How Places Shape Identity
The Origins of Distinctive LBQ Identities in Four Small U.S. Cities
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 7616010 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Japonica Brown-Saracino, Japonica Brown‐saracino (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 121 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 1-63 |
| Publication date | 2015-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-9602 • E-ISSN: 1537-5390 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/682066 |
| PMID | 26430710 |
| OpenAlex | W2205341518 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 82 |
| References cited | 72 |
Tools from the study of neighborhood effects, place distinction, and regional identity are employed in an ethnography of four small cities with growing populations of lesbian, bisexual, and queer-identified (LBQ) women to explain why orientations to sexual identity are relatively constant within each site, despite informants' within-city demographic heterogeneity, but vary substantially across the sites, despite common place-based attributes. The author introduces the concept of "sexual identity cultures"--and reveals the defining role of cities in shaping their contours. She finds that LBQ numbers and acceptance, place narratives, and newcomers' encounters with local social attributes serve as touchstones. The article looks beyond major categorical differences (e.g., urban/rural) to understand how and why identities evolve and vary and to reveal the fundamental interplay of demographic, cultural, and other city features previously thought isolatable. The findings challenge notions of identity as fixed and emphasize the degree to which self-understanding and group understanding remain collective accomplishments
Aesthetics · Collective identity · Economic geography · Ethnography · Geography · Human sexuality · Identity (music) · Lesbian · Narrative · Place identity · Political science · Politics · Queer · Sexual identity · Social group · Social identity theory · Social science · Sociology · Urban planning · Anthropology · Gender Studies · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy · Psychology · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Social Psychology · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies
Internal Diversity among "Spiritual but Not Religious" Adolescents in the United States
Reconnecting Religion and Community in a Small City
Gentrifiers Evading Stigma
Healthier Than Just Healthy
Why LGBTQ Adults Keep Ambivalent Ties with Parents
Uncertain Sexualities and the Unusual Woman
Afraid of Walking Home From the 'L' at Night?' The Politics of Crime and Race in Racially Integrated Neighborhoods
Anti-Black and Blue
Urban Borderlines
Barriers to belonging
Inside a Safe Place
The Geography of Stigma Management
Urban Referencing Styles and Networks
Sexual Orientation and Social Attitudes
Urban Ecology in the Time of Climate Change
Place Narratives and the Experience of Class
Civil and uncivil places
The Geography of Research on LGBTQ Life
Class, culture, and structure
Toward a sociology of global comparative placemaking
Examining the links between beliefs and institutional emergence
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families and health
Portland Oregon, Music Scenes, and Change
Performative Progressiveness
Aligning Our Maps
Cultural Archipelagos
Examined Masculinity”
How place shapes taste
Ambivalently post-lesbian
Ethno-Racial Appeals and the Production of Political Capital
The Spatial Articulation of Urban Political Cleavages
Not going to the mainland
Campus Sex in Context
Heritage places and the place attachment of adolescents
Going Out
American Medical Sociology and Health Problems in the Global South
Post-gay, Political, and Pieced Together
Characteristics and functions of subcultural identities in the lives of gay, bisexual, and queer-identifying men in Australia
Meeting Ethnography
Identities, participation, and the immigration crisis in the city
Are Population and Land Use Changes Perceived as Threats to Sense of Place in the New West? A Multilevel Modeling Approach
Does Conservation Ethic Include Intergenerational Bequest? A Random Utility Model Analysis of Conservation Easements and Agricultural Landowners
Resilient queer subjects
Where Allies Matter Most
A spirit of urban capitalism
When place shapes attitudes
Queer Nightlife in Costa Rica (1984–2024)
“Different than an infantry unit down in Georgia”
The Geography of Gentrification and Residential Mobility
Racialized Organizations in Racialized Space
Mapping lesbians’ everyday community-making in a small city
‘What is up with my sisters? Where are you?’ The origins and consequences of lesbian-friendly place reputations for LBQ migrants
Homonormativity or queer disidentification? Rural Australian bisexual women's identity politics
West Hollywood Is Not That Big on Anything but White People
Metropolitan Manufacturing Decline and Environmental Inequalities in Industrial Air Pollution in the United States
Compartmentalizing Communities or Creating Continuity
Discourses of Resource Dependency
Governing space, constructing place
The big ole gay express’
Les identités lesbiennes et les positionnements queers comme stratégies politiques
Place habitus in the city and suburbs
Tourism and social representations of Sherpas from Nepal
It Was Mythic”
The Geography of Sexual Orientation
Children's Health Lifestyles and the Perpetuation of Inequalities
It Just Always Seemed Like it Wasn't a Big Deal, Yet I Know for Some People They Really Struggle with It
Coming Out as Transgender
Queer Communities and Activism in South Korea
What Has Kept Me Alive
Navigating unintelligibility
Transing' fitness and remapping transgender male masculinity in online message boards
Heritage places as the settings for virtual playgrounds
No Place for a Feminist
However I talk about it, my kids tell me I’m doing it wrong
No girls allowed
Turning newcomers into locals
Globalization, place and the life course
Place Attachment and Alienation from Place
Finding Queer Life through Allies
The Afterlife of Identity Politics
Deconstructed and Constructive Logics
Place-Based Partisanship
When Work Disappears
Odd girls and twilight lovers
From Nowhere to Everywhere
Stuck in Place
Great American City
Invisible Families
Villa Victoria
With the Boys
Becoming Right
Vision and Method in Historical Sociology
Turkish Berlin
Black Citymakers
Theorizing and Researching Intersectionality
Recognizing (and Resisting) Regulation
'Can I Be Bridesmaid?' Combining the Personal and Political in Same-Sex Weddings
Sexual Orientation-Based Hate Crimes on Campus
Dangerous Disclosures
Making Character Concrete
Neighborhood Factors Associated with Same-Sex Households in U.S. Cities
High School Religious Context and Reports of Same-Sex Attraction and Sexual Identity in Young Adulthood
Ecological Analyses of Gay Male and Lesbian Partnering in the Metropolitan United States in 2000
Sentiment and Symbolism as Ecological Variables
Another Country
Certain Places Have Different Energy
Bodies that matter
Citizenship and the Place of the Public Sphere
Faithful to Fenway
The Philadelphia Barrio
History Repeats Itself, but How? City Character, Urban Tradition, and the Accomplishment of Place
Disrupting Cultural Selves
Hate Crime Reporting as a Successful Social Movement Outcome
Neighborhood Effects in Temporal Perspective
Place in product
Out' in The Valley
Women, urban social movements and the lesbian ghetto
From Methodological Stumbles to Substantive Insights
Gone 'underground'? Lesbian visibility and the consolidation of queer space in Montréal
Get Thee to a Big City
For better or worse
Out in the Field
Queer Unions
Renaissance Revivals
Identity and Community on the Alaskan Frontier
From the Lesbian Ghetto to Ambient Community
Post-Gay Collective Identity Construction
Must Identity Movements Self-Destruct? A Queer Dilemma
Displacement and Identity Discontinuity
Queer Pilgrimage
The Night Is Young
Midwest or Lesbian? Gender, Rurality, and Sexuality
Assessing 'Neighborhood Effects
Collective Identity and Social Movements
A Place to Call Home
The Sociology of the Local
The Social Organization of Desire
Pray the Gay Away
Who Am I and Who Are We? Conflicting Narratives of Collective Selfhood in Stigmatized Groups
Celebration and Suppression
Beyond 'identity
Talking identity in the public sphere
The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry
The re-accomplishment of place in twentieth century Vermont and New Hampshire
| Unique citing works | 82 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 8,2 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2026 (11) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 81 |