: The Complexity of School Decision‐Making Among Lesbian and Gay Adoptive Parents

Parents influence their children's educational experiences in part via school selection. This process is particularly complex for families with multiple minority, potentially stigmatized, statuses. This qualitative study examines middle‐class lesbian and gay (LG) adoptive parents' school decision‐making. Parents' economic resources provided the foundation for how parents weighed child/family identities (children's race, LG‐parent family structure, child's special needs) and school‐related concerns (e.g., academic rigor). For White gay male‐headed families in affluent urban communities, financial resources muted racial and sexual orientation consciousness in favor of competitive academic environments. Lesbian mothers of modest economic means prioritized racial diversity more centrally. Racial diversity overrode gay‐friendliness as a consideration in lesbian‐mother families; gay‐friendliness was prioritized over racial diversity among families in conservative communities; and special needs overrode all other child and family identity considerations. For LG adoptive parent families, school decision‐making has the potential for greater tensions amidst multiple intersecting identities and fewer economic resources.     

Religion,Spirituality, and Thriving: Transcendent Narrative,Virtue, and Telos

A theory is proposed to explain how religion/spirituality (R/S) is related to positive youth development and thriving. The concept of telos is employed to define thriving as continued growth through strength‐based living that leads to contributing to one's communities and living out one's ethical ideals. Virtue development is proposed as a primary process by which R/S promotes thriving. Virtues are defined as hybrid personality units emerging when characteristic adaptations are given meaning by a transcendent narrative identity. R/S contributes to virtue formation through the ideological, social, and transcendent contexts embedded within religion by providing opportunities to grow both the characteristic adaptations and transcendent narrative identities necessary for virtue formation in youth and, ultimately, thriving. Implications for future research are discussed.     

White Universal Identity as a “Sense of Group Position”

This article seeks to expand upon Blumer's “Race Prejudice as a Sense of Group Position.” I argue that Blumer's group position model invites us to critically consider the role that dominant group identity and “threats” to identity play in reproducing racial inequalities. Identities seat both material and ideal concerns, and white identities, in particular, may provide “ontological security” that whites will defensively protect. I draw on ethnographic research conducted in 1994–96 in two demographically distinct high schools. Young whites in both schools expressed identities that positioned them as “universal,” and they responded reactively, even prejudicially, when their universal group position was threatened.     

Applying the ‘Experience-Near’ Principle To Research: Psychoanalytically Informed Methods1

This article is about how to preserve the vitality of the meaning conveyed to social science researchers by participants. I use the example of a qualitative, psycho-social project on the topic of how women's identities change when they become mothers for the first time. Psychoanalysis was used and adapted to understand both participants' and researchers' experience, and the relation of these to each other. I describe two psychoanalytically informed research methods, free association narrative interviewing and infant observation, and give examples of how, separately and together they can go beyond a text-based method and conceptualise identities in ways that avoid reproducing assumptions of rational, unitary, discursive subjectivity. In assessing how well the two methods worked, I focus my discussion on the observation method using four themes: dimensions of time, embodiment and practices, spatial sensitivity and multiple positioning, and how knowing is accomplished in research.     

“The Sigh of the East”: A Sense of Empire and Other Lingerings*

L'étude des récits de voyageurs qui sont allés à Singapour au XIXe siècle révèle de quelle manière l'odorat, le toucher et le goût ont influé sur la subjectivité des voyageurs occidentaux et sur I'idée qu'ils se faisaient de Singapour et de la Malaisie britannique à cette période. Souvent, le même endroit suscitait différents sentiments: soit une admiration pour la nature, soit un dégoût pour l'état de délabrement qui régnait, et parfois même un sentiment ambivalent. En s'appuyant sur des fictions et sur plusieurs récits, cet article démontre que, si l'Orient a été orientalisé par les expériences de ces voyageurs, les identités de ces mêmes voyageurs se sont construites dans la sensualité de leurs relations avec le milieu. An examination of travellers' accounts of 19th-century Singapore reveals how smell, feel, touch and taste impacted upon the subjectivities of Western travellers and their conception of 19th-century Singapore and British Malaya. Often the same location would evoke different conceptions: either a celebration of nature or disgust with the dilapidated conditions, and sometimes even ambivalence. The paper argues, through the use of fiction and several narrative accounts, that as much as the East was orientalized through such travellers' experiences, the travellers' identities were constituted by their sensuous interaction with their environment.     

