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In 2001, Neil Gaiman published American Gods, a novel of American life and mythology. As a British author living in the United States, Gaiman has a powerful vantage point from which to critique American culture, landscape, and ideology. Rich with re-invented deities, legends, mythic creatures, and folk heroes cast in a decidedly American mold, American Gods examines the American character, evaluating the myths and beliefs of the culture from the vantage point of an outsider. By examining the character's allegiance to particular cultural legacies (Wednesday as the American con artist, Shadow as the cowboy), I intend to assess this outsider's understanding of what it means to be an American.

[pt] A presente dissertação é uma análise da construção da identidade do oficial do Exército Brasileiro. Ampla e inédita pesquisa de opinião realizada com mais de seiscentos oficiais de carreira formados na Academia Militar das Agulhas Negras (AMAN) clarifica o perfil atual da identidade dos oficiais do Exército destacando as variações impulsionadas pela pós-modernidade. A pergunta que norteia todo o trabalho é: com a chegada dessas transformações sociais a partir da década de 1970, a identidade dos oficiais do Exército Brasileiro sofreu alterações? Inicialmente é realizada uma exposição teórica acerca do conceito de identidade com abordagens da sociologia e textos da psicologia e filosofia, em que são traçados paralelos entre identidade e caráter, identidade e reconhecimento, diferença e identidade, além das abordagens da identidade profissional, institucionalização e valores do trabalho e das organizações. As identidades na modernidade e pós-modernidade são descritas sob uma visão sociológica abordando-se as diferenças impostas aos indivíduos e instituições nas relações pessoais e profissionais, caracterizando a necessária flexibilização das identidades, inclusive no meio militar. Também são utilizadas visões de autores consagrados acerca da identidade do homem brasileiro e dos militares, destacando os valores que cultuam, tendo por base biografias dos patronos do exército. Finalizando a análise, mediante tratamento estatístico quantitativo e qualitativo, toda a teorização é confrontada com os dados obtidos na pesquisa de opinião realizada com os oficiais de carreira para a obtenção do perfil da identidade dos oficiais do Exército destacando as variações impulsionadas pela pós-modernidade. / [en] This thesis is an analysis of the construction of the the official Brazilian Army identity. Extensive and unprecedented survey conducted with over six hundred trained career officers at the Military Academy of Agulhas Negras (AMAN) clarifies the current profile of the identity of army officers focusing on variations driven by postmodernity. The question that guides all the work is: with the arrival of these social transformations from the 1970s, has the identity of the Brazilian Army changed? First there is an exhibition about the theoretical concept of identity with approaches from sociology and psychology, and philosophy texts, in which parallels are drawn between identity and character, identity and recognition, identity and difference, besides the approaches of professional identity, values and institutionalization and labor organizations. The identities in modernity and post-modernity are described from a sociological view addressing the differences imposed on individuals and institutions in personal and professional relationships, characterizing the necessary flexibility of identities, including the military life. Beyond that, visions of acclaimed authors about the identity of the man and the Brazilian military, highlighting the values worshiped based on biographies of patrons Army. Concluding the analysis by statistical quantitative and qualitative, all the theorizing is confronted with the data obtained in the survey conducted with career officers for obtaining the profile of the identity of army officers focusing on variations driven by postmodernity.

