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This concept paper explores possible collective identities for a future wildland fire workforce. Taking inspiration from the work of futurists who foresee an end to the dominant fire exclusion/suppression paradigm, and assuming that an emerging fire restoration/resilience paradigm shift replaces it, this paper engages in speculative explorations of the process and product of this paradigm shift with respect to the future collective identities of a workforce conducting ecological fire management. Social constructionist assumptions from symbolic interactionist sociological theory, Gramscian political theory's concept of hegemony, and new social movement theory's concept of collective identity all provide the intellectual foundations for the discussion. This concept paper argues that in order to actualize a paradigm shift, more than advances in scientific research or reforms of government policies will be required—the wildland fire community will need to become (or join) a social movement engaged in collective actions. An imaginary social movement, the "Greenfire revolution," is invented to help illustrate how the selected theories and concepts might apply in the social construction of ecological fire management and the collective identities of its future workforce. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the COVID-19 pandemic, loosely affiliated protesters came together around the slogan 'freedom' in the online and physical places of anti-lockdown protests. These protesters held shared grievances against official health advice and social distancing measures. Although the slogan freedom emotionally validated protesters, they articulated a diverse set of interrelated motivations, identifications, and beliefs with this slogan. This paper studies the ways the collective identity of the anti-lockdown protests in the UK was formed, relying on 33 go-along interviews and ethnographic observations in London anti-lockdown protests. The findings, first, show that protesters came together around an anti-political identity, which reflected a larger political alienation from the political system. Their strong emotions of anger and ressentiment towards official health advice and social distancing measures and their distrust towards elites, political institutions, and mainstream media created a shared sense of 'we-ness'. Second, the paper uncovers how the feeling of solidarity amongst protesters in London did not only originate from online platforms despite the increase in Internet use during the pandemic, but it was also materialized in local neighbourhoods, which fed larger anti-lockdown protests in physical spaces and online publics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protesting government tuition increases in 2012, Quebec university and college students participated in collective action that they contentiously characterized as a ‘strike.’ While oppositional actors insisted students were boycotting classes – not striking – student activists claimed legal and cultural justifications for their action. This paper asks: How did Quebec student activists discursively characterize and legitimize their protest tactic as a strike? How did this discourse – and opponents’ counter-discourse – structure the terms of the debate within higher education institutions? Using discourse analysis of student newspapers and organizers’ first-hand accounts of the strike, this paper argues that striking students developed a discursive repertoire constituted by two components: they linked their action to a collective identity with a historical legacy of striking and adopted collective action frames that characterized the action as disruptive and collective. While the debate within higher education institutions centred around legitimacy, it was deeply rooted in contestation over individualism versus collectivism and the ongoing neo-liberalization of higher education. Through the case of the 2012 student strike, I propose employing collective identity and collective action frames together in a dialogic framework of discursive repertoires, thereby providing analytical clarity to this concept for social movement scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People on the move are increasingly immobilised between and within state borders, having left 'there' but not allowed to be fully 'here'. This paper presents a nuanced examination of this state of enforced in--betweenness, exploring how refugees and other migrants negotiate collective existence through, despite, and alongside liminality. Drawing on ethnographic data collected at a Swiss Red Cross psychotraumatology centre, the study identifies factors that impede and facilitate the formation of collective identities, with temporal and spatial liminality emerging as the most central collective experience for refugees and other migrants. The findings illustrate how therapists reinforce these bonds by fostering an idealised sense of therapeutic communitas that promotes unity in adversity. However, the paper refrains from reducing the collective significance of liminality to a mere act of defiance. Instead, it critically reflects on how refugees and other migrants forge collective connections within politically and legally imposed disconnection. It accounts for the paradox of refugees and other migrants making collective lives in liminality while confronting the always-imminent possibility of this very liminality dismantling their lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of agency refers to the experience of control over voluntary actions and their effects. There is growing interest in the notion of we-agency, whereby individual sense of agency is supplanted by a collective agentic experience. The existence of this unique agentic state would have profound implications for human responsibility, and, as such, warrants further scrutiny. In this paper, we review the concept of we-agency and examine whether evidence supports it. We argue that this concept entails multiplying hypothetical agentic states associated with joint action, thus ending up with an entangled phenomenology that appears somewhat speculative when weighted against the available evidence. In light of this, we suggest that the concept of we-agency should be abandoned in favor of a more parsimonious framework for the sense of agency in joint action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often the case that religious and national forms of self-definition are mutually reinforcing and intertwined (e.g. Smith 1991, 2004; Daniel -- Durham 1997; Friedland 2001; Hoppenbrouwers 2002; Anderson 2006, etc.). This process can occur in a variety of ways and contexts all over the world. In addition to attempts at defining religious and national identities, the following paper focuses primarily on three approaches: (1) how religious and national identification can be understood, (2) what is the relationship between religion and nationalist worldviews, what is the reason for this linkage, and (3) what is the mechanism and significance of the connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collective identity (CI) is one of the levels of the social construction of citizenship. It was assumed that since citizenship as a state-centred notion is difficult to maintain today, an analysis of CI should exceed national, ethnic, language and cultural identifications. What does it look like in the case of CI constructed discursively by youth organisations? The aim of the research presented in the paper is to reconstruct collective identities (CIs) based on a discourse analysis of selected youth organisations operating in Poland and an assessment of their community-individual orientation. The research material constituted 696 documents produced in 2018 by six youth organisations on their official websites and Facebook profiles. The approach by Ruth Wodak and Martin Reisigl was adopted. We analysed the application of discursive strategies in the texts referring to the ‘we’ and ‘they’ categories. The conclusions indicate, among others, that in the analysed discourses the CI is differentiated by the manner of distinguishing from ‘others’ and the constellation of predicates relating to the category ‘we’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an investigation of representations of the Other and ancient Chinese collective identity in classical Chinese texts, this paper offers a new perspective to modern discourse surrounding the ‘distinctions between barbarians and Chinese’ (yixia zhi bian 夷夏之辨). Providing a historical analysis of terms and tropes related to the in-group Huaxia and out-group rongdi (barbarian Other) from the Shang to the Han dynasties, it is argued that increasingly abstracted representations of the Other functioned in promoting identification and solidarity with an increasingly unified Huaxia. Rather than reading depictions of the rongdi as merely a reflection of how the ancient Chinese perceived the out-group, terms that function as the ‘generalized barbarian’ are interpreted as recursive reflections of how the Huaxia in-group understood the Huaxia themselves, offering a glimpse into what was implicitly regarded as characteristic, distinctive, or even sacred to Huaxia collective identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advantageously, smaller regional wineries need to differentiate themselves, but also need to build partnerships with their local competitors in order to develop regional brand identity. Wineries will form geographical strategic groups to create a common identity and communicate with buyers through digital storytelling. Regional wineries that perform this strategy have the advantage of collectively drawing customers into the region before attempting to distinguish themselves individually. This paper is to conceptually demonstrate the benefits of strategic groups and how they operate via digital storytelling methods. Oftentimes, regional winery groups can craft a collective identity that provides benefits, such as mutual trust and reputation. More importantly, the collective identity is done as a strategic group to reinforce authenticity to the individual wineries' digital storytelling, to connect with buyers. Through a strategic group lens, we attempt to understand how collective winery groups use digital storytelling to create authenticity and enhance individual efforts. We investigate these efforts via regional wine collectives to understand authenticity development through digital storytelling. We introduce examples of wineries utilizing digital storytelling within their regions as a justification to study these concepts in the winery business. A call to empirically investigate winery strategic groups at a regional level is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that indigenous Latin American food delivery workers organize to defy information and knowledge asymmetries by utilizing technology built to mediate online social interactions. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, this paper investigates transnational modes of community-building and network formation and examines how these networks are instrumental for delivery workers in New York City to exercise agency, forge their narrative, and resist platform control by resisting, pushing, and extending a variety of digital and communication technologies. I analyze how public and private means of communication facilitate and constrain social forms of organization by mapping how delivery workers communicate and engage collectively both in the physical and the digital worlds. My research reveals two platforms that workers use to share information: one that operates inwards (WhatsApp) and another that operates outwards (Facebook). These channels represent opposite sides of the spectrum between public and private and synergize to form a transnational distributed knowledge network to shape and interpret the collective identity of Latin American delivery workers. Overall, this article sheds light on how the flow of information through different spaces and times enables delivery workers to construct a place for subversion and negotiation with roles assigned to them by broader socio-political forces. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This concept paper explores possible collective identities for a future wildland fire workforce. Taking inspiration from the work of futurists who foresee an end to the dominant fire exclusion/suppression paradigm, and assuming that an emerging fire restoration/resilience paradigm shift replaces it, this paper engages in speculative explorations of the process and product of this paradigm shift with respect to the future collective identities of a workforce conducting ecological fire management. Social constructionist assumptions from symbolic interactionist sociological theory, Gramscian political theory’s concept of hegemony, and new social movement theory’s concept of collective identity all provide the intellectual foundations for the discussion. This concept paper argues that in order to actualize a paradigm shift, more than advances in scientific research or reforms of government policies will be required—the wildland fire community will need to become (or join) a social movement engaged in collective actions. An imaginary social movement, the “Greenfire revolution,” is invented to help illustrate how the selected theories and concepts might apply in the social construction of ecological fire management and the collective identities of its future workforce.

