Media, Meaning and Religious Identity in the Postmodern Context: The Case of Adolescents and their Families
Presented at the annual meeting of the Society for Scientific Study of ReligionNovember, 1996, St. Louis

by Lynn Schofield Clark
Doctoral Candidate

School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Campus Box 287, University of ColoradoBoulder, CO 80309-0287
Lynn.Clark@Colorado.EDU
(303) 492-1357

Introduction

"Identity" is a term that has gained renewed salience recently in the field of mass media, and in cultural studies in general . With the challenge to both metanarratives and the stable subject, postmodern thinkers have taught us that identity - both individual and cultural/collective - cannot be thought of as something which is isolated, or which develops along a certain progressive trajectory. Instead, we increasingly understand identity as something that is processural, performed for specific audiences, and constructed from the resources made available in the commodified symbolic environment of late capitalism. This might seem to suggest a "marketplace" metaphor for the understanding of identity, which views individuals as consumers creating from symbolic resources an identity-pastiche of our own choosing. Indeed, much of the recent research into the relation of media and identity has adopted this perspective . Yet I will argue in this paper that identity also represents a position which is constructed for us due to our placement in relation to various discourses, power centers, and the specific context of this historical moment. Identity therefore occurs simultaneously in the "private" and "public" realms as it is experienced as a reflective and performative process, yet is best understood analytically in the context of discourse.

The question of religious identity-formation has frequently been explored in the context of denominational affiliation. While this research has provided important insights into certain denominational groups and an examination of individual formation within them, this paper takes an approach more akin to the "generations" research modeled in the work of Wade Clark Roof as it foregrounds the subjective experience of religion in everyday life without overprivileging institutional affiliation. As Roof's and other texts have acknowledged, the mediated realm is an important context in which such identity-construction occurs. This paper, therefore, attempts to bring media scholarship on the relation of media and identity to an exploration of religious identity-construction in contemporary North America.

This paper employs ethnographic and critical methods, offering a preliminary analysis of a case study of the relation of media and religious identity-construction among a teen-aged girl and her single-parent father. I will discuss how this family is situated in terms of various social and material factors, highlighting the ways in which these aspects of identity are contested and negotiated, and how this relates to audience meaning-making practices, as revealed in the narratives emerging in the research situation. The case study demonstrates the impossibility of understanding religious identity without a sense of the way in which individuals are situated vis a vis the symbolic sphere, largely mediated, which is not only resource for but interpellator of the subject.

Identity and Discourse

The concept of identity is connected with the concept of the self and the "sovereign" individual. It is rooted in the 18th century Enlightenment ideals of humanity and reason which developed as critiques of the older feudal order in which ontological understandings had been based in one's relation to a deity and to a king. Thus the concepts of selfhood, "the individual," and identity undergird and legitimize the rise of capitalism as the socio-economic order that replaces feudalism. This underscores the fact that the ideas of the 'self' and of identity are not neutral or ideologically 'blank' ones, but are inherently related to the Western cultural context in which they developed.

The psychological and developmental literature of identity is appropriately critiqued for its tendency to embrace uncritically these notions of a universal experience of the 'self.' This literature has also been criticized in its assumptions of a "neutral" society into which individuals must fit, its tendency to privilege the white, middle class male experience as the norm, and its asumption that identity tends toward stability in adulthood. Nevertheless, it is still widely accepted that adolescence is a time of experimentation in many senses as young people make important intellectual and experiential choices. Because young people and their families experience the adolescent and young adult years as times of flux, they are particularly interested in and articulate about identity construction. Religious groups and scholars have been interested in this age group as well, as it represents what is understood to be an important time in the process of spiritual development.

In the research situation, as well as in daily life, young people (and their parents) construct narratives which describe both these choices and their understanding of the relationships between themselves and those they define as 'Others' (even if they include themselves in that definition in relation to different social groups). This process is significantly shaped by ideologies which are communicated through discourse. I am here employing the Althusserian concept of ideology as that which creates subjects and gives them a position within the larger society as they are 'hailed' through interpellation - the process in which we are made to believe that we are unique beings, yet are actually held in our "place." As Eagleton explains:

All action for Althusser, including socialist insurrection, is carried on within the sphere of ideology...it is ideology alone which lends the human subject enough illusory, provisional coherence for it to become a practical social agent.

