Family identity construction: an interpretation of the Lunar New Year's Eve dinner consumption ritual

PurposeFamily dinner on Lunar New Year's Eve is the most important and most ritualized feast for families in China. It is the time for the entire family to reunite. Families gather together to reflect their past and talk about the future. Through the lens of consumer culture theories, this study explores how Chinese consumers construct family identity.Design/methodology/approachBased on constant comparative analysis of primary data including in-depth interviews and participant observation, and secondary data including historical archives, cultural tracing, documentary reports and essays, the authors deconstruct the consumption rituals of family dinner on Chinese Lunar New Year's Eve. The authors focus on four aspects, including participants, place, time and related activities, and analyze Chinese consumers' ritual experiences.FindingsThe authors’ findings show how young consumers construct and strengthen individual self-identity, relational identity and family identity in various ways through consumption and ritual practices during Chinese Lunar New Year celebration.Originality/valueThe study of family dinner on Lunar New Year's Eve helps the authors understand contemporary consumer culture in three aspects. First, it helps the authors understand the relationship between consumption and culture. Second, the study shows the changes and continuities of consumption rituals. Third, the research highlights the experience of “home” among contemporary Chinese consumers.

World Interrupted: An Autoethnographic Exploration into the Rupture of Self and Family Narratives Following the Onset of Chronic Illness and the Death of a Mother

Informed by the developments in autoethnography, narrative analysis and biographical sociology this paper seeks to affirm that understanding our narrative enables self-understanding and more importantly enables the understanding of others. Using an autoethnographic approach this paper explores the rupture in self and family identity following two traumatic events: the onset of a chronic illness (Multiple Sclerosis) and the death of a mother. It is the story of the life of my mother, who suffered with MS for 9 years and the story of my sister and myself, who cared for her throughout our childhood up to her death in 2000. The rupture in identity that we suffered interrupted the world in which we lived and exposed the contents of our individual and collective world(s). The themes that emerged from the narratives in this study suggest rupture is experienced as a movement of transgression that leads to movements of regression and progression.

Corporate Governance and Financial Features of Portuguese Family Firms

This study analyses whether corporate governance and financial features of private family firms are different from private non-family firms and discusses the role of private family firms in regional economic development. The evidence is drawn from a database of Portuguese private family owner-managed firms in order to determine the differences in the management and experiences of venture capital and other financing options. The main results demonstrated that family firms have significantly lower ratios of leverage, are less interested in venture capital, have much more experience in management and are less likely to be female than those in non-family firms. Our results indicate that the financial development of Portuguese private family firms is also consistent with the moderate tenet of family firms which could hamper their business growth and demonstrate that corporate governance features assist the family identity and the ability to exert family influence.

Formation of a Personal-Professional Position as the Basis of Technology Design Career Guidance Practices

The article considers the need for a broad view on the technologization of career guidance practices, the importance of which is increasing due to the spread of early professionalization in modern society. The purpose of the article is to identify and substantiate the semantic foundations for the technologization of vocational guidance practices, determined taking into account the process of forming a personal-professional position in the conditions of early professionalization. Research methodology: systemic personality-developing, subjective and technological approaches; methods of theoretical research (analysis, synthesis, generalization, analogy, interpretation, concretization). Attention is drawn to the essential features of personal-professional positioning, the focus is on the attitude to work, profession, personal and professional self-determination. Semantic supports for the design of vocational guidance technologies are identified and justified: the differentiating basis of the stage of life activity; immersion in accessible roles in the field of professional and labor activity and the formation of a value attitude to them; attention to work, the pattern of work of any profession, the formed attitude to work as a value; professional and labor traditions of the family, related features of family identity and family socio-professional trajectory; definition and implementation of personal and professional prospects; preservation and strengthening of personal-professional position.

ANCESTRY AND FAMILY IDENTITY IN SUETONIUS’ CAESARS

Suetonius’ Lives of the Caesars usually begin with a family tree. These family trees are often rhetorical, foreshadowing in the ancestors character traits that will be themes of the rest of the Life. This particular rhetorical strategy relies upon an older phenomenon of ‘family identity’—namely, the literary application of similar characteristics to people in the same family—such as the one that tells us that the Claudii are proud and the Domitii Ahenobarbi are ferocious. Gary Farney studied ‘family identity’ as a phenomenon of the Republic. There, it was the association of a family with a certain characteristic, a kind of ‘branding’. It would be perfectly obvious for Suetonius to use the family identities already in use for well-known families, but, as I show here, Suetonius’ selection of ancestors creates different family identities rather than simply using the traditional ones he would have found in other sources. In this study I concentrate on Nero and Tiberius. I focus on these two emperors because they are individuals where there is a known family identity in other sources and they also have the most detailed and elaborate ancestry sections in Suetonius’ Caesars. Family identity seems to be most interesting to Suetonius when it goes against expectations, and that is when Suetonius’ family trees are most elaborate.

