‘Having to say everyday … I’m not black enough … I’m not white enough’. Discourses of Aboriginality in the Australian education context

This paper interrogates discourses of Aboriginality about, and by, early career Aboriginal teachers as they negotiate their emergent professional identity in specific Australian school contexts. These discourses position the respondents via their ethnic and cultural background and intersect with self-positioning. This relates to the desire to be positioned as teacher rather than (only) as an ‘Aboriginal’ teacher. Consequently, the over-determination of Aboriginality includes such suppositions as the ‘think-look-do’ Aboriginality with a ‘natural’ connection to community, the ‘good’ Aboriginal teacher who fixes Aboriginal ‘problems’, the Aboriginal teacher as ‘Other’, and [the notion that] ‘Aboriginal work’ as easy, not real work and peripheral to core business. Through qualitative methodology, eleven Aboriginal teachers from the University of Sydney were interviewed. They were able to construct stories of early career teaching and the data was analysed to explore how the participants interpreted, accepted and/or resisted various discourses in their efforts to be agentic and resilient and to make a difference for the Aboriginal students they teach.     

A study of significance of racial and athletic identification on educational perceptions among African American male college athletes

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to analyze the racial and athletic identities of African American male college athletes to determine how the identities might impact the athletic and educational potential and performance of this specific group of college athletes. The study revealed that participants who responded negatively to a poor athletic performance were more likely to have lower levels of academic self-concept. In contrast, college athletes who highly identified with their racial group were more likely to have higher levels of academic self-concept. Overall, the findings reveal the intricacies and complexities of being an African American college student and athlete at predominantly white institutions (PWIs) in the US. As such, the article details the implications of the findings as they relate to African American culture, American sports culture, and higher education realities.     

Identity construction of second-generation Iranians in Australia: influences and perspectives

Understanding the complexity of identity in the children of immigrants has become important with the growing rates of global migration. A new theoretical construct refers to an individual’s subjective representation of the interrelationships among his or her multiple group identities and how their subjective identity could be explained.

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of their Iranian background and the social characteristics of their host society, Australia, on the second generation’s understanding of their national and ethnic identity.

This cross-sectional study is based on a quantitative method. Participants in the study were second-generation Iranians aged 18–40, living in Australia. Data were collected on how these second-generation Iranians identified themselves with Iranian society and/or with the wider society, and how their chosen identity was influenced by their background, their national beliefs, their perspectives towards the host country and the host country’s perspective towards specific ethnic groups.

Overall, 137 people participated in this study, and the results show patterns of biculturalism; the majority claimed hyphenated identity wherein the second identity was shown to be the weaker identity. The main contextual factors influencing their identity formation were birth place, acculturation and attitudes towards the host.     

Oestrogen Rising 2016: Ireland’s stained and bloodied cloths

A weaver, seamstress, laundress and artist, in this essay I shall spin a yarn, tangle a web, and construct a text(ile) of the inter-weave of narrative and identity that I define as my intellectual, textual, somatic and material/visual practice obsessions. My work explores ‘the places in-between’ in the entanglements of Irish and Northern Irish gender and identity, and in the abject fabrics of death and of desire. As an Irish feminist, sense-making of the complexities, conundrums, challenges and contradictions of my land, my cloth, my body and my culture owes much to Irish women before me who fought for female suffrage, and Irish women now – north and south of the border that divides the island of Ireland – who still struggle for equality of citizenship, social justice, human rights, and full reproductive autonomy. My contention is that when we accept that Ireland herself is a many-layered cloth, a stained and bloodied cloth, a cloth marked irreversibly by history, conflict, denial and abuse, stained by its own repression, marked through denial of all its people’s rights and needs, and bloodied by its greatest export, the haemorrhage of its people, then – polemical, didactic or reflective, with more compassion, empathy, humility and heart – we just might make peace with our past.     

