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"Power and Identity at the Margins of the Ancient Near East rethinks the dichotomy between antiquated terms such as "core" and "periphery," explores lived realities in the margins of central authority and centers those margins as places of resistance and power in their own right"--

"This book reimagines dialogue as a tool to drive inquiries, encourage reflection and develop meaningful collaborations. It aims to foster public conversations surrounding identity, language and power that inspire criticality, innovation and multimodal engagement"--

There has been an increasing motivation for foster care and adoption within the last years; foster parents are seen as a positive alternative to home care; furthermore there seems to be a differentiated understanding for "factual parenthood" in public opinion. Nevertheless the social status of a foster child is a problematic one; in addition there is no relevant role script for foster parents at all. These deficits lead to identity problems: the research design, interpretated in this article, is asking for self-concepts to foster parenting. By interrogation of a sample of foster parents, belonging to the "Bundesverband der Pflege—und Adoptiveltern e.V." in Western Germany, the basis of motivation and selfconcepts can be seen more distinctively. In spite of declining numbers of children in home care and increasing places in foster care the chance of identificational continuity will be a great task in future for foster children and parents as well. In general, there is too much administration involved in the matching of foster children and foster parents and too little psychological support concerning identity problems.

The research article aims to reflect the language and the cultural identity of the Hindu Diaspora. Language forms a significant part of the cultural identity. The word "diaspora" is generally not used for religions but the case of Hinduism is unique. The population of Hindus living outside the Indian subcontinent has never formed a large fraction of the total Hindu population. Even today more than 95% of Hindus live in the Indian subcontinent. The percentage of converted Hindus is much smaller as compared to the other major religions of the world. Hindus are a heterogeneous community which has expanded all over the world and speaks several languages. The Hindu Diaspora is a kind of an ecotone, which is between the traditional Hindu culture and the culture of its resident country. It consists of people of Indian origin and non resident Indians. The research paper classifies the Hindu diaspora into various spoken languages and culture further it also tries to present its spatial dimension. There have been various stages of emigration of the Hindus from the subcontinent. The research article presents the migration of Hindu Diaspora in terms of its spatial and temporal dimension. The research article also demonstrates two small case studies regarding the Hindu Diaspora in Reunion Island and the Hindu Diaspora of South American countries of Guyana and Suriname. The research article also presents the impact of Indian languages and culture in the various pockets of the world. The author has compared the dominance of Indian languages vis-a-vis each other over the Hindu Diaspora. In the light of the massive data required, the author uses secondary data. The reports of various International institutions, governments, newspaper articles and journals have been used as a source of the data. The various Hindu customs, foods and festivals are celebrated with full vigour in the continent, which were unheard of a few decades ago. The author finds that the Hindu Diaspora is evolving socially, economically and culturally. It is ...

Surgical intervention into human corporeality relies on the Cartesian machine model of the body to justify such radical intrusion as the properly reasoned and informed actions and choices of essentially disembodied sovereign subjects. Both the surgical subject and the surgical team are engaged in a form of heroic, albeit supremely functional, medicine in which questions of self, embodiment, and intercorporeality are put to one side. This is especially evident in the field of heart transplantation. Nonetheless, of all the non-visible parts of the body, it is the heart that has been most clearly at the centre of both imagery and imagination in western culture. What is striking is the degree to which the heart is represented not as a merely functional part of the body that might be exchanged at will, but as an organ of immense personal significance. In socio-cultural terms the heart stands in for a range of inherently human attributes such as love, empathy, fear, guilt and so on that are at the core of selfhood. And as my current research on transplantation shows, both recipients and donors are troubled by not so much by biomedical risk, as by issues of identity and the vexed relation between self and other. How then does this cultural and personal understanding line up with the biomedical need to represent the organ as a mere pump, as an exchangeable depersonalised mass that can unproblematically take its place in 'spare part surgery'? I shall review some contemporary representations of heart donation and transplantation that both re-enforce the supposed utility of the process while at the same time sliding away into the realm of psychic significance where the heart is figured as the gift of life. What are the implications for recipients of receiving such a gift that in the most substantive way crosses the boundary between self and other in a mode that leaves the categorical identity of both open to doubt. How can we reimagine the problematic in ways that would leave behind intimations of intrusion and acknowledge intercorporeality as a positive and desirable outcome?