Thus it is impossible to conceive of individual identity as apart from ideology, as we actually become subjects through ideology. Bringing the Althusserian notion of the 'centered' symbolic realm to the work of media audiences, Stuart Hall argues that identity is constructed in representation to the extent that it can make some audience members see themselves as 'Other:'

I have been trying to speak of identity as constituted, not outside but within representation; and hence of cinema, not as a second-order mirror held up to reflect what alread exists, but as that form of representation which is able to constitute us as new kinds of subjects, and thereby enable us to discover who we are.

The media, then, serve not only as resources upon which we may draw in our self-conscious attempts at identity-construction, but also shape the contexts through which we are understood by others and in which we come to understand ourselves; in fact, they create us through representation.
I have modeled my understanding of the relationship of discourse and ideology upon Peck's argument:

As 'vehicles of ideology,' discourses define participants' contributions in terms of content (what can be spoken, what is the 'topic'), relations (how speakers' relationships and interactions are defined), and identities (what subject positions different speakers may occupy in the interaction)...When a discourse has achieved such social dominance that these constraints are nearly invisible..., it attains the status of 'common sense.'

Discourse, as O'Sullivan and his colleagues write, is "the social process of making and reproducing sense(s)." Thus, while the language in which a discourse operates may be said to be infinite, a discourse is limited by the specific context of the structure of social relations in which it occurs. Further, they argue,

we establish and experience our own individuality by 'inhabiting' numbers of such discursive subjectivities (some of which confirm each other; others however coexist far from peacefully). The theory of discourse proposes that individuality itself is the site, as it were, on which socially produced and historically established discourses are reproduced and regulated.

Therefore, the subjective experience of the individual is the location at which conflict between different ideological positions occurs and is resolved, if only temporarily, through the ways in which individuals participate in discourse. As resolution of these tensions through narrative is an aspect of identity-construction, the narratives constructed in the research situation which describe such negotiations with media representations become important texts for analysis.

Discourse has frequently been studied in media research at the site of media texts. Media texts are of necessity structured so as to be consistent with the sense-making practices of the wider culture, and they therefore serve to institutionalize and legitimate certain viewpoints over others. This occurs through the ability of the media to articulate and frame what is "real" through the unquestioned assumptions which underlie representations. In this study I am exploring discursive struggles, yet rather than looking to media texts directly, I am interested in how individuals draw upon media representations in their discussions of both differential relations and their experience of their individuality.

Media and Identity

There are at least six ways in which media and identity work together, as previous media research and my own earlier work have suggested. First, media structure the environment in which identity-construction occurs. Communication technologies are embedded in the domestic environment so fully that they are often overlooked, yet play an important structuring role in the formation of identity. This occurs most obviously in the access (or lack of it) to certain media, as ownership of technology is often laden with cultural symbolism and status (i.e., the current popularity of pagers among teens). Second, media provide symbols of shared identity among social networks, and therefore also provide symbols which help us to define others in our social networks . Much of the early research of the Birmingham Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies, under the direction of Stuart Hall, has delineated the shared preferences of media among certain social groups such as punks, "teddy boys," housewives, etc., noting the ways in which these shared preferences reinforce social groups or subcultures. Third, the media serve as a resource adolescents employ to rebel against their parents in their process of self-definition and differentiation . This occurs both through the selection of media content as well as media practices through which teens differentiate themselves from their parents (i.e., not only choosing rap, but listening to it full blast, late in the evening). Fourth, the media serve as a consciously sought resource when individuals sense that they need to change their role and self-perception due to changing circumstances (i.e., divorce, move, loss of job, etc.). At these times, people seek out specific information or identify with new "role models" which mirror their newly-acquired status. Fifth, the media serve as a means of self-expression. While the media are occasionally searched for helpful resources in life's transitions, there are many more cases in which individuals identify with media texts through less self-conscious efforts, such as preferring media content that echoes their emotional attitudes (i.e., choosing to listen to sad music during a divorce). Sixth, media symbols serve as a symbolic "Other" against which people define themselves, reinforcing exoticization of certain racial/ethnic or other groups . The fact that some media texts reinforce a sense of the 'Other' as not-white, not-male, not-American, not-Protestant, in some ways serves to reinforce some audience members' senses of their positions as marginal in relation to the wider U.S. society.

These six aspects of the relationship between media and identity serve as a basis upon which to address deeper, contextualized issues of identity-formation and the implications of the mediated environment in these practices, as I will discuss in the case study.

