Strategic ethnicity: the construction of multi-racial/multi-ethnic religious community
This article highlights through one case the way in which religious organizations provide an exploratory space for maintaining, reclaiming, and altering aspects of racial and ethnic identity within a racially and ethnically integrated community. Utilizing data from in-depth interviews and participan...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Routledge
2006
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| In: |
Ethnic and racial studies
Year: 2006, Volume: 29, Issue: 5, Pages: 856-881 |
| Further subjects: | B
Ethnicity
B Usa B Relationstechnik B Interrogation B Religion B Development B Church congregation B Identity B Protestant B Culture B Vereinigte Staaten Los Angeles / Cal Religion Church congregation Protestanten Ethnicity Identity Development Culture Relationstechnik Befragung |
| Summary: | This article highlights through one case the way in which religious organizations provide an exploratory space for maintaining, reclaiming, and altering aspects of racial and ethnic identity within a racially and ethnically integrated community. Utilizing data from in-depth interviews and participant observation in Southern California, the author suggests that within the organizational culture of the congregation, church leaders and individual members recursively construct an integrated identity through 1) the public framing and articulation of goals, 2) their religious organizational structure and resources, and, 3) the lived experiences of members. The author argues that a perceived reciprocal legitimacy emerges in this process through which religious claims affirm integration goals while, at the same time, observable integration within the congregation strengthens the acceptance of religious doctrine. The author offers strategic ethnicity as a useful way of thinking about the transformation of racial experience and ethnicity into collective and individual tools within American Protestant congregations. (Ethnic and Racial Studies, ECMI) |
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| ISSN: | 0141-9870 |
| Contains: | In: Ethnic and racial studies
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