In this study, I examine how users of an online Reddit community, r/IntellectualDarkWeb, forged an anti-establishment collective identity through practices of "heterodox scientific" reasoning. I do so through a discursive analysis of comments and posts made to r/IntellectualDarkWeb during the COVID-19 pandemic. First, I deploy the BERTopic algorithm to cluster my corpus and surface topics pertaining to COVID-19. Second, I engage in a qualitative content analysis of the relevant clusters to understand how discourses about COVID-19 were mobilized by subreddit users. I show that discussions about COVID-19 were polarized along "contrarian" and "anti-contrarian" lines, with significant implications for the subreddit's process of collective identity. Overwhelmingly, contrarian content that expressed skepticism towards vaccines, mistrust towards experts, and cynicism about the medical establishment was affirmed by r/IntellectualDarkWeb users. By contrast, anti-contrarian content that sought to counter anti-vaccine rhetoric, defend expertise, or criticize subreddit users for their contrarianism was penalized. A key factor in this dynamic was Reddit's scoring mechanism, which empowered users to publicly upvote contrarian affirming content while simultaneously downvoting anti-contrarian content. As users participated in sense making about COVID-19, they deployed Reddit's scoring mechanism to reinforce a contrarian collective identity oriented around a practice of heterodox science. My research shows the continued relevance of the concept of collective identity in the digital age and its utility for understanding contemporary reactionary social movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent decades have seen a blurring of the line between extremist movements and mainstream politics, driven by rising sectarian polarization. This development has been linked to digital media, with suggestions that so-called echo chambers may drive political radicalization. To understand the social processes taking place inside such digital spaces, this article draws on Randall Collins and the Durkheimian tradition to develop a theory of discursive community formation. Empirically, we analyze 20 years of discussion on the White Power forum Stormfront, employing natural language processing to study discursive evolution as members become socialized into the community. Our findings suggest that digital media provide space for conversational rituals that instill in people a sense of social membership and intersubjectivity, contained in the elaboration of a shared discourse, within which certain beliefs become sacred and unquestionable. This provides a potential social mechanism linking echo chambers to the rise of sectarian polarization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Considering the significance of collective identity in carrying out group and social activities, this study aimed to design a model of collective identity based on perceived social support with the mediating role of emotional intelligence among students. Methodology: The present study was applied in objective and descriptive-correlational in method. The research population comprised all undergraduate psychology students of the Islamic Azad University of Qom Province in the academic year 2021-2022. The sample size of this study was 500 individuals, selected after reviewing the entry criteria through convenience sampling. Data were collected using the Collective Identity questionnaire (Hezarjaribi & Lohrasbi, 2011), Perceived Social Support (Sherbourne & Stewart, 1991), and Emotional Intelligence (Schering, 1996) questionnaires and analyzed using Pearson correlation coefficients and structural equation modeling in SPSS-27 and AMOS-24 software. Findings: The findings showed that collective identity, perceived social support, and emotional intelligence among students had a positive and significant correlation (P<0.01). Additionally, the model of collective identity based on perceived social support with the mediating role of emotional intelligence in self-efficacy among students had an appropriate fit. In this model, the variable of perceived social support had a direct and significant effect on emotional intelligence and students' collective identity, and the variable of emotional intelligence had a direct and significant effect on their collective identity. Perceived social support with the mediating role of emotional intelligence had an indirect and significant effect on students' collective identity (P<0.001). Conclusion: According to the results of the present research, counselors and psychologists can improve collective identity among students by enhancing their perceived social support and emotional intelligence through educational workshops. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyses the formation of new identities in the Caspian post-Soviet republics. The overall importance of the subject under consideration stems from the need to reassess Russia’s current foreign policy interests and its renewed role in the international arena. Throughout Russian history the Caspian region has been of a particular interest. The development of the Caspian region is perceived as a complex issue, entailing tough negotiations on the Caspian Sea shelf, emerging alternative transport roots bypassing Russia, etc. The Caspian Sea region is becoming a place where the configuration and alliances of various political forces may be multivariate and unpredictable. Therefore, the relevant task is to identify the peculiar patterns of identity formation in the Caspian countries, emphasizing the role of memory policy. The paper focuses on Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan using sociological survey (both quantitative and qualitative), conducted by the authors, as a basic research method. The respondents were young citizens of both countries. The study shows that Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan use the same patterns to shape new memory policy, namely the fundamentalization of their own past through its ancientization, the revision and revaluation of the past shared with Russia and the anticipation of future opportunities. These processes are aimed at reinforcing political independence and demonstrating new prospects. At the same time, the results of the memory policy are controversial and its efficiency differs in these states: the coherence between expected and actual results is more evident in Kazakhstan.

Between 2016 and 2019, South Korean conservatives organized a movement called the T'aegŭkki Rallies to oppose the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye and to protest against President Moon Jae-in's administration. This movement is puzzling for its timing, demographic composition, and rhetorical choices. Through in-depth interviews with rally participants and non-participants, I illustrate that a collective identity, shaped by authoritarian socialization, strengthened with positive memories about an authoritarian past, combined to mobilize rally participants. Curiously, rally participants saw themselves as defenders of liberal democracy, protecting South Korea against progressive forces seeking to turn the country into a communist state. However, my interviews revealed that they were, in fact, trying to protect the authoritarian past. In this manner, South Korea's authoritarian legacy entrenches ideological polarization and hampers common understandings of democratic citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conformation and dynamics of metropolitanisation act as propulsive elements of territorial transformations. The deficiency of infrastructural equipment, the heterogeneity of urban fabric and the lack of services and public spaces contribute to severing the identity ties between settled communities and territories. In light of this, within the more general reflection concerning urban regeneration, we recall the role that cultural heritage plays in the physical and functional organisation of the city, as a reflection of the interaction between community and context. The contribution is contextualized in the research work on the activities related to Thematic Line 4 of the Extended Partnership 5—CHANGES (NRRP). The thematic line activities follow three phases: 1. contextualization; 2. operational phase; 3. experimentation. The research work presented here is part of the 'operational phase', to identify strategies and projects for heritage-led regeneration. The article analyses the pilot case of CSOA Forte Prenestino as a starting point for thinking about expanding the research activity to other similar cases. It is a self-managed community centre in Rome (Italy) located in the nineteenth-century Forte, which has become a symbol of collective identity. The case study was identified following three levels of investigation: 1. identification of the municipality, first-level administrative subdivision of the city of Rome (Italy); 2. identification of the main historical, archaeological and architectural emergencies of the municipality; 3. identification of an asset to be analysed as "Heritage by designation" (involvement of experts) and "Heritage by appropriation" (involvement of communities). The research results show the "Recognition Path" of Forte Prenestina: according to what has been 'designated' by urban planning instruments, project instruments, legislative instruments and authors of scientific publications and conferences; and on the basis of the bottom-up 'appropriation' process of the asset that has allowed its management, assessment of its cultural and social potential and its development. The research results allow us to reflect on heritage-led urban regeneration as a strategy capable of capturing and promoting the links between social integration and cultural–historical identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Korrika is the most popular and participative event in favour of a minority language such as basque. The participants run around 2,000 kilometres in relays for eleven days without interruption. This research analyses the twenty-second digital Korrika on Twitter, the first one held after the pandemic, combining Social Network Analysis and Descriptive Content Analysis. A total of 52,210 tweets from 13,739 cyberactivists were captured and analysed (from 1 March to April 30, 2022), extracting relevant data on the leaders of the conversation, the language used, the most viralised content, etc. The results show that the