The Case Study: Joe and Amber Dearborn

The case study discussed in this paper emerges from a pilot study which has been conducted under the direction of Stewart Hoover at the University of Colorado's Center for Mass Media Research and is funded by the Lilly Endowment. This research has focused on household-level observations and qualitative interviews of adolescents (teens and those in their early twenties) and their parent(s) or custodial guardian(s). To date, the researchers have interviewed and/or observed fifteen family groups and have conducted interviews with over fifty individuals. These families represent an interesting religious diversity.

The methodology calls for a ninety minute initial interview in the context of the family group, followed several days to two weeks later by individual interviews conducted separately and privately with each member of the family group (these individual interviews ranged in length from thirty minutes to two hours).

My relationship with Joe and Amber Dearborn went beyond the two-meeting interviewing process, however. Because my first interviews with them yielded such rich information (and even these initial interviews lasted much longer than the standard 90-minute formats), I found myself wanting to talk with them again, and in more depth, about their experiences. Thus, my relationship with them extended over six months (March - August, 1996), and included several formal interviews as well as more casual phone calls and get-togethers over lunch or dinner. While I would have liked to continue this relationship, there were unfortunate circumstances involving Joe's ex-wife which forced me to leave the research situation.

To examine the negotiations between the various discourses in which people are situated/situate themselves vis a vis the media, I wanted to draw out examples of narratives for analysis, obtained in the form of open-ended interviews. Such narratives are always constructed for specific audiences, and talk about identity necessarily occurs within the context of the subject's desire to present to others what he or she conceives to be a socially desirable identity. Implicit in this work is an understanding of language not as an expression of thought, but as a means of achieving social goals in interaction, reflecting a shift in understanding which affects how we understand the research process and situation. As Shotter argues in discussing methodological blind spots in psychological research:

we have concentrated all our attention upon what is supposed to occur 'inside' isolated individuals studied 'externally,' from the point of view of third person observers, socially uninvolved with them. We have failed to study what goes on 'between' people as first - and second-persons, the sense- making practices , procedures or methods made available to us as resources within the social orders into which we have been socialized - procedures that have their provenance neither in people's experience nor in their genes, but in the history of our culture.

This implies that we must not overlook the social contexts in which knowledge about identities are constructed. We have conceived our task as eliciting narratives so as to construct in our analysis not who the person "is" in some essential sense, but how he or she presents her or himself to us in the specific context of the interview process. This underscores the fact that such narratives are not solipsistic, but occur within a context in which participation in certain discourses are deemed more legitimate than others. How they are legitimized, and in which contexts, is a topic that will be discussed at a later point.

Joe and Amber: A Postmodern Family

Joe and Amber are perhaps best described as a "postmodern family," as disruptions due to employment and domestic changes have figured prominently in their lives. Joe "won" Amber in a bitter custody battle last year after Amber's relationship with her mother Leanne deteriorated once Leanne moved Amber and her brother Tim into her then-boyfriend, now-husband Trevor's home (where Amber lived for less than a year). While Tim stays with Joe and Amber every other weekend, Amber's visits to the home of Leanne and Trevor, with whom Tim and a stepsister Nan live, are much less frequent than that. Surprisingly, despite the contentious relationship between Joe and Leanne, Leanne's family still participates regularly in the Dearborn's family gatherings, and thus Amber continues to have an extended family of support.

Amber's move to her father's apartment further destabilized Joe's already-fragile financial situation. He has gone through frequent layoffs, once as a truck driver and now in his job as a heavy equipment mechanic, a position in which he estimates earnings of $30,000 a year. The move also represented a financial change for Amber: after having been raised in Westville, a lower middle class area of the city with a large Hispanic population, she had moved to Trevor's home in Orchard Park, an upper middle class and primarily caucasian area. It is not surprising, then, that a relationship between geographical location, class, gender, and race converge in Amber's discussions of her identity-negotiations. Amber identifies herself as "Chicana," although her father corrects her, noting that he is part Native American and while they both grew up in Hispanic areas of the city, they have no Mexican heritage. She calls her friends her "Chicana sisters" and also claims Hispanic heritage for them (although Joe is skeptical about this, also). When she speaks of her Chicano/Chicana friends, Amber adopts an appropriate accent as if to signify aurally her connection with the culture.

