Search

Over the past decade, there has been a revival of social protest and labor union activity in Chile. In this article, we examine the effects of this phenomenon to analyze its influence on working-class identity. Using International Social Survey Programme surveys from 2009 and 2019, we investigate whether class location and union membership affect people's subjective identification with the working class and how that effect may have changed over the decade. Our findings suggest that subjects who are situated in a 'subordinated' class position (unskilled workers or informal self-employed workers) are more likely to identify with the working class compared to subjects located in a privileged class position (employers, experts, or managers). However, surprisingly, our analysis does not indicate that working-class identity is reinforced by union membership. In addition, our results do not demonstrate that the effect of class or union membership has strengthened over the past decade. At the end of this article, we offer some possible explanations for these findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do people from privileged class backgrounds often misidentify their origins as working class? We address this question by drawing on 175 interviews with those working in professional and managerial occupations, 36 of whom are from middle-class backgrounds but identify as working class or long-range upwardly mobile. Our findings indicate that this misidentification is rooted in a self-understanding built on particular 'origin stories' which act to downplay interviewees' own, fairly privileged, upbringings and instead forge affinities to working-class extended family histories. Yet while this 'intergenerational self' partially reflects the lived experience of multigenerational upward mobility, it also acts – we argue – as a means of deflecting and obscuring class privilege. By positioning themselves as ascending from humble origins, we show how these interviewees are able to tell an upward story of career success 'against the odds' that simultaneously casts their progression as unusually meritocratically legitimate while erasing the structural privileges that have shaped key moments in their trajectory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an exercise in 'cognitive class analysis' by tackling the question of when young children first develop the ability to perceive and judge stereotypical representation of class identity. With the aid of a specifically designed visual methodology, 82 children aged 5 to 12, were asked to combine a series of figures into a set of 'class families', to assign different amounts of money to these families, to attribute an occupational status to the parents of each family and to indicate their most and least likeable family. Results show that children prove capable of perceiving and judging class stereotypes at a younger age than previous studies have suggested. A considerable number of 5- and 6-year-olds already demonstrate the ability to classify people on the basis of differences in dress and appearance and effectively recognize these classifications as based on differences in class position. In addition, visible markers of class-status also appear to play a role in shaping children's preferences for different types of families and playmates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Morales's election, rural movements have become the new protagonists of Bolivian politics. Previous analyses have emphasised their active role in shaping national politics, often focusing on those organisations as a compact block. However, their relationship is marked by both cooperation and fragmentation. This article provides a narrative of Bolivian socio-political history over the last 60 years, establishing four main phases of identitarian articulations/disarticulations. It demonstrates the high degree of interdependence and fluidity of ethnic and class identities, as well as their interconnections with the broader socio-political context and the national legal and institutional changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on the article "Are You a Girl or Are You a Boy? Or..." by Hallie Lovett. He notes that the said paper declares that gender identities are always under construction and that he finds the topics creative, experiential and scholarly. Reflecting on the paper, the author thinks about his professional identity, then his theoretical orientation and then his particular style of clinical expression.

