'In the Service of the Honourable East India Company': Politics and Identity in Dean Mahomet's Travels (1794)

The successful career of Dean Mahomet (1759-1851) as a migrant from India to Ireland (and later, England) has led to scholarly and popular interest in his work. His Travels through several parts of India in the Service of the Honourable East India Company (1794) published by subscription in Cork is reputedly the first English book by an Indian, and has been seen to counterbalance the many accounts of India by western travellers, and to assert, in autobiographical form, his identity as an Indian in 1790s Ireland. My paper analyses this text in relation to moral and economic criticisms of the East India Company in the eighteenth century, and in particular to legislation of 1793 which defined the role of the Company in Ireland’s trade with the east. These aspects of colonial politics involving Ireland and India as subject nations of Britain are shown to shape Mahomet’s discursive strategies and the complex identity produced in his text.

Conceptions of Teacher Identity: Creating Self-Boxes as Arts-Based Self-Study

This paper presents a palimpsest of ways in which self-study draws upon arts-based methods not just as processes towards teacher development, but also as means to problematize and inquire into conceptualizations of the self. It focuses on the creation of individual self-boxes that mediate teachers’ dynamic narratives of identity. Concepts of the unitary self, the decentred self and the relationship between inner and outer experience are challenged and illustrated through two interlapping stories made manifest through the creation of self-boxes. From time immemorial man has known that he is the subject most deserving of his own study, but he has also fought shy of treating this subject as a whole, that is, in accordance with its total character. (Buber, 1947, p. 140)

Attitudes, norms, identity and environmental behaviour: Using an expanded theory of planned behaviour to predict participation in a kerbside recycling programme

In an effort to contribute to greater understanding of norms and identity in the theory of planned behaviour, an extended model was used to predict residential kerbside recycling, with self-identity, personal norms, neighbourhood identification, and injunctive and descriptive social norms as additional predictors. Data from a field study (N = 527) using questionnaire measures of predictor variables and an observational measure of recycling behaviour supported the theory. Intentions predicted behaviour, while attitudes, perceived control, and the personal norm predicted intention to recycle. The interaction between neighbourhood identification and injunctive social norms in turn predicted personal norms. Self-identity and the descriptive social norm significantly added to the original theory in predicting intentions as well as behaviour directly. A replication survey on the self-reported recycling behaviours of a random residential sample (N = 264) supported the model obtained previously. These findings offer a useful extension of the theory of planned behaviour and some practicable suggestions for pro-recycling interventions. It may be productive to appeal to self-identity by making people feel like recyclers, and to stimulate both injunctive and descriptive norms in the neighbourhood.

Does chronic illness place constraints on positive constructions of identity? Temporal comparisons and self-evaluations in people with schizophrenia

It is often suggested that people in potentially threatening situations might engage in self-enhancing temporal comparisons that allow them to view themselves and their experience in a more positive light. Data from semistructured interviews with 12 individuals in the UK diagnosed as having schizophrenia were content analyzed to explore patterns of temporal comparison. The study found that the onset of schizophrenic symptoms created a new baseline in participants' representations of their past, with different types of temporal comparisons occurring before and after this point. Although comparisons with past selves after onset supported the suggestion that people may select and construct their past in such a manner that permits them to see their present circumstances more positively and envisage a better future, comparisons with past selves before onset were more negative. The findings suggest that the Theory of Temporal Self-Appraisals (Ross I Wilson, 2000) needs to be elaborated to include people who have experienced major life changes. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.