Role Transitions,Objects, and Identity

Most research on role transitions, following a tradition pioneered by van Gennep, regards these major turning points in the life course primarily as times when people move between different sets of social networks. While these studies acknowledge that rites of passage occur within particular physical spaces in which material objects are present, the importance of such objects has received little attention. I explore one particular role transition—moving away to college—and illustrate that objects play a central role in how students construct their identities. Students at “Midwestern” University make strategic choices about which objects to leave at home as anchors of prior identities and which ones to bring to school as markers of new identities. Moreover, I suggest that the meanings of these two categories of objects differ by gender. I argue that this case opens up the possibility that objects play a much more central part in role transitions than social scientists have acknowledged. This study also challenges existing assumptions about different processes of identity formation. Therefore, it engenders the need for additional research about how people reinterpret objects during role transitions, and about the different meanings that objects may have for the constructions of masculinity and femininity.     

Midwives,Marginality, and Public Identity Work

Because midwifery in the United States is an occupation at the margins of medicine, midwives must frequently negotiate competing identity claims. This article examines the public identity work of a group of midwives by focusing on two important tools they use to accomplish this work: boundary negotiation and impression management. Drawing on data from in‐depth interviews with twenty‐six licensed, nurse, and empirical midwives in the state of Florida, this article illustrates the ways in which midwives frame their identities in relation to history and media representations and manage public identities through boundary negotiation and impression management. I argue that the marginality of this occupation lends itself to competing categories of identity that midwives must negotiate. These categories become salient when midwives confront historical and media representations of childbirth and midwifery as well as the perceptions of the general public, consumers, lawmakers, and medical professionals.     

Gender Relations and Identity at Work: A Case Study of Masculinities and Femininities in an Advertising Agency

The paper explores gender relations and genderidentity, based upon an ethnography of a Swedishadvertising agency. The organization is of specialinterest as it has a strong gender division of labor,where men hold all senior posts, at the same time ascreative advertising work seems to have much moresimilarity with what gender studies describe as"femininity" rather than with forms ofmasculinity. The paper discusses how gender is constructedin an organizational context. Emphasis on workplacesexuality is related to identity work of men in responseto the highly ambiguous and contested context of advertising work. Tendencies toward thefemininization of the work and clientrelationships put some strain on (gender) identity formen, triggering a structuring of gender relations andinteraction at the workplace to restore feelings ofmasculinity. The paper problematizes ideas ofmasculinities and femininities and argues for arethinking of their roles in nonbureaucraticorganizations. Also assumptions about a close connection between domination ofmasculinity and of males are criticallydiscussed.     

Youth Identity Formation: Contemporary Identity Work

The study of youth identity and its formations today is diffuse and widely expansive, charted across a variety of disciplines, including Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, Education, History, English, and Cultural Studies. This review essay is largely concerned with youth identity formation as a socially bound process as understood by sociologists. I sketch some of the thematic currents that guide contemporary sociologists’ investigations of youth identity formation as socially constituted process, and some of its exemplars. I highlight two conceptual framings of note: (a) youth identity formation as ‘project’ captured in the concept of ‘identity work’ and (b) youth identity formation as historically contingent phenomenon shaped by changes to the life course and changes in conceptions of the self in late modernity.     

Surgical Identity Play: The Anatomy Lab Revisited

The anatomy lab has been studied by sociologists interested in professional socialization since the 1950s. This is because the act of dissecting a cadaver is thought to be foundational for both the student's medical knowledge and the development of the student's professional identity. In this paper, I revisit the anatomy lab both historically and ethnographically. Drawing on theoretical insights from the laboratory ethnography tradition within science and technology studies, I show that students use material artifacts in the lab to support their “surgical identity play.” This activity is structured by the laboratory's performative architecture even while it is unsupervised by anatomy faculty. While many analyses of professional socialization focus on how students learn to interact with patients during their training, I show that the anatomy lab experience is an important form of professional socialization because here students learn to employ surgical instruments, language, and dress, and begin to relate to each other as colleagues.     

The Experiences of Accession 8 Migrants in England: Motivations,Work and Agency

Drawing on a recently completed qualitative study in a northern English city, this paper explores motivations and experiences of Accession 8 (A8) migrants who have entered the United Kingdom following the expansion of the European Union in 2004. The paper considers commonalities and differences among the group of migrants routinely referred to as A8 migrant workers/labourers. Diversity is apparent in three particular respects: first, the motivations and forms of movement undertaken; second, their experiences of work within the UK paid labour market; and third, the extent to which the act and experience of migration offers new individual and collective opportunities and potentially opens up spaces for people to negotiate structural constraints and reconfigure aspects of their identity.     

Leisure,School, and Work Activity Preferences and Their Role in Vocational Identity Development

Elements of an expanded construct of adolescent vocational identity were examined in terms of their interrelationships with each other, as well as relationships with preferences among leisure, school, and work activities, engagement in those activities, and identity status. Investigating a sample of 660 7th through 12th graders, we found that vocational interests, occupational self-efficacy, and occupational prestige were closely associated with each other, with school and leisure interests, and with actual engagement in corresponding (exploratory) activities. We also found that adolescents did not draw significant distinctions between leisure, school, and work activities. The role of school and vocational exploration in adolescents' self-chosen vocational identity is discussed.     

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.     

