Identity enactment as collective accomplishment: Religious identity enactment at home and at a festival

Stephen Reicher,Nick Hopkins,Kavita Pandey,Shail Shankar,Clifford Stevenson,Shruti Tewari

doi:10.1111/bjso.12415

Abstract

Much research addresses the proposition that identifying with a group shapes individuals' behaviour. Typically, such research employs experimental or survey methods, measuring or manipulating social identification and relating this to various outcome variables. Although shedding much light on the processes involved in the identity-behaviour relationship, such research tends to overlook the various constraints that limit individuals' abilities to act in accordance with their identities. Using interview data gathered in north India, we explore the factors affecting the enactment of a religious identity. More specifically, using data gathered at a religious mass gathering, we compare and contrast participants' reports of identity enactment when they are at the event and when they are in their home villages. These two contexts differ in terms of their social organization, especially the degree to which they are marked by the presence of a shared identity. Exploring participants' accounts of such differences in social organization, we consider the social processes that constrain or facilitate identity enactment. In so doing, our analysis contributes to a richer analysis of the identity-behaviour relationship.

Highlights

It is one thing to identify and endorse certain identity-related positions, and it is another to be able to act upon them: We live in a world of constraint. Such constraints may originate in the active opposition of others. They may arise less through active opposition but through the ways in which others fail to act in ways that accord with our social identification
We argue that if we are to appreciate the more mundane constraints on identity enactment, we should explore the shifts in social relations that occur when people view themselves and others as sharing a social group membership and identity
A religious mass gathering has none of the drama of a protest crowd, our comparison of participants’ understandings of how their mass gathering experience contrasts with their everyday experience suggests that identity enactment is something of a social and collective accomplishment and that this is easier in the Mela than at home

Summary

Introduction

We consider the contrasts participants drew between the informal social organization of life at home and in the Mela and how these shaped their ability to enact religious practices and pursue spiritual concerns. In these two extracts (4 and 5), our interviewees’ contrasts between the experience of life at the Mela and at home focused on how routine village interactions associated with non-religious identities impacted their ability to enact their religious values and orient to spiritual concerns.

Results

Conclusion