Amber, who is 16, differentiates herself from the "Orchard Park attitude," noting that she prefers her life "on the edge," where you must "do all you can to live:"

Lynn: How come you didn't get the Orchard Park attitude?
Amber: 'Cause I was more rebellious against it (than her brother was). Against living down there and stuff. If I ever saw it happening, 'cause I seen it happen to other people, and every time I look at them, it'd scare me even more and more, so. No way. I got into all that stuff (drugs, trouble, etc.), and that's kinda what kept me alive from turning - UGH! - into a scary person.

Amber sees her move from Westville to Trevor's home in Orchard Park as a "liminal moment," a time in which she was forced to redefine herself because of her immersion in the new social and economic context of her more scholastically rigorous new high school and her mother's imminent remarriage. This change is represented by her in terms of peers, behaviors, performance in school, and even music choices. It also emerges in her conversations about religion, as I will discuss.

Both Joe and Amber talk about religion as an important aspect of their lives, and were regular attenders and members of an American Baptist church during the time of the divorce and during Amber's move to Joe's. They now infrequently attend this church, which Joe's mother also attends, and where Amber has been active in leading the young children's programs in the past. Amber praises the church for the fact that its members treat her "like an adult" and show her "respect." They both consider their religious beliefs conservative. During one visit, Amber showed me a picture she had drawn based upon an illustration in a children's Bible titled, "The Princess finds Moses." She noted, "I always use the Bible. It's really good." Other than this, however, there was little in their speech or in the artifacts in their home to indicate the importance of the Bible or other traditional religious memorabilia in their everyday lives.

Joe had been raised United Methodist but his family became Baptist during the Vietnam war, when, Joe says, "the young pastor we had in there was preaching more politics than religion." They then joined a Baptist church as a family, but Joe "became disenchanted" with that church because of its hypocrisy:

There was a lot of inner church politics, a lot of hypocrites, really. On Sunday, they'd be 'hey brother,' like that, but come Monday they wouldn't talk to you. A lot of holier than thou people who'd look down their nose at you, but at night they were doing worse things than I was doing.

Joe then quit attending church for many years, but six years ago began attending a Baptist church his mother and stepfather joined a few years earlier. Although there are very few people his age (Joe is 42), and even fewer that are Amber's, they both describe it as "like family."

Both Joe and Amber have told me of paranormal experiences they have had, although neither of them see many inconsistencies (or connections) between this and their conservative Baptist faith. Amber describes her first paranormal experience, which occurred when she was young, as a seemingly pleasant and benign interaction with her grandfather who had died violently in a fire. Her description of the experience has some similarities to Joe's description of his own paranormal experience, which occurred when he was a teen after his father died of a heart attack while performing on stage. He describes the single occurrence after noting his inability to deal with his father's death at the time:

Lynn: Did it hit you later?
Joe: It hit me later, yeah, it did. (pause) Then there - you probably think - this is really silly. (pause) Ah, I don't know if I believe it any more. (pause). Two weeks after his death I got the room that he used to have, he and my mom used to have. It's a straight shot, I can look out that bedroom door, and I can see the back door, straight shot through the entire house. (pause) And. About 2 o'clock, 2:30 in the morning, you know I used to wake up and hear my dad come in the back door (after performing with local bands). And I woke up and looked up and here - (slight laugh) - as God is my witness, I swear I seen this. There was this black and white image of my father there. And he doesn't open the door, he comes through the back door. And he's tripping through, and he's walking. And it's a full body, black and white - and I'm awake. I am, so help me God, I am awake. I didn't dream it. I freaked, I watched right until he got to the beginning of the hallway, which is about 15 feet from my room, and I freaked, I just pulled the covers over my head. Looking back in retrospect, I really don't think the man would've hurt me. I think he was just so used to coming home he was coming home.

...

Lynn: Did he see you, or was there any kind of connection?
Joe: It was like you projected an image onto a cloud, like a holographic image. It wasn't like he was looking at me, it was like he just - had a really weird look in his eye, this distant look. Like, you know it is when someone's daydreaming, and they're looking at you, but they're not really looking at you, they're looking through you. That's the way he looked. It's like he just was walking like this, not really looking at me. I was twelve years old, I mean, shit. I was a horror fanatic. And here it is in living color and I'm like, 'well, TV's one thing, this is real life. We're outta here.'

