Showing papers on "Identity (social science) published in 1991"

Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color

Abstract: Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en

Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age

Abstract: The reflexivity of modernity extends into core of the self. Put in another way, in the context of a post-traditional order, the self becomes a reflexive project. One concerns the primacy of lifestyle — and its inevitability for the individual agent. Lifestyle is not a term which has much applicability to traditional cultures, because it implies choice within plurality of possible options, and is 'adopted' rather than 'handed down'. Lifestyle choices and life planning are not just 'in', or constituent of, the day-to-day life of social agents, but form institutional settings which help to shape their actions. Of course, for all individuals and groups, life chances condition lifestyle choices. Life planning is a specific example of a more general phenomenon that author shall discuss in some detail in subsequent chapter as the 'colonisation of the future'. In the reflexive project of the self, the narrative of self-identity is inherently fragile. Moreover, the pure relationship contains internal tensions and even contradictions.

The Saturated Self Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life

Abstract: * The Self Under Siege * From the Romantic to the Modern Vision of Self * Social Saturation and the Populated Self * Truth in Trouble * The Emergence of Postmodern Culture * From Self to Relationship * A Collage of Postmodern Life * Self-Renewal and Sincerity * Reckoning and Relativity

The problem of speaking for others

Abstract: dian women. She writes them in first person and assumes a Native identity. At the 1988 International Feminist Book Fair in Montreal a group of Native Canadian writers decided to ask Cameron to, in their words, "move over" on the grounds that her writings are disempowering for Native authors. She agrees.' 2. After the 1989 elections in Panama are overturned by Manuel Noriega, President Bush of the United States declares in a public address that Noriega's actions constitute an "outrageous fraud" and that "the voice of the Panamanian people has spoken." "The Panamanian people," he tells us, "want democracy and not tyranny, and want Noriega out." He proceeds to plan the invasion of Panama.

Becoming a Person

Abstract: First relationships the process of development relationships and early learning the construction of identity.

Shades of Black: Diversity in African American Identity

Abstract: Preface Acknowledgments Part I: Rethinking Self-Hatred 1. Landmark Studies of Negro Identity 2. Empirical Research on Group Identity and Personal Identity 3. Testing the Lewinian Hypothesis 4. Issues of Imposition, Self-Hatred, and Celebration Part II: the Psychology of Nigrescence 5. Black Militancy and the Psychology of Nigrescence 6. Rethinking Nigrescence Appendix: Summary of Forty-Five Studies of Black Identity Bibliography Index

Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship

Abstract: Preface to the Paperback EditionAcknowledgments1.The Monkey Cage and the Red Desoto2. Exiles from KinshipIs Straight to Gay as Family Is to No Family? Deck the HallsKinship and ProcreationFrom Biology to Choice3. Coming Out to "Blood" RelativesDisclosing Sexual IdentityCategorical Understandings (Or, It's All Relative)Family-Which Family?Conditional LoveDiscursive LocationsTaking Identity, Talking KinshipSelection and Rejection4. Kinship and Coherence: Ten Stories5. Families We ChooseBuilding Gay FamiliesSubstitute for Biological Family?Friends and LoversFrom Friendship to CommunityDeliberating Difference6. Lovers Through the Looking GlassThe Looking-Glass OtherPower "Differentials," Relationship "Roles"The Urge to MergeNarcissism, Kinship, and Class ConvictionsCouples Versus CommunityReflections on Metaphor7. Parenting in the Age of AIDSThe Lesbian Mother as IconMale-Female Revisited: Insemination and AIDSOf Death and BirthBlood Relatives RespondParents and Persons8. The Politics of Gay FamiliesAssimilation or Transformation?Common GroundThe Big PictureReengineering BiogeneticsAppendixNotesReferencesIndex

On merging identity theory and stress research

Abstract: In this paper I develop and discuss the concept of «identity-relevant stressors.» Identities refer to individuals' conceptions of themselves in terms of the social roles that they enact (e.g., spouse, parent, worker, churchgoer, friend). An identity-relevant experience is one that threatens or, alternatively, enhances an identity that the individual values highly; identity-irrelevant experiences occur in roles that the individual does not value highly. This concept can help solve a problem in the stress literature, namely the inability of stress theory to account parsimoniously for social status differences in psychological distress

Selves in Transition: Symbolic Consumption in Personal Rites of Passage and Identity Reconstruction

Abstract: The consumption of aesthetic plastic surgery is examined within the broader context of daily life in an investigation of the motives and the self-concept dynamics underlying this symbolic consumer behavior. Data were collected in multiple, in-depth, ethnographic interviews, and analyzed by a constant comparative method revealing insights into both a priori and emergent themes. A priori themes regarding body image, impression management, symbolic self-completion, and possible selves are developed through a literature review and discussed briefly in light of the findings. Emergent themes, including role transitions, sexual selves and romantic fantasies, control and efficacy, and identity play are developed and embedded in a discussion of identity reconstruction and personal rites of passage. It is concluded that consumption activities are important to both the maintenance and the development of a stable, harmonious self-concept. Directions for future research are discussed.

