Oppositional identities and the labor market

We develop a model in which nonwhite individuals are defined with respect to their social environment (family, friends, and neighbors) and their attachments to their culture of origin (religion or language), and in which jobs are mainly found through social networks. We find that depending on how strong peer pressures are, nonwhites choose to adopt “oppositional” identities because some individuals may identify with the dominant culture and others may reject that culture, even if it implies adverse labor market outcomes.      

社交活动对老年人口健康状况影响的量化分析

人口老龄化已成为中国社会的常态,老年人口健康及其相关问题研究日益成为政府、社会和学者共同关注的焦点。本文基于中国健康与养老追踪调查2015年数据,针对老年人口社交活动难以量化的问题,构建"社交活跃度"指标,利用OLS回归和IV-regress二阶段回归模型分析社交活动对中国老年人口健康状况的影响。实证结果表明:第一,我国老年人社交活动水平整体呈现低活跃型特征,社交形式比较单一。第二,社交活动确实会对中国老年人口的健康状况产生影响,老年人健康状况在各影响因素不同水平下表现出显著差异,尤其受教育程度较高、经济状况较好以及较高的社交活跃度会对老年人健康产生积极正向影响。第三,老年人积极参与社交活动能够显著改善其健康状况,参与多项社交活动且参与活动频率高对老年人口健康状况的优化作用尤其明显。因此,我们应提升中国老年人口的社交活跃度。老年人应积极主动参与丰富多彩的社交活动,社区、基层政府及社会企业应构建并完善与老年人社交活动及健康保障相配套的产品和服务体系,国家层面则应更加积极地完善相关的老龄化政策、制度。     

The Harki Identity: A Product of Marginalisation and Resistance to Symbolic Violence?

This paper seeks to demonstrate that since their arrival in France in 1962, the Harkis – the Algerians who fought with rather than for the French side against the Algerian independence movement (1954–1962) – have been the victims of symbolic violence. They have been assigned by the French state to the periphery of French towns, French history and French identity. As, since 25 September 2001 (the first national Harki remembrance day) and 5 December 2002 (when President Chirac inaugurated the Algerian war memorial in Paris), the Harkis ceased to epitomise ‘the archetype of official non memory’ (Rosello, 1998 Rosello, M. 1998. Declining the stereotype- Ethnicity and representations in French cultures, Hanover: University Press of New England.  [Google Scholar], p. 170), this paper ultimately asks whether the end of a certain form of symbolic violence may not result in the ‘delegitimisation’ of the Harkis’ main (historical) claims and, consequently, in the weakening of the Harki identity.     

The Effects of War on the Chechen National Identity Construction

Since the end of the first war in 1996, the definition of the Chechen national identity has been at stake in a top-level competition. I argue that four main trends – the separatists, the radical Islamists, the traditionalists and the pro-Russians – are in competition. Each of them produces its own narrative, based on a specific rendering of history. Using a constructivist approach, I address the influence of an all-out war context on social interactions, self-perception and categorisation by the others. I then examine the narratives in competition. I finally show how history and traditions have become political weapons in the struggle for power and legitimacy by opposing self-proclaimed elites promoted by wars.     

Imagining a Homeland: Constructing Heimat in the German East, 1871–1914

Germany has a long history of political fragmentation, with regional (Heimat) identities playing a critical role in the formation of the national consciousness. The process of rallying local identities to the nation is being examined in the western parts of Germany, but the east remains largely unexplored. Addressing this issue is important because studies of the Heimat movement have challenged received notions about the character of nationalism in imperial Germany. This article illustrates the special challenges Heimat activists—especially Hugo Conwentz—faced in fashioning a regional identity in the German east, and compares their efforts to those in the west.     

Power differentials and identity formation: Images of self and other on the Russian–Georgian boundary

This article looks at how Russia places herself in relation to one of her southern neighbours, Georgia, and vice versa. Russia and Georgia have recently been engaged in a short but full-fledged war, hence their interrelationship has been intensely debated in both countries. Both Russia and Georgia are, as it were, poised ‘between East and West’.

As a starting point, therefore, we hypothesized that Russians would present themselves as a European nation while they would orientalise the Georgians. Conversely, the Georgians would define themselves into and the Russians out of Europe. We found, however, that identity construction on the Russian-Georgian border is not symmetrical. While the Georigan discourse basically confirmed our assumption, in Russia the dominant discourse is that Russia and Georgia are closely related, fraternal peoples. This shows the importance of power relations in the study of reciprocal identity formations.

While hegemonic discourses often are discourses of exclusion our study shows that a discourse of inclusion—in our case a rhetoric of ‘brotherhood’—often may be a more effective technique of domination. The prevailing discourse in the weaker group, on the other hand, will focus more on cultural distance towards the more powerful Other.     

'The Justice of Queen Victoria': Boer Oppression,and the Emergence of a National Identity in Lesotho

The growth of a national identity in Lesotho after 1910 was a direct response to the threat of incorporation into the Union of South Africa. The Basotho feared being governed by what they considered to be an unjust and hostile South Africa. The Basotho appealed to the justice of the British government - for them to continue to honour the protection that they had extended to the nineteenth-century Basotho chief, Moshoeshoe. The protection which Moshoeshoe had secured entrenched his position as the centrepiece of the Basotho's emergent national identity in the twentieth century.     

20世纪80年代以来中国语言规划研究述评

近30年来国内语言规划研究主要有两条线索：一是对国外语言规划理论的译介,一是根据国内语言实况进行的规划研究,后者占主要地位。国外语言规划研究成果的译介主要涉及语言规划的分类、语言规划的步骤及语言规划的实践等。国内语言规划的本土研究要随着新情况的不断出现而做持续研究和相应调整。     

长春市下岗女工身份构建的个案分析

“下岗女工”,作为中国转型期新兴的社会群体之一,其社会身份值得研究。长春市的一名下岗女工讲述了自己的再就业经历,通过叙事构建了其社会身份。可见,身份的塑造有历史的、社会的和个人的因素,是一个动态的、叙事的过程。     

Leaders’ influence on collective action: An identity leadership perspective

What makes followers act collectively when called upon by their leaders? To answer this question, participants were randomly allocated to leader–follower relationships embedded either in a partisan group or a workgroup context; and the relationship between identity leadership and collective action through ingroup identification (Study 1: N = 293) or both ingroup identification and group-efficacy (Study 2: N = 338) were assessed. Based on the model of identity leadership, we predicted and found that identity leadership was positively related with intentions for collective action when called upon by the leader, both via ingroup identification and belief in group efficacy. As predicted, the social identity process for the effectiveness of identity leadership was more important in partisan groups than in workgroups. The efficacy related process was group context invariant. These results have implications for our understanding of group processes involved in the leadership in collective action.