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Introduction This chapter contextualises the work-based identity insecurity experienced by middle-class professionals in the public sector among the general identity-making problems of postmodernity and other cultural determinants of the group. The aim is to illuminate how the call to adapt quickly and constantly to the changing demands of the profit-hungry and cost
6 Identity: struggles with personhood, nationhood and professional virtue The multi-study research project of which this ethnographic study is a part was originally conceived in the context of then recent devolution in Scotland and constitutional change in the UK more generally. We were trying to get a finer-grained understanding of how national identity works on a banal, everyday basis (Billig 1995) and how it connects to personhood and individual identity (Cohen 1996). Thus we chose to explore Scottish national identity within the mundane frame of a large
Identity 175 8 Identity Major, a Saint Bernard For all the efforts in the Victorian era when Manchester saw many well-meaning and important societies created, none of these established a global image of the city and its citizens, nor did they unite the population. If Manchester was discussed, it tended to be either because of its industry or for negative reasons concerning health, pollution and working conditions. Many organisations had been successful in improving the social life of the city and developing intellectual interests, while also improving
Identity is often regarded as something that is possessed by individuals, states, and other agents. In this edited collection, identity is explored across a range of approaches and under-explored case studies with a view to making visible its fractured, contingent, and dynamic features. The book brings together themes of belonging and exclusion, identity formation and fragmentation. It also examines how identity functions in discourse, and the effects it produces, both materially and in ideational terms. Taking in case studies from Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East and Latin America, the various chapters interrogate identity through formal governing mechanisms, popular culture and place. These studies demonstrate the complex and fluid nature of identity and identity practices, as well as implications for theorising identity.
Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth century social history. Over 10,000 women, establishing and managing significant Catholic educational, health care and social welfare institutions in England and Wales, have virtually disappeared from history. In nineteenth-century England, representations of women religious were ambiguous and contested from both within and without the convent. This book places women religious in the centre of nineteenth-century social history and reveals how religious activism shaped the identity of Catholic women religious. It is devoted to evolution of religious life and the early monastic life of the women. Catholic women were not pushed into becoming women religious. On the basis of their available options, they chose a path that best suited their personal, spiritual, economic and vocational needs. The postulancy and novitiate period formed a rite of passage that tested the vocation of each aspirant. The book explores the religious activism of women religious through their missionary identity and professional identity. The labour of these women was linked to their role as evangelisers. The book deals with the development of a congregation's corporate identity which brought together a disparate group of women under the banner of religious life. It looks specifically at class and ethnicity and the women who entered religious life, and identifies the source of authority for the congregation and the individual sister.
Competing identities within nation states are commonplace in the modern world. Only about 1 in 10 of today’s nation states is ethnically homogeneous (Haymes, 1997 ), leaving considerable scope for ethnic political conflict. Since 1990, ethnonationalist conflict has been particularly intense in the postcommunist states of eastern Europe and central Asia, where ethnic divisions have provided an
Of particular relevance perhaps is Britain’s persistent identity crisis in the wake of both empire and Cold War, most notably the difficulty of equating Britishness with toleration and openness rather than xenophobia and chauvinism. (Beck 2003: 409–10) In the previous chapter we considered the British propensity to heterotypify European countries and the EU’s system of governance through discursive constructions which set British national identity permanently against that of the EU’s leading member states and the EU as political practice. The
3 Identity conflict A basic feature of the universal human condition is the need to find commonality with others and form larger associations at the individual, group, and community level, and this is at the heart of the concept of identity. A variety of factors, ranging from physical attributes, language, and culture to societal norms and structures work to promote a selfawareness and self-consciousness of sameness with a larger collective. A significant positive benefit resulting from this shared identity is the ability to provide protection and security
2 Cultivating identity Taking people seriously; what you see is what you get A can of paint can be sold with the slogan ‘It does just what it says on the tin.’ People are more than paint, but what can be seen and heard matters in social life. I have made the democratic empirical assumption that feathers and flags, clothes and gestures, voice and manners, and all the other expressions and features of identity, are not signs of who people are; they are what people, as social beings, are, and constitute their social identity
migration and diaspora in recent decades, but it is hoped that some of the ideas we explore will prove useful to those beginning their studies in a number of diasporic contexts within Europe and perhaps even beyond too. We will think about migration and diaspora primarily in the context of decolonisation in this chapter and think about some of the most influential ways in which postcolonial diasporas have been conceptualised often by focusing on the key issue of identity. What is a ‘diaspora’? In an important essay, James Clifford has noted that the term ‘diaspora