‘Every particular Thou is a glimpse through to the eternal Thou; by means of every particular Thou the primary word addresses the eternal Thou … the Thou that by its nature cannot become It.’.

The concept of identity has become widespread within the social and behavioral sciences in recent years, cutting across disciplines from psychiatry and psychology to political science and sociology. All individuals claim particular identities given their roles in society, groups they belong to, and characteristics that describe themselves. Introduced almost 30 years ago, identity theory is a social psychological theory that attempts to understand identities, their sources in interaction and society, their processes of operation, and their consequences for interaction and society (...) from a sociological perspective. This book describes identity theory, its origins, the research that supports it, and its future direction. It covers the relation between identity theory and other related theories, as well as the nature and operation of identities. In addition, the book discusses the multiple identities individuals hold from their multiple positions in society and organizations as well as the multiple identities activated by many people interacting in groups and organizations. And, it covers the manner in which identities offer both stability and change to individuals. Written in an accessible style, Identity Theory makes, step by step, the full range of this powerful new theory understandable to readers at all levels. (shrink)

The idea of Brazil as a ‘racial democracy’ and a mixture of peoples and cultures became a central part of its national identity following the publication of Gilberto Freyre's Casa-grande e senzala in 1933. This chapter argues that the idea of racial democracy cannot be understood without taking into account the dialogue, dating from much earlier than 1933, between Brazilians and North Americans, based on an emphasis on the mixture of black and white, and on the ‘one drop rule’ and (...) the segregation that came with it. (shrink)

In social psychology, we need to establish a general theory of the self, which can attend to both macro and micro processes, and which avoids the redundancies of separate theories on different aspects of the self. For this purpose, we present core components of identity theory and social identity theory and argue that although differences exist between the two theories, they are more differences in emphasis than in kind, and that linking the two theories can establish a more fully integrated (...) view of the self. The core components we examine include the different bases of identity (category/group or role) in each of the theories, identity salience and the activation of identities as discussed in the theories, and the cognitive and motivational processes that emerge from identities based on category/group and on role. By examining the self through the lens of both identity theory and social identity theory, we see how, in combination, they can move us toward a general theory of the self. (shrink)

The last decade has seen a slow but steady increase in the number of postdoctoral scholars employed in faculties of education. In this article, seven postdoctoral scholars who worked in the same Ca...

Este ensayo es una pequeña parte de una historia más amplia, la gran diáspora de intelectuales del Centro y Este de Europa en los años treinta, hacia Gran Bretaña, EEUU, Francia, América latina, etc. El exilio puede ser observado como una escuela, una forma de educación de adultos, no sólo para los propios exiliados sino también para algunos de los nativos que llegaron a conocerlos. De forma más precisa, consideramos las consecuencias intelectuales de la diáspora en una cultura insular, con (...) mención especial a dos disciplinas relativamente nuevas y pequeñas. La sociología y la historia del arte estaban en los años treinta mucho más desarrolladas en Europa central de lo que lo estaban en las islas Británicas, permitiendo a algunos destacados inmigrantes realizar una desproporcionada contribución si tenemos en cuenta su número. ¿Cómo se establece una nueva disciplina? Lo que se ofrece en este ensayo es una suerte de historia social o de sociología histórica tanto de la Historia del Arte como de la misma Sociología, sugiriendo que la contribución de los exiliados puede ser vista no como una simple transferencia de conocimiento, sino más bien como un encuentro cultural que supuso cambios en ambas partes, en una especie de hibridización cultural. (shrink)

El importante papel de Gilberto Freyre en la construcción de la identidad brasileña moderna se presenta en este artículo como un resultado, en gran medida, de experiencias importantes que tuvo en el extranjero al final de la década de los diez y comienzos de la de los veinte del pasado siglo: el racismo norteamericano y su contacto con la cultura victoriana inglesa y sus escritores.

