Non-religious identities in Argentina: visibility, differentiation and perceived social recognition

RABBIA, HUGO H.

Barcelona

Congreso; 35th International Conference of the ISSR/SISR (International Society for the Sociology of Religion); 2019

International Society for the Sociology of Religion

The number of religiously unaffiliated people have been growing in Argentina during the last decades. ?Unaffiliated? refers to a heterogeneous segment of population that includes unaffiliated believers, indifferent, atheists, and ?spiritual but not religious?. Each position refers to different ways of living and contesting a social-discursive space of the "non-religious", including collective apostasy actions.Based on in-depth interviews to 22 unaffiliated from Cordoba/Argentina, the study explores their identifications as personal narratives, configured from an inter-group differentiation process between a religious other (?Them?) and a disputed ?We?. From a micro-sociological and relational perspective, narratives referred to several daily experiences when feelings of ?otherness? have emerged related to instances of visibility of the non-religious identities. These situations enable us to discuss the perceived social recognition of non-religious identities in a context where Christian religious tradition, especially Catholicism, are viewed as predominant but contested