Browsing by Subject "identity"
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Item A Merger of Two Theories: The Case of Multiracial Asian Identity(2014-08-08) Le, Jennifer LinhThis study takes the case of multiracial Asian Americans, as self-identified "part Asian" as well as another (or multiple) major racial group to determine what influences their racial, ethnic, and overarching group identities as well as how those identities affect other variables. Multiracial Asians were studied for their uniqueness being part of the socially-defined model minority racial group. I used three data sets: the ICPSR National Asian American Survey (NAAS) (Ramakrishnan, Junn, Lee, and Wong 2008), interviews, and HapaVoice.com posts. I conducted 60 in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews, informed by the literature and quantitative data from the NAAS, in order to determine what influences their racial and ethnic identity as well as how their racial and ethnic identity influences other things. This descriptive work provides a backdrop against which I merge two major theoretical traditions of identity, namely social psychological identity?using Tajfel's social identity theory?and race and ethnic identity theories?in particular Rockequemore, Brunsma, and Delgado's work on multiracial identity. Numerous trends were found in the data relating to different ways to identify racially, one?s cultural exposure and competency, one?s perceived discrimination, one?s social networks, one?s religious upbringing and affiliation, as well as one?s sense of belonging and the salience and hierarchy of one?s identities. A sense of belonging is conflated for multiracial Asians as they do not feel as though they have a group to which they belong. This is a very important commonality between the two theoretical traditions as is salience and hierarchy. If one does not feel a sense of belonging, there does not exist a strong in-group/out-group distinction which may leave one without a social identity. This lack of belonging can have significant impact on the group in question, as well as other multiracials, in terms of their ability to feel a part of something and collectively organize for their specific needs.Item Adult Female English Language Learners: Investment, Identity and Benefits(2013-07-31) Wharton, AnnaELLs are a growing community in the United States and their learning needs are significantly different from younger learners, collegiate ELLs or Adult Basic Education students. Additionally, adult female ELLs have their own needs and motives for investing in the English language. This study explores the self-recounted experiences of three adult female English language learners? (ELLs) motivation for investing in English language learning, their identities and the benefits gained in a nonacademic learning setting in Texas. Data for this study was gathered using a background questionnaire, individual interview, group interview and in-class observation using an instrument that looks for visible markers of investment. First, each participant?s investment and identity are analyzed with regard to how the two intersect and influence each other throughout the language learning experience. Second, investment and benefits are examined and presented to demonstrate before and after pictures of the participants? experiences learning English, asking, ?Have the learners gained what they sought to gain?? and ?Is it worth it?? Findings substantiate prior research on the influence that investment and identity have on each other in language learning, while also clearly demonstrating the explicit relationship between investment and benefits. The study concludes with an understanding that adult educators must recognize the individuality of each adult learner and her circumstances.Item Ante rem Structuralism and the Myth of Identity Criteria(2010-01-20) Siu, Ho KinThis thesis examines the connections between the motivations of ante rem structuralism and the problem of automorphism. Ante rem structuralists are led to the problem of automorphism because of their commitment to the thesis of structure-relative identity. Ladyman's and Button's solutions to the problem are both unsatisfactory. The problem can be solved only if ante rem structuralists drop the thesis of structure-relative identity. Besides blocking the problem of automorphism, there are further reasons why the thesis has to be dropped. (i) The purported metaphysical and epistemic purchase of adopting the thesis can be put into doubt. (ii) Primitive identity within a mathematical structure is more in line with ante rem structuralist's commitment to the faithfulness constraint and to the ontological priority of structure over positions. However, the cost of dropping the thesis is that ante rem structuralists cannot provide a satisfactory solution to Benacerraf's problem of multiple reductions of arithmetic.Item "As Un-American as Rabies": Addiction and Identity in American Postwar Junkie Literature(2011-02-22) Bowers, Abigail LeighThe years following World War II symbolized a new beginning for the United States. While at the height of global power, Americans founds that they were able to experience a leisurely existence where items, desired instead of necessary, could be purchased by almost anyone. This increased prosperity, however, also caused a rise in the number of addicts that included not only the hard-core drug users, but "junkies" who were addicted to filling the emptiness within through the use of illegal drugs to television to sex in order to do so. This dissertation examines the phenomenon of the rise of addicts following World War II, using the literature of addiction in order to elucidate