The Impact of Gender Identity on Female Offending: A Quantitative Assessment Using the BSRI

Despite considerable research showing the importance of masculinity in male offending, the role of gender identity in female offending remains unclear. The current study explores the impact of gender identity on female offending among a sample of 843 college women using the Bem Sex Role Inventory and Multiple Problem Behavior Index. The impact of gender identity on rates of general deviance, as well as behaviors typically in high male and female participation, aggression and self-harming, respectively, were examined. Results found that women with masculine identity were more likely to engage in aggression as well as general deviance broadly. Gender identity was not found to impact rates of self-harming.     

The effects of populism as a social identity frame on persuasion and mobilisation: Evidence from a 15-country experiment

This article investigates the impact of populist messages on issue agreement and readiness for action in 15 countries (N = 7,286). Specifically, populist communicators rely on persuasive strategies by which social group cues become more salient and affect people's judgment of and political engagement with political issues. This strategy is called ‘populist identity framing’ because the ordinary people as the in-group is portrayed as being threatened by various out-groups. By blaming political elites for societal or economic problems harming ordinary people, populist communicators engage in anti-elitist identity framing. Another strategy is to blame immigrants for social problems – that is, exclusionist identity framing. Finally, right-wing political actors combine both cues and depict an even more threatening situation of the ordinary people as the in-group. Based on social identity theory, an experimental study in 15 European countries shows that most notably the anti-elitist identity frame has the potential to persuade voters. Additionally, relative deprivation makes recipients more susceptible to the mobilising impact of the populist identity frames.     

Deglobalization: Identity Crisis in Western Countries

In recent years, the trend of deglobalization has spread over western developed countries as an irrational response to the fierce challenges from global markets and syndromes of the national identity crisis. In a new world order of post-western era, the trend of deglobalization cannot turn down the dynamic process of economic globalization, but may lead to more setbacks suffered by these countries in their domestic identity split and social conflicts.     

A community under siege: exclusionary education policies and indigenous Santals* in the Bangladeshi context

Abstract

This article presents and analyses the voices and responses of the research participants about the impact of exclusionary formal and informal education policies imposed on the Santal community in Palashpur, Bangladesh (Palashpur is a pseudonym for the site of my research; it is also a metaphor for contested space where the colonial power and politics of the nation state exert domination and subordination). These policies are implemented through a state-led, centralised, monolingual and exclusionary curriculum in local primary and secondary schools, schools run by the churches, and schools supported by nongovernmental organisations. The education policies in Bangladesh bear the legacy of the combined forces of cultural homogenisation and social exclusion rooted in the colonial learning structure and its objectives. Embedded in these policies are elements of the civilising mission, an ultra-religious assimilative but exclusionary nationalistic agenda, and Western values of modernity and development. In this rural context, these alien ideologies and practices in education are actively engaged in eliminating local institutions, the knowledge system of indigenous peoples, the texture of their lives, their joy of living, their spirituality and their sense of being. This article reveals how, imposed from above, education policy and practices have dispersed an indigenous community to negotiate a life that goes against the interests of the community itself and its members.     

Laughing with / at the national self: Greek television satire and the politics of self-disparagement

This study engages with the cultural consequences of the self-disparaging politics of television satire. It focuses on an emblematic program of Greek television fiction, Oi Afthairetoi (MEGA channel, 1989–1991) and the ways it both constructs and ridicules a particular version of the Greek self, the “Neoellinas”. By proposing a wider understanding of the political side-effects of television satire, which have so far been mainly addressed within the study of political satire, it turns the attention toward the role of satirical discourse in a public’s view on its national self in times of change or transition. More specifically, while it recognizes the contradictory impact that satire can have on society, it applies the concept of “satiric misfire” as a means to understand satirical endeavors which reinforce rather than counter the problematics they set out to fight against in the first place.     

Perverse Effects of Unfulfilled Norms: A Look at the Roots of Favoritism

In four experiments, 120 subjects had to judge and reward the performance of players in a game. When no player fulfilled the norm of the game, subjects gave rewards arbitrarily or favored their friends among the players; when some players fulfilled the norm of the game, subjects made fair judgments, rewarding the players who fulfilled the norm, and they did not favor their friends. These findings suggest that research on in-group favoritism should include a serious discussion of the formal norms that regulate people's decisions when they have to allocate rewards.     

Smoke in the Looking Glass: Effects of Discordance Between Self- and Peer Rated Crowd Affiliation on Adolescent Anxiety, Depression and Self-feelings

Peer crowds serve as an identity marker for adolescents, indicating their image and status among peers; but adolescents do not always endorse peer appraisals of crowd affiliation. We report on two studies—one with 924 adolescents in grades 7–12 and a second with a more diverse population of 2,728 students in grades 9–11, followed for 2 years—that examined how congruence between peer and self-appraisals of crowd affiliation relate to self-esteem and internalizing symptoms. Analyses indicate that high-status crowd members may suffer and low-status crowd members benefit by denying their peer crowd affiliation, but effects are modest in size and not entirely consistent across the two studies. Findings underscore the value of symbolic interactionist principles concerning reflected appraisal processes in understanding how peer crowd affiliation affects adolescent self-image.

American Republican Religion? Disentangling the Causal Link Between Religion and Politics in the US

Recent research in American political behavior has examined at length the link between evangelical Protestants and the Republican Party. These works however do not consider the idiosyncratic nature of religiosity in the US, and insist on treating religion as an ‘unmoved mover’ with respect to political contexts. The question posed herein is: during the participation of religious communities in partisan politics, should we expect politics to eventually constrain religious behavior? Motivated by a political social identity approach, I use American National Election Study panel data and structural equation modeling techniques to explore the untested possibility that religious and political factors are linked through reciprocal causation. Conditional upon religious and temporal context, findings highlight the causal impact of ideology and partisanship in shaping religious behavior.     

Trump Gave Them Hope: Studying the Strangers in Their Own Land

This article argues that a set of recent books published in advance of the 2016 U.S. presidential election provides a road map for understanding its outcome and a research agenda for political communication scholars in the years ahead. This article focuses on sociologist Arlie Hochschild’s Strangers in Their Own Land, a field study that documents the roles that identity, narratives, and emotions play in shaping the political beliefs and behavior of White Tea Party supporters. Building on these insights, through an analysis of 123 content analyses published in Political Communication between 2003-2016, we demonstrate gaps in our field and argue that scholarship can grow analytically and empirically by accounting for the findings of these books. We conclude with suggestions for future research into people’s perceptions of identity, group status, deprivation, and political power, as well as the role of media, political actors, and social groups in creating these narratives of American politics.     

“Consuming” national identity in Western Ukraine

This paper represents an attempt to study national identity in the post-Soviet context through the lens of everyday life practices. Building on ideas of banal nationalism and consumer citizenship, and with support of empirical evidence collected in L'viv, Ukraine, this paper demonstrates how national identity becomes materialized in everyday life through consumption practices and objects of consumption. While exploring objects and practices that are not originally national in scope but infused with national meanings by ordinary people, it will be shown how consumption becomes an arena for the expression and renegotiation of national self-portraits. Differences in national meanings among residents of L’viv belonging to two different language groups will highlight the diversity of ways and means by which people express their national sensibilities. By exploring national meanings in everyday consumption practices of Ukrainian citizens, this study aims to provide an alternative perspective on post-Soviet nation-building and contribute to the current debate on the position and identity of the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine.