‘So They Could Travel By Day or Night’: Traversing Space and the Religious Identity

• In Event: 4467 - Section on Social Psychology Refereed Roundtables (Cosponsored with Section on Sociology of Emotions)
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 9: Religion

Abstract

Within identity theory, researchers distinguish between large, intermediate, and proximate social structures which have been shown to impact individuals' self-structures by shaping interactional probabilities. To date, scholars have paid the least attention to intermediate social structure despite its important role in facilitating and/or constraining individuals’ abilities to reach the physical locations where they can regularly enact a given identity. In order to address this gap, this research seeks to examine how the physical layout of the social world impacts the identity process. Specifically, I examine how the effort required to traverse space to reach a given place is an element of intermediate social structure that shapes how regularly one comes into contact with identity related others at that place. In so doing, I also examine how the frequency of attending a place impacts who one knows in the given identity context, and how this in part determines the location of an identity with the prominence and salience hierarchies. Using the religious identity as the identity of interest, I examine these relationships using survey data collected from 300 individuals in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. The findings support the propositions that the easier it is to reach a place, the more frequently that place will be visited and thereby the greater the proportion of one’s regular social contacts who share the religious identity. The importance of these findings to identity theory and its connection to place and space in sociology more broadly is also discussed.

Author

• Timothy Richard Rose, Kent State University