Research conducted in schools over the past two decades has found that youth shape who they are in ways that do not simply mirror class, race, and gender discourses organizing life in schools. Instead, educators have learned that youth play active roles in shaping who they are on a daily basis, challenging dominant meanings and practices as they move through school. New insights in these directions now compel those in educational circles to talk differently about youth identity formation than they did nearly two decades ago. While sound research on male identity formation in educational contexts has illustrated boys' socialization processes in school, there still is much to learn about girls' social lives and meaning-making processes, particularly in the relatively unexplored arenas of private education and single-sex schooling. Probing beneath the surface, this book explores one year in the lives of thirty-four adolescent girls in Best Academy, a historically elite, private, single-sex high school, as female students construct their identities in an educational context. Through the eyes of these students, we find that the private school is less of a homogenous and stable culture along class and race lines than educators have understood it to be. School officials and parents interact with these adolescent girls to weave a story of complex and contradictory moments of meaning making as youth work hard at figuring out who they are becoming as raced, classed, and gendered individuals in the context of institutional and structural change.
This volume deals with issues and problems of national and gender identity in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey. Articles discuss experiences and position of women vis-à-vis state intervention, economic, political and cultural change, in both public and private spheres of life. In the book the real life conditions and experiences of women are analyzed on three complementary levels. The first of these is the economic and institutional circumstances shaped by structural adjustment policies, globalization and transnational policies. The second is realities of everyday life, particularly pertaining to family, religion, tradition and education. The third level is that of politics and ideology where national and nationalist discourses often build on the gender identity shaped by the economic and social levels. The book does not only present a cross cultural analysis of women's position in the region but also reflects the varied perspectives of female scholars from many different countries and disciplines.
"International sex researcher, neuroscientist, and frequent contributor to The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Debra Soh [discusses what she sees as] gender myths in this ... examination of the many facets of gender identity"--
With intellectual reference points that include Foucault and Freud, Wittig, Kristeva and Irigaray, this is one of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years and is perhaps the essential work of contemporary feminist thought.
Making and Molding Identity in Schools delves into the lives of adolescents to examine how youths assert ethnic and racial identities in the face of policies, discourses, and practices that work both to reproduce and challenge social categories. Detailed case studies illuminate adolescent voices and perspectives, revealing that identity and academic engagement emanate not just from societal and cultural forces, but also from ordinary, day to day interactions and experiences within school settings. Drawing on contemporary social theory, the author emphasizes the political and relational nature of race and ethnicity, and illustrates the potential for identities and ideologies to vary over time and across school settings. The book provides a needed expansion of theories that link youth identities and ideologies solely to cultural, economic and political forces, and provides insight into settings that allow students to engage without discarding their ethnic and racial selves.
Identity is a 'trendy' and 'hot' topic in classics Eminent contributors, including Pat Easterling, Gillian Clarke Identity examined from different perspectives and as different structures - sexual, ethnic, geographic, status, religions - comprehensive Theoretically and critically up-to-date