Constructed Realities
Deconstructing the Binary: Teaching Racial and Ethnic Identity in American Classrooms within the Context of Globalization
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michelle Diane Wright
The foundation of the Africana Studies discipline is the study of collective racial and ethnic identity formation within the African Diaspora. For more than two centuries, race in the American context has been fallaciously defined utilizing binary terms of Black and White without consideration of other possible equations. While recent DNA discoveries have proven race to be a social construct rather than biological fact, the categorization of people according to phenotypical characteristics persists and are generally dictated by governmental census definitions. As the world becomes culturally and socially more integrated, the binary structure of racial definitions in the United States has become obsolete. This fact however, creates a pedagogical challenge as most traditional college students enter the classroom with the binary paradigm firmly entrenched. This paper examines instructional methods that can assist American students in comprehending the myriad of understandings of race and ethnicity globally, and to reassess their discernment of a complex and ever-changing social construct that actually impacts their daily lives.
Masculinity, Femininity, and Trust in Government
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session David Jones, Monika Mc Dermott, Oksan Bayulgen, Jeffrey W. Ladewig
As Americans' trust in their government – most specifically Congress – has declined over the past half century, it has become increasingly important to answer the question of who does or does not trust government, and why. A popular avenue of inquiry has been into potential gender differences in trust. The evidence, however, is mixed. One possible reason for this is that studies may be focusing on the wrong interpretation of gender. Specifically, studies focus on biological sex as the key to trusting attitudes when the more appropriate explanatory variable is likely to be gendered personalities. The psychological literature has long demonstrated that common beliefs about sex effects are actually better explained by personalities, but this idea is relatively new to political science. Given that feminine individuals are more caring and compassionate while masculine personalities are more individualistic and tough – and that these personalities are not sex-specific – it makes sense that feminine personalities, not women, are the more trusting. This paper analyzes the effects of gendered personality traits on trust in government, demonstrating that feminine personalities are significantly more trusting of our governing institutions than are masculine personalities. It also examines what happens when individuals possess equally high levels of both sets of gendered traits – androgynous personalities – or low levels – the undifferentiated.
A Relational Construction of Social Class and Ethnicity : Introducing a New Mapping Tool
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Michael Donnelly
This paper introduces a new ‘mapping tool’ developed as part of a 3-year comparative study into spatial and social im/mobilities of young people - involving over 180 young people across 20 fieldwork sites across all four corners of the UK. A key focus of the project was to foreground geography in our understandings of young people’s university transitions and im/mobility intentions, capturing the diverse spatial vantage points from which their choices are oriented. The ‘mapping tool’ involves participants using different colours to express their subjective perceptions and feelings about the geography of the UK (in this case), which is then followed-up by an interview orientated around their map. Their map, like all maps, are visual representations of how these young people cognitively configure space, including the array of identities and resources that exist across it – it is their geography of the UK. Use of this tool in our research elicited rich spatial imaginaries of our participants, and we report here on its particular affordances for allowing a relational construction of social class and ethnic differences to be captured. We draw on interview data to show how the tool helped to reveal how young people came to define their classed and ethnic identities and orientations to mobility in relation to the perceived other. The distinctive characteristics of the tool - including its weak framing of space and place - allowed this relationality to come through in unique and in-depth ways during interviews.
