Basudhara Sen

This study examines identity construction among first-generation Asian Indian immigrants who reside in the Southern Plains region of the United States. Employing structural ritualization theory this study focuses on how three types of ritualized behaviors - regional-ethnic, pan-ethnic, and host - play a crucial role in constructing the “multi-ritual” ethnic identity of Indian immigrants. In determining the rank or overall importance of ritualized symbolic practices we argue that the higher the rank of a practice, the greater its impact on the cognitions and behaviors of immigrants as they construct a multi-ritual ethnic identity. The results of this study, which is based on interviews with thirty-one individuals, field observations, and numerous documents and secondary research, indicate that in the process of ethnic identity formation, Indian immigrants negotiate with their distinctive pan-Indian RSPs, retain and alter their regional-Indian RSPs, and bring their ethnicity into the mainstream society through selective pan and/or regional-ethnic RSPs. Emphasizing the situational dimension of ritual dynamics, this study contributes to the social constructionist perspective of ethnicity and to the micro-sociological analysis of ethnic identity. It also enhances our empirical understanding of an understudied Asian Indian immigrant community while expanding the analytic scope of structural ritualization theory.