Background: Nursing in Chile is considered to be the leading example of professional development in Latin America - nurses must undertake five years of university education on a full-time programme. Academisation of nursing education is a key aspect in the evolution into professional status. The consequences of education, however, are commonly related to the replication of social institutions and structures that perpetuate social inequalities. Objective: The study's aim was to comprehend the consequences of nursing academisa- tion and its relationships with the social transformations which that country has witnessed. Methods: We draw upon ethnographic data, gathered between 2010 and 2011 in a 500-bed, high-quality university hospital in Chile. Participants were nurses ranging from beginners to experienced professionals and recruited from wards representing technically expert nursing and caring-oriented nursing. The data were organised to allow the development of concepts and patterns, using the Grounded Theory approach. Results: Despite the fact that Chilean nursing originated from the educated elite class, today's nurses share a middle-class consciousness, and a sense of class distinction is encouraged throughout academic training - the 'eliteness' of professional groups. This discourse antagonises middle-class people who 'should' adopt a professional-class identity. A tension among nurses surfaced, based on a competition for a scarce resource: social mobility. Furthermore, an antagonist stratification between university-trained nurses and auxiliary nurses has developed, and in the process the title 'nurse' and the practice of 'nursing' have been monopolised by university-trained nurses, resulting in a relationship of domination-subordination. Conclusions: The academisation process followed by Chilean nursing is rooted in the social-class transformations of that country. Such process has been ineffective in preventing social inequalities, resulting in the reproduction of earlier historical class differences in nursing, inhibiting nurses' individual development. Class differences are manifest in the socially constructed distinction between the nurse and the auxiliary nurse, resulting in a schism of the nursing family. By reconstituting a broken-up occupation, the political power of nursing could be strengthened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift from a corporatist citizenship regime to a neoliberal one has adversely affected Latin American rural communities and led to widespread social mobilisation and organisation in the countryside. The struggle of such marginalised communities has been often framed by stressing their indigenous collective identity over the previously prevalent class-based peasant identity. This article focuses on the role of identity and the negotiation of different identities in the struggle of two rural organisations in Northwest Argentina for securing land tenure and improving their standards of living. Argentinean society, in contrast to some other Latin American societies, is often imagined as ‘white,’ but in recent decades many peasant, orcampesino, communities have rediscovered or reaffirmed their indigenous origin. This article therefore deconstructs rural collective identities in Argentina and analyses how class and ethnic identities are negotiated in struggles of grassroots social organisations in the countryside of this predominantly urban country. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Drawing on life history interviews with sixty men and women in north-east England who were caught up in 'the low-pay, no-pay cycle', this article describes how people living in poverty talk about poverty - in respect of themselves and others. Paradoxically, interviewees subscribed to a powerful set of ideas that denied poverty and morally condemned 'the poor'. These findings are theorized in four ways: first, informants deployed close points of comparison that diminished a sense of relative poverty and deprivation; second, dissociation from 'the poor' reflects long-running stigma and shame but is given extra force by current forms of 'scroungerphobia'; third, discourses of the 'undeserving poor' articulate with a more general contemporary prejudice against the working class, which fuels the impetus to dissociate from 'the poor' (and to disidentify with the working class); and fourth, the hegemonic orthodoxy that blames 'the poor' for their poverty can more easily dominate in contexts where more solidaristic forms of working-class life are in decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The term ‘master status’, coined by Everett Hughes in 1945 with special reference to race, was conceptualised as one which, in most social situations, will dominate all others. Since then race and other collective social identities have become key features of people’s lives, shaping their ‘life scripts’. But is race still a ‘master’ or ‘dominant identity’ and, if not, what has replaced it? Analyses of recent social surveys show that race has lost its position to family, religion (in the South Asian and Black groups) and (amongst young mixed race people) also age/life-stage and study/work. However, many of these different identity attributes are consistently selected, suggesting the possibility – confirmed in in-depth interviews – that they may work through each other via intersectionality. In Britain race appears to have been undermined by the rise of ‘Muslim’ identity, the increasing importance of ‘mixed race’, and the fragmentation of identity now increasingly interwoven with other attributes like religion. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Understand the role of information technology and communication in the construction of identity of the inhabitants of a society involves first understanding the process of appropriation of these technologies. This paper discusses, from diverse perspectives, this concept from its own process involving bicategories continuum formed by the use / consumption and appropriation / significance. The discussion of the concepts of consumption, use and appropriation developed by classical communication as Fiske (en O´Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders, Montgomery and Fiske, 1995), Thompson (1998) and García Canclini (2009) up to the conceptualization that researchers in the area of ICT are currently working as Carroll, Howard, Vetere, Peck and Murphy (2001 and 2002); Carroll (2004); Overdijk and van Diggelen (2006), Montes González and Ochoa Angrino (2006), Scolari (2008) and Crovi (2009) among others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses upon the St Anns neighbourhood in Nottingham, a community first studied by Ken Coates and Bill Silburn in the 1960s which noted the great upheavals of the physical and social changes generated by the slum clearance programme of 10,000 back-to-back terraced houses, and the consequent building of the concrete council estate that is now St Anns. This paper draws upon both the physical and the social changes within the neighbourhood, and highlights what has remained constant despite the massive upheavals to working-class life over the last 40 years. This paper looks at the concept of belonging to a neighbourhood which has been stigmatized, finding value and an identity within the estate, and residents describing themselves as simultaneously and interchangeably as being from and simply being St Anns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent economic changes in India have coincided with a dramatic change in the concept of a ‘middle class’ in the south Indian city of Madurai. Whereas previous sets of class identities were overwhelmingly dichotomous (for example, the rich and the poor, or the ‘big people’ and ‘those who have nothing’), the middle class has now become a highly elaborated component of local class structures and identities. It is also a contested category; moreover, its indigenous boundaries differ from those most often used by scholars, marketers, or policy-makers. Drawing from research over the past decade, this paper examines local definitions of ‘middleness’ and the moralized meanings ascribed to it. Whilst being ‘in the middle’ is a source of pride and pleasure, connoting both achievement and enhanced self-control, it is simultaneously a source of great tension, bringing anxiety over the critical and damaging scrutiny of onlookers. For each positive aspect of a middle-class identity that emphasizes security and stability, there is a negative ramification or consequence that highlights the precariousness and potential instability of middle-class life. In exploring each of these aspects, I pay attention to the explicitly performative features of class identities. I conclude by considering the epistemological and experiential insights we gain into the construction of emergent class categories by focusing on self-ascribed identities and their performance. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Knowledge leads to human locations, groups of people and the individuals within them being what they are, that the places differ from one another, people as individuals, groups of people as communities, and thus knowledge in all its manifestations is objectified in a local way. Light can be shed on this relationship and the effects by the problematizing of the relationship between a place and knowledge, the folding nature of the production of a place through knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our attitudes towards the use, meaning, and importance of money are developed early in life, i.e. often years before having any idea of how money is obtained; why it is valued in high regard by some people, and what explains it being treated with contempt by others. Here a survey of 420 college students on 3 dimensions of a money attitude scale that reveals how money affects their relationships and influence on personal needs, social identity and emotions. Findings indicate a real need for better education in personal finance, especially money management, among college students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for a reconceptualization of the intersections of race, gender and class as simultaneous processes of identity, institutional and social practice in order to redress the lack of attention to these intersections in feminist organization studies. Grounding my argument on a brief critique of white liberal feminism from the perspective of women of colour, I examine other feminist frameworks beyond the dominant liberal paradigm and identify their possible contributions to the study of intersections in organization theory and practice. Specifically, I propose theoretical and methodological interventions for researching and practicing more forcefully and intentionally the simultaneity of race, gender and class in organizations, including researching and publicizing the hidden stories at the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, class, nation and sexuality; identifying, untangling and changing the differential impact of everyday practices in organizations and identifying and linking internal organizational processes with external societal processes. I conclude with some reflections on the possible implications of these proposals for each of us, scholars and practitioners of gender and organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article develops a model for analyzing social identity and applies it to the political economy of income redistribution, focusing on class and national identities. The model attempts to distill major findings in social psychology into a parsimonious statement of what it means to identify with a group and what factors determine the groups with whom people identify. It then proposes an equilibrium concept where both identities and behavior are endogenously determined. Applying this model to redistribution helps explain three empirical patterns in modern democracies. First, national identification is more common among the poor than among the rich. Second, national identification tends to reduce support for redistribution. Third, across democracies there is a strong negative relationship between the prevalence of national identification and the level of redistribution. The model further points to national eminence, national threats, and diversity within the lower class as factors that can reduce redistribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents reasons and arguments regarding the term 'creative class' within an urban growth rhetoric. It accounts their large immense contribution to the modern urban economy, and their deft resourcefulness and ingenuity in a remarkably creative everyday round. It refers to creative-class guru Richard Florida's own assumption that the key features of a creative population is their central contribution to city economic solvency and the use of daily ingenuity. It then suggests that applying such conception of the creative class to spur city growth and development would be irrational.