Faculty of Humanities School of Education 0516698x georgemakubalo@yahoo.com / This research report explores the English language practices of six Grade 10 learners in a desegregated Johannesburg school as well as the ways in which the learners position themselves and others as users of English and other languages. The context of the study is desegregated schooling that is a consequence of the demise of apartheid with its policies of separation of people on racial and ethnic grounds. I draw on post-structuralist theorizing of language and identity in thinking about the relationship between language and identity (Hall, 1992a; Weedon, 1997; Zegeye, 2001) with an emphasis on the productive force of language in constituting identity (Pennycook, 2004). Also significant in this research report are the hybridity theories of Bhabha (1994) and Hall (1992b) and their critiques as well as the post-structuralist concepts of ‘positioning’ (Davis and Harrè, 1990) and ‘investment’ (Norton (Pierce), 1995; 1997). A further important strand in this study are the politics of English as a global language and language of power. The overall design of the project is qualitative, using ethnographic methods and drawing on the traditions of school ethnography. In analyzing the data, I argued that English constitutes and is experienced as a major part of the participants’ identities. I also state that through learners’ language practices and positioning of themselves and others as speakers of language, multiple and at times contradictory identities are continually being constructed and reconstructed. I also argue that the learners’ desire to be proficient in English and use of prestigious accents and varieties of English is not about a simple process of assimilation into dominant discourses. Assimilation as I contend, takes place under complex processes of contestation and appropriation that involves constant crossing of borders and authorization of hybridities. I have also argued that the post-apartheid youth find themselves in a situation where internalised racialised categories of apartheid ideology continue to be relevant in their understanding of issues but that they are not constrained by them in their lived experience of boundary crossing and fashioning of hybrid identities.

This study was directed at exploring the personal constructions of young males who had self selected as peer counselors, of what it means to be a man in South Africa at this time in history. One of the goals identified was to highlight and examine both hegemonic and alternative versions of masculinity and, in particular, to examine how young men position themselves in relation to these constructions. In order to investigate the research question, ten adolescents/young men participated in focus group discussions on the topic of masculinity. The participants included 8 school boys, 5 white and 3 black, attending a private, all boys school, as well as 2 black university students. All participants had self selected as peer counselors. The study is located in the qualitative research tradition which allows for depth of description and interpretation. The three focus group discussions held (two at the boys school with 4 participants in each, and one at the university) were recorded and transcribed verbatim. These transcripts were then subject to a critical thematic content analysis. The main themes were identified and the four themes which emerged as dominant in the conversation and occurred most regularly across all three groups are analyzed and discussed. These themes are emotional stoicism, normative heterosexuality, gendered division of labour and displayed toughness. Under each theme material supporting hegemonic constructions of masculinity and material supporting alternative constructions of masculinity is discussed as a separate sub-theme. The impact of the role as peer counselor on participants’ constructions of masculinity is also discussed. A brief meta-theoretical discourse analytic commentary is also provided, addressing for example, strategies employed by participants to maintain their sense of masculinity in the discussions. This study highlights the fluidity and plurality of masculinity as well as the struggle of adolescent boys and young men as they engage with where and how to position themselves as masculine. A main finding or observation is that some degree of alternative masculinity will be countenanced provided there is evidence of an acceptable baseline of hegemonic or traditional masculinity in a boy or man.

This manuscript addresses an important empirical regularity: Why are revolutionary leaders more likely to initiate conflict? With the goal of explaining this regularity, I offer an identity-driven model of decision making that can explain why certain leaders are more likely to take risky gambles. Broadly, this manuscript provides a different model of decision making that emphasizes emotion and identity as key to explain decision making. I offer a plausibility probe of the identity-driven model with four in-depth case studies: The initiation of the Iran-Iraq War, the initiation of the Gulf War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the start of the Korean War. I use the congruence method and process tracing to test the plausibility probe. I find strong support in two cases—the initiation of the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War—and mixed support for the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Korean War.

Thesis advisor: Paul G. Schervish / Men's experiences at home and at work are changing, bringing to light new ways in which fathers identify with these two realms. This research expands upon current understandings of paternal identity by analyzing the potential for overlap and reinforcement between men's attachments to work and parenting. In this analysis, non-hierarchical, independent measures of work and parenting identities are constructed from a recently surveyed sample of 726 "New fathers"--professional, high-earning white men with children under 18, a group arguably marked by the desire to be more involved in home life, yet also faced with high work demands. In order to determine the differences between men that report identifying strongly with both work and parenting from those that do not, I use multinomial logistic regression to capture the association between demographic traits, time spent in both roles, support from others, perceptions of enrichment and the odds of identifying strongly with either work and family, neither, or both. The results demonstrate that time spent in a role, support from coworkers and managers, and higher reports of enrichment between the spheres are all associated with a respondent's odds of reporting dually strong attachments to work and parenting. The findings yield both theoretical contributions and practical implications, providing 1) new understandings of how some fathers experience synergistic parenting and work identifications, 2) evidence that fathers' perceptions of workplace support and positive overlap between their roles are associated with reports of higher identification with both, and 3) directions for future research that address how institutional practices in the workplace relate to fathers' reports of dually strong role identifications. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Sociology.

This dissertation deals with current political immigration debates, the conversations about the philosophical concept of recognition, and intercultural encounters in contemporary German literature. By reading contemporary literature in connection with philosophical, psychological, and theoretical works, new problem areas of the liberal promise of recognition become visible. Tied to assumptions of cultural essentialism, language use, and prejudice, one of the main findings of this work is how the recognition process is closely tied to narrative. Particularly within developmental psychology it is often argued that we learn and come to terms with ourselves through narrative. The chosen literary encounters written by Alev Tekinay, Emine Sevgi Özdamar, Maxim Biller, Rafael Seligmann, and Finn-Ole Heinrich magnify this particular human experience on an aesthetic level and dismantle “mechanisms of recognition,” particularly three aspects illustrating the recognition process: the role of the narrator and his or her description of the characters, the construction of family bonds within the texts, and the linguistic and cultural practice of naming with all of its connotations. Within the chosen texts there is no unified depiction of the recognition process, but rather the texts elucidate a multidimensionality of this concept, tying it closely to the political, social, and aesthetic sphere. In this context the analysis brings to light that the notion of “authenticity” crucially informs recognition as well as the circumstances of a power imbalance that dominates the process. My analysis shows that contrary to popular assumptions in philosophical and political debates, the concept of recognition turns out to be rather limiting instead of liberating.

The Films of Scotland Committee (1938 and 1954-82) produced one hundred and sixty eight documentaries on Scotland and Scottish life; the thesis is an archaeology of those documentaries. The thesis breaks from a film theory discourse that has marginalised documentary to argue that the genre should be understood as a cultural technology, an exhibitionary apparatus that draws on a variety of discursive formations in its production of knowledge. Similarly, the thesis argues that the representation of Scotland should not be understood as an aesthetic failure to represent the reality of life in Scotland, but as a distinct discursive practice that emerged at a specific historical period, a practice regulated by the rules of formation of the discourses within which it operates. The thesis outlines the history of Scottish film culture before 1938, and examines the formation of the Committee by the Scottish Office, arguing that this needs to be understood in relation to the history of public cultural policy in Britain since the mid nineteenth century. It examines the Committee's commitment to 'the national interest, and its relation to the mechanics and legitimation of state authority. A discursive analysis of The Face of Scotland (193 8) begins to identify the discursive regimes on which Films of Scotland documentaries draw in their production of knowledge. The thesis argues that this film occupies a space of representation opened up by the discursive formations of ethnography and history, and a discourse of nationhood, and traces the formation of this space by looking at the earlier surfaces of emergence of these discourses. It also begins to suggest the ways in which these discourses engage with the construction of cultural and national identities. Arguing that the figure of the tour is central to the Films of Scotland documentaries, th e thesis traces the emergence of the tour as a cultural technology in Scotland from the eighteenth century travel writing of Martin Martin and Boswell and Johnson, to the apparatuses of tourism established by Thomas Cook. The last part of the thesis focuses on the travelogue as a sub-genre of documentary, mapping out both the technologies of vision on which it draws, and its generic 'regime of verisimilitude', structured, it is argued, by an oscillation between the discourses of history and ethnography. Finally the thesis argues that what remains hegemonic in Scottish culture are not particular images and narratives, but the very concept of national culture itself, and the nature, rather than the content, of national identity.