Joe notes that it was the only time he ever saw his father. Amber, on the other hand, described several paranormal experiences of her own, none of which echoed Joe's fear. Also, she approached the topic much differently, seeming proud of and excited by her experiences while Joe was tentative in describing his. This is not surprising, given that he might have expected me as a researcher to be skeptical of their truth claims and he might have feared that such tales might have even cost him legitmacy in my eyes. However, I do not raise these issues to debate whether or not Joe and Amber saw what they said they saw. What is interesting to me here is the connection between these experiences and other discourses, as I will discuss. One example is the discourse of fright and "evil" which emerges in Amber's description of a different yet similar type of experience during the liminal move to Orchard Park:

Lynn: Have you seen anything recently, like since you've moved here?
Amber: Not recently. But back at the old house, I saw it all the time. It was great.
Lynn: And then did it stop when you went to Orchard Park?
Amber: Yeah. I think something - when I moved to Orchard Park, I knew something was there but it wasn't a good feeling. I think it might have followed me from my neighbor's house. I used to mow his lawn all the time, and he was a trucker, and no one was in our neighborhood, and I was mowing his lawn and was almost done and I was just talking to myself and all of a sudden the lawn mower just died. It was full of gasoline, and all of a sudden I heard this really evil laughing from all around. Nobody was in the neighborhood except for me and my brother. And it sounded really evil, and then it kinda followed me down to Orchard Park. And I saw a figure...it wasn't like a full body, it was kinda like an aura around a face...Really gruesome teeth, no nose, and that's the aura right there (pointing to a picture she'd drawn of it earlier). And I saw it at school and when I went home, and in my nightmares, and I never got a full night's rest because of that.
Lynn: And so that started before you moved to Orchard Park and then was there?
Amber: Well, I didn't see too much of it but I saw it mainly when I was in Orchard Park. I'd go outside and it would follow me. I felt I could feel its vicious paws go through my body. It felt like I had been torn in half and then put back together again. It was really scary. It followed me a little at night, and I haven't seen it since. (pause). I don't know. Some people don't believe in ghosts, but I do.

Certainly one might draw connections between Amber's unhappiness and alienation in Orchard Park, her parents' divorce, and her experience of this evil manifestation which tore her "in half and then put [her] back together again." Yet what was particularly interesting to me is that she talks about this experience openly, even mentioning it to her Sunday School teacher. In fact, when Amber told her Sunday school teacher about her experience, the church leader equated it with a manifestation of "the devil," an explanation that seemed acceptable to Amber. Joe, on the other hand, was somewhat shocked to learn that Amber had mentioned it to the church leader. He himself has not talked about his own experience with anyone in the church, although he has told a number of friends about it. This underscores, again, he sense of the fact that discussions of the paranormal represent an illegitimate public discourse. He attempts to control when and in which circumstances he will participate in that discourse.

Amber and Joe both like to watch documentaries and other programs about paranormal experiences, grouping these "strange phenomena" with "life after death experiences," "faith healing," and "ghost stories." Joe's use of the latter term is not meant to trivialize the stories, as he argues for at least the possibility that they might be "true." He and Amber both claim expertise in being able to tell an accurate portrayal of the experiences from one produced by someone who doesn't "have a clue of what they're talking about," as Joe says. He mentioned as particularly appealing the program In Search Of , which had been narrated by Leonard Nimoy. They distinguish these shows from the "science fiction" of The X-Files and Outer Limits, which they do not watch. Yet the two activities that they mentioned they do together regularly as a family are attending church every week and watching Star Trek every night at 10:30 P.M.

Their interest in the paranormal, and its popular portrayal in the media, does bleed into their religious beliefs, as can be seen in this discussion of Star Trek , in which a statement of cosmology emerges:

Lynn: Do you think there's any connection between your paranormal experiences or religion and your liking of Star Trek shows? Because some people seem to think they're sort of religious, or uplifting, or whatever.
Joe: I wouldn't say so. Even my pastor and I have gotten into debates over Star Trek, and Gene Rodenberry in particular. Because he, my pastor believes that Star Trek is along the lines of the cults out there that are saying that Jesus Christ was actually an alien that landed on this planet. And I'm goin'...'Well, do you know he wasn't?' And I said, 'y'know, that is one man's point of view'. I said, 'there's too many things in this world that nobody can explain away, like the drawing on the pyramids with the ancient Egyptians, drawing what looks like a modern-day space suit. And too many other variables, y'know?' I said, 'all I'm saying is, what if ?' And he just, you can see the veins start to come out (motions to his neck), but him and I, we go at it. I don't think, as far as Star Trek, I'm just curious. I'm just a natural curious person. I truly believe that we don't know a fraction of the things that go on in this world. So, I don't think Star Trek is something that really pulls any weight on paranormal existence, I just think that it might offer some ideas on why it takes place. Because, Star Trek, along with a coupla other shows, are based on - everything that is done on Star Trek, they may stretch the hell out of it, but if you bring it back down, there is a basis in scientific fact about a lot of things they do, as far as, like, the transporter. The particle beams. The carrier waves. There are carrier waves that we use in radio. Particle beams, we've got lasers now, they're particle beams. Yes, they may stretch it until it's almost unrecognizable, but everything they - and y'know, what if life after death is nothing more than a different dimension? You go, from, say, this dimension to another? I'm not saying we do that, I'm just saying, what if.