Social identity theory suggests that an individual's self-concept is shaped through group identification and positive social identities are established by favorably comparing the individual's in-group against an out-group. When unfavorable intergroup comparisons occur, individuals perceive a negative social identity. Because of the motivation to maintain a positive self-concept, this perception creates a need to cope. On the basis of face-to-face interviews with Mexican immigrants, the author examined the ways in which negative social-identity perceptions triggered different coping mechanisms. The findings offer support for two coping mechanisms—individual mobility and social creativity, with social creativity used more often than individual mobility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Traditional Instrumentality×Value (I×V) models have attributed gains in performance groups to various conditions affecting the instrumentality of group members’ effort for a variety of valued outcomes. Social identity models have challenged this interpretation, suggesting that the instrumentality of effort may be irrelevant when group identification is high. A laboratory study is reported in which both indispensability and group identification are manipulated, and participants’ effort on a physical persistence task is assessed. Contrary to the social identity predictions but consistent with I×V predictions, the indispensability of effort had a positive effect on participants’ effort. Group identification had no direct or moderating effects on effort. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The functional approach to identification suggests that people with a particular motive tend to identify with groups that fulfill this motive. Thus, identification should be strongest when individual motives and group features match. The present paper explores the predictive power of this motive-feature match principle. Participants judged themselves on five motives (self-esteem, distinctiveness, belongingness, uncertainty reduction, and power), rated several groups on features relevant to fulfillment of these motives (e.g., the group's power as to the power motive), and indicated their identification with each group. Although the most predicted Motive x Feature interactions on identification emerged, the overall fit between data and predictions was moderate. The reductionist nature of the motive-feature match principle is discussed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of cues to personal identity on the quality of dyadic collaboration via computer-mediated communication systems. Study 1 (N = 180) shows that an absence of cues to personal identity resulted in more work satisfaction and better subjective performance. Analyses suggested that this effect was mediated by perceptions of shared identity that emerged in cueless dyads. Study 2 (N = 91) confirmed and extended these effects, showing parallel effects on objective performance. The effects of Study 1 were replicated among high identifiers but not low identifiers. This provides direct evidence that social identity played a role in enhancing the quality of dyadic collaboration. It also illustrates the distinction between interpersonal and intragroup processes in online interaction. We conclude that when individuals in a dyad consider themselves part of an overarching social group, anonymity can improve collaboration performance as a function of shared social identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from recent research on first-generation college (FGC) students, this chapter advances an interdisciplinary theoretical framework for understanding how these students enact multiple aspects of their personal, cultural, and social identities. I use dialectical and cross-cultural adaptation theories as a foundation to extend examinations of how diverse FGC students negotiate the alien culture of the academy against that of home. In this regard, college is situated as a pivotal point of development, and successful negotiation of identity tensions is represented as a key factor in academic success. © Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examine how students from different class backgrounds at vastly different colleges interpret the role of social class in their past and future. It begins with a review of previous research findings based on freshmen and sophomore year interviews (2002-2004) with three groups of students: low income students at a state college; low income students at an elite private college (Little Ivy), and affluent students at the same elite private college. During a period of relative quiescence on college campuses, all three groups of students tended to look at their own lives in individualistic, non-structural ways, and generally downplayed the role of their own class backgrounds. Many of the students were interviewed again during their senior year to determine what, if any, changes had occurred in their overall outlook. Both groups of students at Little Ivy had become less politically progressive and active as they approached graduation; State College students had verbally moved to the Left, but without corresponding activism. Occupational goals for each of the three groups differed. The affluent students anticipated positions with the most power and prestige, while the State College students aimed for entry and middle level statuses. Not surprisingly, the low income Little Ivy students expected to obtain positions below their affluent peers, but higher than the State College students. The meaning of these findings in the context of the current historical period and the power of social reproduction is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When they graduate I want them to feel, "I went through a real thing, not an approximation of college, but I went through college and that means something!" (Adjunct Instructor) This article explores the complexity of providing an academically rigorous college education to adult students enrolled in a union-supported worker education program affiliated with a large urban public university. The author examines differences in student and faculty perspectives on academic rigor and considers how students' lack of academic preparation intersects with institutional constraints to impact academic standards. She examines the role of race, ethnicity, class, and