the reasoning behind this surge. Contemporary American authors formed a new genre of writing, "junkie literature," which chronicles the rise of addiction and juxtaposes questions of identity and the use of "junk." Burroughs's Junky and Trocchi's Cain's Book are among the first to represent the shift in the postwar years between earlier narratives of addiction and the rise of junkie literature through an erasure of previously held beliefs that addiction was the result of a moral vice rather than a disease. Jim Carroll's The Basketball Diaries, Ann Marlowe's How to Stop Time: Heroin from A to Z, and Linda Yablonsky's The Story of Junk continue this trend of semi-autobiographical writing in an effort to show the junkie's identity in society, as well as the way addiction mirrors capitalism and consumerism as a whole. Finally, Hubert Selby's Requiem for a Dream, Bret Easton Ellis's Less than Zero, and John Updike's Rabbit at Rest explore a different kind of junk addiction, focusing on the use of television, diet pills, sex, cocaine, and food to fill an ineffable void inside that the characters of the novels find themselves unable to articulate. Using Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection, as well as various socio-historical critics, this dissertation investigates the rise of addiction narratives in the postwar years, linking the questions of identity to consumerism in contemporary American culture.Item Brothers of the Trade: Intersections of Racial Framing and Identity Processes upon African-Americans and African Immigrants in America - Ancestral Kinsmen of the American Slave Trade(2012-07-16) Williams, Veeda V.The "implicit rules" of the white racial framing shape meanings, structure interactions, and impose identities upon all who enter American society. The context of this current study conceptualizes how this racialized frame differentially shapes the experiences of native African-Americans and African immigrants in America, disrupting associations between these ancestral kinsmen and subsequently interrupting identity processes. The body of knowledge now available depicts the relationship between native and immigrant blacks as "socially-distanced," "divided," "conflicted" ? as disconnected. However, I argue that such characterizations ? symbolic of the divisive influence of racial structures rooted in America's slave past ? evolve from inappropriate evaluation of black behavior within white racial contexts that do not support or encourage such expression. This current mixed-method study re-examines the relationship between native and immigrant blacks from an africentric perspective ? a view that captures the authenticity of black behavior in the service of its full development and potential. Based on data obtained from 40 respondents (20 African, 20 African-American) at a Historically Black College/University (HBCU), this study informs our understanding of the workings of the white racial frame and its impact upon identity processes, specifically for native and immigrant blacks in America. This research found that absent the influence of the white racial frame upon identity processes, native African-American and African respondents freely interact and fully express identification with a shared ancestry and heritage; that the most significant disconnect in the relationship exists in identification with a common history given the separation experienced as a direct result of the American slave trade. This separation ? still perpetuated today by American racial constructs' divisive characterizations ? accounts for the differential experiences and motivations of native and immigrant blacks within American society. As a result, native and immigrant blacks do not contextualize or interpret racial experiences in the same manner, giving birth to the misconception that their identification with each other does not emanate from a shared heritage and promoting as an obvious rift, obscure tensions bred by the white racial framing of American society.Item Center of the periphery(2009-05) Thrond, Matthew Dale; Levack, Brian P.; Kamil, Neil, 1954-Print culture was a fundamental site in which new ideas about England’s role in world affairs were debated in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Print changed the ways in which new discoveries, proposals, grievances, and questions were assessed, and not always to the desired effect. In the face of the sphinx-like power of the press, a wide array of strategies emerged to control it. But people at many levels of the publishing process could use the rhetoric of the text, and of the printed book, to rearrange the relationships between authors and readers, to upset the thrust of a particular line of argument, to alter the aesthetic, moral, or pragmatic judgment a reader might exercise, or in a more subtle way to change the terms of the issue at hand. In view of the diversity of these possibilities, this report follows figures known to the London print world, some authors, some printers, and examines how they acted, reacted, and worked through, issues that arose from being on the cusp of England’s relationship with a wider world.Item Cowboys, pop stars, pimps and players: themes in music videos(Texas A&M University, 2005-08-29) Wesley, Chelcie MelissaTelevision is something that is a part of the everyday lives of a majority of people in America. The content of what is on television can vary in nature from being positive to being negative. However, what people are exposed to through music videos, in particular, a very popular form of artistic expression, has not been thoroughly investigated. This study uses structural ritualization affect, gender schema theory, media