The demobilization of diaspora: history,memory and ‘latent identity’

In the context of sustained interest in the mobilization of diasporic identities, I consider how and why diasporic identities might be demobilized over time. I use the case of an Indian Pakistani community in the UK and the USA (sometimes referred to as ‘Bihari’) to examine how historical memories of conflict are narrated in diaspora and the impact this has on the presence or absence of ‘diasporic consciousness'. The significance of memory in diasporic and transnational communities has been neglected, especially where the narration of historical events is concerned. The impact of forgetting has received particularly scant attention. I argue that, in the absence of this story, important lessons about the role of history in the formation of community are obscured. In this example, the ‘latent’ identities created on diaspora's demobilization help us to unpick the dyadic relations of ‘home’ and ‘away’ at the heart of essentialist conceptualizations of the concept.     

“Tell Something About the Pictures”: The Content and the Process of Autobiographical Work Among Scrapbookers

Viewing the popular process of making “scrapbooks” as a particular type of autobiographical occasion, I analyze interviews with scrapbookers and others who make up the scrapbooker's community, including industry workers and biographical others (i.e., family and friends). By considering scrapbooks within the autobiographical community in which they are created, I am able to scrutinize the structure of the narratives they contain, the role of the audience in their creation, and the emergence of norms of remembrance among scrapbookers. The narratives recorded in scrapbooks emerge from the bottom up and suggest that scrapbooking is a way to demonstrate the biographical stability necessary to craft an authenticity narrative. Further, I explore how scrapbookers “do autobiography” by uncovering their decision‐making process regarding what is worth memorializing. Scrapbookers work through a mnemonic checklist assessing special events and everyday life for its “scrapworthiness.” This paper's contribution centers on describing the process and the content of these atypical autobiographical occasions.     

CONSTRUCTING IDENTITIES AT THE MARGINS: Masculinities and Citizenship in the Israeli Army

This article examines the construction of multiple gendered and national identities in the Israeli army. In Israel, hegemonic masculinity is identified with the masculinity of the Jewish combat soldier and is perceived as the emblem of good citizenship. This identity. I argue, assumes a central role in shaping a hierarchal order of gendered and civic identities that reflects and reproduces social stratification and reconstructs differential modes of participation in, and belonging to, the Israeli state.
In-depth interviews with two marginalized groups in the Israeli army—women in "masculine" roles and male soldiers in blue-collar jobs—suggest two discernible practices of identity. While women in "masculine" roles structure their gender and national identities according to the masculinity of the combat soldier, the identity practices of male soldiers in blue-collar jobs challenge this hegemonic masculinity and its close link with citizenship in Israel. However, while both identity practices are empowering for the groups in question, neither undermines the hegemonic order, for the military's practice of "limited inclusion" prohibits the development of a collective consciousness that would challenge the differentiated structure of citizenship.     

Representations of Jewish Childhood From 1950s Communist Romania in Memoirs by Women Émigré Authors to the United States

ABSTRACT

This article examines the memoirs of three Jewish women – Marianne Hirsch, Anca Vlasopolos, and Haya Leah Molnar – to understand how they remembered childhood in 1950s communist Bucharest. I first show how Marianne Hirsch’s part-memoir, part-critical book, Family Frames, uses her personal experiences to theorize tropes of transcultural dislocation as specific features of post-World War II Jewish children’s identities in 1950s Romania. I analyze how these tropes equally permeate the memoirs by two of her generation’s peers, Anca Vlasopolos and Haya Leah Molnar, highlighting how the two authors deploy them in their narratives. Overall, I show that writings of one’s 1950s childhood experiences in Bucharest by Jewish emigrées to the US offer new alternative discourses about facing the past and the present in Eastern Europe and the US by the tropes of initial transcultural, dislocating experiences at the start of their lives.