gender in determining academic expectations and outcomes and explores the complex and, at times, conflicting relationship between care and academic rigor. She highlights the crucial role of institutional constraints in hindering the implementation of rigorous education for academically under-prepared students. The author argues that high academic standards are an issue of educational equity for working class students of color and are integral to the social justice mission of the worker education program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As museums continue to broaden their offers and attract increasingly diverse audiences, it becomes ever more important to understand how motivations for visitation can vary between different cultural groups. This article explores some of the reasons people visit cultural festivals at the Immigration Museum in Melbourne, Australia, combining data from 5 different festivals with a total sample of 414. The audience of these festivals contains a mix of 74% cultural community members and 26% non-community members, and their reasons for visiting the festivals differ in distinct ways. Among these distinctions, it was found that social identity played a role in why people chose to visit, especially for community members and at the festivals of communities that were relatively new to Melbourne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As today's organizations become more globally oriented, their leaders must help those they lead deal with an increasingly prevalent source of conflict—social identities. Our social identities are made up of the aspects of ourselves that are tied to the various demographic and cultural groups to which we belong. Learning how to deal with social identity conflicts isn't easy, but it is possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent revival in interest in class subjectivity has been largely premised on class belonging as a form of identity, eschewing talk of class-consciousness. Evidence in this debate has been mostly qualitative and focused on specific social groups. This paper uses data from the 2003 British Social Attitudes Survey to map the sense of class belonging in England and to assess the strength of class belonging when placed alongside other social identities, such as gender and nationality. The paper also explores the extent to which class identity could be conceived of as class-consciousness through its links with attitudes to redistribution and workplace relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the emergence of a sharply delineated socioeconomic and sociocultural fault-line between Cessnock's former coal towns and the immediately adjacent Hunter Valley Wine Country, centred on Pokolbin. We provide evidence that divergent culturally-related class identities act as mutually reinforcing constraints on reciprocity between job-deficit former coal towns and the job-surplus wine country. We relate this to a consideration of time-space dimensions in the interdependencies between the class and place identities of Cessnock and Pokolbin. These identities have been influenced by metropolitan colonisation, with the markedly differentiated absorption of these two locales into the enlarged metropolitan population-work-welfare-housing-leisure agglomeration. Further, we propose that the former coal towns and the wine country can both be seen as place-specific representations of wider class-related changes within Australian society. Our interpretations are founded on three current research directions: first, the role of culture as a critical intervening variable in class identities and actions; second, the current flux in class formations, most notably the loss of self-identity and solidarity in the working class and the emergence of a new middle-class sector dedicated to self-realisation and self-fulfilment; and third, recognition of class formation as a geographical process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Authors have repeatedly argued that a nearly exclusive focus on the dominant form of masculinity limits our knowledge of masculinity. Qualitative masculinities researchers have revealed multiple masculine forms, but quantitative researchers have not yet assessed them. This study adopted a social identity approach to examine endorsement of ten typically male images (Average Joe, Businessman, Family Man, Jock, Nerd, Player, Rebel, Sensitive New-Age Guy, Stud, Tough Guy) and their connections to gender norms and traits. Data from 340 male and 348 female adults revealed that identification with each image was related to a particular pattern of norm conformity and trait endorsement. Patterns varied by sex. Findings suggested that distinctions across images may be assessed quantitatively. Implications for quantitative research on masculinities were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the classed dimensions of ‘taste’ have, following Bourdieu, been widely discussed, expressions of disgust at perceived violations of taste have been less frequently considered in relation to class. This paper considers various expressions of disgust at white working-class existence and explores what they might tell us about middle-class identities and identifications. I argue that the narratives of decline and of lack present in such representations can be seen in terms of a long-standing middle-class project of distinguishing itself. Drawing on Bourdieu's critique of Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the ownership of ‘taste’ is understood as reflecting true humanity, and as conferring uniqueness. Ironically, however, this uniqueness is only achieved through an incorporation of collective, classed understandings. The paper calls for a problematization of a normative and normalized middle-class location that is, I argue, given added legitimacy by a perceived decline in the significance of class itself. [A]n account of class, rank or social hierarchy must be thin indeed unless accompanied by an account of the passions and sentiments that sustain it (William Miller, The Anatomy of Disgust, p. 245). Social identity lies in difference, and difference is asserted against what is closest, which represents the greatest threat (Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, p. 479). What we read as objective class divisions are produced and maintained by the middle class in the minutiae of everyday practice, as judgements of culture are put into effect (Beverley Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture, p. 118). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the historical process of identity construction in the Guinean Rivers area of Cape Verde. The author uses the concept of power relations and the desires for inclusion/exclusion to help him define the evolving phenomena of identity construction in the region. The author analyses the concepts of ethnicity, culture, language, nation/nationalism, state, territory and space and how they pertain to the region at hand, in order to conceptually support his reasoning on the historical construction of identity. Moreover, the article characterizes the emergence of the four dominant identities in the area: Malinke, Kaabunke, Afro-Portuguese and Cape Verdean. The author describes the characteristics of each identity, points out the differences between them, as well as their specific power dynamics. The author concludes by exemplifying how miscegenation can transform space into entity and its importance in nation building. The inclusion/exclusion dynamic also serves as tool to demonstrate how the ever changing relations of power are determinant in explaining identity phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Class theorists ask for research on the‘paradox of class’– the fact that while class appears to be materially just as important as ever, it hardly features as part of a self-conscious social identity. At the same time mothering is usually seen as a classless activity. This paper describes class based differences in how mothers combine employment and caring for their children, how they divide labour with their partners, and how they choose childcare. These are not simple structural divisions between working class and middle class, but instead refer to more nuanced social identities. These class based differences in mothering present different mixes of choice and constraint, or of‘rationality’ and‘preference’ in choosing alternative courses of action. However, theories focusing on classless individualised preference (Hakim) and class–based rationality (Goldthorpe) do not go far beyond a tautological description of these alternatives. Rather, the paper shows how preference and rationality are socially and culturally created through the development of career as an identity, through biographical experience, through relations with partners, and through the development of normative views in social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents an analysis of the interactions between gender and class in the career pathways of social workers practising as counsellors and psychotherapists. Gender is one of the strong patterns found in the empirical data generated by a qualitative study of the professional identity of practitioners in social work. Gender was found to have a strong influence on the career choices made by men and women in social work. Women in the sample have pursued career directions that continue to have a strong clinical focus, combined with other roles such as management, supervision and training. They are more likely to express the need to balance their working lives with the needs of their families. Men are more likely to single-mindedly pursue careers in management and to express feelings of responsibility to provide for their families once children are born. However, the analysis of data also found that men were more likely to identify their family origins as working class, while women identify their family backgrounds as middle class. This patterning shows the complex interactions between gender and class in determining life outcomes. These differential pathways and work preferences need to be recognised and addressed to work towards more equitable outcomes for practitioners within social work, so that structural disadvantages on the basis of gender and class are challenged rather than replicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the embodiment of class and gender in a subject through the conferring of social identity on it. The author utilizes French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu's understanding of the cultural and symbolic aspects of class divisions in order to investigate this idea of the imposition of social norms. More specifically, the connection between class distinction and gender are analyzed through the lens of Bourdieu's concept of the habitus, with particular focus given to the construction of feminine identity. The ways in which class and gender identity can inform political struggles are then discussed, with focus given to mothers' protests against housing for child sex abusers in the early 21st century and their depictions in the press.

This paper draws on research in four communities in the Highlands and Islands, Scotland, to explore how the notion of community and community identity are reworked in the political spaces created as communities claim collective rights to land. In the cases of the Assynt Crofters' Trust, the Bhaltos Community Trust, and Laid, this has concerned land under crofting tenure; in the case of the claim of the North Sutherland Community Forestry Trust, the land on which the Naver Forests stand is the responsibility of the Scottish Ministers and is managed by Forest Enterprise. The four case studies differ with respect to membership and institutional practices and thus provide fertile ground on which to examine, comparatively, collective struggles for the land and the search for sustainable futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the social conditions of Roma in Europe. While in many Roman countries Roma cannot formally make political organizations founded on ethnicity, Roma political organizing is developing. Almost everywhere, the Roma groups emerges at all levels, from the grassroots as well as the national. International organizations are also taking place. The Romani movement in Central and Eastern Europe has come into a period of consciousness establishing along identity lines, directed at mass mobilization and political participation. Whether the Romani movement will lean toward anachronistic, trivial nationalist consolidation, or form a new civic mobilization with a vision drawing its power from new sources in globalizing world remains unclear.

