The aim of this essay is to study how the Sami are presented in four textbooks about religion and history that are used in the schools of the majority culture of Sweden today and one book of ideas asto how a textbook could look like from a Sami's perspective. Its aim is not only to study how the Sami are presented but also to discuss how students who read these books could interpret what it means to be a Sami and what their culture is about. It is also meant to discuss how the Sami identitycould be formed. In order to be able to discuss this the essay uses three different kinds of theories about identity and culture. The analysis showed that there is little information about Sami culture, identity, religion and historypresented in the four textbooks used in schools of the majority culture and that these books seem to want students to think that the Sami are troublemakers but are and should be assimilated into the majority culture.

This thesis explores both modernist and poststructuralist theories of the identification process as a vehicle for understanding the makeup of individuals and their relationship with social movements. It is asserted that individuals are made up of multiple lines of identity, such as sexuality and gender, which interact with societal normative discourse. This essay develops the theory of the fractured being to account for these arrangements and asserts that individuals continually rearrange their identity in order to negotiate axiomatic activities. By demonstrating that it is possible to affect change at micro and macro levels, the fractured being retains agonistic power relations. Theories that demonstrate how individuals resist norms on a daily basis are explored through an examination of daily events, popular culture, and a qualitative interview. This thesis concludes that benefits are derived within social movements when members organise around more complex relationships rather than singular issues.

Complementing field research among severely disadvantaged minority groups, the present laboratory analogue investigates how the clarity of a group member's cultural (collective) identity is related to positive feelings about oneself and one's performance. Participants were assigned to a clear, conflicted, or unclear collective identity condition, and were then faced with challenging tasks (study 1) or a challenging social interaction (study 2). In study 1, the hypotheses were not confirmed because participants overcame a lack of collective identity clarity by simply applying their own familiar collective identity to the tasks. This default alternative was removed in study 2, which resulted in a confirmation of the hypotheses. Participants in the clear condition felt more positive and successful than participants in the conflict and unclear conditions. Compared to participants in the clear and unclear conditions, participants in the conflict condition found the interaction to be the most difficult presumably because they were challenged to resolve competing identities. Clarity of collective identity was related to feelings of positivity, success, task difficulty, and to the expression of positive emotions, certainty, and achievement, thereby emphasizing the importance of collective identity clarity for the self.

The purpose of this study was to explore the identity development of mixed race individuals in a Western Canadian context. The case study methodology was used to guide the overall procedure and participant selection. A thematic analysis was used to analyze patterns in the data. Four individuals of mixed race parentage were interviewed and five themes emerged: (a) the influence of family, (b) the influence of childhood experiences, (c) the influence of physical appearance, (d) the influence of racism, and (e) the influence of adult experiences. The detailed explorations of the participants experiences add to the Canadian literature on mixed race identity development, which provides several counselling implications and directions for future research. / Psychological Studies in Education

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 154-159). / v, 159 leaves, bound 29 cm

ABSTRACT The relationship between subjective age identity and ideal age, as measured by the Subjective Age Identity Scale (Hubley, 2004), and personality domains and facets, as measured by the NEO-PI-R (Costa & McCrae, 1992), was investigated in a sample of 210 adults ages 19 to 78. Subjective age and ideal age scores were regressed, using multiple standard regressions, on the NEO-PI-R domains and facets, respectively. Results indicated that 22% of the variance in subjective age identity scores was explained by personality domains whereas 27% was explained by personality facets. Specifically, two personality domains (Openness to Experience and Neuroticism) and one personality facet (Aesthetics) made significant unique contributions to the explained variance in subjective age scores. Very little variance in ideal age scores was explained by personality domains and facets (less than 10%). One domain (Openness to Experience) and two facets (Vulnerability to Stress and Values) made significant unique contributions to the explained variance in the ideal age scores. These findings are examined in the context of the previous research on the relationship between personality and subjective age and the importance of conducting both domain and facet level analyses when using the NEO-PI-R is discussed. Implications of the present findings for counselling and clinical work with persons facing age role transitions or other age related concerns (e.g., negative attitudes towards aging) are highlighted.

Thesis (MVisualArts)--University of South Australia, 2003.

In this thesis I investigate the influence of mentoring on the formation of the identities of women academics in Australian universities. Many Australian and New Zealand universities have introduced some form of mentoring initiative for women academics over the last decade. The aim of these initiatives is usually expressed in terms of supporting women's career development in order to increase the representation of women in senior positions in universities. I take up Foucault's theory of governmentality together with feminist theories of subjectivity, to examine the ways in which mentoring contributes to 'producing' the women as academic subjects of the times. My analysis of the formation of the subjectivities of the women concerned is set in the context of a political economy of contemporary higher education accompanied by the changing nature of academic work. I argue that mentoring has found support in recent years because it responds to the concerns of 'the enterprise university' with improving performance while also being seen to respond to the problem of gender inequality. The thesis is based on interviews conducted with 17 women academics who have participated in a formal mentoring program or who have been mentored informally by a colleague in their universities, six of which are discussed in detail. I use a feminist interpretive framework to analyse the discourses through which the women and I construct their accounts at interview. I also highlight the parallels between the confessional aspects of feminist research interviewing and the confessional space of the mentoring relationship itself, particularly mentoring of women by women. On the basis of this analysis, I argue that mentoring has a number of productive effects, producing particular sorts of self-regulating subjects, together with new knowledges and discourses of work and of the self. In their engagement in mentoring, the women take up a project of self-review and self-regulation. This can be understood as a biographical project of the self. It is a project that is iterative and ongoing, as the women navigate the discourses of academic work, career, gender, mothering, sexuality, social class and ethnicity, amongst others. This process is frequently fragmented and contested as the women confront the contradictions within the combined positioning of themselves and their positioning by others. Rather than try to resolve the tensions and contradictions that characterise this process, these tensions might be better explored in terms of their productive potential for disrupting the gendered work order of universities.

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