Full Description
This book focuses on the experience of leaving unusual or extreme situations: from military careers to religious communities, subcultures, criminal groups and political leadership. It explores how people become disillusioned with and disengaged from these social worlds, challenging their sense of self-identity and cultural belonging. Each chapter considers how participants negotiate the process of 'role exit' and adjust to their new identity back in the everyday world. Drawing on symbolic interactionist and existentialist theories, the authors discuss how ex-members dismantle and rebuild their lives in a search for personal meaning.
Contents
1. Introduction.- 2. The Reinventive Self: War Veterans' Accounts of Trauma, Disillusionment and Reparation.- 3. Exiting an Offender Role: White-Collar Offenders' Sense of Self and the Demonstration of Change.- 4. When Certainty Cracks: Early Identity-Change Work among Women Exiting High-Cost Religion.- 5. Women Leaving and Losing in Politics: Eulogy Work on a Public Stage.- 6. Identity in Reverse: Exploring 'Broken Typifications' and Calibrating 'Depth' in Interpretive Inquiry with Ex-Straightedgers.- 7. From Free to Exoneree: A Narrative Analysis of Ex-treme Identity Processes as Expressed through Autobiographical Accounts of Exonerees.- 8. Caring for and Containing the Hateful Other: Schools' Strategies to Deal with Students with Neo-Nazi Convictions.
