Books on the topic 'Identity-shaping processes'

This is a book about the intersection between processes of mobility and religious identity and practice in Early Modern Ireland. The period between c.1580 and c.1685 was one of momentous importance in terms of the establishment of different confessional identities in the island, and various typesof mobility played a key role in the development, articulation, and maintenance of separate religious communities. Part I examines the dialectic between migration and religious adherence, paying particular attention to the transnational dimension of clerical formation which played a vital role in shaping the competing Catholic, Church of Ireland, and non-conformist clergies. Part II investigates how more quotidian practices of mobility such as pilgrimage and interparochial communions helped to elaborate religious identities and the central role of figurative images of movement in structuring Christians’ understanding of their lives. The final chapters of the book analyze the extraordinary importance of migratory experience in shaping the lives and writings of the authors of key confessional identity texts. Hitherto underestimated or taken for granted, the book argues that migrants and exiles were of crucial significance in forging the self-understanding of the different religious communities of the island.

The legacy of the social construction of race, class, and gender within the social construction of smartness and identity in US schools are synthesized utilizing meta-ethnography. The study examines ethnographies of smartness and identity while also exploring what meta-ethnography has to offer for qualitative research. The analyses demonstrate that race, class, and gender are key factors in how student identities of ability or smartness are constructed within schools. The meta-ethnography reveals a better understanding of the daily, sociocultural processes in schools that contribute to the denial of competence to students across race, class, and gender. Major themes include epistemologies of schooling, learning as the production of identity, and teacher power in shaping student identities. The results are significant in that new insights are revealed into how gender, class, and racial identities develop within the daily practices of classrooms about notions of ability.

This chapter describes how societal changes over the past several decades have reshaped the social and political interests of democratic citizens. Publics and parties have traditionally focused on the economic cleavage as a basis of electoral politics. The processes of social modernization have produced a second cultural cleavage based on environmentalism, gender equality, immigration, and identity politics. New social movements advocating these issues have stimulated a conservative backlash. This cultural cleavage now exerts influence equal to economics in shaping citizens’ policy demands. A two-dimensional space for political competition has gradually evolved to represent these new political interests, producing new parties on the far left and far right. Longitudinal data from the European Election Studies allow us to track these changes in both citizen and elite opinions from the 1970s to 2014.

This book explores the identities, perspectives, and roles of the second and subsequent generations of Muslim Americans of both immigrant and convert backgrounds. As these younger Muslims come of age, and as distant as they are from historical processes that shaped their parents’ generations, how do they view themselves and each other? What role do they play in the current chapter of Islam in a post-9/11 America? Will they be able to cross intra-community divides and play a pivotal role in shaping their community? Culture figures prominently in the discussions about and among Muslims and is centered on four dominant narratives: 1) culture is thought to be the underlying cause of an alleged “identity crisis,” 2) it presumably contaminates a “pure/true” Islam, 3) it is the cause for all that divides Muslim American immigrants and converts, which could be remedied by creating an American Muslim community and culture, and 4) some Americans fear an “Islamization of America” through a Muslim cultural takeover. In this ethnographic study, Muna Ali explores these questions through these four dominant narratives, which are both part of the public discourse and themes that emerged from interviews, a survey, social and traditional media, and participant observation. Situating these questions and narratives in identity studies in a pluralistic yet racialized society, as well as in the anthropology of Islam and in the process and meaning of cultural citizenship, Ali examines how younger Muslims see themselves and their community, how they negotiate fault lines of ethnicity, race, class, gender, and religious interpretation within their communities, and how their faith informs their daily lives and how they envision a future for themselves in post-911 America.