and audience power theories, cultivation theory, agenda setting and framing theories, and (cognitive) social learning theory in order to investigate what people are actually exposed to by watching music videos, in particular, MTV, BET, and GAC.Item Head black woman in charge: An investigation of how black female athletic directors negotiate their race, gender, and class identities(2009-05-15) McDowell, JacquelineFramed as an instrumental case study, the purpose of this investigation was to understand how a select group of women, Black female athletic directors, define and negotiate their race, gender, and class identities. Data was collected via a qualitative indepth semi-structured interview methodology. The women who were chosen for this research are Black female athletic directors of NCAA Division I, II, and III intercollegiate athletic departments. The data analysis consisted of coding the data at two levels: first-level coding and pattern coding, and following the coding process, the emergent findings were compared with the identity negotiation theory (i.e. selfverification and behavioral confirmation processes) in order to understand how the Black female athletic directors negotiated their race, gender, and class identities. This investigation found that Black women athletic directors used two different denotations (i.e. African American and Black) to reference their racial identity, and race was the most salient identity because of their upbringings, childhood experiences, and dealings with racism. All of the women are heterosexual, but insufficient data did not allow a full understanding how they define their gender identity. In describing their class status, the majority of the women came from a traditionally defined lower socioeconomic class background, but as a result of their athletic director appointment they now reside in the middle or upper middle economic class status. In understanding how Black female athletic directors negotiate their identities within and outside the athletic department, and what factors are associated with the negotiation of their identities, this investigation found that the Black women athletic directors had to establish, maintain, and change their race, gender, and class identities with the utilization of various self-verification and behavioral confirmation strategies. These negotiations were conducted in response to the expectations that ensued as a result of their role in a leadership position, lesbian, intra- and inter-racial interactions, and exposure to lesbian, Mammy, and Sapphire stereotypes.Item Hooperchicks: Black Women, College Basketball and Identity Negotiation(2014-08-14) Clay, CharityThis project used in depth interviews with Black women who played Division I college basketball from1997-2007 to elucidate how they developed their racial, gender and athletic identities during adolescence, and how those identities are performed within the role of student athlete. My research shows that there are specific factors attributed the cultural significance basketball has in the black community and the increased visibility of women?s basketball during my participants? adolescence that position basketball as a reference group of Black women?s empowerment. I call my participants ?Black woman hoopers? to represent the conflation of race, gender and athletic identity. The qualities of Black woman hoopers include but are not limited to: strong work ethic, perseverance, value of teamwork/sisterhood, and self-confidence. Investigating my participants? college experiences at predominately white institutions revealed the following themes: the importance of having Black teammates and coaches to provide mentoring; exacerbated racial battle fatigue for participants with primarily white teammates and coaches; the development of a community of support extending beyond their teammates and coaches; and how the larger community of Black woman hoopers transcends individual teams and exists as a space for a wide array of representations of Black womanhood not constrained by Eurocentric standards of beauty and femininity. Framing inquiries into my participants? experiences after their college careers with the 2007 Don Imus incident in which he called women on the predominately Black Rutgers University women?s basketball team, ?Nappy headed hoes? revealed the extent to which my participants understood the negative perceptions of Black woman hoopers. It also allowed them to reflect on ways that their experiences as Black woman hoopers have equipped them to deal with similar stereotypes that exist in their current career fields. This research combats the silence of Black women athletes? voices and presents Basketball as a unique space where Black women, because they comprise a majority at elite levels, can celebrate and build solidarity that include the spectrum of representations of Black womanhood that extend beyond athletics.Item Identity and Social Networks Among First Generation College Students(2012-10-19) Le, Huong ThiThis thesis focuses on first generation college students and their unique social positions in social and institutional networks. First generation students are less likely to attend college than non-first generation students. I examine what factors make a student more likely to self-report student success by considering formation of a new identity, ?college student,? as well as looking at networks and role behaviors consistent with the new identity. It was predicted that those that were consistent with behaviors and identity would self-report academic success at a higher rate. I also predicted that overall, first generation students would be at a disadvantage compared to non-first