This research delves into the works of contemporary Kurdish novelist Sayyed Qadir Hedayati, specifically focusing on two of his novels: Bull Roar and Bardinah. These selected novels fall within the Bildungsroman genre, a category not commonly explored in Kurdish literature. The scarcity of such novels in the language prompted the investigation into the underlying reasons for their emergence in Hedayati's works. While Bildungsroman focuses on the formation of the individual, Hedayati's novels, very much like the early German cases of the genre, delineate the social and cultural concerns of a community. Through analysis, it is revealed that Kurdish Bildungsroman can flourish within specific historical and political contexts. The driving force behind the plot of these novels lies in the quest for identity in a controversial historical and political context. Hedayati utilizes the Bildungsroman genre to amplify the voices of a community that has grappled with marginalization. By doing so, he invites readers to immerse themselves in the intricate fabric of Kurdish life and development.

Drawing upon Darvin and Norton’s (2015) model of investment, this article examines how Xing and Jimmy (both pseudonyms) as two male Chinese English as a foreign language learners from rural migrant backgrounds negotiate their identities and assemble their social and cultural resources to invest in autonomous digital literacies for language learning and the assertion of a legitimate place in urban spaces. Employing a connective ethnographic design, this study collected data through interviews, reflexive journals, digital artifacts, and on-campus observations. Data were analyzed using an inductive thematic approach as well as within- and cross-case data analysis methods. The findings indicate that Xing and Jimmy experienced a profound sense of alienation and exclusion as they migrated from under-resourced rural spaces to the urban elite field. The unequal power relations in urban classrooms subjected them to marginalized and inadequate rural identities by denying them the right to speak and be heard. However, engaging with digital literacies in the wild allowed these migrant learners to access a wide range of linguistic, cultural, and symbolic resources, empowering them to reframe their identities as legitimate English speakers. The acquisition of such legitimacy enabled them to challenge the prevailing rural–urban exclusionary ideologies to claim the right to speak. This article closes by offering implications for empowering rural migrant students as socially competent members of the Chinese higher education system in the digital age.

This three-year longitudinal case study explored how trilingual Uyghur intranational migrant students utilized digital technologies to learn languages and negotiate their identities in Han-dominant environments during their internal migrations within China, a topic that has been scarcely researched before. Adopting a poststructuralist perspective of identity, the study traced four Uyghur students who migrated from underdeveloped southern Xinjiang to northern Xinjiang for junior high school education, and to more developed cities in eastern and southern China for senior high school education and higher education. A qualitative approach was adopted, utilizing semi-structured interviews, class and campus observations, daily conversations, WeChat conversations, participants’ reflections, and assignments. Findings reveal that Uyghur minority students utilized digital technologies to bridge the English proficiency gap with Han students, negotiate their marginalized identities, integrate into the mainstream education system, and extend the empowerment to other ethnic minority students. This was in sharp contrast to the significant challenges and identity crises they faced when they did not have access to digital technologies to learn Mandarin in boarding secondary schools. An unprecedented finding is that, with digital empowerment, Uyghur minority students could achieve accomplishments that were even difficult for Han students to attain and gain upward social mobility by finding employment in Han-dominant first-tier cities. The implications of utilizing digital technologies to support intranational migrant ethnic minority students’ language learning and identity development are discussed.

When affirmative action policies target more than one disadvantaged group, they contain uncertainty as to whether an individual who belongs to one of these groups was actually favored. In a laboratory experiment, we study how this feature affects outcomes of affirmative action in the form of quotas, and compare it with two other conditions, namely affirmative action with a certain favored group and no affirmative action. We find that when a group is favored with certainty and the social identity that triggers affirmative action is made salient, affirmed individuals are wrongly perceived as less competent, both by themselves and by others. Consequently, their willingness to compete does not increase and they are selected less for teamwork post competition. Affirmative action with uncertain favored groups does not distort belief in competence, and thus does not induce such unintended consequences. In contrast, it increases competition entry of the affirmed groups and enhances their chances of being selected for teamwork.

