For many of today’s social theorists and cultural critics, questions of identity are a central concern. In this paper I examine one highly influential strand of theorising about identity, associated primarily with the discipline of Cultural Studies. Here, whilst identity is certainly a key focus, it is also one which some have begun to question. Marjorie Ferguson and Peter Golding, for instance...

I Resume In the history of contact between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada, there has been an imbalance in acculturative influences. Generally, Aboriginal peoples have been changed substantially, with serious erosion of their cultures and identities. However, this dominance by EuroCanadian peoples has also been met by resistance by Aboriginal peoples. Policy and programme change...

Identity is recognized as an important aspect of psychosocial well-being. This study examined the self-concept and cultural identity of 550 youth in a community based sample of high school students in Canada. A revised version of Kuhn and McPartland’s (1954) Twenty Statement Test and Oetting and Beauvais’ (1991) orthogonal cultural identification item were used to gather data. The relationship ...

BACKGROUND Possessing a strong cultural identity has been shown to protect against mental health symptoms and buffer distress prompted by discrimination. However, no research to date has explored the protective influences of cultural identity and cultural engagement on violent offending. This paper investigates the relationships between cultural identity/engagement and violent recidivism for a ...

This study compares age identities of middle-aged and older adults in the United States and Germany. Differences between countries in social systems and cultural meanings of old age are expected to produce different age identities. Data are from respondents between ages 40 and 74 in the United States (MIDUS; n = 2,006) and Germany (German Aging Survey; n = 3,331). Americans and Germans tend to ...

I discuss the function of social identity signaling in facilitating cooperative group formation, and how the nature of that function changes with the structure of social organization. I propose that signals of social identity facilitate assortment for successful coordination in large-scale societies, and that the multidimensional, context-dependent nature of social identity is crucial for succe...

An integrated anthropological and linguistic analysis of Creek oratory shows oratory to be part of a ritual cycle which recreates both the fundamental Creek cultural system and the Creek towns, the basic political units of Creek society. 1 Creek individual and group identities are thus defined and integrated into the Creek political system. This paper describes the performative effectiveness of...

Identity is seen as a cultural and social construct, which indicates how we have been embodied and how we might represent ourselves. The knowledge that identities are the outputs of discourses is a familiar characteristic of some societal concepts. Gender, as an identity or a sense of our identity we build for ourselves, rather than something we are born with, is a constructed cultural category...

Intersubjective perceptions refer to shared perceptions of the psychological characteristics that are widespread within a culture. In this article, we propose the intersubjective approach as a new approach to understanding the role that culture plays in human behavior. In this approach, intersubjective perceptions, which are distinct from personal values and beliefs, mediate the effect of the e...