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Triangle Atheists: Stigma, Identity, and Community Among Atheists in North Carolina's Triangle Region

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Date
2013
Author
Mann, Marcus
Advisors
Prasad, Leela
Chaves, Mark
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Abstract

While there has been much speculation among sociologists on what the rise of religious disaffiliation means in the long-term for American religiosity, and if it can be considered a valid measure of broader secularization, the issue of if and how explicitly atheist communities are normalizing irreligion in the United States has received little attention. Adopting an inductive approach and drawing on one year of exploratory ethnographic research within one atheist community in North Carolina's Triangle Region, including extensive participant-observation as well as nineteen in-depth interviews, I examine in what ways individuals within this community have experienced and interpreted stigma because of their atheistic views, how they have conceptualized and constructed their atheist identity, and how both of these things influence their motivations for seeking and affiliating with atheist organizations and communities. On all these measures I found great diversity among my interlocutors along with a popular desire to shift the focus of atheist organizations, within their own community and in the public sphere, in a positive and value-affirming direction. I consider how these findings might reflect broader trends in how atheism is conceived of and enacted in the contemporary United States and where organized atheism might be heading in the years to come.

Type
Master's thesis
Department
Religion
Subject
Religion
Sociology
atheism
atheist
atheist community
atheist ethnography
atheist identity
atheist stigma
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8275
Citation
Mann, Marcus (2013). Triangle Atheists: Stigma, Identity, and Community Among Atheists in North Carolina's Triangle Region. Master's thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8275.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Rights for Collection: Masters Theses


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