Coordination problems arise in many economic, political, and social situations. Many times, authorities and institutions are created to solve these coordination problems. However, the success of these institutions depends on whether people are willing to follow their prescriptions. Using a behavioral experiment on Amazon Mechanical Turk we analyze whether an authority can aid in solving hawk-dove coordination games and whether its success depends on a shared identity by the players. The authority is represented in our experiment by a randomizing device that recommends actions to players to implement a socially efficient correlated equilibrium. In the game, players are better off following the recommendations if they believe others will do as well. We investigate whether people are more likely to follow recommendations when they have a shared identity. We find that the device's success is not driven by group membership, but rather by the content of its recommendations.

Personality pathology is hypothesized to be an important factor in shaping identity, yet longitudinal evidence linking dimensional measures of identity and personality pathology remains scarce. To address this knowledge gap and shed light on the reciprocal dynamics proposed by the alternative model of personality disorder, we conducted a comprehensive seven-year study involving 372 emerging adults from a community sample (MageT1 = 21.98 years, SDT1 = 1.13; 57% females). Pathological personality traits were assessed using the short form of the Personality Inventory for DSM-5 (PID-5 SF) while identity was assessed with the Dimensions of Identity Development Scale (DIDS). Cross-lagged analyses in Mplus revealed that personality pathology consistently predicts subsequent different levels of identity seven years later, whereas only one significant pathway from identity to personality pathology was found. Notably, negative affectivity and detachment emerge as the most influential pathological personality trait, whereas no significant effects were found for disinhibition and psychoticism. In summary, our study uncovered compelling longitudinal associations that underscore the pivotal role of pathological personality traits in the development of identity. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.

Many efforts to persuade others politically employ interpersonal conversations. A recurring question is whether the participants in such conversations are more readily persuaded by others who share their demographic characteristics. Echoing concerns that individuals have difficulties communicating across differences, research finds that individuals perceive demographically similar people as more trustworthy, suggesting shared demographics could facilitate persuasion. In a survey of practitioners and scholars, we find many share these expectations. However, dual-process theories suggest that messenger attributes are typically peripheral cues that should not influence persuasion when individuals are effortfully thinking, such as during interpersonal conversations. Supporting this view, we analyze data from eight experiments on interpersonal conversations across four topics (total N = 6, 139) and find that shared demographics (age, gender, or race) do not meaningfully increase their effects. These results are encouraging for the scalability of conversation interventions, and suggest voters can persuade each other across differences.

For older adults requiring permanent care in nursing homes (or residential aged care facilities), there can be a tendency to feel disconnected from their sense of self. Digital storytelling has the potential to improve relationships and social connectedness, and encourage a sense of self and identity; however, there is little research on the implementation of this practice. A qualitative process evaluation was conducted with a sample of 12 volunteers who delivered a Digital Stories programme. The programme connected volunteers with socially isolated residents of nursing homes with the aim of engaging the residents to reminisce and contribute toward creating a digital story about their lives. The study aimed to understand enablers of and barriers to implementing the programme in nursing homes, from the perspective of volunteers. Thematic analysis resulted in several overarching themes and sub-themes. The enablers of implementation included skills and characteristics of the volunteers (e.g. adaptable to residents’ needs), specific features of the programme (e.g. having a shared goal) and support from the nursing home staff. The barriers to implementation included individual traits of the resident (e.g. low capacity for engagement), limitations associated with the prescribed protocol, and managing perspectives regarding what stories are told. Volunteers also made suggestions for future programme development. Implications for successful future digital storytelling projects include ensuring a manualised approach to the program while allowing for flexibility in delivery, careful recruitment of residents and volunteers, and providing comprehensive training and education to volunteers.

One of the problems with the problem of world order is that what makes for order within societies is often precisely what makes for disorderly relations between them. I argue in this short essay that many of the problems with the problem of world order arise from assumptions that are widely shared within a discipline where the language of power and interest dominates and where a view of states as “like units” permeates. With more emphasis on values and visions of the good life, and acceptance that the ontological foundation of IR is difference rather than sameness, the debates about the problem of world order would take on a different form. The essay adapts the work of Hedley Bull and introduces the concept of “resilience-governance” to distinguish between resilience as a practice of self-governance taking place within ordering domains and resilience as a practice of “diversity-governance” taking place between ordering domains. The combination of the two allows for a bifocal view into how practices of resilience as self-governance may produce order within individual domains but will at the same time increase diversity and difference between the ordering domains, hence making the practices of resilience as diversity-governance much more challenging.