This article analyzes the class identification of married, employed women and men in U.S. society. Focusing on the relative weights between wife's and husband's attributes in determining class identification for three class attributes (education, income, and occupational prestige) and on population heterogeneity in those weights, the study finds that men and women, on average, agree on how to weight the contributions of wife's and husband's income and occupation to subjectively identified class: wife's income and husband's income equally affect class identification but only husband's occupational prestige — not wife's — affects class identification. By contrast, men and women do not agree about the contributions of husband's and wife's education to subjectively identified class: education is a more individualized determinant of class, especially for men. The article also finds population heterogeneity in the weights: for example, self-employed women and African-American women have a more “independent” basis of class identification than do other employed women, and there is an interplay of gender role and self-enhancement in class identification among couples where the wife has higher income than the husband. Theoretical implications of these findings are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

These are scarcely auspicious times for the left. An unfortunate confluence of recent social and political trends has conspired to question seriously the value of materialist interpretations of the world. The reconstruction of western societies out of the debris of the economic crises of the nineteen seventies has led to the emergence of increasingly intricate class hierarchies. Changed work practice and accelerated consumption have both served to blur the boundaries between previously distinct social strata. The increasingly complex and dynamic nature of contemporary bourgeois society has invited predictable and indeed opportunistic responses from neoliberal critics. Most famously the political scientist Francis Fukuyama (1989, 1992) has declared that we are living through the end of history. The unprecedented has allegedly afforded humanity have ensured, Fukuyama insists, that the notion of social class has effectively ceased to have real meaning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an approach to the analysis of the construction of collective identities which goes to a large extent against some of the accepted wisdom about the problem that can be found either in the more recent studies of ethnicity and nationalism, or in the classical sociological ones. The construction of collective identity is never, in any society, homogeneous or undifferentiated. The specification of such attributes of similarity also affects the extent of homogenization and plurality of human types which are constructed within any collectivity, and the interweaving, in any concrete situation, of different collectivities. It always entails multiple, often competing constructions and interpretations. The promulgation of such models is also closely connected with processes of the contestation of power over control of resources and struggles of discursive hegemony. The construction of solidarity entails consequences for the conception of authority and its accountability; for the allocation of resources and, above all, for the structuring of the entitlements of the members of the collectivity as against outsiders. The connection between the construction of collective identities and the regulation of the production and flow of resources is effected above all through the regulation of the access of different actors (individuals as well as groups) to the major economic, political and cultural arenas.

This article considers the grounds on which distinctions are drawn between the identities of gender, sexuality, 'race' and class and explores the implications of these distinctions in relation to different kinds of identity politics and, in particular, to the politics implied by Judith Butler's theory of performativity. I argue that what is often taken to be the key site of much queer theory and activism -- that is, the reappropriation of signifiers of difference -- is problematic in the light of a close analysis of subjectivities which are informed by 'race', gender and class. More specifically, it may be that struggles which are frequently linked to issues of visibility are problematic in the context of subjectivities -- class subjectivities -- that are both enabled and constrained by a particular, and a particularly uneasy, relation to recognition and representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two studies establish distinct types of social and collective identities (Study 1) and describe dimensions that differentiate among identities (Studies 1 and 2). In Study 1, individuals (N = 50) sorted 64 social identities on the basis of perceived similarity; 259 respondents provided trait property ratings of the identities. Cluster analysis indicated 5 types of social identity: personal relationships, vocations/avocations, political affiliations, ethnic/religious groups, and stigmatized groups. Multidimensional scaling analysis shows that identities differ on several trait properties, including desirability and collectivity. In Study 2, 171 people rated the similarity of identities within a specific cluster; 193 respondents provided trait property ratings. Results indicate that different trait properties are relevant to each cluster. The theoretical importance of distinguishing among forms of social identification is stressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on an analysis of the subjective class identification of married women in paid employment, based on the People in Society Survey data-base; in part it replicates earlier American work by Ritter and Hargens (1975). The overall conclusion is that the occupational class of these women is not an important determinant of their self-assigned