“Foreign Locals”: Transnationalism, Expatriates, and Surfer Identity in Costa Rica

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 212-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay E. Usher
Keyword(s):  
Costa Rica ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Central Aspect ◽  
Transnational Communities ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Mobile Population ◽  
Attachment To Place ◽  
Strong Attachment

Surfer identity construction has been linked to a number of factors, including a strong attachment to place. Surfers have always been a mobile population, and the search for waves in new places is a central aspect of the sport. The movement of surfers has led to the development of transnational communities in surf destinations. This ethnographic study examined the ways in which expatriates in Costa Rica construct their identities as local surfers. Many expatriates considered themselves local surfers as a result of the time they had lived and surfed in Pavones and their knowledge of the wave. Many Ticos did not think of expatriates as local surfers. Some expatriates’ assertions of local identity and resultant aggression were sources of frustration for Ticos, tourists, and other expatriates.

Achieving Collaborative Aims through Multiple Identity Construction: Managing a public inter-organizational collaboration

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Isidora Kourti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Public Services ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Effective Management ◽  
Collaborative Process ◽  
Stability And Change ◽  
Multiple Identity ◽  
Organizational Collaboration

Although public inter-organizational collaborations can offer better public services, their management is a complex endeavour and they often fail. This paper explores identity construction as a key aspect that assists in managing successfully these collaborations. The study draws upon a longitudinal ethnographic study with a Greek public inter-organizational collaboration. The research illustrates that managers should encourage partners to construct collaborative and non-collaborative identities in order to achieve the collaboration aims. It also suggests that managers should seek both stability and change in the collaborative process and offers four collaborative patterns for the effective management of public inter-organizational collaborations.

Diglossia and Local Identity: Swiss German in the Linguistic Landscape of Kleinbasel

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edina Krompák ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Focus Group ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Focus Group Discussions ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Swiss German ◽  
Written Form

The city of Basel is situated in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, in the geographic triangle of three countries: France, Germany and Switzerland. Everyday urban life is characterised by the presence of Standard German and Swiss German as well as diverse migrant languages. Swiss German is ‘an umbrella term for several Alemannic dialects’ (Stepkowska 2012, 202) which differ from Standard German in terms of phonetics, semantics, lexis, and grammar and has no standard written form. Swiss German is predominantly used in oral forms, and Standard German in written communication. Furthermore, an amalgamation of bilingualism and diglossia (Stepkowska 2012, 208) distinguishes the specific linguistic situation, which indicates amongst other things the high prestige of Swiss German in everyday life. To explore the visibility and vitality of Swiss German in the public display of written language, we examined the linguistic landscape of a superdiverse neighbourhood of Basel, and investigated language power and the story beyond the sign – ‘stories about the cultural, historical, political and social backgrounds of a certain space’ (Blommaert 2013, 41). Our exploration was guided by the question: How do linguistic artefacts – such as official, commercial, and private signs – represent the diglossic situation and the relation between language and identity in Kleinbasel? Based on a longitudinal ethnographic study, a corpus was compiled comprising 300 digital images of written artefacts in Kleinbasel. Participant observation and focus group discussions about particular images were conducted and analysed using grounded theory (Charmaz 2006) and visual ethnography (Pink 2006). In our paper, we focus on signs in Swiss German and focus group discussions on these images. Initial analyses have produced two surprising findings; firstly, the visibility and the perception of Swiss German as a marker of local identity; secondly, the specific context of their display.

scholarly journals A Bridge to Portugal: Language and Identity in Bridgeport, CT

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
Fabio Scetti
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
American English ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Language And Identity ◽  
Speech Community ◽  
Structured Interviews ◽  
The Status

Here I present the results of BridgePORT, an ethnographic study I carried out in 2018 within the Portuguese community of Bridgeport, CT (USA). I describe language use and representation among Portuguese speakers within the community, and I investigate the integration of these speakers into the dominant American English speech community. Through my fieldwork, I observe mixing practices in day-to-day interaction, while I also consider the evolution of the Portuguese language in light of language contact and speakers’ discourse as this relates to ideologies about the status of Portuguese within the community. My findings rely on questionnaires, participant observation of verbal interaction, and semi-structured interviews. My aim is to show how verbal practice shapes the process of identity construction and how ideas of linguistic “purity” mediate the maintenance of a link to Portugal and Portuguese identity.

Cosmopolitan English, traditional Japanese

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 238-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Baudinette
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
English Language ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Linguistic Landscape ◽  
Japanese Men ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Sexual Identities ◽  
Queer Space

Abstract The Linguistic Landscape of Tokyo’s premier gay district, Shinjuku Ni-chōme, contains much English-language signage. Previously described in touristic literature as marking out spaces for foreign gay men, this article draws upon an ethnographic study of how signage produces queer space in Japan to argue that English instead constructs a sense of cosmopolitan worldliness. The ethnography also reveals that participants within Ni-chōme’s gay bar sub-culture contrast this cosmopolitan identity with a “traditional” identity indexed by Japanese-language signage. In exploring how Japanese men navigate Ni-chōme’s signage, this article deploys Piller and Takahashi’s (2006) notion of “language desire” to investigate the role of LL in influencing individual queer men’s sense(s) of self. This article thus broadens the focus of LL research to account for how engagement with an LL may impact identity construction, with an emphasis placed on how learning to “read” an LL influences the formation of sexual identities.