(Dis)locating nations in the World Cup: football fandom and the global geopolitics of affect

The World Cup, as a tournament that pits national teams against one another, initially seems to be a site where support for sports is tied to nations. However, situating this sporting event at the intersection of discourses of globalization, transnational circulation of capital and populations, and theories of fandom, our examination of diasporic populations found that the choice is not a simple one between ‘origin nation’ and ‘residence nation.’ Instead, the decision of which team to support relies much more on an attenuated, complex notion that we call transnational affinity. We examine this concept in relation to the context of transnational flow of players, media, spectators, and capital, contending that locating nations or national preference in the World Cup requires understanding the contemporary de- or trans-nationalization of not only sports but identity itself beyond the binary of national and global.     

‘I am studying in the US but’: observations and insights from Caribbean college students

This paper examines the experiences and views of 12 Caribbean students studying at four Liberal Arts colleges and one large university in the Northeast, USA. The purpose of the study was to ascertain how young educated potential immigrants to the US today are thinking about race, identity, and homeland. The data were gathered through a 12-item open-ended questionnaire electronically administered through Google Forms. Among other issues, the researcher wanted to learn about participants’: decision to study in the US, experiences with race, identity and attitudinal shifts, feelings about being assigned racial labels, and current thinking about returning to their home countries. The findings highlight the acceptance of racial labels except for ‘African American’, a dogged adherence to national identity, the challenge of adjusting to the US racialized space, the view of the US as an education and economic transitional point for migrants on their return journey to their home countries, the formulation of new understandings and attitudes regarding mixed ancestry, and the defining role of sexual orientation in the attitude towards home country versus the US.     

Interpreting conflict and integration through the reciprocity lens: mobility and settlement in a historical perspective on the Sierra Leonean coast

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Sierra Leone has witnessed intense population movements. During the civil war (1991–2002), many populations fled the fighting zones of the interior to take refuge on the coast. Since the conflict ended, new populations have reached the coastal area with the hope of accessing economic opportunities in the fishing business. Mobility, along with changing sociopolitical and economic conditions, has generated conflict between immigrants and Sherbro populations, who consider themselves autochthonous and deny migrants the freedom to access political and land rights. The paper argues that present dynamics of conflicts are rooted in long-term patterns of settlement and relationships of reciprocity between groups. Relations between migrants and local populations are grounded in a sociocultural idiom that implies the institutionalization of practices of reciprocity between local inhabitants (hosts) and later settlers (strangers). The host/stranger reciprocity system is an emic model of cultural action embedded in historical and power relations between groups. It implies the progressive integration of strangers into the host society. This paper highlights how, in a situation of conflict, long-established social relationships between groups are reevaluated with reference to norms of integration and reciprocity. The paper draws on Sherbro oral traditions to show how social memories about interethnic relations are reframed with reference to values and expectations of reciprocity, in order to explain the recent conflict that opposes Sherbros to immigrants. Sherbros use oral traditions to interpret these tensions in a long-term perspective, thereby expressing their own view on settlement, conflict and integration.     

Tracing normal lives: between stigma and the will to be Cigano

Despite the stereotyped homogenisation of the Ciganos (or Gypsies/Roma) – often perceived as poor and marginalised – many have in fact taken different personal and family life paths. Taking into account a perspective of differentiated socialisation processes, social and family contexts and frames of life experiences, the aim of this paper is to present the main results obtained from a qualitative study where in-depth interviews were conducted with Ciganos integrated in the Portuguese labour market (as employees). Our focus is on the processes of social integration, on the many revelations of social and cultural pluralism, and on Gypsy identity, centring attentions and how such identification often serves to challenge the static and hegemonic conceptions about the cultural traits and representations of this population.     

藏族网民对网络文化的使用习惯、特点与认同研究

藏族网民对数字图片、视频、歌曲、影视、游戏和小说等网络文化的喜好使得他们形成了网络文化的使用习惯、特点以及强烈的网络文化认同感.藏族网民在网络文化载体手机化趋势和网络文化消费娱乐化倾向与其他民族的网民保持着一致性.但在网络文化认同上则表现为更加喜欢选择藏族网络文化产品;更加积极参与到对涉藏网络文化传播内容、方式的肯定、批评和建议中;更加倾向于由藏人自己主导、创作的网络文化作品;强烈希望涉藏网络文化创作和传播过程中对藏族文化习俗的理解和尊重.网络为藏族文化的传播和保护带来了新的机遇,更重要的是在藏族网民心中逐步建立起了网络文化认同.