A model for the development of family identity among future teachers

В настоящее время все более остро встают вопросы, касающиеся различных аспектов идентичности личности. Процесс глобализации общества ведет к тому, что индивиду предоставляется более широкий выбор жизненных сценариев. Такое многообразие отрицательно влияет на восприятие индивидом себя как целостной единицы. Это явление носит название кризиса идентичности личности и встречается повсеместно. В качестве основных причин возникновения кризиса идентичности личности можно выделить следующие: угрозы ядерных и техногенных катастроф, моральная безответственность членов общества, пропаганда антисоциальных форм поведения СМИ и др. Исследователи также фиксируюткризис семьи в российском обществе, выражающийся в трансформации семьи и девальвации семейных ценностей: узаконивание однополых браков во многих странах Европы; увеличение количества женщин и мужчин, не вступавших в брак; снижение рождаемости вследствие ориентации на бездетность; увеличение количества неполных семей; рост числа детей, оставшихся без попечения родителей и т.д. В данной статье раскрыта актуальность проблемы формирования семейной идентичности у будущих педагогов. Представлено описание теоретической разработки модели развития семейной идентичности студентов педагогических направлений подготовки. Раскрыто содержание блоков модели: концептуального, содержательного, организационно-деятельностного, технологического и результативно-диагностического. Currently, questions concerning various aspects of personal identity are becoming more and more acute. The process of globalization of society leads to the fact that the individual is given a wider choice of life scenarios. Such diversity negatively affects the individual's perception of himself as an integral unit. This phenomenon is called the identity crisis of the individual and is found everywhere. The following can be identified as the main causes of the identity crisis: threats of nuclear and man-made disasters, moral irresponsibility of members of society, propaganda of antisocial forms of media behavior, etc. Researchers also record the crisis of the family in Russian society, expressed in the transformation of the family and the devaluation of family values: the legalization of same-sex marriages in many European countries; an increase in the number of women and men who did not marry; a decrease in the birth rate due to orientation to childlessness; an increase in the number of single-parent families; the increase in the number of children left without parental care, etc. This article reveals the relevance of the problem of the formation of family identity among future teachers. A description of the theoretical development of a model for the development of family identity of students of pedagogical training areas is presented. The content of the model blocks is disclosed: conceptual, substantive, organizational and activity, technological and performance-diagnostic

Emerging adults’ preferred surnames: Reasons and social cognitive dispositions

Surname practices in the U.S. are believed to reflect and reinforce the enduring patriarchal nature of U.S. society. Yet, some women and men reject patriarchal expectations. Calls for research accounting for such individual variations have been made. We examine the role that dispositional differences play in preferences for and reasoning about marital surnames in a sample of U.S. heterosexual women and men. With an online survey, we examined 799 heterosexual unmarried emerging adults’ (mean age = 19.9) preferences for their own and a future partner’s surname, reasons for their preferences, and associations with social cognitive dispositions relevant to self- and other-orientations: narcissism and perspective-taking. The findings suggest greater flexibility about women’s surname preferences than previously reported. Approximately one-third of men and women were open to nontraditional options. Reasons for preferences included heritage, tradition, masculinity norms, conceptions of marriage and family, identity, family pressures, and practical reasons. After controlling for age, relational status, traditionalism, autonomy, and career aspirations, lower perspective-taking was predictive of women’s preferences for both partners to retain their birth names, whereas greater narcissism was associated with women’s preferences to retain their birth name. Greater narcissism was associated with men’s desires for both partners to use his name. Taken together, the addition of individual difference dispositions provides greater insight into surname preferences and reasons for those preferences beyond gender masculinity norms.

Transmission of family identity and consumer response: do consumers recognize family firms?

PurposeCommunicating the identity of a family business generates positive results in consumer response. The paper aims to understanding how the efficient transmission of family identity can influence consumer behavior is essential for designing family firms' marketing communication strategies.Design/methodology/approachAn experimental study based on the eye-tracking technique was designed to determine how attention to (familiar vs non-familiar) visual stimuli on a website influences consumer recognition of a family firm status and how it influences consumer behavior. A sample of 212 individuals was exposed to (simulated) websites of family and non-family firms in the hospitality industry to capture information about their eye movements and measure visual attention to specific stimuli that communicated family identity.FindingsVisual attention has a direct and positive influence on recognizing family firm's identity (FFI). Through FFI, visual attention has an indirect positive effect on trust in the company and attitude toward the brand (BraAtt). Trust in a firm positively affects purchase intention (PurInt).Originality/valueIt is known that consumers can perceive a FFI; however, there is no study on the sensory mechanisms operating in consumers' perceptions of family identity. The study contributes to understanding how consumers can perceive a FFI. This study proposes a novel method for evaluating consumer responses by transmitting family business identity on digital platforms.