online community mobilises digitally accompanying the physical event and promotes a horizontal and cohesive digital Korrika, with shared leadership and using different languages to foster activist links with other international communities sensitive to minority languages. On the other hand, the most viralised contents, in audiovisual format, contribute to build by visual metaphors a collective Basque identity related to effort, romanticism, courage, cooperation, etc. Another notable phenomenon is that the conversation mainly revolves around positive messages and symbols, and the online community effectively isolates hate speech. The methodological design of this research has the potential to be replicated in the observation of other social phenomena with the aim of converting the data (interactions on Twitter) into knowledge that can be used by the scientific community or the actors involved in strategic decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study delves into the transformative power of cultural nationalism in Oromoo literature, examining its role in fostering collective consciousness, safeguarding collective identity, and propelling social and political change. The analysis focuses on four selected novels, Godaannisa, Yoomi Laataa? Burreen Bifa Tokko Miti, and Dibaa, employing the "Earth-Woman Symbolism" framework to explore the intertwining of man-woman and culture-nature dichotomies in strengthening cultural nationalism. The study reveals that cultural nationalism serves as a beacon for Oromoo, defining their "us" against external marginalization. It also acts as a custodian of collective identity, ensuring its transmission across generations. Cultural nationalism is embedded in character? ethical stances, their pursuit of truth and peace, and their resistance to harmful societal structures. The narratives of the selected novels are constructed on a foundation of cultural nationalism, shaping the very essence of Oromoo identity. Key emphases include constructing a cohesive collective identity, ensuring the continuity of cultural heritage, invigorating cultural resistance, and promoting societal transformation through ritual practices. Building upon these findings, the study calls for further exploration into the diverse facets of cultural nationalism in Oromoo literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to investigate the relationship between the national media, the provincial TV channel and the Kurdish language overseas satellites on the dimensions of the national and ethnic identity of the Kurds in Oramanat region of Kermanshah, which was conducted with a survey method and the use of a questionnaire among a sample of 400 citizens of four cities of Javanroud, Paveh, Ravansar and Salas Babajani. The obtained data were processed and analyzed through spss software. The findings of the research show that the amount of use of the national media (1 hour and 45 minutes) and the provincial TV channel (half an hour) compared to virtual space and the Internet (4 hours) and even satellite (about 2 hours) was much less, which shows that respondents' satisfaction with national and provincial media is very low. In terms of identity, the average number of ethnic identities is (4) and national identity is (3.5), which is at an average level. The inferential results of this study showed that the national media (beta 0.22) and the Zagros provincial TV channel (beta 0.19) have a positive and direct effect on national identity, which explains a total of 13% of respondents' national identity. Also, age (beta 0.14) has a positive effect on national identity, and the use of Kurdish language satellites (beta -0.12) has a negative effect on national identity. On one hand, out of all the studied variables, only Kurdish-language satellites with beta (0.21) have had a positive effect on ethnic identity, and in total, 5% of the variance of ethnic identity is related to these Kurdish-language overseas media. In the meantime, the amount of use of new social networks with beta (-0.12) had a negative effect on ethnic identity. On the other hand, in relation to the respondents' religious identity, the national and provincial media explained only 9.5% of the respondents' religious identity, and more than 90% of the unexplained variance is related to factors other than the national and provincial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sense of agency refers to the experience of control over voluntary actions and their effects. There is growing interest in the notion of we-agency, whereby individual sense of agency is supplanted by a collective agentic experience. The existence of this unique agentic state would have profound implications for human responsibility, and, as such, warrants further scrutiny. In this paper, we review the concept of we-agency and examine whether evidence supports it. We argue that this concept entails multiplying hypothetical agentic states associated with joint action, thus ending up with an entangled phenomenology that appears somewhat speculative when weighted against the available evidence. In light of this, we suggest that the concept of we-agency should be abandoned in favor of a more parsimonious framework for the sense of agency in joint action.