Resisting “the World of the Powerful”: “Wild” Steam and the Creation of Yellowstone National Park

In this essay, I argue that steam operates as a critical, other-than-human actor in the establishment of Yellowstone National Park and a broader, colonial posture towards the natural world that reflects a sharp division between nature and culture on the settler landscape—reiterating what Marisol de la Cadena and Mario Blaser call “the world of the powerful,” and a “world where only one world fits” (2018, pp 2-3). By appearing in contradictory contexts of powerful engines and pristine nature, steam was bifurcated into natural and cultural registers in order to justify the establishment of the natural park and the colonists’ claim to Yellowstone as “property,” foreclosing alternative relationships to the land such as those of the region’s Indigenous residents. Approaching this research from the perspective of a settler on Indigenous lands, I am invested in engaging new materialist and ecological methodologies in the important work of decolonial critique. Adopting Nathan Stormer’s (2016) “new materialist genealogy” and Nathaniel Rivers’ (2015) treatment of wildness in service of a decolonial agenda, I demonstrate how steam’s inherent repulsion to nature/culture dichotomies contests the very idea of the park itself, Yellowstone’s importance to the settler state’s expansion into the west, and its popular understanding as an exemplar of environmental politics. Further, this essay provides a methodological and theoretical intervention for new materialist and ecological scholarship to support decolonial projects in solidarity with Indigenous resistance. By unraveling dominant discourses that persist in collective identification with Yellowstone, the borders of the park that denote iconicity and exemplarity, unspoiled nature from capitalist development, become brittle, fragile, and so, too, does their dominance in discourses about environmentalism. By disrupting Yellowstone and undermining its dominance, we can demonstrate, unequivocally, that another world—indeed worlds—are possible.

La movilización de los pensionistas en España como proceso de construcción y aprendizaje de una nueva identidad colectiva

El movimiento de los pensionistas en 2018 supuso la primera movilización multitudinaria basada en una identidad colectiva de personas mayores en España, y mostró una capacidad de contestación popular sin precedentes en el tema de las pensiones. Este trabajo indaga en el proceso de configuración de la identidad colectiva como estrategia analítica que permite entender la aparición y la naturaleza (exitosa) de la movilización. Siguiendo la conceptualización de Melucci, este proceso se analiza desde una doble perspectiva. Por un lado, como estrategia de actores colectivos que persiguen articular la contestación popular a la política de pensiones puestas en marcha durante la Gran Recesión. Aquí, el análisis se centra en identificar el proceso organizativo en el que se sientan las bases identitarias del movimiento, y que se extenderían con éxito en la fase posterior de contestación masiva. Por otro lado, se presta atención a la naturaleza de la identificación entre los propios pensionistas como resultado de procesos de aprendizaje durante sus experiencias de movilización. Para la primera perspectiva, el trabajo se basa en informaciones obtenidas en noticias de prensa sobre las actividades de protesta y en documentos producidos por las organizaciones del movimiento. La perspectiva individual de los participantes se fundamenta en el análisis de los discursos obtenidos en entrevistas personales focalizadas a participantes. Este doble enfoque, como estrategia organizativa intencionada y como proceso de aprendizaje durante la experiencia de la movilización, ofrece informaciones clave para comprender no solo el proceso, inédito en España, de construcción de una voz propia de los pensionistas sino también para indagar en los procesos de aprendizaje y cambio actitudinal que implican para los participantes corrientes. En un sentido más amplio, esta estrategia de análisis permite igualmente, por un lado, ubicar el proceso de movilización de los pensionistas en una trayectoria temporal más amplia de contestación popular y, en particular, vincularlo a los legados del ciclo de movilización que protagonizó el 15-M. Por otro lado, también permite destacar esos procesos de contestación como espacios de aprendizaje en los que se modelan actitudes, valores y demás elementos de la cultura de protesta. The pensioners' movement in 2018 was the first mass mobilization based on a collective identity of older people in Spain, and showed an unprecedented capacity for popular contestation on the issue of pensions. This paper inquires into the process of collective identity configuration as an analytical strategy that allows us to understand the emergence and (successful) nature of the mobilisation. Following Melucci's conceptualization, this process is analysed from a double perspective. On the one hand, as a strategy of collective actors seeking to articulate popular contestation to the pension policies implemented during the Great Recession. Here, the analysis focuses on identifying the organizational process in which the identity bases of the movement are established and, which were successfully extended in the subsequent phase of mass protest. On the other hand, attention is paid to the nature of the collective identification among pensioners themselves as result of learning processes during their protest experiences. The analysis of the organizational configuration of the movement is based on information obtained from press reports on the protest activities and documents produced by the movement's organizations. The individual perspective of the participants relies on the analysis of the discourses obtained in focused interviews with participants. This dual approach, as an intentional organizational strategy and as a learning process during the mobilization experience, provides key information to understand not only the process, unprecedented in Spain, of building a voice for pensioners, but also to investigate the learning processes and attitudinal change involved for ordinary participants. More broadly, it also allows, on the one hand, to place the process of mobilization of pensioners in a broader temporal trajectory of popular contestation and, in particular, to link it to the legacies of the cycle of mobilization in the wake of the 15-M movement. On the other hand, it also allows us to observe protest as learning spaces in which attitudes, values, and other elements of the culture of protest are modelled.