This book develops a model of language which can be characterized as functionalist, usage-based, dynamic, and complex-adaptive. Its core idea is that linguistic structure is not stable and uniform, but continually refreshed and in fact reconstituted by the feedback-loop interaction of three components: usage, i.e. the interpersonal and cognitive activities of speakers in concrete communication; conventionalization, i.e. the social processes taking place in speech communities; and entrenchment, i.e. the cognitive processes taking place in the minds of individual speakers. Extending the so-called Entrenchment-and-Conventionalization Model, the book shows that what we call the Linguistic System is created, sustained, and continually adapted by the ongoing interaction between usage, conventionalization, and entrenchment. The model contributes to closing the gap in usage-based models concerning how exactly usage is transformed into collective and individual grammar and how these two grammars in turn feed back into usage. The book exploits and extends insights from an exceptionally wide range of fields, including usage-based cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, interactional linguistics and pragmatics, historical linguistics, sociolinguistics and the sociology and philosophy of language, as well as quantitative corpus linguistics. It makes numerous original suggestions about, among other things, how cognitive processing and representation are related and about the manifold ways in which individuals and communities contribute to shaping language and bringing about language variation and change. It presents a coherent account of the role of forces that are known to affect language structure, variation, and change, e.g. economy, efficiency, extravagance, embodiment, identity, social order, prestige, mobility, multilingualism, and language contact.

For centuries, forms of European identity were built up through contrasts and oppositions, creating various forms of orientalism and occidentalism. It is useful to keep three levels of discussion distinct: that of the concrete procedure of the unification of Europe, that of the different ideas and ideologies regarding a united Europe, and that of identity. Multiculturalism has been suggested as the basis for an identity that could be recognised also by non-territorialised groups, such as foreigners or immigrants, and as the only possible basis for shaping a European political culture which could foster a European identity. In reference to Europeanness, the number and extension of currently possible cultural identities has increased. The process of globalisation, which has relativised the nation state, has led to the interpenetration of the European Union and other regions of the world. Thus it has suggested new conceptions of regional identities, in a modified vision of the relationship between self and other.

Advice, defined as a recommendation for action in response to a problem, is a common form of interpersonal support and influence. Indeed, the advice we give and receive from others can be highly consequential, not only affecting us as recipients and advisors but also shaping outcomes for relationships, groups, and organizations. Some of those consequences are positive, as when advice promotes individual problem solving or enhances workgroup productivity. Yet advice can also hide ulterior motives, threaten identity, damage relationships, and promote inappropriate action. The Oxford Handbook of Advice provides a broad perspective on how advice succeeds and fails, systematically reviewing and synthesizing theory and research on advice from multiple disciplines, such as communication, psychology, applied linguistics, business, law, and medicine. Some chapters examine advice at different levels of analysis, focusing on advisor and recipient roles, advising interactions and relationships, and advice as a resource and connection in groups and networks. Other chapters address advice in particular types of personal relationships (e.g., romantic and family) and professional contexts (e.g., workplace, health, education, and therapy). Authors also consider cultural differences, advice online, and the ethics of advising. For scholars concerned with supportive communication, interpersonal influence, decision making, social networks, and related communication processes at work, at home, and in society at large, the Handbook offers historical perspective, contemporary theoretical framing, methodological recommendations, and directions for future research. The authors also emphasize practical application, offering clear, concise, and relevant “advice for advising” based on theory and research.

Recently, scholars studying American law and identity have adopted American Political Development (APD)’s focus on institutions in generating, shaping, and thwarting change. Their work has informed APD by emphasizing legal institutions as developmental factors and by highlighting how political struggles over identity influence the course of development. Studies of identity and law fill in missing parts of developmental stories. Developmental accounts recognize the importance of significant identity-based institutions like slavery or immigration regimes, but often they ignore impacts of these institutions on development. Further, some significant institutions like marriage and family that implicate identity are often omitted from debates over developmental questions. Overlooking these struggles impoverishes the account by distorting developmental narratives or disabling them from explaining the timing, process, and trajectory of changes. Focusing on identity and law also illustrates the significance of law and legal institutions in development. Moments in constitutional development turn on questions of identity, and struggles over equality and inclusion that influence the course of political development occur on legal terrain. Constitutional and legal development intersect with political development as legal struggles spill over onto political ground and vice versa. Law and legal discourse bridge between broader cultural concerns and the institutions and practices that comprise the state.

