9. The (In)visibility of Race, Ethnicity, and Religion: A Comparison of Mexican and Irish Americans in Chicago

• In Event: 408 - Visual Media Poster Presentation

Abstract

This comparative ethnographic study investigates the role of religion in the everyday lives of 2nd- and 3rd-generation Irish and Mexican Americans in Chicago. Based on life narratives, visual sociology, and ethnographic observation in homes and neighborhoods, I argue that race and class structure the form and extent to which everyday religion operates in these people’s lives. As a result of racial segregation, most of the Mexican participants live in ethnic neighborhoods that are simultaneously replete with visual symbols of Mexican Catholicism and concentrated levels of poverty and violence. Catholicism, even for former Catholics, is central to their everyday lives and anchors them to their ethnic background. Everyday Catholic prayers and rituals ask for safety from gang violence as well as stability in the face of material and existential uncertainty. As a result of the privilege of Whiteness, Irish Americans are not constrained by race and structural violence; thus, their Catholicism is more optional and less central to their everyday lives and decisions. Indeed, Irishness and Catholicsness are linked and embraced by the participants, however, this linkage is relatively inconsequential and symbolic, more akin to cultural enrichment than to the more necessary and consequential link of Mexicanness and Catholicness. In this particular presentation I will focus on the visual sociology component of my work by presenting my research through my own photographs and the photographs of my participants.

Author

• Christopher Robert Carroll, Northwestern University