The purpose of this study was to investigate how refugee youth from Burma construct their identities while navigating the United States education system and society, through the methods of narrative analysis. To this end, this study focused on identitymaking and the learning experiences of Burmese refugee youth, and included research questions such as: "How do refugee youth from Burma narrate their lives, experiences and identities living in the United States?" and "What sources of capital/knowledge do these students describe having?" The data used in this study were interviews conducted as part of a larger longitudinal research project, Community Voices: Stories of Family, Culture and Education, investigated by Sofia Villenas, Cornell University. This larger study explores how a community makes sense of racial inequity and social justice within their school district. Participants for this thesis included four Burmese youth (three female, one male) from two different ethnic groups, three from the Burman ethnic majority, and one from the Karen ethnic minority group; they ranged in ages 15 to 19. These youths discussed diverse "refugee" experiences, which were reflected in the way they self-identified. Their narratives described the acceptance, rejection, and construction of multiple identities as a result of their lived-experiences. As they shared their stories, these youths illustrated numerous cultural and experiential resources that were drawn upon in order to facilitate the process of activating agency. Although each narrative was unique, this analysis attempts to add to our knowledge of the experiences of refugee youth in U.S. schools and communities. Their voices push us to question further what it means to be a "refugee," or to be "American," and how we can better incorporate their knowledges and perspectives in the classroom.!

The complex and sometimes contradictory articulation of ethnicity, religion and gender informs this book on the cultural construction of identity for Jamaican migrants in Britain. The author argues that religion -- in this case Pentecostalism -- cannot be understood simply as a means of spiritual compensation for the economically disadvantaged. Rather, in the New Testament Church of God, one of Britain's largest African Caribbean churches, the cosmology of the church resolves the questions surrounding identity as well as suffering. Religious participation is one way in which African Caribbean people negotiate the terms of representation and interaction in British society.

Women Activating Agency in Academia seeks to create and expand safe spaces for scholarly, professional and personal stories and assemblages of agency. It provides readers with the opportunity to connect with the strategies women are using to navigate academe and the core values, linked to trust, relationship, wellbeing and ethics of care, they live by. The collection offers the stories of women academics from around the globe and across disciplines and showcases their efforts to meaningfully listen and converse in order to resist self-audit and diminished identities. Reflections come from a range of responsive, personal and aesthetic techniques, including writing groups, guided autobiography, auto-ethnography, collective activism and slow scholarship. Chapters engage with themes and ideas such as agency, neoliberalism, ontological security, androcentricity, identity and collegial support, which manifest in unique ways for female academics. The focus in this volume is what really matters to women in the academy, as they share their efforts to ‘be’ themselves in their work, to ‘care for themselves and others’ and to ‘count what isn’t counted’. It aims to prove how collaborative storytelling and discussion can empower female academics to preserve and achieve these ambitions.

This volume provides a distinctive overview and analysis of the place of social constructionism in social psychology. The author′s arguments revolve around two key questions: How can social constructionism account for changes in human identities? In what ways might social constructionism accommodate a role for nonhumans - whether technological or `natural′ - in the constitution of identity? Michael locates these questions between recent innovations in social psychology and the highly influential contributions of actor-network theory, which has come to dominate the sociology of scientific knowledge.

This book presents a new agency paradigm that can resolve complex socio-political situations in cross-cultural environments.

This book brings theory from popular music studies to an examination of identity and agency in youth films while building on, and complementing, film studies literature concerned with genre, identity, and representation. McNelis includes case studies of Hollywood and independent US youth films that have had commercial and/or critical success to illustrate how films draw on specific discourses surrounding popular music genres to convey ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and other aspects of identity. He develops the concept of ‘musical agency’, a term he uses to discuss the relationship between film music and character agency, also examining the music characters listen to and discuss, as well as musical performances by the characters themselves

Based on the experiences of Mayan women, Stern critically re-considers the connections between security, subjectivity and identity. By engaging in a careful reading of how Mayan women "speak" security in relation to the different contexts that inform their lives, she explores the multiplicity of both identity and security, and questions the main story of security imbedded in the modern "paradox of sovereignty."