generation students. Survey data collected from a large university in the southwest was utilized for analysis. First generation students are less likely to report academic success compared to their non-first generation peers. However, when more variables are considered within a binomial regression analysis, first generation status is no longer a significant influence on success. Other factors such as hours per week engaged in homework, involvement in learning communities, and ethnicity had an effect on self-reported success. Those who spent more hours per week doing homework or were involved in learning communities were more likely to self-report academic success. Whites were also more likely to report academic success than non-whites. Several policy implications are discussed.Item Interpersonal process and borderline personality(2009-05-15) Hopwood, Christopher JamesAlthough borderline personality is characterized by a variety of interpersonal antecedents and consequences, interpersonal theory has yet to develop an adequate model of the disorder. It was hypothesized that considerations of non-interpersonal features that influence interpersonal behavior can inform the description of the interpersonal process associated with borderline personality. Specifically, it was proposed that borderline personality is not adequately conceptualized as characterized by rigid and extreme traits. Instead identity diffusion, or under-developed personality organization, characterizes the disorder, as do notable problems with perception and behavioral impulsivity. Three samples of dyads interacting in a collaborative task were compared using structural equation models of their traits and situational behavior from the perspectives of multiple raters. Two samples included dyads without a borderline interactant and one dyad had one person with and another without borderline personality features. It was hypothesized that dyads including borderline participants would manifest behavior that deviates from normative interpersonal processes. Results were consistent with hypotheses in suggesting that dyads without an individual who has borderline characteristics demonstrate very similar interpersonal patterns, whereas dyads with a borderline interactant deviate from normative interpersonal process. Specifically, borderline individuals appear to be hyper-perceptive of others? efforts to control (dominate or submit to) them. With regard to affiliation (warmth vs. coldness), borderline individuals appear to have very different perceptions of their own interpersonal style than do individuals who know them, and unlike nonborderline individuals, these styles exert minimal influence on their behavior in interpersonal situations. These results suggest practical implications that vary across interpersonal dimensions. Data imply that clinicians should take seriously suggestions by borderline patients that they feel controlled. With regard to affiliation, data are consistent with the theory of identity diffusion in suggesting that borderline personality features are associated with a lack of stable interpersonal traits that influence behavior across situations, and the development of such a style is an important therapeutic target.Item Mechanisms of Borderline Personality Disorder: The Role of Identity Diffusion(2013-08-06) Lowmaster, Sara ElizabethBorderline personality disorder (BPD) is a disabling psychiatric condition that causes pervasive and enduring impairments in social and occupational functioning. Previous literature has outlined the core components of the disorder to include disturbances in affect regulation, identity problems, disrupted interpersonal relationships, and impulsive behavior. While several theories have postulated the primacy of one component in driving the remaining components, the etiological and maintaining mechanisms of BPD are poorly understood. Therefore, the present study examined the primacy of one of these components, identity disturbance, in eliciting changes in the affective, interpersonal, and impulsive components of the disorder. The current study employed an experimental manipulation of identity coherence in 388 undergraduates who were screened for high or low levels of borderline personality features. All participants completed measures of affect prior to and immediately following the manipulation and then completed a GoStop task of impulsivity and an interpersonal trust task in a counterbalanced order. The results suggest individuals with high levels of borderline personality features generally report reduced self-concept clarity and are more susceptible to efforts to alter the coherence of their identity than those with lower levels of borderline personality features. Destabilization of identity coherence led to greater difficulties inhibiting behavior in those with high levels of borderline features, whereas it improved behavioral control in those with low levels of borderline features. These results support theoretical articulations of BPD that indicate impulse control problems are a means of regulating one?s internal self-state. Contrary to some characterizations of the disorder, there was no evidence to suggest that alterations of identity coherence led to an exaggerated emotional response or disturbed interpersonal behavior. This finding is consistent with a number of studies examining affective reactivity to emotion induction procedures, interpersonal stimuli, and now alterations in identity coherence indicating that BPD is better characterized by severe, trait negative affect valence compared to healthy controls rather than hyper-reactivity. Moreover, the failure of interpersonal behavior to vary as a function of