Goenka’s Vipassana movement is distinguished for its consistent refusal to identify as Buddhist and its rich rhetorical repertoire for repackaging Theravada Buddhist teachings in pseudo-scientific and secular language. This book is an in-depth qualitative study of Goenka’s movement in New Zealand. It illustrates the implication of the movement’s discourse on shaping unique processes and narratives of conversion and disengagement. It argues that conversion to this movement is tacit and paradoxically results in the members’ rejection of religious labels and categories. The book subsequently examines disengagement in the context of tacit conversion, outlining three pathways: (1) pragmatic leaving, (2) disaffiliation, and (3) deconversion. Pragmatic leavers refer to individuals who disengaged prior to developing a commitment and their language is characterised by pragmatisms, dualistic discourse, and ambivalence, and their post-disengagement involves an active gravitation towards practices with easily accomplished goals. Disaffiliates and deconverts are individuals who disengaged after years of intense commitment to the movement. One of the distinguishing features of disaffiliation narratives is self-doubt resulting from the movement’s ambiguous discourse regarding progress, and that post-disengagement often involves the retrospective adoption of the Buddhist identity. The book argues that consequential to its linguistic strategies as well as the movement’s relation to the host culture, deconversion from this movement is a rare exit pattern. The book thus also questions the normative participant recruitment approach in conversion studies and argues that a simple reliance on the informants’ identification or rejection of categories fails to encompass the tonalities of conversion in the contemporary spiritual landscape.

This collective monograph is a comprehensive study of the causes, evolution and outcomes of complex processes in the contemporary history of the countries of Central and South-Eastern Europe, and aims in particular to identify common and special characteristics in their socio-economic and political development. The authors base their work on documentary evidence; both published and unpublished archival materials reveal the specifics of the development of the political landscapes in these countries. They highlight models combining both European and nationally oriented (and even nationalist) components of the political spheres of particular countries; identify markers which allow the stage of completion (or incompletion) of the establishment of a new political system to be estimated; and present analyses of the processes of internal political struggle, which has often taken on ruthless forms. The analysis of regional and country-specific documentary materials illustrates that the gap in the development of the region with “old Europe” in general has not yet been overcome: in the post-Socialist period, the situation of the region being “ownerless” and “abandoned”, characteristic of the period between the two world wars, is reoccurring. The authors conclude that during the period from the late twentieth to the early twenty-first centuries, the region was quite clearly divided into two parts: Central (the Visegrad Four) and South-Eastern (the Balkans) Europe. The authors explore the prevailing trends in the political development of Hungary and Poland related to the leadership of nationally and religiously oriented parties; in the Czech Republic and Slovakia the pendulum-like change in power of the left and right-wing parties; and in Bulgaria and Romania the domestic political processes permanently in crisis. The authors pay special attention to the contradictory nature of the political evolution of the states that emerged in the space of the former Yugoslavia. For the first time, Greece and Turkey are included in the context of a regional-wide study. The contributors present optimal or resembling transformational models, which can serve as a prototype for shaping the political landscape of other countries in the world. The monograph substantiates the urgency of the new approach needed to study the history and current state of the region and its countries, taking into account the challenges of the time, which require strengthening national and state identity. The research also offered prognostic characteristics of transformational changes in the region, the Visegrad Four, and the Balkans.

This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early Modern Spain was left with a significant Islamic heritage: Córdoba Mosque had been turned into a cathedral, in Seville the Aljama Mosque’s minaret was transformed into a Christian bell tower, and Granada Alhambra had become a Renaissance palace. To date this process of Christian appropriation has frequently been discussed as a phenomenon of hybridisation. However, during that period the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. The aforementioned cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity. The Iberian Peninsula’s Islamic past became a major concern and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On one hand, the monuments’ Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates shaping the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation and its ecclesiastical history.

