Suchergebnisse

The economic and sociopolitical factors related to the current Greek crisis are translated into intrapsychic and interpersonal mechanisms in order to explain the political phenomenon of Golden Dawn. I draw on psychoanalytic concepts to reflect on how the crisis has functioned as a mechanism for the production and control of individual and collective subjectivities. I argue that the crisis has created immense insecurity and has fuelled feelings of desperation, fear and anger. For some, these feelings have been displaced onto a substitute reality offered by a transcendent group represented by Golden Dawn; personal boundaries have loosened, and subjectivities have been absorbed by a large, collective "false self". At the centre of the notion of this substitute reality is the fantasy of omnipotence, channelled through the mechanism of projection onto the leader of the group. History is used and misused in order to cement the psychic life of the group and as a compensatory mechanism for the felt national shame. Moreover, collective denigration, or even extinction, of immigrants serves to displace negative feelings and impulses onto the "other". I borrow Freud's contention that when evil is not condemned, raw and wild impulses are let loose –hence, the assassination of a leftwing rapper that has landed Golden Dawn in court.

Understanding the identity construction of a minority requires an understanding of the intricate interplay between the real and the symbolical groups it belongs to. In such a context, individuals and groups adopt identity strategies (at the personal or/and the collective level) by means of which they assert their existence, their social visibility, and their integration in the wider community, while at the same time valuing and establishing their own internal coherence. The case of the Muslim minority in Western Thrace is a very good example of this identity construction, which arose from incessant dynamic confrontations between the dominant values of the majority and the affirmation of their own individual ones. Taking into consideration the socio-historical context, this paper will try to analyze the complex interplay of national, ethnic, religious, linguistic, and cultural identities of the minority groups constituting the Muslim minority of Thrace.

This paper engages with the lived and experiential aspects of (trans)national identities in childhood, through the exploration of an ethnographic biography of a Greek‐Albanian boy in Athens. Through a grounded ethnographic approach, we examine the ways in which he experiences and negotiates his (trans)national identity. Our analysis demonstrates the everyday subtle and sophisticated understanding of the complexities and contradictions of national identities, and the child's own positioning within that. In conclusion, we suggest that interdisciplinary approaches should be assumed in the study of (trans)national identities in childhood, and ones that are grounded in children's own meaning making of their experiences of such identities.

This article investigates the relationship between culture, personality, and deception in a simulated international management negotiation at multiple levels of analysis. `Deception' was operationalized here as the propensity to lie and bribe. As predicted, at the cultural level the results from a scenario study with 1583 participants from eight cultures suggested that cultural collectivism was positively related to reported use of deception in negotiations, and to greater emotional reactions (i.e. guilt, shame, and disgust) after the use of deception. At the individual level, however, the personality variable of allocentrism (consisting of behaviors found in collectivist cultures) was negatively related to the use of deception. Theoretical implications are discussed.