borderline personality status or experimental task type indicates the importance of dynamic influences during interactions as potential sources for variability in behavior. Although further research is needed to clarify the mechanisms linking identity, affective dysregulation, and interpersonal behavior; psychosocial interventions aimed at maintaining and developing a stable sense of identity may be beneficial for reducing the impulsive behaviors in BPD, which are potentially most critical for establishing the patient?s safety.Item Navigating static: A layered autoethnographic account of family identity and televisionMerritt, Kelsey Lane; Bolen, Derek M; Madero, Flor L; Salisbury, Micheal W; Eoff, Shirley MIn this thesis, I write to explore lived realities of family life, identity development, and the influence of television. I inquire into the constructed television narratives and realities we consume in our daily life. I use reflexive, aesthetic, critical, personal narrative to document personal and political aspects of family and identity development experienced in the shadow of television realities. I offer my stories with hopes to create space for discourse on carefully constructed, easily consumed, television narratives shared and reintegrated into family and personal culture through relational watching. We are consciously and unconsciously embodying and recreating these television narratives in our daily lives. I write resistance and recognition of how doing autoethnography allows for reflexion and critical thought on the impact television narratives have accumulated over a lifetime.Item Patterns of Identification: The Children of Latino/Non-Latino White Families(2012-02-14) Fox, AmberThis thesis examines the various factors that influence how children in Latino/non-Latino white households are racially and ethnically identified. The question of multiracial/ethnic identity has come to prominence following the changes made to the U.S. Census questionnaire beginning with the 2000 survey which allows the option of more than one racial identifier. However, little research has focused a group which must still grapple with the complications of identification, namely Latino/non-Latino families. Latino identity is considered to be an ethnic identification rather than a racial identification, with ethnic identification still allowing only one option on the census survey. Thus, these families still must struggle with the decision as to how to identify their children. In this study, I use the 2005-2007 3-year sample of the American Community Survey to examine how various family dynamics and contextual factors can help to explain what drives the decisions of parents on how to racially and ethnically identify their children. Specifically, I use both multinomial logistic regression and multilevel binomial logistic regression to predict the outcome of the child either being identified as Latino (white or other) or non-Latino (white or other). These models incorporate characteristics of the Latino parent and the non-Latino parent as well as the ethnic composition of the area in which the family lives. The findings of this study indicate that certain characteristics of the Latino parent are most influential in determining how the child is identified. The language that the Latino parent speaks in the home, the nativity status of the Latino parent, and the ethnic origin group of the Latino parent are all important factors which influence the decision behind how to identify the children in the family. If the Latino parent speaks Spanish in the home, is Mexican in comparison to other Latino groups, and is U.S.-born, the child is more likely to be identified as Latino. However, influencing factors behind multiracial/ethnic identity go beyond the household. The percent Latino in the area in which the family lives also leads to a Latino identification for the child.Item Politics of collective belonging: loyalties in the European Union(Texas A&M University, 2007-04-25) McGee, SibelWhy do some citizens of the European Union feel indeed European and others do not? Although the officials of the European Union introduced many symbols and discourses of unity, empirical studies show that the development of a sense of belonging at the popular level is slow. This dissertation, by drawing upon the established social identity theories, takes the investigation back to basics. It develops a model consisting of the basic premises of the identity theories as well as factors deriving from national and individual contexts that condition individual experiences relating to the aforementioned premises. Rather than developing new theories, this work's contribution to the study of European identity is that the study presents as complete a model as possible based on the existing theoretical frameworks as a cross-sectional analysis. Doing so, it unifies the disconnected literature on the issue within a consistent theoretical logic and cross-validates the patterns found in 15 countries through a large N multivariate analysis based on the Eurobarometer 2000. Results yield that social identity theories are confirmed in the case of European identity except for external demarcation principle.Item Postmodernism and the Self: How Social Saturation Influences Who We Think We Are(2014-01-16) Hirsch, Kelly AnneThe current research examined the role that social saturation plays in people?s beliefs about the self. Specifically, the current studies examined whether ?social saturation? predicts the belief that people have multiple selves (as opposed to one single true self). It was hypothesized that greater social saturation would lead to greater belief in multiple selves and that