After Rachel E. Burke briefly introduces the essays presented with a focus on our contemporary relationship to modern subjectivity, Mieke Bal will make the case for the sense of presentness on an affective and sensuous level in Munch’s paintings and Flaubert’s writing by selecting a few topics and cases from the book Emma and Edvard Looking Sideways: Loneliness and the Cinematic, published by the Munch Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Emma & Edvard. It is this foregrounded presentness that (...) not only produces the ongoing thematic relevance of these works, but more importantly, the sense-based conceptualism that declares art and life tightly bound together. If neither artist eliminated figuration in favour of abstraction, they had a good reason for that. Art is not a representation of life, but belongs to it, illuminates it and helps us cope with it by sharpening our senses. As an example, a few paintings will clarify what I mean by the noun-qualifier “cinematic” and how that aesthetic explains the production of loneliness. (shrink)

Between ca. 336 and 324 B.C.E., state revenues to Athens approximated 1,200 talents per annum. As regular income, this was a sum unprecedented in Greek history. Such revenues again allowed for state pay of an imperial scale: for political and judicial service, for work on a building program, and for naval service. But for Athens, a precondition to sustained prosperity was acquiescence to the Macedonian peace. The thesis here is that the demos, long habituated to the practice of state pay, (...) but without much subsidy for most of the fourth century, voted acquiescence. Political leaders, including Lycurgus, to preserve status, yielded to the demos, at the same time overseeing a program of civic renewal that may have helped veil the reality behind the prosperity. (shrink)

Aggleton & Brown have built a convincing case that hippocampus-related circuits may be involved in thalamic amnesia. It remains to be established, however, that their model represents a distinct neurological system, that the distinction between recall and familiarity captures the roles of these pathways in episodic memory, or that there are no other systems that contribute to the signs of amnesia associated with thalamic disease.

Mobile phones are reportedly the most rapidly expanding e-reading device worldwide. However, the embodied, cognitive and affective implications of smartphone-supported fiction reading for leisure (m-reading) have yet to be investigated empirically. Revisiting the theoretical work of digitization scholar Anne Mangen, we argue that the digital reading experience is not only contingent on patterns of embodied reader–device interaction (Mangen, 2008 and later) but also embedded in the immediate environment and broader situational context. We call this the situation constraint. Its application to (...) Mangen’s general framework enables us to identify four novel research areas, wherein m-reading should be investigated with regard to its unique affordances. The areas are reader–device affectivity, situated embodiment, attention training and long-term immersion. (shrink)

In contemporary discussion of the philosophy of religion, or for that matter of any branch of philosophy, the names of Whitehead and Wittgenstein are not often linked. Whitehead's later work is, for the most part, treated as a rather specialized interest, an attractively under-cultivated field for the enterprising thesis-writer perhaps, but well away from the main centres of current philosophical activity. And what he has to say about specifically religious or theological issues 1 becomes simply one ramification of an ingenious (...) but somewhat eccentric system. Nonetheless, there is at least this much justification for considering it in relation to the much more influential and widely discussed views of Wittgenstein. Whitehead has some original things to say about God, Wittgenstein some original reasons for thinking that Whitehead's brand of originality is here radically misplaced. And the possibility or otherwise of such theological originality is an issue of very considerable importance for the philosophy of religion. (shrink)

To what extent does the fact that a philosopher, in order to communicate, is constrained to use the same language and the same concepts as other members of his society, inhibit him from developing genuinely original modes of thought? Section I of this paper outlines arguments for the view that any attempt at radical originality, of the kinds traditionally expected of philosophy, must involve misuse of these shared concepts. Section II, however, on the basis of an examination of what it (...) is for different members of a society to use the same concepts, argues that so doing does not rule out important differences over instantiations and logical interrelations. It then attempts to show that this latitude for difference is adequate to allow for certain kinds of philosophical originality, for example, that shown in the Whiteheadian philosophy of organism. (shrink)