Sex differences in the resolution of the identity crisis

Based on Erikson's view of the importance of inner space in feminine identity, researchers have added an interview on premarital sex to the standard ego identity interview on occupation, religion, and politics used for males. This study was designed to investigate the relative importance of premarital sexual ideology for males and females, as well as sex differences in identity status on occupation, religion, and politics. Marcia's semi-structured ego identity status interview was given to 70 male and 70 female college students, with premarital sex questions included for both sexes. Consistent with Erikson's theory, females were more likely than males to have experienced a sexual identity crisis, whereas males were very likely to be foreclosed in this area. Males as well as females were more likely to be committed about sex than about any other area. In all areas except sex, female identity followed basically the same pattern as male identity.Received her Ph.D. from State University of New York at Buffalo. Current research interests are ego identity and human sexuality.Received his Ph. D. from State University of New York at Albany. Current research interests are mental health evaluation and behavior therapy.     

Student teachers' perceptions of the identity formation process

Student teachers were asked to respond to profiles of various styles of dealing with adolescent identity issues. Student teachers responded most favorably to the profile indicating adolescent exploration of occupational and ideological alternatives (Moratorium) and least favorably to an apparent nonconcern with adolescent issues (Diffuse). Commitment to plans and beliefs with closedness to alternatives (Foreclosure) received intermediate evaluations. Consistent with Eriksonian notions, but at variance with empirical findings, the Moratorium style was rated highest in psychological health. Student teachers preferred the Moratorium-style individual as prospective students; the Diffuse-style one the least. Implications for teacher training and educational practice were examined, and areas of further research were outlined.Funding for this project was received from a grant by the Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.He received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Research interests include adolescent personality development and teacher training.His Ph.D. was received from the University of Oklahoma in Experimental Social Psychology. Current research interests include varied aspects of consumer behavior with focus upon the effects of credit card stimuli upon consumer behavior.He received his Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. Research interests focus upon special education and learning disabilities.     

The construction of a slave identity: an examination of the dual identity of indentured labourers across the Western Pacific

ABSTRACT

The examination of indentured labour in the Western Pacific has been reported as pure historiography, without the guidance of an explicit theoretical framework. It has concluded that indenture in this case does not meet its own definition of slavery. However, this analysis is highly dated in as much as it is narrowly institutionalist in perspective, relying on legalistic points of distinction, such as the existence of a labour contract. To challenge this established wisdom a new-institutionalist history is conjured from existing social an economic theory. This enables the topic to be brought into the business and organisation disciplines. The examination demonstrates the promotion of a dual identity, which cast native labourers as free labourers, while instantiating norms readily identifiable with slavery. These norms served to encourage low-status natives into acceptance of the disciplines of the plantation and other businesses as part of the natural order, but proved unsustainable over the longer term as a broader range of life choices emerged.     

Drag queens and gender identity

Heteronormativity within our society has a significant impact on how we come to view and understand gender identity. Drag queens allow a break in the heteronormative gender guideline while also reinforcing the social image of what it means to look like a woman. Although drag queens merely reflect the preexisting image of a woman, they still present an image of both gender bending and the ways that gender is socially taught. This ethnographic research explores how gender and sex identity is socially taught in the public and private space. Ultimately, gender identity is socially influenced when determining our social identities based on social influence. My personal experience in deconstructing my own gender identity has allowed me to explore my social self-identity and how powerful our social heteronromative gender guidelines are. By dressing in male clothing for the first time in a public space, I challenged the daily heteronormative idea of gender while shattering my own self-identity. The gender constructions and guidelines that were socially taught to me throughout my life were broken when I put on a fake beard.     

The evolutive style of identity formation

In the study of differentiation of Styles of Identity formation with a sample of high school age adolescents, a group of the participants were found (by discriminant analysis) to have common features and to be a distinct group that displays an Evolutive Style of Identity Formation. The characteristics of this style are examined in this article, which focuses on the conceptual discussion of the significance of the Evolutive Style for the model of Styles of Identity Formation.Received Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Manchester, England. Research interests include psychosocial development in adolescence and young adulthood.     

