An Exploratory Study of Part-Time Minorities: Finding Home as a Minority Member

This study examines an atypical population of immigrants in Taiwan who immigrated in search of home, self-discovery, and career opportunities. Many of these immigrants sit at the nexus of privilege and othering with their ability to pass as Caucasian. Through the participatory method Photovoice and semi-structured interviews, I investigate the fluid nature of identity processes, the extent that acculturation hinges on predetermined factors, and the benefits and costs of biculturalism, which include cultural fusion and liminality. Additionally, I investigate the impact of context on acculturation strategies and the experience of transformation.     

Professional coach educators in-situ: a social analysis of practice

Professional coach educators are key to the success of coach education and play a crucial role in developing coaching practice. However, coach education research remains remarkably coach centric with little attention paid to the coach educator or the broader role of the socio-cultural context that frames the learning process. Four professional coach educators working for a Sport Governing Body in-situ with twenty five professional clubs took part in interviews and focus groups over the course of a year. In addition, interviews were undertaken with nine academy managers and thirty two coaches as well as observations in eight of the clubs. This paper focuses on the coach educators specifically and aims to understand the nature of coach educators' social reality and practice by examining something of the relational nature of the coach educators and their practice in context. Using the work of Bourdieu the paper engages in epistemic reflexivity and attempts to uncover coach educators' social and intellectual unconscious embedded in and reflected through their social practice. Findings show the operation of a number of socially constructed legitimating principles where the success or failure of the coach educator's practice and learning was inextricably linked to power. Each club (field) was a field of struggles, and coach educators had to play a symbolic and relational game being defined by and, at the same time, struggling to define these relations. Hence practice for the coach educators was both social and embodied.     

Refugee Identities: Ethnicity as a Communicative Process

Ethnicity and, by extension, ethnic identity, are problematic concepts to define. This article explores self-defined boundaries of ethnic identity by framing ethnicity as a communicative process through a narrative study focusing on a particular refugee group called Meskhetian Turks. Twelve in-depth interviews were analyzed for emerging themes. The results revealed three inter-connected themes demonstrating the significance of (1) the past, (2) cultural preservation, and (3) a sense of community. Thus, the study demonstrated self-defined borders of ethnic identity and revealed ethnicity as a communicative process, whose emergence, preservation, and continuity depends solely upon communication.     

“There’s no such thing as Asian”: A membership categorization analysis of cross-cultural adaptation in an Asian American business community

This paper examines the relationship between communication and cross-cultural adaptation through conducting a membership categorization analysis of interactions among members of an Asian American Chamber of Commerce (AACC). Analysis of audio-and-video-recorded data gathered during ethnographic fieldwork illustrates how immigrant AACC members adapt to US notions of race through adopting the “Asian” racial category yet define “Asian” in creative ways that meet institutional goals. AACC members also resist US essentialist racial ideology through identifying with ethnic categories that help members meet situated institutional goals. Overall, this paper highlights how members routinely switch among racial, ethnic, and professional identity categories when navigating structural constraints of racial ideology during cross-cultural adaptation in institutional contexts.     

Associations between retirement reasons,chronic pain,athletic identity,and depressive symptoms among former professional footballers

Background: Retirement from professional sport has been recognised as a major psychological stressor, and there is a need to identify factors that increase the risk of mental health problems after career termination. The current study examined associations between career-ending injury, chronic pain, athletic identity, and depressive symptomology in retired professional footballers. Methods: A cross-sectional study was performed with 307 retired male footballers who had played within a professional United Kingdom league. Participants completed measures of depressive symptoms (Short Depression-Happiness Scale), chronic pain (Pain Intensity Numerical Rating Scale), and athletic identity (Athletic Identity Measurement Scale), and reported their reasons for retirement. Results: A total of 48 participants (16%) met the cut-off score for possible cases of clinically relevant depression. These participants were more recently retired, and had higher athletic identity than those without depressive symptoms. Former players with depressive symptoms were more likely to cite injury as a retirement reason, and report higher levels of ongoing injury-related pain. Multivariate logistic regression revealed that the presence of depressive symptoms was independently associated with retirement through injury (OR?=?3.44; 95% CI?=?1.39, 8.51), higher pain levels (OR?=?1.38; 95% CI?=?1.02, 1.86), and increased athletic identity (OR?=?1.28; 95% CI?=?1.14, 1.44). Conclusions: Career-ending injury is strongly associated with higher odds of depressive symptomology during retirement, while experiencing chronic pain, and maintaining a high sense of athletic identity, are additional potential contributors.     

The Uses and Gratifications of Language in Social Media among the Indian Subcontinental Diaspora in the U.S.

This study examines the uses and gratifications of language in social media among the Indian subcontinental diaspora in the United States, based on data collected from an online survey of 535 adult immigrants following a snowballing technique. Results showed the use of native language is related to the use of home country media, while the use of English language is related to emotional adjustment. This study contributes to the literature on social media, community, and language preference by opening avenues for conducting further research on the usage of language in social media among the Indian subcontinental diaspora in the United States. The findings of this study contribute to an understanding of the influence of social media on language preference.     

The Malay question in Indonesia

Thinking about links and fractures in political and historical thoughts about Malaya and Indonesia, one central question comes to mind: Why “ke-Melayu-an” (Malayness) did not become a national project in Indonesia? Given the facts that there have been emotional and material entanglements between Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia, and that in Malaysia and Singapore, Malayan consciousness had a clear political context, it is important to revisit the notion of the Melayu identity in Indonesia. This article sheds some light on this issue, bringing language and political identity into vision. By looking at trajectories of Malay and Malayness in Indonesia, it aims to raise interest in a new methodology of studying political thoughts about national projects in Asia, starting with formulating central questions worthy of further pursuit.     

Transfiguring identity: Social relationships and intercultural communication between foreign “children” and Japanese “parents”

This paper examines how intercultural communication and interpersonal relationships between Japanese “parents” and African “children” are capable of destabilizing status quo notions of identification. Using qualitative ethnographic data, this paper demonstrates how intercultural interactions unfold in ways that engender new forms of sociality, which underscore the diversifying nature of majority–minority relationships in Japan. Drawing on theoretical insights from applied linguistics and communications studies, this paper suggests that the material products of these relationships warrant increased scholarly attention because they are capable of positing compelling challenges to existing understandings of identity, as well as to the ways various groups conceptualize themselves in relation to others.     

Racial incorporation through alignment with whiteness

This study examines alignment with whiteness as a form of racial incorporation among Asian Indian immigrants. Alignment—lining up—explains the process of racial incorporation as a creative construction of similarities in social position, values, interests, and culture. Thirty Asian Indian immigrants were interviewed. We found that they were positioned to interact with white Americans by their material resources, terms of immigration, and prearrival imagination of the U.S. as white. They incorporated themselves by constructing terms of equivalence with whiteness and adopting the discourse of racelessness. We demonstrate how identity capital and affect enable and secure racial alignment.     

论三代中共领导人的大异与大同

尽管三代中国共产党领导人所处的时代、肩负的历史任务与治国方略不同,但在奋斗目标、主攻方向和思想方法上他们却是一致的,换言之,异虽异,同则同。这正是为什么“老大哥”今已不复存在,而新中国却依然蒸蒸日上的关键之所在。