The Unlived Life Is Worth Examining: Nothings and Nobodies behind the Scenes

This paper explores how people talk about the things that have not happened in their lives. I argue that we can perform reverse biographical identity work upon our unmade selves by exploring the meanings of unlived, non-experience. Challenging one's own rehearsed life story is an act of narrative self-transgression, involving negative responsibility assumption. Drawing on my symbolic interactionist theory of “nothing,” I consider how negative social phenomena (no-things, no-bodies, and non-events) are interactively accomplished and retrospectively made sense of in personal accounts. Themes of lost opportunities, silence, invisibility, and emptiness emerge from an analysis of twenty-seven stories. These tales reveal a mixture of emotions: not only sadness, stigma, shame, and regret, but also relief, pride, acceptance, and gratitude. Narratives of nothing are often ambivalent in tone, reflecting the complexity of storied life behind the scenes.     

Identity work in female‐led creative businesses

This study explores the identity work carried out by three female owner‐managers in creative industry businesses, identified in Government reports as a discriminatory industrial sector for women in the UK. Through the development of narratives by the owners and other participants, observation of practice and review of online and offline materials, three cases emerged. These showed overlapping, different identities developed and performed through identity work. Each presented rational and logical persona as business leaders despite observation showing extensive use of intuition and gut feeling in both creative and entrepreneurial aspects of the business. Intuition and gut feeling were seen as inappropriate at work as they belonged to the home sphere, emotionally based and therefore automatically unreliable. While occupying male stereotypes and avoiding the female realm of emotion at work, these women expressed femininity through their emphasis on the maternal, ‘being a good mother' as a desired ideal being embedded in work as well as home practice.     

A qualitative case study of a Korean former addict’s existential self‐interpretation and identity transformation

This study explored the case of a former addict, focusing on his existential self‐interpretation and identity transformation process. This study began from the question of whether philosophical processes related to existential self‐interpretation could lead to the formation of the concept of bottoming out and of identity transformation. To answer this question, the study analyzed the case of a male in his mid‐forties who was addicted to drugs for approximately 30 years and has only recently maintained abstinence. The study used the phenomenological approach to determine the meaning drugs held for him in each stage, and what drug‐related identity he had in each stage. Further, this study identified the integrative implications of these meanings in terms of existential self‐interpretation and identity transformation. The four different identities the man identified for the four stages of his life were juvenile delinquent, gang member, half‐gangster, and breadwinner, and the associated meanings drugs had for him during each period were “glue,” “filthy,” “leeches,” and “abstinence,” respectively. Finally, this study elucidated the integration of these meanings through the hermeneutic circle, identified the social welfare implications of the findings, and developed educational recommendations.     

文化视阈下构建党内和谐的路径分析

党的自身文化建设与党内关系和谐紧密相连,党内和谐孕育升华党内先进文化,党内先进文化促进党内和谐;实现党内和谐,必然要求党加强自身的党内文化建设,必然要求党内具有先进文化。文化的本质属性决定了必须加强党内文化建设;全球化背景下,党内文化建设面临着前所未有的严峻挑战。构建党内和谐必须加强党内和谐文化建设,将"四个坚持"进行到底,即坚持以马克思主义文化观为指导、坚持激发两大动力、坚持抓好四个着力点和坚持"五个相统一"。     

构建和谐铁路路风系统的理性选择

铁路路风是指铁路的行业风气,是铁路企业和铁路职工经营管理素质、理想纪律素养、职业道德风貌的外在表现,反映铁路企业管理水平和职工精神面貌的综合指标。铁路路风质量的优劣,集中反映在铁路运输产品——旅客和货物的位移质量上。运输产品的全部质量特征包括安全、准确、舒适、迅速、经济、便利和文明服务等诸多方面。旅客和货主就是根据这些来全面判断路风质量优劣的。必须从整体上对路风质量实行全面控制,不能顾此失彼。     

文字狂欢的背后——从弹幕窥析新媒体传播

近10年弹幕网站日益发展壮大,成为诸多网络流行语的诞生地。弹幕作为一种亚文化的技术呈现,为受众提供了想象的空间与解构话语权威的路径。但以弹幕网站为代表的新媒体平台并没有真正发挥出意义建构的作用,新媒体对文化意义的建构还有待于受众对新媒体技术的掌握和自身文化素养的提高。     

趋近化视角下社交媒体关于人工智能报道的话语建构研究

基于社交媒体关于人工智能的相关报道自建语料库,通过数据搜集和清洗,运用KH Coder文本分析可视化软件,选择其中的名词短语和动词短语,生成关联词频图进行可视化解析,并从趋近化策略的空间趋近、时间趋近和价值趋近维度对自建语料库进行分析。研究结果显示,社交媒体人工智能话语建构了以空间趋近化策略为主,以时间趋近化和价值趋近化策略为辅的正向话语。同时,人工智能对人类具有潜在威胁,公众应采取相应的风险预防对策。     

Transnational queer sociological analysis of sexual identity and civic‐political activism in Hong Kong,Taiwan and mainland China

The sociology of homosexuality lacks engagement with queer theory and postcolonialism and focuses primarily on the global metropoles, thus failing to provide a plausible account of non‐Western non‐normative sexual identities. This research adopts the author’s newly proposed transnational queer sociology to address these deficiencies. First, it critiques the Western model of sexual identity predominantly employed to elucidate non‐Western, non‐normative sexualities. It does so by examining not only the queer flows between West and non‐West but also those among and within non‐Western contexts to produce translocally shared and mutually referenced experiences. Second, the proposed approach combines sociology with queer theory by emphasizing the significant role of material, as well as discursive, analyses in shaping queer identities, desires and practices. This article employs the approach to examine young gay male identities, as revealed in 90 in‐depth interviews conducted in Hong Kong (n = 30), Taiwan (Taipei, n = 30) and mainland China (Shanghai, n = 30) between 2017 and 2019. More specifically, it highlights the interplay between the state and identity by investigating the intersection and intertwining effects of these young men’s sexual and cultural/national identities, revealing three different forms of civic‐political activism. The article both demonstrates the way in which sexuality and the state are mutually constituted and provides nuanced analysis of the heterogeneity of contemporary homosexualities in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. In applying a new sociological approach to understanding sexuality, this research joins the growing body of scholarship within sociology that is decentring the Western formation of universal knowledge.     

Growing up on the sidelines: identity negotiations of Palestinian youth from ‘collaborating’ families relocated to Israel

By examining the experiences of the children of Palestinian collaborators whose families have relocated to Israel, this study explores how youth negotiate self within the context of marginalisation and cultural dislocation. Due to the actions of their parents, the research participants have become outsiders and outcasts in their Palestinian communities of origin, outsiders in Israel, and outsiders among Israeli-Arabs. Based on qualitative, in-depth interviews with 11 Palestinian male youths, we describe and analyse the experience of identity negotiation in the context of fear and their families’ past deceit. Our findings highlight that the youths’ identities are negotiated by engaging in a dialogue of self on belonging and not belonging that is based on visions of their past, present and future selves. This is accompanied by a forced dialogue with others, explaining who they are in order to fit in with the ‘audience’, a presentation that is then acted out.