Abstract
Scholars have argued that activist identity narratives are key to social movement participation and commitment, but there are few in-depth analyses of identity construction processes that take place in social movement organizations. This study of a faith-based community organizing group, ELIJAH, draws upon interviews, participant observation, and archival data to address this. The findings indicate that ELIJAH leaders go through parallel processes of politicizing their personal experiences and personalizing their political beliefs. These processes result in a politicized personal narrative that motivates sustained activism by making involvement in social change efforts an integral part of individual identity. This study contributes to the literature on identity and narrative in social movements by demonstrating how an organization can intentionally cultivate activist identities using narrative.
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Notes
In some accounts, organizations of this type are referred to as congregation-based community organizing groups (CBCOs) or institution-based community organizing groups (IBCOs). In this account, I will use the term faith-based community organizing or FBCO.
All names and locations have been removed and pseudonyms are used. ELIJAH is not an acronym.
One exception to this is Reger (2004), who demonstrates how organizational processes can direct participants’ cognitive and emotional processes, creating solidarity and increasing commitment to activism.
Only three individuals in the interview sample reported that they were no longer involved with ELIJAH, all of which cited biographical availability and time constraints as their reason for suspending their involvement.
It is important to note that the Path to Power training has been conducted in many contexts by different trainers. Archival data indicates that at national weeklong trainings offered by one FBCO national network, this training has followed a similar format since at least the 1990s.
These numbers are based on evidence from the interviews. In the analysis, a person exhibits politicization of the personal if that person connects her political activism with a personal experience or describes being encouraged to do this by ELIJAH. A person exhibits personalization of the political if she considers the personal implications of moral beliefs, social issues, or her own political behavior and implies that the moral/political dimension existed before the understanding of its personal relevance; often this happened in the context of describing how ELIJAH training helped the respondent “see” the connection between political and personal.
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Acknowledgments
Thank you to my research subjects who made this project possible. I would like to thank Korie Edwards for her extremely helpful guidance and advice throughout the research and writing process. Thank you also to Andrew Martin, Townsand Price-Spratlen, Hahrie Han, David Smilde, Justin Schupp, and Lindsay Ibanez for their useful comments on various drafts of this paper. Finally, anonymous reviewers for Qualitative Sociology provided detailed feedback. This research was supported by a Silverman Research Support grant from the Ohio State Sociology Department.
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Oyakawa, M. “Turning Private Pain Into Public Action”: The Cultivation of Identity Narratives by a Faith-Based Community Organization. Qual Sociol 38, 395–415 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-015-9313-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-015-9313-4