Debatable Land: National and Local Identity in a Border Town

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 66-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Kiely ◽  
David McCrone ◽  
Frank Bechhofer ◽  
Robert Stewart
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Identity Claim ◽  
Identity Processes ◽  
Border Town ◽  
Close Proximity ◽  
English National Identity ◽  
Specific Identity

Through a systematic programme of research into national identity we have developed a sound understanding of the processes of identity claim, attribution and receipt. Central to these processes are identity markers and rules. We have always sought contexts where national identity is either salient or problematic as identity construction then becomes most clearly apparent. Berwick- upon-Tweed, a town in England but located close to the Scottish border, provides such a context. One would expect people from Berwick-upon-Tweed (‘Berwickers’) to claim an English national identity. They live in a town jurisdictionally in England and in the county of Northumberland. Moreover, one might think that, living only 3 miles south of the Scottish border, they would feel a heightened sense of their English national identity. However, our research shows that national identity in Berwick-upon-Tweed is complex and problematic. This is not simply due to close proximity to the border but a combination of unique forces - historical, cultural and demographic - that has led some Berwickers to avoid explicitly articulating a definitive nationality. Instead, they mobilise a specific identity strategy of localism. Context dramatically affects the willingness to claim a national identity. Key findings are presented from 70 household interviews conducted in Berwick-upon-Tweed and 48 divided evenly across Eyemouth, a nearby town in Scotland, and Alnwick, a town slightly further south in England. These data allowed us also to explore how Berwickers’ identity claims are received, how national identity is attributed to them by others and how these attributions are in turn received. Two of the aims of our work are to demonstrate the fluid nature of national identity processes and the crucial importance of context to these. Our work in Berwick-Upon-Tweed has done much to meet and further these aims.

Divorce: a visual essay

2012 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sigrid Norris ◽  
Andrea Brandt
Keyword(s):  
Lived Experience ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Ethnographic Fieldwork ◽  
Year 2000

AbstractThis visual essay incorporates poetry and paintings, telling a narrative about the stages of divorce that Andrea (retrospectively) experienced. The stages developed through this project were not lived as such, but rather are an analysis of past lived experience. The paintings, which were produced in 2011 embed poems that were written around the year 2000 during an ethnographic study on identity construction (Norris, 2011) in which Andrea was one of the participants. Back then, the researcher used poetry to jot down emotions of participants and other difficult-to-describe aspects encountered during ethnographic fieldwork. This year, we revisited the poems that came about because of Andrea’s divorce at the time, and illustrate our findings in this essay.

scholarly journals Community Photographs

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Janne Seppänen
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Identity Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Politics Of Representation ◽  
Research Subject ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
The Look ◽  
The Town

Abstract The research subject of this article is formed by a project with the title Two Pictures of My Town. The project was carried out during spring 2002 in the town of Tampere, Finland, when town district or suburb communities, and in one case a sixth-form class, were asked to ‘get to the bare essentials’ of their town district and present them in two photographs with short captions. The following research questions were asked: What kinds of visual orders can be found in the paired photographs? What kind of politics of representation is included in these orders? What kind of identity work is expressed by the photographs’ visual orders and politics of representation? The photographs were interpreted through a theoretical researcher reading. Photographs in which the local identity was constructed on the basis of familiar and safe visual orders offered a relatively solid and legitimate basis for local identities. These photographs repeated the visual orders of traditional tourist photographs and nature photography. If the two photographs commented the changes in the look of the neighbourhood, for example the differences between old and new architecture, they offered a more discontinuous basis for local identity construction. On the other hand, they provided alternative surface of identification for those who do not accept prevailing visual orders of the neighbourhood.

Defending Borders: States and Nation-States in the ASEAN 5

2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Case
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
Identity Construction ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Nation State ◽  
Local Identity ◽  
Units Of Analysis ◽  
Nation States ◽  
Regime Types ◽  
Administrative Decentralization

AbstractDiscontent simmers within social science over states and nation-states as units of analysis. Disputes over what even constitutes a state, whether simply an organizational apparatus, albeit with unique legitimacy, or a broader complex of social relations, have never been resolved. But it is not just its murky delineation with which the state is afflicted. It has lately come under attack from above and below, with causality seen to be draining away to transnational and sub-national forces. This paper begins by rehearsing the economic and social vectors along which assaults on the state and the nation-state are conveyed. It then turns to Southeast Asia, a part of the developing world in which the state would seem especially vulnerable, its powers having been usurped by transnational firms and corroded internally by connected rent-seekers and provincial “men of prowess.” However, this paper tries also to show that in Southeast Asia, national states and territorial borders have remained quite intact. Neither globalized markets, regional formations, local identity construction, administrative decentralization or migration have shaken the standing of the state and the nation-state as appropriate units of analysis. This is especially the case when addressing major questions about regime types and change in the region.

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