This collection of essays explores contemporary reflections on interactions between gender and culture. The 11 contributions focus on varied dimensions of popular culture that define, interpret, validate, interrogate and rupture gender conventions. There are discussions on how children react to gender expectations and how this reaction is reflected in their activities like drawing and games. There are also investigations of films, female bodybuilding in the USA, transgender identity in Greek and Indian mythology, and women breaking glass ceilings and pioneering social movements in developing countries like India. Specific chapters are devoted to British TV series and Hindi films that address issues related to masculinity. Essays on challenges that women face in the corporate world and the real world of social inequalities, especially in developing countries, give this volume rich thematic diversity. The collection will be of interest to literary critics, film critics, gender studies scholars, and poets.

This article explores the centrality of conservative "peasant" identity in the large-scale armed mobilization of rural Nicaraguans to oppose revolutionary change in the 1980s. Drawing on fieldwork in the municipio of Quilali, an epicenter of rural resistance, I argue that the construction of a grassroots "peasant" identity, its content & boundaries, was a contested process strongly influenced by dynamics of social class & shifting concentrations of social, military, & political power. This case study also highlights tensions between goals of recognition (in identity movements) & distribution (in social justice movements), & the dilemmas that conservative movements present for those who seek to evaluate, analytically & normatively, social movement impact. 36 References. Adapted from the source document.

Identity-based democracy -- Using old words in new ways -- A brief history of social sorting -- Partisan prejudice -- Socially sorted parties -- The outrage and elation of partisan sorting -- Activism for the wrong reasons -- Can we fix it?

THIS ARTICLE ATTEMPTS TO ANALYZE THE PROCESS OF A QUEST FOR IDENTITY ON THE PART OF EXILED WOMEN FROM CUBA, CHILE, AND ESPECIALLY BRAZIL. THE AUTHOR SHOWS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF FEMININE AND FEMINIST ORGANIZATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE BRAZILIAN COMMUNITY IN EXILE AND THE INFLUENCE OF THE COUNTRY OF REFOGE ON THEIR DEVELOPMENT.

The essays in this volume illuminate varied and complex inter-relationships between education, conflict, and national identity, while accounting for ways in which policymakers, teachers, youth, and community members replicate, resist, and transform conflict through everyday interactions in educational spaces.

This commentary takes stock of how Multi-level Governance and European Integration has helped scholars frame empirical research agendas. It focuses on three specific research programmes emanating from the book: (1) the role of identity in multi-level governance, (2) political contestation in multi-level systems, and (3) the effect of multi-level governance on policy outcomes. It aims to highlight existing knowledge in these lines of research whilst offering several critical reflections and directions for future research. The commentary argues that the book's observation that governance structures are ultimately shaped by identities rather than by efficiency considerations has proved almost prophetic given recent backlash against the EU. The book expertly shows that there is an inherent tension in sharing authority across multiple levels of government, and that multi-level systems require constant recalibration and renegotiation of how authority is shared.

The paper argues that children face challenges in growing up and fitting into their societies and that these challenges need to be addressed with care. These challenges, which are complicated by the effects of colonialism, war and economic crises in the context of Zimbabwe, are portrayed in the novels Nervous Conditions (Dangarembga 1989), The Book of Not (Dangarembga 2006), The Uncertainty of Hope (Tagwira 2006) and Running with Mother (Mlalazi 2012). In analysing the characters of the children portrayed in these four novels, the vulnerability of children, regardless of their age, is demonstrated. The child characters strive to help their parents and be useful citizens and yet at times this contrasts with their desire to be sheltered and treated as children. This contradiction is best exhibited in teenagers who try to fashion their own identity that is separate from the people around them but who still require guidance to do so.

To explore how emerging adults grapple with the increasing demands of fiscal responsibility, the present study tests a model of identity formation in the domain of finance. We draw on Erikson's theory of identity formation as operationalized by Marcia's identity status model, which details four identity statuses: achieved, foreclosed, moratorium, and diffused. A sample of college students ( N = 1,511) were surveyed at two time points: in their first (ages 18–21, T1) and fourth (ages 21–24, T2) years of college. Primarily, we find evidence for financial identity stability, although we found some evidence for financial identity regression from moratorium to foreclosed status. After controlling for T1 financial identity, T1 variables were most predictive of changes in T2 foreclosure: Increases in foreclosure were predicted by measures of perceived parental socioeconomic status, parental communication, financial education, and subjective norms at T1.