Negotiating social identities: the influence of gender, age and ethnicity on young people’s ‘Street Careers’ in Tanzania

This paper explores the diverse ways that children and young people negotiate their social identities and construct their life course trajectories on the street, based on ethnographic research with street children in Tanzania. Drawing on the concept of a ‘street career’, I show how differences of age, gender and ethnicity intersect with the time spent on the street, to influence young people’s livelihood strategies, use of public space, access to services, and adherence to cultural rites of passage. Using the notion of ‘gender performativity’, I analyse how young people actively reconfigure gender norms and the concept of ‘the family’ on the street.

Why your customers’ social identities matter

The article looks at the role of consumers' social identities in their purchasing decisions, and hence in the creation of effective marketing strategies. It says that people generally belong to multiple social groups, any one of which may have the most salience for them in a given situation. It reports on social psychology research on how a person's connection with a particular social identity can be triggered and discusses the idea in the context of marketing products including the Toyota Prius hybrid-electric automobile, Nescafé instant coffee, and the Jeep all-terrain vehicle. INSET: Lessons of the Stanford Prison Experiment.

Consumption and social identity: evidence from India

We examine spending on consumption items which have signaling value in social interactions across groups with distinctive social identities in India, where social identities are defined by caste and religious affiliations. Using nationally representative micro data on household consumption expenditures, we find that disadvantaged caste groups such as Other Backward Castes spend 8 percent more on visible consumption than Brahmin and High Caste groups while social groups such as Muslims spend 14 percent less, after controlling for differences in permanent income, household assets and household demographic composition. The differences across social groups are significant and robust and these differences persist within different sub populations. We find that the higher spending of OBC households on visible consumption is diverted from education spending, while Muslim households divert spending from visible consumption and education towards greater food spending. Additionally, we find that these consumption patterns can be partly explained as a result of the status signaling nature of the consumption items. We also discuss alternative sources of differences in consumption patterns across groups which stem from religious observance.

France and the memories of ‘others’: The case of the Harkis

Historical narratives help construct social identities, which are maintained through differentiation between in-groups and "others." In this article, we contend that Fatima Besnaci-Lancou's texts, as well as her reconciliation work—in which she enjoins Beurs and Harkis' offspring to write a new, inclusive, polyphonic narrative of the Algerian War—are an example of the positive use of textually mediated identity (re)construction. Her work suggests the possibility of implementing a moderate politics of empathetic recognition of the (often migration-related) memories of "others" so as to reinforce French national belongingness.

Dancing, skating and sex: action and text in the digital age

This paper explores the relationship between discourse and action in practices involved in making and consuming texts. Texts are produced through the process of ‘entextualization’ in which strips of action and discourse are extracted from their original contexts and recontextualized into other situations. Different technologies for turning actions into texts affect the kinds of social actions and social identities that are made possible both at moments of entextualization and at future moments of recontextualization. In particular, I focus on how digital technologies affect the practices and participation structures around entextualization. Digital photography and video have had a profound effect on social practices and relationships around the making of texts. Specifically, they have made processes of entextualization more immediate, more contingent and more communal. Implications of these features of digital text making are discussed in light of previous work on literacy and orality.

'You show me yours, I'll show you mine': the negotiation of shifts from textual to visual modes in computer-mediated interaction among gay men

This article explores the way users of an online gay chat room negotiate the exchange of photographs and the conduct of video conferencing sessions and how this negotiation changes the way participants manage their interactions and claim and impute social identities. Different modes of communication provide users with different resources for the control of information, affecting not just what users are able to reveal, but also what they are able to conceal. Thus, the shift from a purely textual mode for interacting to one involving visual images fundamentally changes the kinds of identities and relationships available to users. At the same time, the strategies users employ to negotiate these shifts of mode can alter the resources available in different modes. The kinds of social actions made possible through different modes, it is argued, are not just a matter of the modes themselves but also of how modes are introduced into the ongoing flow of interaction.

Out of the ivory tower: the impact of wider social contact on the values, religious beliefs and identities of Chinese postgraduate students in the UK

This article explores the impact of wider social contact on the experience of Chinese postgraduate students of adaptation to life in the UK. Focus group and individual interviews were conducted with a group of 11 Chinese students on an MA programme at a university in southern England and individual interviews with three representatives of a local volunteer group (LVG) offering support to the Chinese students. Although it was perceived that the students’ support needs were not adequately met by the University, the additional support offered outside the University was unanimously valued and considered as enriching their cultural and linguistic experiences and meeting their expectations. However, frequent social contact with the LVG, whose members were mostly Christians, also had an impact on their values, religious beliefs and identities. In a discussion framed within the sociological perspective of proselytization or religious conversion and the broad framework of international education and globalization, the different responses to this contact are described in terms of believers, doubters, empathisers and commentators. Implications are considered for universities, people involved in providing social support for international students, and sponsors of international students.

Projecting social and discursive identities through code-switching on facebook: the case of Greek Cypriots

Two varieties of Greek are spoken on the island of Cyprus: the local dialect, namely the Greek-Cypriot Dialect (GCD), and Standard Modern Greek (SMG). English is also influential, as Cyprus was an English colony until 1960. The dialect is rarely employed for everyday written purposes; however, it is now evident in computer-mediated communication (CMC). As a contribution to the field of code-switching in writing, this study examines how Greek-Cypriot internet users employ GCD, SMG, and English in their Facebook interactions. In particular, we investigate how identities (discursive and social) are performed and indexed through the linguistic choices of Greek-Cypriot internet users. The findings indicate that switches to GCD add a humorous tone and express solidarity and informality. SMG is mostly used for ‘official’ statements, and it is preferred by mature internet users, while English is used with expressions of affect and evaluative comments.

Young people with intellectual disabilities attending mainstream and segregated schooling: perceived stigma, social comparison and future aspirations

Mainstream schooling is a key policy in the promotion of social inclusion of young people with learning disabilities. Yet there is limited evidence about the school experience of young people about to leave mainstream as compared with segregated education, and how it impacts on their relative view of self and future aspirations. Sixty young people with mild to moderate intellectual disabilities in their final year of secondary school participated in this study. Twenty-eight individuals came from mainstream schools and 32 attended segregated school. They completed a series of self-report measures on perceptions of stigma, social comparison to a more disabled and non-disabled peer and the likelihood involved in attaining their future goals. The majority of participants from both groups reported experiencing stigmatized treatment in the local area where they lived. The mainstream group reported significant additional stigma at school. In terms of social comparisons, both groups compared themselves positively with a more disabled peer and with a non-disabled peer. While the mainstream pupils had more ambitious work-related aspirations, both groups felt it equally likely that they would attain their future goals. Although the participants from segregated schools came from significantly more deprived areas and had lower scores on tests of cognitive functioning, neither of these factors appeared to have an impact on their experience of stigma, social comparisons or future aspirations. Irrespective of schooling environment, the young people appeared to be able to cope with the threats to their identities and retained a sense of optimism about their future. Nevertheless, negative treatment reported by the children was a serious source of concern and there is a need for schools to promote the emotional well-being of pupils with intellectual disabilities.