Ego identity status and decision styles

It was hypothesized that the decision processes used in coping with the identity crisis would be related to more general decision styles in that identity achievers and moratoriums would tend to be reflective in their conceptual tempo while foreclosures would typically be impulsive. No prediction was made about identity diffusions. Ninety-two male college students were given an identity status interview and the Matching Familiar Figures Test. The results were consistent with the hypotheses, and in addition it was found that identity diffusions were generally impulsive. Since conceptual tempo has been found to be well established in childhood, the results of this study have implications for the early prediction of adult identity status.Received Ph.D. from SUNY/Buffalo. Recent research has been mainly concerned with the development of ego identity and correlates of the different identity statuses.Received Ph.D. from SUNY/Buffalo. Recent research has been mainly concerned with the development of ego identity and correlates of the different identity statuses.     

Ego identity formation in middle adolescence

Assumed determinants of ego identity were investigated in this study using sophomore, junior, and senior high school males and females. Subjects were administered the Marcia Ego Identity Status Scale and measures of sex-role identification, personality development, psychological functioning, self-concept, and parental socialization practices. Data analyses, using a median split on identity score, showed that high-identity adolescents obtained more positive scores on sex-role identification, personality development, psychological adjustment, and self-concept than low-identity adolescents. Socialization practices also differed for the two groups. The sex differences which emerged were congruent with the identity literature. Overall, the data supported Erikson's theory of ego identity development.This study was funded by Grant No. 791-01-010-502 from the Senate Research Committee, University of Nebraska at Omaha.Received his Ph.D. in developmental psychology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Major interests are in the area of social and personality development in children and adolescents.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Chicago, September 1975.     

Parental influences on the development of adolescent autonomy and identity

Two studies were undertaken to examine parental influences on autonomy and identity development. In Study 1, 262 adolescents in seventh and eleventh grades were given Kurtines's autonomy measure, Simmons's identity measure, and Elder's questions regarding the adolescents' perceptions of their parents' autocratic, democratic, or permissive parenting styles. Study 2 was a replication with 168 subjects. Across both studies it was found that sex-role socialization is more influential for automony development than is either level of parental power or age. Both age and father's use of democracy were the most influential variables on identity development.Received Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Major interests are adolescent social cognition and social development.Received Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati. Major interests are cognitive development and theories of personality.     

Exploring three approaches to identity development

Identifications from the past, current feedback from social relations, and one's own priorities combine to make up one's identity. These insights were incorporated into three separate identity development programs and administered to 57 high school seniors. Pretests and posttests included the Rasmussen Scale of Ego-Identity and a Self-Identity Social-Similarity Grid. Significant differences in change were demonstrated on the grid between the experimental groups and the control. That there were no significant changes in the Rasmussen scores highlights the diverse attempts to operationalize the many aspects of Erikson's theory. Suggestions for administering and evaluating future identity development programs are made.Received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Major interests are identity and moral development.Received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. Major interests are adolescent social and moral development.     

Desire recast: the production of gay identity in Iran

This paper traces the transformation of sexual space in Iran during the past 200 years; a process which culminated in the emergence of Iranian gays at the beginning of this century. We reconcile the work of Najmabadi [2005. Women with mustaches and men without beards: gender and sexual anxieties of Iranian modernity, Berkley: University of California Press], Foucault [1990. The history of sexuality, Vol. 1: an introduction, New York: Vintage Books], and Massad [2002. Re-orienting desire: the gay international and the arab world. Public Culture 14(2), 361–385; 2007. Desiring arabs, Chicago: University of Chicago Press] and describe distinct moments of modern subject construction. We claim that gays are constituted in Iran through a process of heteronormalization of social space, followed by the ‘fixing’ of deviant types in law and medicine and then the availability of a positive frame of reference which makes its appearance in the mid-1990s when the discourse of identity and human rights enters Iran. We conclude by signalling a new chapter in the constitution of sexual space in Iran in which gay activists experiment with Persian culture to create gay-friendly speech.     