Shared Leadership and Team Performance: The Joint Effect of Team Dispositional Composition and Collective Identification

This study explores how team core self-evaluations (CSE) influence the emergence and effectiveness of shared leadership. Drawing on adaptive leadership theory, we propose that decisions to share leadership responsibilities rather than allocating the role to a single team member are influenced by homogeneity in members’ CSE. In addition, we identify team collective identification as an emergent team state that interacts with CSE homogeneity to promote the emergence of shared leadership. We then argue that not all shared leadership teams are equally effective; applying group social capital theory, we propose that team mean CSE strengthens the impact of shared leadership on team performance. Results based on multisource and time-lagged data from 85 project teams provide support for our proposed moderated mediation model. We discuss how our theoretical model extends research on the role of team dispositional composition on the antecedents and consequents of shared leadership and highlight practical implications related to the design, recruitment, and socialization of autonomous work teams.

Rituals of Vocational Socialisation: Faith-Building in Higher Vocational Education for Weak-Form Occupational Pathways

This paper addresses the question of how higher vocational education and training programmes socialise participants for future work, where the occupational pathways they are to embark on are weakly defined. The analysis focuses on organisational rituals as a means to understand individual and collective transformative processes taking place at a particular intersection of education and labour markets. Building on organisational and sociological theories of rituals, as well as drawing empirically from a longitudinal qualitative interview study of a cohort of students in Swedish higher vocational education for work in digital data strategy, I explore how rituals are enacted in a vocational education and training setting and what these rituals mean to the aspirants who partake in them. The findings illustrate how rituals initiate, convert, and locate the participants in a team. These repeated encounters with rituals socialise, cultivate and build vocational faith amongst participants, despite the nascency and unstable nature of their education-to-work pathways. However, while rituals can serve as a catalyst to ignite processes of collective identification and vocational socialisation, they are not always successful. The paper discusses implications of faith-building in weak-form occupational pathways when the labour market is strong and conversely, when the economy is in recession. The text concludes by advocating the need for examining the power of educational institutions in shaping transitional experiences of participants in vocational education.

“Blonde makes you strong”: Embodiment, intersubjectivity, and feminist reflexivity

Drawing on theoretical discussions that explore embodiment as a critical realm for the articulation of subjugated agency, I focus in this paper on the manner in which hair color has become a visual sign, a code that marks social boundaries and gendered ethno-class identities in contemporary Israel. Empirically, this essay aims to explore the manner in which Mizrahi women craft their own subjectivity in relation to dominant discourses through their blonde embodied practice. Using three ethnographic vignettes I argue that the blonde performance of my interlocutors cannot be understood as mere mimicry of, or reaction to, the imagined Israeli collective identification as White European. It is rather a creative act of self-fashioning that brings joy and self-affirmation to its practitioners and at the same time, at a collective level, it is a practice that poses a symbolic threat that works to fragment hegemonic Israeli claims to Whiteness

The role of regional identity in the structure of collective identities of the student youth of the Republic of Mordovia