this relationship would be mediated by reduced self-reflection and increased perceived stress. A preliminary survey study (Study 1) using an adult noncollege student sample supported these predictions, showing that individual differences in social saturation positively predicted belief in multiple selves and that this relationship was mediated by self-reflection and perceived stress. However, exploratory analyses revealed that the relationship between social saturation and belief in multiple selves became nonsignificant when controlling for perceived stress, suggesting that perceived stress was driving this relationship. Two experimental studies (Studies 2 and 3) using college students directly manipulated the objective context (high social saturation vs. low social saturation), and revealed that the objective context of saturation did not result in the subjective experience of saturation (i.e., overload). Trends in the data revealed that participants in the high social saturation (vs. low social saturation) condition actually reported less belief in multiple selves (Study 2), less self-alienation and more selfconcept clarity (Study 3). Exploratory analyses revealed that both experimental studies showed a similar pattern to the analyses in Study 1, such that greater perceived stress was related to greater belief in multiple selves. Implications of both social saturation and stress for self-beliefs are discussed.Item Queering young adult literature: examining sexual minorities in contemporary realistic fiction(2009-05-15) Wickens, Corrine MarieFiction that incorporates gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or questioning of heterosexuality itself (GLBTQ) themes and characters has been noted among the most widely censored novels for young adults (ALA, 2007; Finnessy, 2002; Karolides, 2002). Despite many teachers? and librarians? anxiety about even recommending a novel that includes homosexual characters, more novels with GLBTQ characters and themes are receiving significant literary accolades and awards. Furthermore, acclaimed researcher and young adult literary historian, Michael Cart (2004) notes that reading young adult literature, ?the quintessential literature of the outsider,? provides ?the lifesaving necessity of seeing one?s own face reflected in the pages of a good book and the corollary comfort that derives from the knowledge that one is not alone? (p. 46). For GLBTQ youth, this is exceptionally important given the heteronormative structures in place to monitor and control sexual and gender identities and expressions. With this in mind, I utilized a dynamic and multi-faceted analytic approach, including interpretivist, textual discursive, and literary analyses, to examine seventeen GLBTQ themed novels for images, characterizations, and messages depicted about nonconforming sexualities and gender identities. I sought to answer three primary questions: 1) What are the networks or systems of power that are unveiled as inhibiting the identities of the characters? 2) How are the identities of these characters constructed? 3) What messages do the texts convey regarding nonconforming sexual and gender identities? I found that the authors largely created dynamic, three-dimensional characters with complex histories and narratives that affirm and validate GLBTQ identities. Moreover, I observed two overarching set of factors: one that encompasses culturally mediated forces, which include cultural institutions and practices, persecution, and social networks, and a second that emphasizes a critical modernist construction of identity. Additionally, I found a progressive-oriented didacticism pervasive through the texts that positively portrays GLBTQ characters, denounces homophobia, frequently challenges heteronormative assumptions and behaviors, and instructs readers about various issues and conflicts common to GLBTQ youth.Item Racial and Ethnic Identities of Mexican-White Couples in Texas(2010-11-03) Guillen, Jennifer 1983-This thesis is a result of qualitative research conducted with individuals in interracial, Mexican-White couples in Southeast, Texas. This study calls into question the ways in which individuals in these relationships self-identify and how they perceive and are perceived by their partners. There are several conclusions reached during this study. First, the results partially support Omi and Winant?s (1994) argument that racial and ethnic identities are fluid and dynamic among non-White individuals, as is shown by the availability of labels and the variation in selecting those identities. Second, the analysis shows that Whites impose the label ?Hispanic? onto their Mexican partners, regardless of how these self-identify. Finally, the identity of Whites does not support Omi and Winant?s (1994) argument that racial and ethnic identities are fluid and dynamic. On the contrary, behaviors and attitudes among Whites shift, but their identity is static. This reflects the retention of White power and privilege associated with White identity. This analysis utilized forty in-depth interviews of individuals living in a small to medium sized metropolitan area in Texas, and who were asked to discuss ethnic and racial identity as it is self-identified, and perceived and imposed by their partners. Respondents revealed extensive variation in responses as to how individuals in these couples racially and ethnically self-identified, identified their partners, as well as, what factors may or may not affect those identifications. Results indicate a complex relationship between individuals in interracial and interethnic relationships and their constructions of identity that influence racial and ethnic identifications.