Deconstructing place identity? Impacts of a “Racino” on Elora,Ontario, Canada

The heritage-scape is a socially constructed place that provides locally crafted products, cuisine, and experiences to satisfy consumers’ desire for authenticity. In this paper we question if the introduction of a functionally non-conforming structure causes an existing heritage-based place identity to dismantle (i.e. deconstruct). In 2003, a pari-mutuel racetrack and gaming parlour (a “racino”) was introduced to the historic village of Elora, Ontario, Canada. Through content analysis we unravel (i.e. deconstruct) the social processes that lay behind this development. We find that this profit-oriented venue was widely contested by preservation-minded residents, who expressed concern that this structure would compromise Elora’s heritage image. Our survey finds, however, that the majority of visitors believe that the Grand River Raceway and Slots has not impacted Elora’s existing place-based identity. Key informants further reveal that image management, spatial placement and visual coherence are largely responsible for its maintenance. We conclude that a heritage-based place identity may be retained, and even enhanced, in the presence of a hegemonic discourse that is underlain by a long-standing preservationist ideology.     

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.     

Persistence and desistance in heavy cannabis use: the role of identity,agency, and life events

Many cannabis users ‘mature out’ of their drug use, and factors of cannabis use cessation have been identified. However, very little in-depth knowledge is available about the mechanisms underlying this phenomenon. Criminological studies have gained interesting insights in desistance from crime, yet these perspectives are rarely used in drug research. This qualitative, three-year longitudinal study explored the processes involved in desistance from frequent cannabis use for young adults. Using a narrative approach, desisters (frequent users who successfully quit their cannabis use) and persisters (frequent users with a persistent desire and unsuccessful attempts to quit) were compared. In the course of the study, desisters mainly exhibited increasing agency and goal setting, established strategies to achieve these goals, and could envision another self. Desistance was generally induced by life events that became turning points. Persisters experienced largely similar events, but lacked goals and strategies and held external factors responsible for their life course and failed quit attempts. Identity change is at the core of desistance from frequent cannabis use, and the meaning-giving to life events and experiences is essential. Agency is a necessary ingredient for desistance, develops over time and through action, and leads to a new drug-free identity with desistance in turn increasing agency.     

Exploring the use of hip hop music in participatory research studies that involve youth

This article explores the use of hip hop in participatory research studies. The article was informed by a research process that explored the identity construction process of female late adolescents who identified strongly with hip hop music. Hip hop music constituted an integral component of the research process, as it was used to stimulate participation. It was also used to prompt reflection and engagement with the Self. Participatory research methods, namely drawings and lyric inquiry, were used in conjunction with hip hop music to elicit narrative data. The findings illustrate that the use of hip hop music was beneficial as it prompted profound engagement with the Self. Hip hop music provided the participants with spaces within which they could reflect on and articulate the continual, interactional and situational dimensions of their lives. These reflections ultimately initiated agency, as it prompted them to contemplate empowerment and liberation. As such, we argue that hip hop music can serve as transformative data-generation stimulus in participatory research projects involving adolescents who identify with this genre.     

After the March: Using Instagram to Perform and Sustain the Women's March

The January 2017 Women's March was an example of the paradigmatic March on Washington, part of the repertoire of collective action used by social movements in the United States for decades. Similar marches were held on its first and second anniversary, in January 2018 and January 2019, respectively. One did not need to travel to the nation's capital to participate in these marches, however; activists also organized hundreds of “sister marches” across the United States and internationally. Yet, a sole focus on these one‐day, physical events misses a great deal of activity. In this article, we examine social media activity related to the Women's March on the platform Instagram that was posted well after the 2017 march was over but before the 2018 march was fully planned. We do so to gain purchase on how individuals and organizations use social media to maintain movements between large events. We analyze a systematic sample of Instagram posts from two sources: (1) individual Instagram users’ public posts with the hashtag #womensmarch and (2) posts from the official Instagram account of the Women's March. Conceptualizing these posts as political performances, we use our findings to draw implications for the study of contemporary protest.     

Establishing Continuity of Self-Memory Boxes in Dementia Facilities for Older Adults: Their Use and Usefulness

Spatial and detailed design aspects of dementia care centers deserve attention because they contribute to the overall experience of vulnerable individuals who need more support from the designed environment. This study examined the use and usefulness of memory boxes (wall-mounted display cases) at the entrances to resident rooms in dementia care facilities. Environmental walk-throughs, photodocumentation, memory box inventory, and staff interviews in three residential care facilities confirmed that memory boxes were beneficial in creating identity, assisting in orientation and wayfinding, and encouraging reminiscence. An additional use that emerged from this study was their usefulness as a tool for staff.     

WHO CAN SPEAK TO RACE AND NATION?

This article examines the production and publication of the Parekh Report (2000) by drawing upon two related current debates – the decline of the public intellectual and the necessity for a public sociology. It argues that both of these debates have failed to engage with concrete examples of public intellectual labour, with the complexities of public communication sociologically and have been reticent as to which particular intellectual voices are able to enter the public sphere. The article argues that the intellectually orientated, multiculturally constituted Future of Multi-Ethnic Britain Commission which authored the report and the report's moment of publication both offer sites in which these critiques can be developed. The article foregrounds the question as to who is entitled to inaugurate, participate in and shape public debates on race, nation, and national identity and evidences the difficulties of attempting to do so in a ‘race volatile’, anti-intellectual and heavily mediated political milieu.     

The romantic self and the politics of internet commercialization

This essay looks at some examples of ways that certain pre-existing imaginary forms of ‘selfhood’ have been culturally mapped onto historically pivotal moments in the Internet’s development. It focuses less on how technologies have shaped culture than on the reverse: on certain ways that culture has shaped society’s embrace of the Internet. What the Internet is and will come to be, the essay suggests, is partly a matter of who we expect to be when we sit down to use it. Specifically, it looks at two key examples of ways that certain pre-existing imaginary forms of selfhood – ways of understanding oneself as a self – have been culturally mapped onto historically pivotal moments in the Internet’s development: the initial explosion of the Internet in the early 1990s and its supporting ethos exemplified by Wired magazine, and the Open Source Movement in the late 1990s. The essay suggests that significant parts of the culture of computing have been not only individualist, but also composed of two distinct if intertwined strands of individualism, romantic and utilitarian, and that their difference has political significance. Like its ancestor, the 1960s counterculture, the case of the computer culture suggests that romantic individualism stands in a tangential relation to capitalist property relations (and the utilitarian ‘I’ they imply), sometimes working in concert with markets and privatization, as was the case in the early 1990s, and sometimes working to call them into question, as was the case towards the end of the 1990s.