An Identity Theory Approach to Commitment

Abstract: Commitment highlights one of the ways in which individuals infuse roles and social structure with self-motivated behaviors, thereby linking the self to social structure. Past theoretical formulations of commitment, including work by Becker, Stryker, and Kanter, tended to focus on commitment as a tie between an individual and either 1) a line of activity, 2) particular role partners, or 3) an organization. An approach based on identity theory or affect control theory (each of which uses a cybernetic model of identity processes) suggests that commitment connects an individual to an identity. In this view, commitment does not link a person to consistent lines of activity, other role partners, or organizations, but to a stable set of self-meanings. These stable self-meanings, in turn, produce consistent lines of activities. This idea is borne out in an analysis of data from the college student role, in which there exist multiple, independent bases of commitment containing cognitive and socioemotional components. Commitment moderates the relationship between student identity and role performance such that the relationship is stronger for persons with higher commitment.

Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America

Abstract: Traces the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from the early years of the century to the diversity of today's lifestyles. Faderman uses journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, new accounts, novels, medical literature and over 186 personal interviews with lesbians of all races, ages and classes to uncover and relate this often surprising narrative of lesbian life in America. Lesbian identity could emerge, Faderman maintains, only during this century with the sexual freedom of the 1920s and the 1960s, as well as the social freedom made possible by World War II, the education of women and the civil rights and women's movements. The term "lesbian" did not become current until the late 19th century, when European sexologists began to explore female same-sex loving. Sexologists stigmatized same-sex loving where once it had been accepted. This book tells how women who accepted the label "lesbian" altered the sexologists' definitions, creating identities and ideologies for themselves.

Artifacts, Identity, and Transition: Favorite Possessions of Indians and Indian Immigrants to the United States

Abstract: The things to which we are attached help to define who we are, who we were, and who we hope to become. These meanings are likely to be especially salient to those in identity transitions. In this study we examine such meanings by comparing favorite possessions of Indians in India and Indians who immigrated to the United States. Because the Indian sense of self differs considerably from Western concepts, these immigrants provide an interesting and important group in which to examine the use of possessions in securing identity. Results suggest that possessions play an important role in the reconstruction of immigrant identity.

Labelling Refugees: Forming and Transforming a Bureaucratic Identity

Abstract: This essay examines how and with what consequences people become labelled as refugees within the context of public policy practices, Conceptual and operational limitations to the existing definition of refugees are noted. These, the paper contends, derive from the absence of a systematic study of labelling processes in the donative policy discourse associated with refugees. The paper outlines the conceptual tools of bureaucratic labelling - stereotyping, conformity, designation, identity disaggrcgation and political/power relationships. These tools are then deployed to analyse empirical data collected from a large refugee population in Cyprus, supplemented by selective secondary research data on various African refugee populations. The analysis proceeds in three parts. First the formation of the label is considered in which stereotyped identities are translated into bureaucratically assumed needs. The label thus takes on a selective, materialist meaning. Alienating distinctions emerge by the creation of different categories of refugee deemed necessary to prioritize need. Next, reformation of the label is considered. The evidence shows how latent and manifest processes of institutional action and programme delivery, reinforce a disaggregated model of identity; in this case disturbing distinctions are made between refugee and non-refugee. Third, the paper considers how labels assume, often conflicting, politicized meanings, for both labelled and labellers. The paper concludes by emphasizing: the extreme vulnerability of refugees to imposed labels; the importance of symbolic meaning; the dynamic nature of the identity; and, most fundamentally of all, the non-participatory nature and powerlessness of refugees in these processes.

Culture tales. A narrative approach to thinking, cross-cultural psychology, and psychotherapy.

Abstract: Narrative (or storytelling) approaches to understanding human action have recently become more popular in several areas of psychology. Treating human thinking as instances of story elaboration offers numerous implications for many domains of psychological theory, research, and practice. For example, several instances of cultural diversity take on a different hue when viewed from a narrative perspective. Finally, several authors (e.g., Bruner, 1986; Howard, 1989; Mair, 1989; McAdams, 1985; Polkinghorne, 1988; Sarbin, 1986) see the development of identity as an issue of life-story construction; psychopathology as instances of life stories gone awry; and psychotherapy as exercises in story repair.

Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures

Abstract: Ferguson introduces an anthology of diverse essays by 27 authors engaged in a deconstruction of the Western binary framework which connotes the Other, in an examination of cultural marginalization. Texts are grouped into sections which explore the critical context of contemporary cultural debates, address the question of how to affirm cultural identity, and discuss the counter movements of displacement and resistance. Includes images selected by Gonzalez-Torres and texts by Watney on the construction of an "African AIDS," by Anzaldua on the complexity of linguistic identity, and by Cixous on sexual difference. Brief biographical notes on contributors. Bibl. 12 p.

Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism

Abstract: PART 1: ETHICS AND PSYCHOLOGICAL REALISM Prologue: Saints 1. Ethics and Psychology The Topic Ethics, Psychology, and the Human Sciences The Autonomy Thesis 2. The Principle of Minimal Psychological Realism Minimal Psychological Realism Psychological Distance Natural and Social Psychological Traits Environmental Sensitivity Natural Teleology and the Naturalistic Fallacy 3. Psychological Realism and the Personal Point of View The Argument from the Personal Point of View Minimal Persons Persons and Plans Characters, Commitments, and Projects Separateness and Impersonality 4. Abstraction, Alienation, and Integrity Strong Realism and Socially Fortified Persons Abstraction and Kinds of Impartiality Integrity, Alienation, and Virtues of Form PART 2: LIBERAL AND COMMUNITARIAN PHILOSOPHICAL PSYCHOLOGY 5. Community and the Liberal Self The Social Construction of Persons The Classical Picture and the Primacy of Justice Community, Friendship, and Flourishing Appreciation, Emulation, and Self-Respect Social Union 6. Identity and Community Actual and Self-Represented Identity Identity, Self-Esteem, and Effective Agency Self-Understanding, Encumbered Identity, and Psychological Realism, Self-Understanding and Like-Mindedness Narrativity and Homogeneity PART 3: MORAL PSYCHOLOGY 7. Moral Cognition: Development and Deep Structure Psychological Realism and Deep Structure The Moral Judgment of the Child Moral Consciousness, Speech Acting, and Opacity Rules and Autonomy: The Marble Study Games and Gender Consequences and Intentions The "Consciousness of Something Attractive" 8. Modern Moral Philosophy and Moral Stages Stage Theory Stage Holism and Globality Moral Stage, Character Assessment, and Unified Justification Development and Improvement The Adequacy of the Highest Stage 9. Virtue, Gender, and Identity Identity and Morality Psychological Realism and Gender Two Different Global Voices? Gestalt Shifts 10. Gender Differences: The Current Status of the Debate The No-Difference Claim The Relation of Justice and Care Further Empirical Questions 11. Gender, Normative Adequacy, Content, and Cognitivis Six Theses The Separate-but-Equal Doctrine The Integration Doctrine The Hammer-Wrench Doctrine Impartialism Noncognitivist Care Context-Sensitive Care PART 4: SITUATION, DISPOSITIONS, AND WELL-BEING 12. Invisible Shepherds, Sensible Knaves, and the Modularity of the Moral Two Thought Experiments about Character Persons in Situations Moral Gaps and the Unity of Character Moral Modularity 13. Characters and Their Traits Traits and Traitology Individual Trait Globality and Situation Sensitivity The Trait-Inference Network and Evaluative Consistency Evaluative Consistency, the Authoritarian Personality, and Authoritarian Behavior Moral Traits 14. Situations, Sympathy, and Attribution Theory Character and Coercion Milgram's "One Great Unchanging Result" Coercion and Rebellion in Groups Situations and Samaritans Attribution Theory and Moral Personality 15. Virtue, Mental Health, and Happiness Illusion and Well-Being The Traditional View Meets the Facts The Traditional View versus the Classical View Virtue, Again Epilogue Notes References Index

Allocation of Investment in Work and Family Roles: Alternative Theories and Implications for Research

Abstract: The process of people's investment in work and family roles is poorly understood. Traditionally, investment in such roles has been considered the product of utilitarian motives. An alternative perspective, derived from social identity theory, suggests that identity salience determines this investment. Proponents of the two approaches differ in describing sources of work-family conflict and methods of achieving work-family balance. Despite the competing predictions of the two approaches future research on the moderating effects of gender, life stage, and culture may prove fruitful for researchers who wish to elaborate upon an integrated model.

