Shakespeare, the Middle Ages and the Luck of the British: Medievalism and National Identity in The Hollow Crown (2012)

Images of the medieval past have long been fertile soil for the identity politics of subsequent periods. Rather than “authentically” reproducing the Middle Ages, medievalism therefore usually tells us more about the concerns and ideological climate of its own time and place of origin. To dramatise the nascent nation, Shakespeare resorts to medievalism in his history plays. Centuries later, the BBC-produced television mini-serial The Hollow Crown – adapting Shakespeare’s second histories tetralogy – revamps this negotiation of national identity for the “Cultural Olympiad” in the run-up to the 2012 London Olympics. In this context of celebratory introspection, The Hollow Crown weaves a genealogical narrative consisting of the increasingly “glorious” medieval history depicted and “national” Shakespearean heritage in order to valorise 21st-century “Britishness”. Encouraging a reading of the histories as medieval history, the films construct an ostensibly inclusive, liberal-minded national identity grounded in this history. Moreover, medieval kingship is represented in distinctly sentimentalising and humanising terms, fostering emotional identification especially with the no longer ambivalent Hal/Henry V and making him an apt model for present-day British grandeur. However, the fact that the films in return marginalise female, Scottish, Irish and Welsh characters gives rise to doubts as to whether this vision of Shakespeare’s Middle Ages really is, as the producers claimed, “for everybody”.

Effects of orientations to happiness on vocational identity achievement

There is an increased interest in vocational psychology and career counseling regarding the link between career development and well-being, yet, little is known about how different ways to achieve well-being or happiness relate to career development. This study explored the relationship between 3 orientations to happiness (meaning, pleasure, and engagement) and vocational identity achievement among 2 groups of Swiss adolescents (n = 268, 8th grade; n = 208, 11th grade). The results indicated that more orientation to meaning and engagement but not to pleasure positively related to vocational identity achievement.

Weiss auf Rot. Das Schweizer Kreuz zwischen nationaler Identität und Corporate Identity

Das Schweizer Kreuz hat als Zeichen ausserordentliche Qualitäten und ein enormes Potenzial. Seine Verwendung geht weit über den unmittelbaren Bereich von Staat und Nation hinaus. Die Publikation der Hochschule der Künste Bern HKB erschliesst dieses Phänomen mit illustrierten Beiträgen von Fachleuten aus verschiedenen wissenschaftlichen Fachrichtungen. Für Nation, Staat, Politik und im Sport steht es als Symbol, im Kontext Wirtschaft ist es Teil von Logos, im Zusammenhang von Lifestyle und Zeitgeist tritt es als modisches Ornament auf. Das Schweizer Kreuz macht TrägerInnen und AbsenderInnen identifizierbar: Abstimmungsunterlagen als staatliche Dokumente, die Sportlerin als Mitglied des Nationalteams, den Inhaber eines Pas-ses oder einer Identitätskarte als Schweizer Bürger; Post oder SBB als schweizerische Dienstleister; die Besitzerin einer Tasche als Vertreterin einer Lifestyle-Gruppe oder Nachzüglerin eines sinkenden Trends; das Mineralwasser als natürliches, gesundes Produkt; eine Alu-Trinkflasche als flottes Qualitätsprodukt. Interdisziplinärer Zugang «Weiss auf Rot. Das Schweizer Kreuz zwischen nationaler Identität und Corporate Identity» ist eine Textsammlung, die entsprechend der Vielfältigkeit des Themas auch eine Vielfalt von Annäherungen an den Gegenstand bietet. Die 13 wissenschaftlichen Texte werden ergänzt durch fünf Interviews mit VertreterInnen aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Sportwissenschaft und Gestaltung, die in ihrem berufli-chen Alltag einen praktischen Bezug zum Schweizer Kreuz haben.

Beyond belief : Strategic taboos and organizational identity in strategic agenda setting

A comprehensive strategic agenda matters for fundamental strategic change. Our study seeks to explore and theorize how organizational identity beliefs influence the judgment of strategic actors when setting an organization's strategic agenda. We offer the notion of "strategic taboo" as those strategic options initially disqualified and deemed inconsistent with the organizational identity beliefs of strategic actors. Our study is concerned with how strategic actors confront strategic taboos in the process of setting an organization's strategic agenda. Based on a revelatory inductive case study, we find that strategic actors engage in assessing the concordance of the strategic taboos with organizational identity beliefs and, more specifically, that they focus on key identity elements (philosophy; priorities; practices) when doing so. We develop a typology of three reinterpretation practices that are each concerned with a key identity element. While contextualizing assesses the potential concordance of a strategic taboo with an organization's overall philosophy and purpose, instrumentalizing assesses such concordance with respect to what actors deem an organization's priorities to be. Finally, normalizing explores concordance with respect to compatibility and fit with the organization's practices. We suggest that assessing concordance of a strategic taboo with identity elements consists in reinterpreting collective identity beliefs in ways that make them consistent with what organizational actors deem the right course of action. This article discusses the implications for theory and research on strategic agenda setting, strategic change, a practice-based perspective on strategy, and on organizational identity.