This is a rich exerpt and worthy of several comments. First, I would like to explore the relation of Star Trek to myth, acknowledging that several other scholars have noted this connection. One of the most helpful definitions of myth in media is offered by Silverstone, who draws upon the writings of Cassirer, Eliade, Levi-Bruhl, Levi-Strauss, and Malinowski for this task. He defines the mythic as

traditional stories and actions whose source is the persistent need to deny chaos and create order. It contributes to the security of social and cultural existence. The mythic is a world apart, but it is also close at hand. It acts as a bridge between the everyday and the transcendent, the known and the unknown, the sacred and the profane."

Let us look at this definition in greater detail. Silverstone refers to myths as traditional stories because they are conservative in a fundamental way. Yet to be effective, they must be flexible and open so as to incorporate new elements which harmonize emergent ideas in culture with their original structure and content. Star Trek sustains a traditional myth of the hero's quest for justice and for an egalitarian society while locating this quest in a futuristic setting. Silverstone notes that as stories , myths rely upon narrative structure, moving from uncertainty to certainty. The desire for resolution of uncertainty is one of the motivations of the mythic, and this resolution, even if symbolic, plays a functional role in culture as it contains the irrational. Because myths frame the irrational and the rational beliefs of a culture, they can become sites of contestation; they are social constructions. Those in the dominant positions of a society may be expected to reinforce the mythic in terms of their own vested interests, sometimes even laboring to secure alternative meanings for myths. Myths are ideological, and as such, their meanings are never finally secured. Because they draw upon Utopic desires through the emotions, they appeal to various members of culture for different reasons, and thus they are always open to redefinition. As a mass produced text, however, Star Trek does frame a certain set of beliefs, excluding some while highlighting others.

Jindra has argued that Star Trek offers a Utopian vision of the world in which "faith is placed in the power of the human mind, in humankind, and in science." He argues that it offers a world view which functions much as religion or myth, noting the centrality of progress to this view. Yet in the case of Joe and Amber,we do not see a family whose world view mirrors that which is seen on Star Trek. Instead we see a family which is self-identified in the traditional religions, espousing a theology which may draw upon Star Trek but for which Star Trek is clearly one of several sources which also must include the various mediated explorations of paranormal phenomena. A discourse of progress never arose in my conversations with Joe and Amber. Both, in fact, were skeptical of the possibilities that are suggested in Star Trek and widely accepted among the middle class, such as the possibility of societal economic equality or the likelihood that various racial/ethnic groups could coexist in harmony. Instead Joe and Amber emphasize the authority of their experiences of the paranormal, along with, perhaps, an implied discourse of relationality and connection with their ancestors. While they did not claim a link between their experience and Native American background, their interpretation of their experience might be suggestive of this.

Thus I want to argue that while this example might seem to illustrate a direct relationship between the content of programs on the paranormal or science fiction and a cosmology, it is important to recognize that the media are not absorbed uncritically in this or any other instance. In another interview, for instance, Joe describes the importance of teaching Amber that what is portrayed in media is not "real." He actually articulates better critical viewing skills than several other families I have interviewed possibly due to his class position, as he recognizes that the news media portray only a "certain point of view" and have a tendency not to highlight the views of "common people" like himself. He notes that often what is seen in the media must be supplemented by information he receives through more informal channels, particularly regarding news about his low-income neighborhood. Further, when I asked Joe if it bothers him that sometimes the paranormal activities are sensationalized in the media, he responded emphatically, "No, 'cause that's entertainment." Thus while he is not seeking information on paranormal experiences directly from the media, Joe notes that he is a "curious person" and approaches the media as introducing new possibilities. Critical viewing skills is not equated with total agency at the site of the audience, however, for the audience member is still situated/subjected by discourse. Accepting the discourse of science, for example, Joe is willing to leave the possibilities introduced by mediated messages open until they can be "disproved." I would argue that the self-identification of Joe and Amber as persons who have experienced the paranormal shape their selection of content that satiates their curiosity about paranormal experiences. These choices, in turn, expose them to new ideas of the paranormal, which then shapes their interpretation of their own experiences, their audience meaning-making practices, and their interpellation into "vernacular" religion.