Madness and social representations

Abstract: Part 1 Life of the mad, living with the mad: framework and history of a family colony custom and defence of identity from contact to impregnation. Part 2 The barriers to integration: from difference to separation similarities and differences in everyday life beyond principles - fear and social threat. Part 3 The people of those homes: understanding without knowledge the three faces of a single state thinking about mental illness acting out a conception of madness.

Women watching television : gender, class, and generation in the American television experience

Abstract: Few issues are more important to feminist scholars than that of gender identity, especially women's gender identity. Of particular concern are the ways in which culture shapes this identity. The author of this study focuses on one of the most powerful image-shaping forces within American culture - television - and examines the relationship between the representations television presents to women of themselves and their own self-images. She asks how women's self-conceptions correspond to television images, whether women identify with the female characters they see on television, and whether women use television images in forming their own self-images. The answers to these questions depend on several factors, the most important being the social class of the women studied. The author contends that women's inclinations to identify with television characters varies with their assessment of the realism of these characters and their social world. She finds that working-class women are much more likely to find television characters and situations "real" than are middle-class women, but that their evaluations of realism reflect their wishes about reality - especially material reality - rather than any objective assessment of the accuracy of television's depiction of their own experience. In her exploration of this and other complexities, Andrea Press draws on feminist analyses of traditional theories of identification, Marxist and socialist analyses of class, and mainstream social scientific studies of the mass media audience.

Aging and Its Discontents: Freud and Other Fictions

Abstract: Acknowledgments 1. Introduction...Aging, Difference, and Subjectivity 2. Reading Freud...Aging, Castration, and Inertia 3. The Mirror Stage of Old Age...Marcel ProustOs The Past Recaptured 4. The Look and the Gaze: Narcissism, Aggression, and Aging...Virginia WoolfOs The Years 5. Gender, Generational Identity, and Aging...Eva FigesOs Waking 6. Between Mourning and Melancholia...Roland BarthesOs Camera Lucida 7. The Transitional Object of the Oldest Age...Samuel BeckettOs Malone Dies 8. Youthfulness as a Masquerade...Denial, Resistance, and Desire 9. Phantasms of the Aging Body...The Companion/Empty/Fragmenting Body Epilogue Notes Works Cited Index

Toward a critical relational theory of gender

Abstract: This article analyzes and critiques the construct of gender as a psychoanalytic and cultural category. Without succumbing to a nonpsychoanalytic notion of androgyny, the argument developed here challenges the assumption that an internally consistent gender identity is possible or even desirable. Beginning with the idea that, from an analytic perspective, the construct of “identity”; is problematic and implausible, because it denotes and privileges a unified psychic world, the author develops a deconstructionist critique of our dominant gender‐identity paradigm. It is argued that gender coherence, consistency, conformity, and identity are culturally mandated normative ideals that psychoanalysis has absorbed uncritically. These ideals, moreover, are said to create a universal pathogenic situation, insofar as the attempt to conform to their dictates requires the activation of a false‐self system. An alternative, “decentered”; gender paradigm is then proposed, which conceives of gender as a “necessary fiction...

"Coming to writing" and other essays

Abstract: This collection presents six essays by one of France's most remarkable contemporary authors. A notoriously playful stylist, here Helene Cixous explores how the problematics of the sexes-viewed as a paradigm for all difference, which is the organizing principle behind identity and meaning-manifest themselves, write themselves, in texts. These superb translations do full justice to Cixous's prose, to its songlike flow and allusive brilliance.

Stigma Management and Gay Identity Development

Abstract: Disclosure of homosexuality is now generally viewed in the professional literature as more desirable than secrecy; disclosure is often seen as evidence of a healthy gay identity, whereas secrecy has come to be viewed as socially and psychologically problematic. By drawing on data from an interview study of 38 gay men in Montreal, this article shows that decisions concerning disclosure and secrecy are related to a variety of situational and relational factors that are largely distinct from gay identity development. It is argued that the new models of identity formation fail to recognize adequately the social factors that shape the ways gay men manage information concerning their sexual preferences. Conceptual and clinical implications of new normative views of disclosure and secrecy are discussed.

MAKING IT BY FAKING IT: Working-Class Students in an Elite Academic Environment

Abstract: This study examines upward mobility among working-class law students. It posits that the experiences of these students can be understood from a perspective of stigma. A triangulated methodology consisting of interviews, participant observation, and questionnaires is used to examine the adjustment of these law students to an elite law school environment, where they experience a class stigma which creates identity problems. Like other individuals who experience stigma, these students learn to hide their class background in order to manage their identity. However, in their efforts to conceal their background they experience identity ambivalence. The accommodation strategies that students use to over come this ambivalence are explored.