Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract:  This paper develops a minimal dynamic model for the acquisition and loss of network contacts in ego networks. The model shows a simple relationship between the rate at which contacts are gained, the rate of loss, and the number of contacts observed in cross-section. The model produces a novel interpretation for the characteristics of tie strength in ego networks. Some conclusions based on the analysis of the model include: (1) any theory of ego networks must have a model of both the creation and
destruction of ties, (2) the dynamics of tie strength are underspecified at present, (3) current methods of gathering data on ego networks provide virtually no information on weak ties, and (4) specifying the absence of ties is both more important, and more problematic than previously recognized. The paper concludes with some applications of the model.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In the broad arc of postmodern scholarship, the unitary, solid, and willful ego of the Enlightenment subject has been thoroughly deconstructed and discredited. Freud's reality testing ego from "The Ego and the Id" has been replaced by the Lacanian ego that can only fantasize itself as a unity across a chasm of separation and lack, inevitably split in multiple directions by desire. Although the site of the modern ego's formation, Lacan's metaphorical "mirror stage," has occasioned a tremendous amount of theorizing (most especially the "lack" that the resulting ego formation suffers from), the fantasy of ability that actually constitutes the ego has received little attention.

In this paper, I examine the birth, life, and death of this ego from a disability studies perspective. An ego that is born out of a willful fantasy of ability remains trapped by that fantasy, and threatened by the prospect of inability. First, I will historicize this ego to the modern West, with its obsessive individualism and meritocratic ideology, which exalts the power of the individual will as the true sign of moral character. Then I will examine a reconstituting practice of the willful ego, the magically bizarre media sensation known as "inspiration," in which people supposed to be overwhelmed by the degenerative body "overcome" it through the sheer force of their will. I conclude with a look at the "Death with Dignity" movement and its insistence that bodily death is preferable when the ego fears its dissolution in total dependence on others.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: International political economy tends, despite its efforts to provide differentiated, located and complex theoretical accounts of everyday life, to reify subjects treating them like ‘ghosts’ (Drainville 2004; Davies 2006). Through the combining of insights in the work of Walter Benjamin, David Harvey and Henri Lefebvre, this paper seeks to develop a more vivid and complex account of subject-formation in the economy. By putting subject-object relations in the constitution of everyday space at the forefront of inquiry into the economy, this paper serves to concretise the historical study of uneven development and its impact on subject-formation. The layered and embodied ego, as described by Susan Buck-Morss in her study of Benjamin’s interpretation of Freud (1992), provides the basis for an understanding of active and complex participants in the economy. As such, issues of participation and resistance in the international political economy can be better understood.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The “creative class” is a growing stratum of the American labor consisting of nomadic workers who master self-promotion for economic survival. Using ethnographic and interview data from a Los Angeles church with a majority of attenders from the entertainment industry, the paper demonstrates how a congregation provides moral guidance that channels believers such that the pursuit of fame and fortune is viewed as a veneer for the real self who, in concert with the moral community, reshapes society to be more congruent with their religious beliefs. This ego-affirming evangelicalism suggests religious structures that accommodate individual “greatness” within a cohesive community will be embraced by creative class workers seeking both inspiration and consolation in the midst of occupational uncertainty.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Authors of basic public speaking course textbooks frequently encourage students to select speech topics in which they have vested interest, care deeply about, and hold strong opinions and beliefs. Consequently, instructors are likely to encourage students to take this advice. This study explores students’ ego-involvement with speech topics in the basic communication course, examines possible changes in students’ ego-involvement scores, and explores possible ego-involvement predictors of speech grades. Pedagogical implications and areas for future research are discussed.