fractured identity and agency and the plays of Adrienne Kennedy

This paper examines the plays of African-American playwright Adrienne Kennedy, Funnyhouse of a Negro (1962) and The Owl Answers (1963), which remain important for their engagement with notions of African-American identity, resistance and agency through their attention to mixed race female characters or mulattas who experience bodily and psychological traumas that demonstrate the abuse of the colonized on a deeply visceral level. Kennedy's plays have remained controversial because of their failure to comply with the nationalistic orientation of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) of 1960s America. I aim to examine these plays through a framework of postcolonial-feminist performance analysis that finds its way back to histories of colonization and slavery, enabling through such returns, a compelling critique of the manoeuvrings of racial hierarchies and power imbalances. As well, I argue that Kennedy's protagonists are de-essentialized fractured beings who fail to embody either White superiority or Black nationalist pride, as they oscillate between two polarities. Such failure (on the part of Kennedy's mulattas) allows for a strategic de-essentialization of identity that interrogates fixed categorization. As well, through a form that is fluid, fragmented and blurs the distinctions among history, memory, space and time, her works impart political agency to the characters and enable an empowered sense of the ‘self-in-process.’     

Dancing across difference: Experience and identity in the classroom

This article uses Liquid Sky to consider the possibilities of feminist reorientations outside of formal and political orthodoxies and suggests that such disengagements from the dominant are alienated from the utopian rather than re-imagined as transgressive modes of utopian resistance. These disengagements are theorized as a postpunk feminist dystopia: that is, a de-emancipatory system of gendered and aesthetic practices that spatio-sonically shapes queer female sexuality as extrinsic to social and sexual ideals. This dystopia specifically frames the lesbian subject as a bodily terrain of self-estrangement, and names the film's network of alienated corporeal, subcultural, and sonic space. Feminist dystopia ultimately describes female empowerment's precarious position in a sexual and sonic landscape of non-normativity and offers a way to visualize oppositional practices that do not readily correspond to liberation.     

Acting out of character: Window on the identity crisis

An autobiographical account of acting out of character at a life turning point is presented as a window on a young person's identity crisis. Analysis of that account reveals (1) that the play of the tentative identities reflects the concurrent crisis in the character of that person's society, (2) that the story the person now has to tell sets forth the range of the psychosocial issues active in his life, (3) that the mysteries generated identify for the person the specific issues at crisis, (4) that the novelty of the event itself catalyzes called for changes, and (5) that the metaphor of the out of character actions serves to preview the ultimate resolution.Received M.D. from Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, New York, in 1964, and psychiatry training at Yale. Interests lie in the area of psychotherapy with disturbed youth, careers of young people who become psychiatric aides in mental hospitals, and group homes for adolescents.     

Out of the mainstream: water rights,politics and identity

ABSTRACT

Indigenous maize from Mexico has become crucial for a wave of contemporary agricultural development initiatives seeking to cultivate a ‘Green Revolution for Africa’. Plant breeders developing disease-resistant hybrid maize for Africa use cutting edge technologies like CRISPR-Cas9 to mine the genomes of maize collected in Mexico 75 years ago, during the Green Revolution’s earliest incarnation. Historicizing this transnational linkage, this paper argues that Green Revolution science appropriates indigenous maize through racial logics rooted in whiteness. In the 1940s, American scientists sent by the Rockefeller Foundation to improve Mexico’s agriculture negotiated their own racial subjectivity through their encounters with Mexico’s indigenous people. In the process, they constructed a racial hierarchy that equated whiteness with scientific superiority and indigeneity with underdevelopment. This racialization undergirded a maize program led by E.J. Wellhausen that collected and catalogued hundreds of varieties of Mexico’s maize – and then distributed them to American seed companies. Wellhausen’s seeds formed the genetic backbone for subsequent Green Revolution projects. The ‘white science’ he embodied expanded as the Revolution sought out nonwhite agriculture across the global South. Today, the Green Revolution’s racial logics are re-articulated along its geographical and technological frontier, as indigenous maize provides the seeds for the African Green Revolution.