Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

SAGETRACK

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by PATERNITI, D. A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

The Micropolitics of Identity in Adverse Circumstance

A Study of Identity Making in a Total Institution

DEBORA A. PATERNITI

Veterans Affairs Medical Center and Baylor College of Medicine

This article is about the micropolitics of identity construction by residents in a total institution. Data come from two hundred hours of participant observation during a four-month period of full-time employment as a nurse aide. Interactional analysis of observations suggests that residents' personal narratives, whether real or imagined, become who some residents conceive themselves to be and define residents' expectations for interactional others. Changes in institutional culture occur as staff begin to recognize in interaction the ways residents think of themselves. The narrative accounts and interactional struggles to define self that the author discovered in the institution are not unlike conceptions and processes of identity construction, maintenance, and change that confront all human actors. These accounts provide insight into the liberating possibilities of personal identity claims.

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, No. 1, 93-119 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/089124100129023837
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Youth SocietyHome page
L. S. Abrams and A. Hyun
Mapping a Process of Negotiated Identity Among Incarcerated Male Juvenile Offenders
Youth Society, September 1, 2009; 41(1): 26 - 52.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Journal of Contemporary EthnographyHome page
N. C. Jurik, G. Cavender, and J. Cowgill
Resistance and Accommodation in a Post-Welfare Social Service Organization
Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, February 1, 2009; 38(1): 25 - 51.
[Abstract] [PDF]