Part-Time Faculty 25
reflecting social values, 5) structural positioning of self in terms of membership within a
community, 6) structural positioning of self in terms of a complex bureaucratic system, and 7)
dangerous economic employment trend in social policy.
This range of perspectives illustrates the blurry borders that distinguish the dimensions of
“part-time” identity. “Part-time” has been traditionally understood as “less than full” with
negative connotations. “Part-time” is a division of time that allocates an exclusive activity.
However, this study indicates “part-time” as becoming normalized for individuals and socially
acceptable with fewer activities marked as “full-time.” Adjuncts describe their “part-timeness” as
a lifestyle that blends or weaves activities together, not as a lifestyle of exclusive activities that
are separated from each other. In “finding one’s own way” in life, experiences are not divisible
by a core (full-time) and a periphery (part-time). Individuals are taking responsibility and
organizing their lives around how they spend their time through negotiated activities. Based on
the results of these interviews, the constitutive communication framework of identity is useful
for describing “part-time” through the blended identity borderlands of self, work, and society.
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Mokros, H. B. (2002). Identity matters: Communication-based explorations and explanations.
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Convention