Face,Accounts, and Schemes in the Context of Relationship Breakups

This article investigates account strategies that individuals employ to neutralize identity threats caused by breakups from romantic relationships. I distinguish three narrative frames for such accounts: dumper, dumpee, and consensus narratives. Individuals who employ a consensus narrative frame provide accounts by default: they deny that any harm was done to anyone. Dumpers dismissed the breakup's conflictuality, used externalization strategies, and depicted themselves as empathetic. Dumpees used externalization strategies and denials of injury, emphasized their agency, and pointed out valuable changes of self. I then analyze the results from a phenomenological perspective to identify connections between accounting practices and the structure of the self. I argue that accounting for traumatic breakups is important for the development of schemes that guide perception, action, and the interpretation of biography.     

新疆地理山川民间故事的形态学分析

该文通过故事形态学的研究方法对新疆的部分民间故事进行分析,参照普罗普的研究成果,发现这些故事材料中不仅存在固定化的讲述规律,而且还出现异于普罗普研究的新特点。     

“说”出集体性——口述性（orality）与20世纪40年代的解放区小说

20世纪40年代解放区小说中,经常出现一种作为情节生产者的"非角色化"叙述者,和作为假想主体的"情境外"叙述接受者,二者之间的遥相呼应完成了叙事传达和接受的想象交流。这种叙述者和叙述接受者之间口述性的共时交流成功地使这类作品易于为农村普通读者接受。口述性的仪式化结构更为解放区作家虚拟了一种"集体性"景象,并为他们提供了使之合法化的叙述工具。     

Impression management in corporate annual reports during the global financial crisis

This paper analyses impression management (IM) during the global financial crisis (GFC). It examines the differences in multiple textual characteristics and attributions between a highly positive performance period (2002–2007) and the GFC period (2008–2012), within the setting of Spain, where these two economic cycles were extreme. In contrast to previous research, companies' extreme poor performance in our sample is driven by an exogenous event. The findings do not show clear evidence of IM based on textual characteristics specifically linked to the GFC. Companies tried not to use overt IM and, to some extent, tried to clarify the impact of the crisis on performance. They were under great scrutiny and probably preferred to tell a more careful story. However, a general pattern of IM was still present during the GFC in the form of consistent positive attributions, favourable benchmarks and enhancement practices. In essence, the crisis did not fully stop IM practices, but rather influenced the way IM was produced. Overall, our results show that IM was lower during the GFC than in the case of poor performance in normal macroeconomic conditions found by previous literature. The results also show that the narratives of firms in the finance and real estate sectors were the most reactive to the GFC, probably linked to their key role in the crisis.     

Children forever: The search for origins among Chilean adults who were adopted

There has been a global increase in the number of adults who were adopted 1 1 To make the text more readable, we use the term “adult adoptee” rather than our preferred term “people who were adopted.” We prefer the latter term because it does captures our understanding that adoption is a practice and a life experience and not necessarily a permanent fixture of the identities of people who were adopted.
searching for their origins. This trend has promoted the interest of social sciences researchers, as well as carry out the obligations of states to provide specialized services. In this article, we present some results from the first qualitative study that explores the experiences of some Chilean adults who were adopted and searched for their origins in Chile through the National Service of Minor's Search for Origins Program. The narratives of the participants show that, in spite of legislative changes, a series of barriers and contradictions continue to exist, which make it difficult to guarantee the right to know one's origins. The legal and technical frameworks and practices analysed show how difficult it is to dismantle the “clean break” principle. They also highlight the persistence of the image of adoptees as “minors” who need the “protection” of their parents or professionals. We discuss the different challenges to be considered by researchers, practitioners, and policy‐makers involved in adoption policies and practices.     

A Different Kind of Whiteness: Marking and Unmarking of Social Boundaries in the Construction of Hegemonic Ethnicity

This article proposes a new theoretical approach to the analysis of hegemonic ethnicity through an examination of the construction of white ethnicity among Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin) in Israel. Contrary to the theory of symbolic ethnicity, I argue that “Ashkenaziness” in Israel is not an optional, voluntary identity; rather, it is constituted by employing narratives that continually establish cultural, color‐based, and ethnic boundaries between Ashkenazim and Mizrahi Jews. In certain social and ideological circumstances, however, boundary marking is not enough to maintain a privileged status. From the narratives of Ashkenazi Jews—the Israeli version of whites—it emerges that not only do they demarcate social boundaries between themselves and other groups, thereby preserving the ethnic hierarchy, but they are constantly engaged in blurring or erasing these same boundaries, allowing Ashkenazim to remain a transparent, unmarked social category. This dual practice of marking and unmarking is a result of the tension between the Jewish‐Zionist and Western‐secular images of the state. While Israel's Jewish discourse supposedly negates intra‐Jewish ethnic conflicts, the Western ideal identifies Ashkenazim with the state, thus solidifying their power and preserving their privileged status.     

Untouchable cultures: memory,power and the construction of Dalit selfhood

In the context of the philosophical literature on multiculturalism, I argue in this article that models of cultural identity based entirely on the nonvoluntary possession of a set of cultural characteristics are seriously incomplete. In particular, such models cannot address the need, among some groups, to reconstruct, invent and imagine alternative positive identities as a result of historical injustice, and to fill in the content of ‘culture’ accordingly. As an illustrative case, I survey processes of identity construction among ‘Dalits’, members of former ‘untouchable’ and other lower caste communities in India, with a focus on the role of historical consciousness and existing power relations in the imagination of Dalit culture. Dalit strategies of identity negotiation reveal the understandable need, on the part of the members of this community in progress, to produce a cultural identity that makes sense, psychologically and politically, given who they cannot imagine themselves to be, due to the fact of historical oppression. My analysis does not merely target essentialism, nor is it meant to be deconstructive of identity claims. Rather, I highlight select elements within the negotiation of Dalit identity to illustrate (1) the relevance of real historical relations of discrimination and inequality to the construction of culture; (2) the equivocal character of ‘choice’ within this process; and (3) the emancipatory possibilities provided by imagined narratives of cultural selfhood.