class, but that educational variables tend to be, if anything, more important than husband's occupational class. Considerable doubt is cast on the utility of cross-sectional data to tackle questions such as these at all, because education, jobs and ‘class of marriage’ are integrally inter-related and therefore confounded variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses middle managers and administrators--a sizeable and developing stratum in the contemporary capitalist society. Their contradictory class situation leads one to regard them as belonging to the middle strata. Changes in their material conditions in the last decades are briefly considered, and shifts in their moods and attitudes in greater detail. Four main types of their social orientations are suggested. The author concludes that the growing identification of middle managers with their own social group--and the corresponding weakening of identification with the employer's interests--is an advance in their historical development. Winning over middle managers and administrators is rather important for the success of the struggle of the working class for deep-going democratic exchanges in society, for socialism. In practice, however, this involves great difficulties. Middle management has strong social ties with the capitalist establishment. The confrontation between managers and managed, rank-and-file workers, cannot disappear under capitalism, though it may attenuate considerably and is already attenuating. At the same time, changes occurring in the attitudes of managerial cadres create opportunities for an alliance with them or, at least, for a drift of a significant part of them from pro-capitalist to neutral positions.

This study argues that job and workplace characteristics, in addition to individual and household characteristics, are important predictors of class identity among women office workers. This expands on earlier research findings on the importance of women's own socioeconomic status (SES) characteristics as predictors of class identity The author also addresses whether class identity is related to (a) "proletarianized" working conditions, (b) office automation, and (c) organizational context. The results show that both intrinsic job rewards and work autonomy are associated with a more middle-class identity Although greater use of video display terminals is linked with a mom working-class identity, office workers in small office settings become more middle class in their identity the longer the office has been automated. This suggests that organizational context may mediate the relationship between automation and class identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employing NORC data for 1974-4978 and 1980-1985, we evaluate three models of class identification for married men and women: (1) an "independence" model, in which one `s own characteristics outweigh those of one's spouse; (2) a "sharing" model, in which equal weight is attached to one's own and one's spouse's characteristics; and (3) a "borrowing" model, in which one's spouse's characteristics are more important than one's own. In both decades, married men exhibit an independence model, in which only their own characteristics are salient, regardless of whether their wife works outside the home or not. From the 1970s to the 1980s, women shifted from a borrowing model to a sharing model. In the 1970s, employed or not, women attached more weight to their husband's than to their own characteristics. In the 198th, employed women moved toward a sharing model in which they take into account both their own and their husband's characteristics. An analysis of single men and women revealed movement away from a sharing model, in which both their own and their parents' characteristics are important, toward an independence model, in which only their own characteristics are salient. These changes are examined in light of economic and demographic shifts, political activism by women, and a possible trend toward greater individualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an overview of a study on the relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational commitment from a social identity perspective. Perceived organizational support (POS) is defined as people's global beliefs about the extent to which the organization cares about their well-being and values their contributions. Social identity theory suggests that people remain loyal when they feel that their organizations value and appreciate them. However, social identity theory maintains that when people feel that their organization values and appreciates them, it is a sign of organizational respect for them or of their high status within the organization. High status is likely to increase people's organizational commitment because it enhances their social identity. Therefore, because social identity is reflected in people's self-esteem, the relationship between people's POPS and organizational commitment is likely to be mediated to some degree by their organization-based self-esteem (OBSE). OBSE is an employee's evaluation of his or her personal adequacy and worthiness as an organizational member. In short, the results suggest that for U.S. convenience store employees, POS might be related to organizational commitment partly because of its impact on OBSE, and that organizational support theory might benefit from expansion of its theoretical foundation to include a social identity perspective.

The article presents a study on the use collective pronouns as social identity markers for an Italian soccer team. Interactions were recorded following two games with opposite results. Both quantitative and conversational analyses were used to examined the nature and distribution of social identity markers. Results revealed that after a victory, team members did not use social identity markers to a large extent, which suggests that they did not demonstrate a strong need to affirm their own social belonging.