Perceptions of self and group in the context of a threatened national identity: A field study

Previous research indicates that people who are highly identified with their groups tend to remain committed to them under threat. This study examines the generalizability, of this effect to (a) a real-life context involving the perception that others view the ingroup (Australians) as intolerant of minorities and (b) various dimensions of social identification. The sample comprised 213 respondents to a random mail survey. Perceived threat was inversely related to self-stereotyping (i.e. perceptions of self-ingroup similarity), but only for individuals with weak subjective ties to other group members. Threat perceptions were also predictive of enhanced judgments of within-group variability on threat-relevant dimensions, particularly for individuals with weaker ingroup ties. Various strategies for coping with a threatened social identity are linked to different facets of social identification.

Political power, national identitiy and language

Afrikaans is the home language of 5.9 million people. During the 1980s, Afrikaans was the dominant state language and a widely-used lingua franca in South Africa and Namibia. But by the end of the twentieth century, English had replaced Afrikaans as the dominant state language and a decline in the use of Afrikaans was in evidence, even among native Afrikaans speakers. An examination of this language's twentieth-century journey helps illustrate the relationship(s) between political power, national identity, and the growth and/or decline of languages.

Global flows of foreign talent: Identity anxieties in Singapore's ethnoscape

This paper draws on Appadurai's (1996) concept of ethnoscapes — the global flow of people or what has become increasingly popularized as the global flow of talent. Singapore has initiated a foreign talent policy to compete for a global pool of talent to make up for its shortfall of indigenous work-force. The rationale for recruiting foreign talent is informed by a nationalist competitive ideology to sustain Singapore in the new knowledge-based economy. This paper examines the competing and dissenting discourses surrounding the foreign talent policy. It argues that the mobility of migratory flow has transformative and disruptive effects at the level of culture and the identity landscape of Singapore, where its discursive cultural boundaries are drawn according to a nationalist framework. Drawing on theories and concepts of ‘diaspora’, ‘hybridity’, and ‘third space’, these are the political and cultural issues that this paper attempts to tease out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Postmaterial values and age: The case of Australia

Inglehart's thesis of value change is one of the most widely discussed accounts of social and political change in advanced Western nations. This article offers a critique of Inglehart's thesis and a clarification of the Australian case. While critics of Inglehart have attacked the validity of his values measures, or sought to improve them, we use Inglehart's own values index to show that even if-as Inglehart claims-his measures are valid, the age/values predictions do not hold as the theory suggests in Australia. In a recent article, Inglehart and Abramson (1999, 673) cite Australia among a group of '28 high-income' countries that exhibit 'stronger relationships between values and age' than found in the United States. We dispute Inglehart and Abramson's findings in relation to Australia. We show that the relationship between age and values in Australia, like the United States, is very weak, highlight the problematic nature of assuming a linear relationship between age and values without evidence, and discover a new non-linear relationship between values and birth cohorts in Australia that has implications for the study of values research internationally.

Celebrity, Nation, and the New Australian Woman: Tania Verstak, Miss Australia 1961

This article examines two women who signified the 'ideal' feminine for Australians and represented the Australian nation on the global stage: Beryl Mills, the first Miss Australia, crowned in 1926, and Tania Verstak, Miss Australia 1961. Both women gained celebrity through their role as Miss Australia, but Tania Verstak is of particular significance as the first 'new Australian' woman to win the coveted title. The strategy of viewing the two women as embodying the Australian nation reveals some of the dramatic social shifts that occurred in the Australian consciousness over the thirty-five years that separated the two title-holders; furthermore, it demonstrates how those shifts reshaped Australia's national identity and its feminine imagery.