Growing up as a Second-Generation White American Hindu: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach to an Ethnographic Study
Social Sciences
SOCY 195C
This senior thesis aims to explore the experience of growing up as a second-generation White American Hindu, and this groups’ sense of social belonging and creation of personal identity in the Western world as adults. I will be using the lens of symbolic interactionism from George Herbert Mead (2015 [1934]), Erving Goffman (1956), Herbert George Blumer (1969), and Tamotsu Shibutani (2009 [1961]), who laid a foundation for studying identity formation in society. By applying Shibutani’s framework for the creation of personal identity and reference group theory, along with definitions of religion by Emile Durkheim (2001 [1912]), I will analyze what it means to be part of this subgroup in American. Looking back at California in the early 1970s-80s, many individuals who were of different religious backgrounds converted to Hinduism and became devotees following the customs, culture, religion, and traditions of South Indian Hinduism through the Saiva Siddhanta Church, a legally recognized religious organization that follows the Saivite Hindu Traditions. This research project specifically studied the people who were born and raised in the Saiva Siddhanta Church. Through in-depth interviews of 12 participants, five key themes were explored: belief and definition of self, religion versus ethnicity, communicating and connecting with others, gender roles, and a general understanding and personal explanation of the respondents experiences. In conclusion, it can be seen that Shibutani’s reference group theory has two key flaws. First, it does not address when there are two competing dominant reference groups. Secondly, it does not speak to how one navigates the social world when there is no reference group that applies to one’s life.