This article studies the structure of collective identities of modern student youth. The subject of the authors’ scientific interest is the role of regional identity in the structure of collective identities of young people in the Republic of Mordovia. The specifics of regional identity as a form of collective identification, its mobility, contextuality, heterogeneity, latency, productivity, and collective genesis are considered in detail. The priority of purposeful construction of positive regional identity as an effective tool for the preservation and development of human capital at the regional level is substantiated. The methodological framework of the study is based on the works by V. A. Tishkov, V. A. Yadov, and M. P. Krylov. The empirical basis of the study includes the data from a mass survey of student youth in the Republic of Mordovia (2020, questionnaire, quota sample, n = 414). Based on the collected empirical material, the regional component of students’ collective identity is comprehensively analyzed. According to the data obtained, identification with the regional community belongs to the identities of the modal level. Only a third (32%) of the surveyed students have a positive regional identity, while the majority of young people in Mordovia identify themselves with the region only nominally. The pronounced emotional component of regional identity is mostly characteristic of the representatives of the titular (Mordovian) nationality. The authors emphasize that in this case, the merging of ethnic and regional identities does not have any conflict potential, because the majority of the respondents perceive Mordovia as a full-fledged subject of the Russian Federation. The conclusion is made about the necessity of diversifying “image projects” in order to build a positive image of the republic among young people.

“I’m with her” or “we’re with her”? Personal versus group leader-based identities and types of political participation

In a region where personalistic politics and charismatic leaders have long been a characteristic of the political landscape, there has been little research exploring the relationship between individuals’ identification with leaders and its relationship with political participation. Using original survey data from Argentina in 2016, the findings from this study demonstrate a few key points. Firstly, that identities form around political leaders and that identification plays an important role in political participation. Secondly, while personal identification with a leader is related with atomized and collective participation, the relationship between collective identification that is shared with other supporters of the political leader and both types of participation is even stronger. Additionally, these identification measures are more strongly associated with political action in support of a leader than frequently used variables such as partisan identification and ideology. This suggests that the study of political participation, especially in those contexts with more personalized political systems such as are often found in Latin America, should not ignore the role of personal and especially group leader-based identity.

Estudio del comportamiento de consumo del surfista español. Una aproximación desde la perspectiva profesional

This article analyzes the practice and consumption of surfing in Spain in order to broaden the study of the Spanish surfer from a consumption perspective. Through a methodology of qualitative approach based on the realization of a panel of experts with the eight most representative managers of Spanish surfing brands and the celebration of four focus groups integrated by Spanish surfers, it is intended to know if both the practice as the consumption of this activity implies some kind of social implication in its condition as a space for collective identification. The results indicate that, although it is a fully socially developed sport, there is no evidence that its practice motivates or strengthens social ties between Spanish surfers.

«They drank tea, they struck spoons...»: ethnocultural identity in the tea drinking practices of Russian Siberians in the 19th — early 20th century

On the basis of original field materials, the author set a goal to reveal the identifying functions of the food cul-ture, particularly, of such a characteristic component of the Northern Eurasian population as hot drinks (teas), in different ethnocultural groups of Siberia: descendants of the old settlers and later Russian migrants, old-believers and followers of the official church. The practices of Siberian tea-drinking have been studied from the perspective of ethnocultural identity within the framework of the mundanity theory. It is the folk customs and beliefs related to the consumption of decoctions of local herbs and later of Chinese leaves (tea) that provide opportunity to infer the place of hot drinks in people’s culture. The author reports interesting facts about the traditions of Siberian tea-drinking and table etiquette in the countryside. Chinese tea-drinking from samovars (table boiling tanks) was not embraced by the old-believers and by some Russian migrants in the late 19th — early 20th c. (South-Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), where the former refrain due to “suspicious glare” of the surface resembling snake-skin, while the latter by the slimy samovars. In Siberia, the spread of the tea-drinking with Chinese leaf coincided with formation of local old-settler population in the 17th—18th centuries and therefore it can be regarded as an old custom for the service-class people and Cossacks. The fact that the Chinese tea was relatively a novation in the culture of the Siberian population is evidence by that it was not part of the ceremonial practices (e.g., family), in contrast to various herbal brews and kisels (jellies). Siberian tea-drinking traditions of the old-settlers (apart from the old-believers) had strong influence on formation of the regional and ethnocultural identity of the Siberians, in the wide sense of the term as Siberia locals. The established traditions can be considered as a consequence of integration processes amongst the Slavic people in Siberia. The tea-drinking traditions support the conjecture that the differentiation process (comparative evaluation) was accompanied by another process — cultural interference and is inextricably linked to the cognitive process — collective identification, which inhibits non-critical adoption of ‘extraneous’ traditions.