Analysing Competence: Gender and Identity at Work

Competence approaches are among the techniques that claim to measure the behaviour, skills, knowledge and understanding crucial to effective managerial performance. It is claimed that competence approaches empower and develop managers while enabling them to meet organizational objectives. Since the bases for the techniques are avowedly scientific, they are said to provide organizations with a gender neutral form of assessment. In this paper we construct a theoretical framework in terms of which these claims can be analysed and assessed. Using this framework, we examine the competence approach as it has been implemented in six organizations in relation to the claim to objectivity.     

Measuring Adoptive Identity: Validation of the Adoptive Identity Work Scale

Guided by Erikson's as well as Grotevant and colleagues’ identity theorizing, three studies were conducted to assess the validity and reliability of the Adoptive Identity Work Scale (AIWS), a self-report measure of the identity work contributing to one's adoptive identity. Adult adoptees were solicited in a series of surveys (study 1: N = 196; study 2: N = 119; study 3: N = 217) to complete existing measures of adoptive identity and well-being as well as the newly formed AIWS. The studies reported here provide concurrent, construct, and predictive validity for the AIWS, consisting of five items measuring reflective exploration and five items measuring preoccupation.     

Negotiations,Work Objects,and the Unborn Patient: The Interactional Scaffolding of Fetal Surgery

This article examines the interactional scaffolding of fetal surgery, an emergent medical specialty focused on the unborn patient. Drawing on work in symbolic interaction, especially that of Mead and Strauss, the article focuses on the social organization of work in a Fetal Treatment Unit at an urban teaching hospital. The major types of interactions among participants are cooperation and conflict, illustrating the many differences among actors in this social world and their need to work together to successfully build their specialty. Differences discussed in this article center on the work object in fetal surgery (who is considered the patient?), criteria for patient selection, and definitions of disease and treatment. Actors must continually negotiate these and other differences as they create the social order of fetal surgery in a politicized context, both locally at Capital Hospital and for the specialty more generally.     

Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency

Physical attractiveness is associated with a number of positive outcomes, including employment benefits such as hiring, wages, and promotion, and is correlated with social and personal rewards such as work satisfaction, positive perceptions of others, and higher self-esteem. As a result, individuals perform various forms of beauty work, thus reproducing and strengthening a social system that privileges youth and attractiveness. In this article, we explore the beauty work practices that people perform. We begin with an examination of the cultural context in which beauty work occurs, including the individual, social, and institutional rewards accompanying physical attractiveness, and then review the practices themselves. Because these rewards and practices contribute in part to the reproduction of social relations and norms, we then turn to the gender dimensions of beauty work, along with its unique racial embodiment. Throughout, we raise the issue of individual agency in beauty work. Finally, we conclude with suggestions for future research.     

Transitional Objects and Social Work: Some Objections to McCluskey

Abstract

Horror, repulsion slowly creeping sensations of cold and shock reverberated around the room, pinning all three of us to our chairs in solemn silence. The pain felt intolerable and one sensed a desire all round to flee the torture of remembrance and recall. Finally it proved too much for the mother, who dashed out in tears. A little later the father gently helped her to return and they sat clinging together in tears as they struggled to return to their story their vividly detailed recall of their experience 8 years before of their second miscarriage. It was the first time they had talked about it together. (Case Study 1 -Mr &; Mrs C. see Section II)     

Trauma Symptoms: Relationship With Career Thoughts,Vocational Identity,and Developmental Work Personality

Knowledge of traumatic events and how trauma symptoms relate to social and psychological well‐being continues to grow. One aspect of an individual's functioning that may be affected by exposure to traumatic events is the ability of the individual to engage in career‐ and work‐related activities (D. H. Coursol, J. Lewis, & L. Garrity, 2001). The current study examines the relationship between trauma symptoms and the career development process of 131 college students. Results indicate a significant relationship between higher levels of trauma symptoms and higher levels of dysfunctional career thoughts and lower levels of work personality. Implications for career counselors are discussed.     

Work Psychology,Women and Stress: Silence,Identity and the Boundaries of Conventional Wisdom

It is argued that there has been a close connection between work psychologists and management which has produced a discourse about stress. In this discourse workers are positioned as victims whose suffering may be overcome through behavioural technologies. Having drawn attention to the assumptions, limitations and silences of the literature, recent debates surrounding gender and the politics of identity are considered in order to outline the possibility of a complementary approach to the study of gender and work stress. Theoretical and practical issues are addressed.     

Social Work Education and the Changing Nature of Public Agency Practice

The CSWE accreditation standard requiring deans and directors to demonstrate commitment to the ethical values of the profession again raises questions about what commitment to ethical values means and about how determinations of adherence will be made. In this paper, two contrasting educational doctrines found in universities are reviewed. Aspects of each are found in social work statements of value. Special attention is given to their conflicting conceptions of students and the ideal learning environment. Following this, a sample of social work values and procedures for determining adherence to them are reviewed. Suggestions for further study are given.     

The Interface of Racial Identity Development with Identity Complexity in Clinical Social Work Student Practitioners

This paper examines the influence that one's racial identity development plays in the overall professional identity development of clinical social work student practitioners. The author discusses race, as a construct, in a post-modern world. Utilizing Saari's (1993, 2000) discussion of identity complexity, the paper demonstrates how the ability to dialogue about issues of race, in a complex and multi-faceted way, is reflective of evolution in one's racial identity development. To further one's identity development, the importance of a dialogical mode of interaction (Bahktin, 1986, 1993) is emphasized.