Religious and Public Discourse and Identity

As Jindra argued in his analysis of Star Trek as a religious phenomenon, there is a tendency in the U.S. to bifucate religion in our analysis of it: either we understand it solely in terms of its institutional and confessional forms, or we abstract it from public life completely, viewing it as wholly privatised practice. Yet this diverts us from exploring the interactions between the ways in which religion is expressed in various public aspects of U.S. culture (including the mass media), and its expression in "private" life. I agree with the many scholars who have contested the secularization hypothesis, arguing that rather than declining, religion is emerging in culture in new forms. While membership in institutional religion is declining, there are many - even within traditional faith groups - who embrace religion in forms such as the New Age and nature religions and understand themselves as religious or spiritual yet autonomous in relation to religious institutions. Albanese notes the ways in which these alternative belief systems have become infused into public discourse, thereby changing not only religion but also signalling the legitimizing of the discourses of therapy and environmentalism just as the legitimacy of more traditional religion in public discourse has faded. It is not surprising, therefore, to find individuals situated in traditional religion who draw upon and may be understood as situated in relation to a variety of other complementary and contradictory discourses, as Joe and Amber are. The struggle over the illegitimacy of the discourse of the paranormal in Joe's narratives highlights his own sense of agency regarding his ability to situate himself within particular discourses. This occurs even as the public definitions of the paranormal frame his own understanding of this experience.

It is also interesting to note that while Amber has no difficulty situating herself in paranormal discourse, she was not able to articulate a cohesive and synthetic cosmology at all. This leaves her with rather contradictory explanations of her experience as "paranormal" and as a manifestation, in Christian discourse, of "the devil." The fact that the non-"evil" paranormal experiences continue to hold legitimacy for her on the basis of her experience (the legitimacy demonstrated in her willingness to talk about it) indicates the degree to which the Baptist explanation may not preempt the contradictory discourse of the paranormal. It is at least interesting to note the fungibility of the boundaries between cosmology/theology and science fiction for both Amber and Joe. Clearly, while there might be an inconsistency, they are not living on a "map" which separates the spiritual experience from the "secular" realm of the media.

Reflections on Method

The case study I have described here follows in the tradition of reflexive cultural anthropology, using Judith Stacey's Brave New Families as a model for how ethnographies based upon an in-depth relationship with a few key informants might offer insights on questions of social change. Stacey's work, along with the preliminary case study analyzed here, must be viewed in relation to the attacks on "realist" ethnographies most famously articulated by Clifford and Marcus and their contributors. While the reflexivity of these studies challenge the notion of "value-free" research, I do not wish to imply that therefore nothing can be known. As Ortner argues:

It is our capacity, largely developed in fieldwork, to take the perspective of the folks on the shore, that allows us to learn anything at all - even in our own culture - beyond what we already know. Further, it is our location 'on the ground' (i.e., studying everyday lives) that puts us in a position to see people not simply as passive reactors to and enactors of some 'system,' but as active agents and subjects in their own history.

Conclusion

This paper has attempted to explore the intersection of religious positionality and public discourse on religion (and quasi-religion) in an analysis of the role of media in the formation of identity. The paper has challenged Modernist (and Romantic) notions of a unified, wholly autonomous subject while also examining the choices individuals make within their limited options. Identity is explored with some attention to the necessary reflexivity of the researcher, and thus I have argued that any such research project has both theoretical and accompanying methodological challenges to address.

The research presented here is preliminary in nature, and I look forward to learning of other ways in which existing religious research might provide further illumniation. Because the research is qualitative in nature, it is not designed to yield generalizable findings. Yet this work is, I hope, suggestive of possible practices which warrant further exploration through a variety of methods. Future work will analyze other case studies of the intersections of media, religion, culture, and discourse, as this paper has demonstrated, I hope, the fruitfulness of an in-depth analysis of these intersections.

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