The opening decades of the twentieth century witnessed a profound transformation in the history of modern sound media, with workers in US film, radio, and record industries developing pioneering production methods and performance styles tailored to emerging technologies of electric sound reproduction that directly shaped dominant forms and experiences of modern sound culture. Focusing on broadcasting’s initial expansion period during the 1920s, Making Radio explores the forms of creative labor pursued for the medium before the better-known network era of the 1930s and 1940s, assessing their role in shaping radio’s own identity and identifying affinities with parallel practices pursued for conversion-era film and phonography. Tracing programming forms adopted by early radio writers and programmers, production techniques developed by studio engineers, and performance styles cultivated by on-air talent, it shows how radio workers negotiated a series of broader industrial and cultural pressures to establish best practices for their medium. In the process, it argues, these sound workers shaped not only the future of broadcasting, but also contributed to much broader shifts in popular forms of music, drama, and public oratory, ushering in a new era of electric sound entertainment.

It is not hyperbole to proclaim that a crisis of legal legitimacy exists in the relationships between African Americans and the law and legal authorities and institutions that govern them. However, this legitimacy deficit has largely (but not exclusively) been documented through anecdotal evidence and a steady drumbeat of journalistic reports, but not rigorous scientific research. We posit that both experiences and in-group identities are commanding because they influence the ways in which black people process information, and in particular, the ways in which blacks react to the symbols of legal authority (e.g., judges’ robes). Based on two nationally-representative samples, this book ties together four dominant theories of public opinion: Legitimacy Theory, Social Identity Theory, theories of adulthood political socialization and learning through experience, and information processing theories, especially the Theory of Motivated Reasoning and theories of System 1 and System 2 information processing. Our findings reveal a gaping chasm in legal legitimacy between black and white Americans. More importantly, black people themselves differ in their legal legitimacy. Group identities and experiences with legal authorities play a crucial role in shaping whether and how black people extend legitimacy to the legal institutions that so much affect them.

This volume provides a basic introduction to the historical, archaeological, and contextual aspects of ancient Israel during its formative period in the Bronze and Iron Age. It integrates extrabiblical sources from regions throughout the ancient Near East with the data found in the biblical narratives in order to explore the development of ancient Israelite identity, cultural traditions, and their interaction with the other major cultures of the ancient Near East. Given the nature of available information on this early culture, it is necessary to take into account the methods designed to examine the transmission of cultural memories and foundation stories in shaping a people’s concept of themselves. Because we do have more data available from neighboring regions, attention is expanded beyond the biblical narratives to include what we know about the physical realities of geopolitics and super-power politics, the international and interregional movement of peoples, and the evolutionary process from inchoate to complex states. In addition, attention is also given to what archaeological excavations can contribute to the reconstruction of the history of ancient Israel and its cultures. In particular, aspects of everyday life both in the village culture and in urban settings are examined as a key to the development of social, legal, and religious traditions and practices.

How did the medieval Middle East transform from a majority-Christian world to a majority-Muslim world, and what role did violence play in this process? This book explains how Christians across the early Islamic caliphate slowly converted to the faith of the Arab conquerors and how small groups of individuals rejected this faith through dramatic acts of resistance, including apostasy and blasphemy. Using previously untapped sources in a range of Middle Eastern languages, the book introduces an unknown group of martyrs who were executed at the hands of Muslim officials between the seventh and ninth centuries CE. Found in places as diverse as Syria, Spain, Egypt, and Armenia, they include an alleged descendant of Muhammad who converted to Christianity; high-ranking Christian secretaries of the Muslim state who viciously insulted the Prophet; and the children of mixed marriages between Muslims and Christians. The book argues that Christians never experienced systematic persecution under the early caliphs, and indeed, they remained the largest portion of the population in the greater Middle East for centuries after the Arab conquest. Still, episodes of ferocious violence contributed to the spread of Islam within Christian societies, and memories of this bloodshed played a key role in shaping Christian identity in the new Islamic empire. The book examines how violence against Christians ended the age of porous religious boundaries and laid the foundations for more antagonistic Muslim–Christian relations in the centuries to come.